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Reconciliation effort with Taliban picks up pace in Afghanistan
Monday January 17, 4:57 PM AFP
The release of some 80 prisoners from US custody in Afghanistan heralds an intensified effort to bring former fighters from the Taliban militia back into mainstream society, officials said.
The move could propel a wider amnesty offer aimed at Taliban foot soldiers, some of whom have waged an insurgency from the hills and caves of Afghanistan since the Islamic regime was ousted by a US-led operation in late 2001.
Chief justice Fazel Hadi Shinwari said negotiations with militants from the fundamentalist movement were continuing and some more moderate Taliban were eyeing the olive branch.
"One category of Taliban want to come back and they have contacted us and the government... and the government is providing them the opportunity to come back," Shinwari said after the detainees were freed by the US military from Bagram air base near Kabul on Sunday before the Muslim festival of Eid.
A remaining hard core of fighters, estimated by government officials to number around 100 and "whose hands are stained with blood, are not eligible for the talks and the government will not reconcile with them," Shinwari said.
Speaking to reporters at the Supreme Court on Sunday, he said the release of prisoners has been instrumental in ongoing talks.
"One prisoner whose name is Mullah Qalamuddin, who was a commander of Taliban from Logar province, was released and then he went to Taliban and came back to us with the idea of reconciliation. There are contacts with the government," Shinwari said, adding that the government was negotiating for the release of more prisoners.
However, a purported Taliban spokesman disagreed. "There hasn't been any contact between the Taliban and the government," Abdul Latif Hakimi told AFP by telephone from an unknown location.
Around 18,000 US-led troops remain in Afghanistan hunting down militants linked to the Taliban and to Al-Qaeda, whose leader Osama bin Laden was given shelter in Afghanistan both before and after 9/11.
President Hamid Karzai and US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad have indicated that ordinary Taliban who are not linked to Al-Qaeda or wanted for crimes against humanity would be welcome to return home and reintegrate into society.
Western security analysts say a reconciliation with the Taliban, who governed the country for six years, is vital for rebuilding Afghanistan.
"There will be a number of people who will cross back over the fence in the next year," said Nick Downie, security coordinator for the Afghanistan NGO Security Organisation.
Colonel David Lamm, chief of staff for US operations in Afghanistan, told AFP that there are "a few thousand low-level militants out there" likely to accept the amnesty offer.
"I suspect that many of the foot soldier Taliban would be able to come back in, reintegrate with Afghan society and participate in the peaceful democratic political process."
Lamm added that ongoing talks, and the Taliban's failure to derail the October 9 presidential election despite months of threats, would spark leadership problems for the militants.
"The Taliban made great claims but if I was one of the foot soldiers out there I would be looking at them and saying these guys just didn't get it," he said.
Assadullah Wafa, the governor of Paktia province, last week headed a delegation of tribal elders set to meet with US envoy Khalilzad about the issue. The meeting was postponed because Khalilzad was meeting US senators.
"The delegation of elders came to Kabul to speak with the ambassador and hear it themselves, that if the Taliban come back there won't be problems for them," Wafa said.
Analyst Downie added that it was vital to give "many people who see no other way out the opportunity to take a different path", which could lead to widespread reinvigoration of Afghanistan.
"Look at Northern Ireland now versus 15 years ago, after people were brought in from the cold," he said.
Afghanistan: Release Of Taliban Suspects Could Bolster Amnesty Talks
By Ron Synovitz
More than 80 suspected Taliban supporters were released from U.S. military detention centers across Afghanistan yesterday ahead of the three-day Muslim festival Eid Al-Adha. U.S. military officials say none was considered a high-level security threat. Some observers say the Afghan government appears to have asked for releases in cases where there was no evidence against the detainees. Others say it could encourage moderate Taliban supporters to accept a government amnesty offer.
Prague, 17 January 2005 (RFE/RL) -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the U.S. ambassador to Kabul Zalmay Khalilzad have both indicated recently that rank-and-file Taliban would be welcome to return home to reintegrate into society -- provided they are not linked to Al-Qaeda or wanted for crimes against humanity.
But Karzai's spokesman, Hamid Elmi, said there is no link between the release of prisoners and the amnesty offer.
"No, there is no such connection. [The release of detainees by the U.S.-led coalition] has taken place because we are in the days of the Eid celebration [beginning on 19 January]," Elmi said. "Remember that on this same occasion in the past, the custom has been to release prisoners. This time, coalition forces released 81 prisoners from their custody out of respect for the occasion."
Brad Adams, however, takes a different view. The Asia director for Human Rights Watch is among those experts on Afghanistan who believe there is a link between the prisoner release and efforts to foster amnesty talks with moderate ranks of the Taliban.Security experts say reconciliation with moderate Taliban is vital to the success of Afghan reconstruction efforts.
"There are some public negotiations and a lot of private negotiations between the Taliban, the U.S., and the Afghan government about ending the low-level war with the Taliban," Adams said. "And I suspect that all of this is connected."
Adams believes Karzai's government asked U.S. forces to release the detainees in order to encourage national reconciliation.
"The Afghan government has been very unhappy with the behavior of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. They've told the U.S. that it has been heavy handed. It has been counterproductive. They have picked up the wrong people at the wrong time," Adams said. "They've made it very difficult for the Afghan government to defend the U.S. presence there. So they have been urging the U.S. for a long time to stop the [sweeping arrest operations] and to release people that they don't have evidence against. This seems to be a sign of that. At the same time, the U.S. has belatedly come to understand that Afghanistan is not the place where they can just arrest anybody they want at any time."
Security experts say reconciliation with moderate Taliban is vital to the success of Afghan reconstruction efforts.
The chief of staff for U.S. operations in Afghanistan, Colonel David Lamm, said he believes as many as a few thousand low-level Taliban are likely to accept the amnesty offer.
Meanwhile, Afghan Supreme Court chief justice Fazel Hadi Shinwari has confirmed that talks between Kabul and moderate elements of the Taliban are under way. Speaking to the detainees before they were freed yesterday, Shinwari encouraged them to view their release as a goodwill gesture toward reconciliation.
"I would like to welcome your safe release," Shinwari said. "Be happy and enjoy time with your family. Don't be upset at what happened to you in jail."
But Abdul Manan, who had been held at the U.S.-run Bagram airfield, said he will have a hard time forgetting what happened.
"I have bad memories of my interrogation by the Americans," Abdul Manan said. "[The U.S. military] abused me and gave me a hard time. This was the worst time that I have lived through."
Meanwhile, from the southeastern Afghan town of Gardayz, Paktiya Province Governor Hajji Asadollah Wafa said he is pushing forward with efforts to broker an amnesty deal.
"The amnesty has been announced by President Karzai, and it is on the basis of this policy that we are in contact with the tribal elders and religious leaders in Paktiya Province," Wafa said. "We announced the amnesty offered by President Karzai [to those leaders] and they assured us that they are going to contact alleged Taliban fighters, or those who have been misled or are angry with the central government. And they are going to work to get these people to return to their home districts."
Supreme Court chief justice Shinwari said yesterday's prisoner release could be instrumental to the success of the ongoing amnesty talks.
He added that at least one recently released Taliban commander from Logar Province already has served as an intermediary for talks between Taliban supporters and the Afghan government.
But purported Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi denied that report. Hakimi told the French news agency AFP today that there has not been any contact between the Taliban and Karzai's government
Lubbers warns against speeding up refugee returns to Afghanistan
17 Jan 2005 14:12:12 GMT
KABUL, Jan. 17 (UNHCR) – Hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees will likely return home this year, but the pace of returns should not be speeded up, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers said at the end of his four-day visit to Afghanistan.
After a meeting with President Hamid Karzai to discuss the need for long-term solutions to the Afghan refugee situation, Lubbers said the rate of return in 2004 was "correct and appropriate." Last year some 760,000 Afghans returned, mostly from Pakistan and Iran.
More than 3.5 million Afghans have returned to their homes since UNHCR began its voluntary repatriation programme in 2002.
During a news conference before leaving Kabul on Saturday, the High Commissioner answered questions about concerns that Iranian authorities might be putting pressure on Afghan refugees to leave the country.
Lubbers said the repatriation from Iran, as well as Pakistan, is governed by a tripartite agreement which is based on the principle that all returns must be voluntary. He said UNHCR is seeking assurances from Iran that Afghan refugees remaining in the country will continue to have access to basic services and that they will not be put under pressure to leave. Talks are currently ongoing with the Iranian authorities on this issue, and UNHCR hopes that these discussions will lead to the renewal of the tripartite agreement when the current one expires in March.
Lubbers and Karzai also discussed whether Afghan refugees would be able to take part in upcoming parliamentary elections.
"I was pleased that Afghan refugees were able to vote in last year's presidential elections," Lubbers said. "The parliamentary elections will be a far more complicated exercise and we need to look at all the dimensions regarding the participation of refugees."
Earlier, in discussions with members of the newly appointed Afghan cabinet as the head of the country's human rights commission., Lubbers emphasized the need to ensure that those Afghans who do decide to return are helped to reintegrate into their places of origin.
Within Afghanistan UNHCR supports the reintegration of returnees through a number of programmes. With assistance from UNHCR and its partners, more than 170,000 homes across Afghanistan have been rebuilt since 2002 and some 8,000 wells or water points have been established in areas of high return.
In places where the return of significant numbers of returnees has created tensions or disputes UNHCR has launched coexistence initiatives which promote dialogue, inclusion and mutual understanding.
During his visit to a village in Parwan province, north of Kabul, the High Commissioner saw first hand how tensions between two communities had been eased through UNHCR interventions.
Disputes over political and military affiliations had existed between the villages of Senjet and Khalazai for decades. Control over the supply of water to Khalazai, which is downstream from Senjet, then became an issue. Through a dual approach of peace-building between the villages and infrastructure improvements to the water supply UNHCR and it partners were able to significantly improve relations between the communities.
"Projects such as this one show what can be accomplished in areas where previously there was conflict, and play an important role in sustaining peaceful reintegration," said Lubbers after meeting village elders.
The High Commissioner also visited the Zhari Dasht camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in southern Kandahar province. Zhary Dasht is the largest of four camps in the region where UNHCR and its partner organizations are providing shelter, food, education and health care to some 145,000 people.
Many of Zhari Dasht's 50,000 residents were forced to leave their homes because of a severe drought that has affected areas of southern Afghanistan for nearly a decade. The camp also provides shelter to a large number of ethnic Pashtuns who fled their homes in the north of the country fearing retribution following the fall of Taliban.
"The first priority, whether it is for internally displaced people here in Zhari Dhast or refugees in other countries, is that they be able to return to their place of origin," said Lubbers. "This is what most want. But many will want to stay where they are. In the case of Zhari Dasht that that is only possible if they can support themselves either as a result of vocational training or land distribution. Then they can be seen as an asset to the region rather than a liability."
Last year the UN refugee agency assisted nearly 20,000 internally displaced persons to return to their homes. With the election of President Karzai in October and expectations of improved security across much of the country it's predicted that 2005 will see greater numbers of IDPs return to their communities than in 2004.
Before arriving in Afghanistan the High Commissioner made a brief stop in Pakistan where he formally endorsed plans to conduct a census of Afghans living in Pakistan. The census, to be held in February, will include all Afghans who arrived in Pakistan after November 1979. UNHCR is covering the nearly US$ 800,000 dollar cost of the first phase of the census. The census should provide information that will enable UNHCR and the government of Pakistan to identify and categorize groups within the Afghan population in Pakistan and to design appropriate responses.
The repatriation of more than three million Afghans since 2002 represents UNHCR's largest operation in its 53-year history. Throughout his visit to Afghanistan – his sixth since being appointed High Commissioner four years ago – Ruud Lubbers praised the results achieved so far, while highlighting the challenges that remain.
Iran rejects U.N. accusation on Afghan refugees
17 Jan 2005 13:05:34 GMT
TEHRAN, Jan 17 (Reuters) - Iran rejected U.N. accusations that it was forcing Afghan refugees to go home and said on Monday that Tehran could review its cooperation with the United Nations on refugees as a result.
A U.N. source told Reuters on Sunday the United Nations would end millions of dollars of annual assistance for repatriating the refugees from Iran unless Tehran stopped sending them to Afghanistan against their will.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) began administering a voluntary repatriation scheme for some 2 million Afghans living in Iran in 2002. Just under 1 million remain.
Iran wants the rest to leave quickly, saying it was now safe for them to return home.
But Ahmad Hosseini, head of the Bureau for Immigration Affairs at Iran's Interior Ministry, denied Iran had forced Afghans back over its eastern border.
"Repatriation has been stopped for three months because of the cold season and school time. No repatriation has occurred in the last three months for (the U.N.) to say whether it is voluntary or forced," he told a news conference.
"If the extensive organisation of the UNHCR in Tehran and the provinces ... cannot produce a real and accurate report on the Afghans ... it seems the Interior Ministry should revise the operations of this organisation in Iran," he added.
Hosseini said Iran made a distinction between legitimate refugees, who fled various conflicts in Afghanistan over the last two decades, and those who had crossed into Iran illegally in search of work.
"Our country has no hesitation in seriously confronting illegal Afghans," he said, adding that 140,000 had been arrested since March 2004.
The U.N. official had told Reuters Iran was deporting some legitimate refugees among the hundreds of illegal Afghans it was sending home every day.
Taliban claim killing 4 Afghan troops in Kunar
Murder of 6 cops in Helmand confirmed
Monday January 17, 2005 (1347 PST) Pakistan News Service/Pak Tribune
KABUL, January 18 (Online): Taliban have claimed killing four troops of Afghan National Army troops in eastern Afghanistan.
Latifullah Hakimi told Radio Tehran that Taliban have blown up Afghan troops' vehicle with a remote control bomb in Naray district of the Kunar province.
He further said that nephew of a jihadi leader and reputable, Malik Haji Zareen is among the four deceased troops.
Meanwhile, Afghan government has confirmed the killing of six Afghan police officials in Helmand province of south western Afghanistan.
talking to Radio MashedA spokesman of Afghan Interior Ministry, Najeebullah Najeeb said that the officials were kidnapped on Wednesday last by anti-state elements. He said bodies of these officials were found by Afghan police in Shahi area of Helmand province.
He further added that Taliban elements seemed to be behind the said killings of six Afghan police officials in Helmand province of southwestern Afghanistan.
Afghanistan sends humanitarian aid to tsunami-hit Indonesia
JAKARTA, Jan. 17 (Xinhuanet) -- Afghanistan has sent humanitarian aid and assistance to Indonesia for the victims of tsunami, the Afghan Embassy in Jakarta said in a statement Monday.
The assistance includes food, medicine, cloth and fresh blood which have been donated by the people in Afghanistan. The assistance "has been through a lot of difficulties for almost three decades by war and natural disasters," the statement said.
Meanwhile, a team of doctors and emergency officers from Afghanistan is expected to arrive in Indonesia's Sumatra on Tuesday.
"In spite of the fact that Afghanistan itself is a receiving country, it feels obliged to show its sympathy and brotherhood through sending its limited aid and assistance to Aceh province inIndonesia," it said.
One in four Afghan children dies before fifth birthday
By Maxine Frith 18 January 2005 Independent News & Media (UK)
Afghanistan has one of the poorest records in the world for women and children's health. And despite the grand promises made to post-war Afghanistan, there is no sign of improvement any time soon.
Unicef says 1,600 women per 100,000 die in childbirth in Afghanistan; in the UK, the rate is 16 per 100,000. In the most remote areas the maternal mortality rate is 6,000 per 100,000, meaning that 6 per cent of women die during labour.
Even if mother and baby survive, their prospects are dismal. One in four children dies before their fifth birthday; in most Western countries, the rate is fewer than 30 per 1,000 live births.
The 26 million people have just 900 clinics for reproductive health and childbirth. Charities and aid agencies have been frustrated that the Millennium Development Goals did not directly address the issue of reproductive health.
The US refuses to fund organisations promoting abortion. Lucy Palmer, support manager for the sexual health charity Marie Stopes International in south Asia, said: "Because of the work we do on abortion, we have to rely on European partners.
"The Americans had committed a lot of money to a basic healthcare package in Afghanistan which would have given women better access to services, but just before the elections the cash was diverted to building roads.
"Contraception is not illegal in Afghanistan but women only have access to these services if there is a clinic two or three kilometres away, and for most that is not the case."
Chronic shortages of trained doctors, midwives and hospitals also mean most women who develop complications during labour are likely to die.
Ms Palmer added: "[We] are struggling just to get our teams out there and working. The country needs a national training centre for doctors and midwives."
US special forces 'inside Iran'
Monday, 17 January, 2005 BBC News
US commandos are operating inside Iran selecting sites for future air strikes, says the American investigative reporter Seymour Hersh.
In the New Yorker magazine, Hersh says intelligence officials have revealed that Iran is the Bush administration's "next strategic target".
Hersh says that American special forces have conducted reconnaissance missions inside Iran for six months.
But the White House has described his article as "riddled with inaccuracies".
Potential targets include nuclear sites and missile installations, he says.
The New Yorker journalist adds that President Bush has authorised the operations, defining them as military to avoid legal restrictions on CIA covert intelligence activities overseas.
They constitute a revival of a form of covert US military activity used in the 1980s, notably in support of the Nicaraguan Contras.
'Working with Pakistan'
The task force has been penetrating eastern Iran from Afghanistan and leaving remote detection devices known as sniffers capable of testing for radioactive emissions in the atmosphere, Hersh says.
He reports as well that American special forces units have been authorised to conduct covert operations in as many as 10 nations in the Middle East and South Asia.
He quotes one senior intelligence official as saying a force in Pakistan is working with scientists who have had dealings with Iranian colleagues.
But the price for co-operation, the official said, was a US assurance that Islamabad would not have to hand over AQ Khan, the father of the Pakistani nuclear programme who last year admitted to illegally transferring nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya.
'Riddled with inaccuracies'
Hersh bases his claims on anonymous sources, including former intelligence officials and consultants with links to the Pentagon.
One such consultant is quoted as saying that the civilians in the Pentagon wanted to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible.
There have also been calls from Pentagon hawks to use a limited attack on Iran to topple the country's religious leadership, one of Hersh's sources said.
The article has already drawn fire from the White House: the communications director, Dan Bartlett, called it "riddled with inaccuracies".
"I don't believe that some of the conclusions he's drawing are based on fact," Mr Bartlett added.
He said the diplomatic approach was still the priority.
"No president, at any juncture in history has ever taken military options off the table," he said. "But what President Bush has shown is that he believes we can emphasize the diplomatic initiatives that are under way right now."
The BBC's Justin Webb in Washington says that while Hersh could be wrong he has a series of scoops to his name, including the details of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal last year.
His track record suggests that he should be taken seriously, our correspondent says.
Turkish troops readying for major tasks in Afghanistan
Monday, January 17, 2005 ANKARA – Turkish Daily News
Afghan parliamentary elections are slated to take place in April, during Turkish command of ISAF
Turkish troops of the 28th Mechanized Infantry Brigade, the headquarters of which is in Mamak, Ankara, are to undertake a number of critical tasks in Afghanistan when they take over the command of a multinational military unit deployed in Kabul.
The troops will take over the command of the Kabul Multinational Brigade in Kabul on Jan. 27. The multinational brigade operates under the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Turkey is due to take over the command of the whole mission on Feb. 11 for six months.
A large group of the 28th Mechanized Infantry Brigade departed from Ankara last week and more personnel and equipment are being transported to Kabul ahead of the Jan. 27 take-over. Throughout its term as commander of the Kabul Multinational Brigade, the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) will be responsible for maintaining security in such areas of operation as assisting the United Nations' missions to disarm Afghan groups, discharging the former Afghan military, assisting the Afghan government and international organizations in providing humanitarian aid to the Afghan people and providing training to the Afghan army.
Maintaining security will be a critical task particularly in April, when parliamentary elections are scheduled to take place in the country.
Some 3,800 personnel from 26 countries currently operate in the Kabul Multinational Brigade. The brigade will have a duty area of 4,380-square kilometers.
Turkey will hand over the command of ISAF to Italy after its six-month term in command of the force expires.
Up to the Task?
Newsonline By Abubaker Saddique
Although Afghanistan s new year will begin with a new government enjoying widespread domestic and international legitimacy, many of Afghanistan’s consistent challenges remain. The most immediate task at hand would be to hold hassle free parliamentary elections in April and taming its unruly warlords and their marauding militias. In the long term, preventing Afghanistan from becoming another narco-state, bringing development to one of the poorest countries in the world and preventing large scale violence would be the key steps to pacify the war-ravaged country.
After weeks of deliberations and behind the scene dealings following his inauguration on December 7 as Afghanistan’s first directly elected President, Hamid Karzai announced a 28 member cabinet on December 24 mostly consisting of western educated technocrats. The next day the cabinet took oath in a simple and little publicized function in the century old Arg palace perhaps heralding a new era for the Central Asian nation.
In terms of power shift the most significant development is the rise to prominence of a clique of westernized ethnic Pashtun technocrats controlling the key ministries of defence, commerce, finance, interior, ruler and urban development. Replacing his old boss and the country’s major warlord Muhammad Qasim Fahim, a former pre-communist era Afghan military officer, General Abdurrahim Wardak has been promoted to the coveted post of defence minister. A long time anti Soviet Mujahideen Commander in the 1980s, Wardak has been a deputy defence minister since late 2002.
Ali Ahmed Jalali is one of the four members of the former transition cabinet to retain his commanding slot of interior minister. Widely credited with successful security sector reforms such as the creation of a well trained national police force, Jalali was almost indispensable given the Herculean task that lies ahead of maintaining security during April s parliamentary polls, which are widely expected to be more troubling than the presidential vote.
Foreign minister Dr. Abdullah Abdullah is another major survivor. Although Karzai’s electoral victory heralded the end of Panjshiri dominance of the central cabinet, Abdullah seems to have adopted a pragmatic approach by siding with Ahemd Zia Massoud, the newly elected vice president and brother of the slain Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud. Over the past three years numerous fractures emerged within Shura-e Nazar, the military body that practically dominated Northern Alliance, eventually leading to a split. The resultant new alignment propped up an alliance between Massoud’s brothers and former President Burhannudin Rabbani against Fahim and former education minister Younas Qanuni. As the former group sided with Karzai, the later provided the only substantial opposition to his election. Qanuni is reported to form a new political party called new Afghanistan to the contest parliamentary vote.
The most prominent reformist dropped out of the cabinet is former finance minister Dr. Ashraf Ghani Ahmedzai who was favoured by most western donors but his strict disciplinarian approach antagonized many Afghans. He is being appointed as Kabul University s chancellor. Ghani is being replaced by Anwar Ul Haq Ahadi, the ex-governor of the State Bank who successfully oversaw the introduction of new currency in 2002.
Former Vice President, Hedayat Amin Arsala has been reappointed as commerce minister and chief advisor to President Karzai - an indication of his proximity to the Afghan leader. Although Arasla had served the World Bank, his significant challenge will be to cash on Afghanistan’s strategic location and transform it into a hub of regional trade - a probability that might transform the nations economy from one depended on narcotics and international assistance to a legitimate trading one.
Like many other countries, ethnicity is a touchy issue in today’s Afghanistan, there is a minimum arithmetic balance with at least 10 Pashtuns in the new cabinet followed by seven Tajiks. There are three Turks in the new team including two ethnic Uzbeks and one Turkomen. Two of vice president Karim Khalili close aids, Sarwar Danish and Dr. Amir Shah Hasan Yar represent ethnic Hazars. There are three other Hazara ministers as well. While most foreign observes often highlight ethnic differences within Afghanistan’s varied communities little attention is paid to the ethnic integration that practically prevented the country from falling apart during long years of turmoil.
While Karzai somewhat successfully accommodated popular demands for ethnic and regional and sectarian balances and keeping his team free of the popularly despised warlords, former Herat governor Ismail Khan and Abdul Karim Brahui are two well known Jehadi faces in the cabinet. Unlike most of his ilk, Khan is credited with significant reconstruction and public service efforts in his home province of Herat in western Afghanistan. He will now be expected to repeat the same in his new role as the energy minister. Brahui, a former governor of the southwestern Nimroz province is called to Kabul and charged with the important ministry of tribal and border affairs.
Breaking with recent past s trends, Karzai’s new cabinet includes three women ministers including his former presidential rival Dr. Massouda Jalal who is being appointed as a minister for women affairs. The other two women ministers are Amina Afzali and Sadiqa Balkhi heading the welfare ministries of youth affairs and martyrs and disabled respectively.
By cutting down the number of ministries from 29 to 26, the new administration has attempted at reducing the size of the government but the real issue will be to fill up the lower tiers of Afghan bureaucracy with competent people. Despite sizeable influx of aid money over the past three years, enough had not been done to cover the huge human resources gap in the country. As most qualified Afghans prefer to and are absorbed into well paid aid agencies jobs, the government is left to juggle with mostly barely literate individuals. Another significant development in terms of government structure is the introduction of a new ministry for narcotics control.
Over the past three years Karzai’s sprawling office also accommodated dozens of the so called adviser ministers who barely did anything significant apart from drawing fat salaries and roaming around Kabul in tinted glassed cars wearing smart business suits. In fact, many such appointments were made to please certain individuals who proved to be incapable of doing anything significant. In many it appeared akin to a hangover of the court culture that prevailed during centuries of monarchic rule.
While Karzai’s team in Kabul might be competent, implementing its reforms agenda in the mostly warlord controlled remote provinces will prove challenging. In fact, by reappointed former warlords, Gul Agha Sherzai and Sayed Hussain Anwari as Governors of Kandahar and Kabul respectively, the president has indicated his unwillingness to do away with warlordism in one clean sweep. While many Afghans dub both individuals as relatively more clean individuals, many others such as Hazrat Ali in the eastern province of Jalalabad, Muhammad Atta and Abdul Rashid Dostum in the northern provinces of Balkh and Jauzjan continue to wield significant power and influence. In the past many such individuals and their followers had successfully blocked reforms initiated from Kabul. Recently the UN has claimed significant progress with the multi million dollar Demobilization, Disarmament and Reintegration (DDR) program that remained stalled at the beginning of the year because of lack of cooperation from warlords. The next few months would be a litmus test for such tall assertions.
According to many seasoned Afghanistan watchers the upcoming parliamentary elections in April might prove a make or break affair for the country. The elections can work both ways. It can further consolidate the achievements over the past three years but its mishandling might create a crisis of legitimacy and a huge power vacuum, one expert told Newsline. While Afghans surprised the world by their overwhelming participation in the October presidential polls, parliamentary vote is more vulnerable. Already many international organizations have voiced their concerns over the lack of resources available for the upcoming elections.
Media reports and signs on ground indicate that the success of October polls also resulted in significantly weakening the Taliban insurgency. However, mistakes in the run up to April polls might provide a new imputes to the hard line movement. While Sayed Akbar Agha, the leader of a Taliban splinter group, Jaishul Muslamin was arrested in Karachi in December, other including its leader Mullah Muhammad Omar remain at large. International and Afghan press had also been reporting considerable progress in negotiations with Taliban splinter groups following an amnesty offer by Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador in Kabul.
For the first time in over two decades, the consolidation of a central government is projected to boost Afghanistan’s participation in regional affairs. Many of its neighbours will be compelled to rethink their strategies and deal with a government instead of individuals and factions. The new cabinet is devoid of individuals close to Iran, Russia, India and the Central Asian states of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. On the contrary, many of its members have lived or were educated in Pakistan but it is yet to be seen of how the country can use this to its advantage.
Built with Chinese assistance, Pakistan’s second southern seaport at Gwadar is expected to be opened in March. The success of that mega project largely depends on stability in Afghanistan, which can potentially interlink the whole Central Asian region to the Arabian Sea through Gwadar. Iran already has completed a similar project by linking its Chabahar port in Persian Gulf to the impoverished Afghan province of Nimroz through rail and road networks. One way or the other regional trade will eventually form the back bone of Afghan economy.
Gauging from its recent past the road ahead for Afghanistan will be bumpy. Karzai’s announcement of a new technocratic cabinet is just one step in the right direction. However, the country’s real success hinges on continued western backing. Faced with total disaster in Iraq, the West might not have another choice in Afghanistan.
Western Provincial Governors Discuss Regional Concern
COMBINED FORCES COMMAND – AFGHANISTAN COALITION PRESS INFORMATION CENTER KABUL, AFGHANISTAN - Jan. 17, 2005 - By Air Force 1st Lt. Elaine Hunnicutt Herat Press Center OIC
HERAT, Afghanistan – The four Western provincial governors met yesterday in Herat to determine the top regional concerns for reconstruction and economic development in Western Afghanistan during the Regional Governors’ Conference.
The governors in attendance included: Sayed Muhammad Khairkhwa, Herat Province; Assadullah Fallah, Farah Province; Aziziullah Afzaly, Badghis Province; and Abdul Qadir Alam, Ghowr Province.
This conference marks the first of many future regional planning forums between the governors. Col. Phillip Bookert, Task Force Longhorn Regional Command West commander, lauded the governors for their willingness to come together and address their shared problems and reiterated the importance for coordinating with one voice to the central government, non governmental organizations and donor organizations to get the needed support in Western Afghanistan.
An agreement upon top regional concerns will enable the four governors to communicate with Kabul and determine the needs for regional development in the Western portion of Afghanistan.
“There must be equality among the four provinces; all of the provinces have problems, but Bagdhis’ are the most serious,” the Herat governor admitted.
The governors determined top priorities for the West to be: security, Water, Electricity, Communications, Education and training, Agriculture.
The governors will meet again next month to evaluate and discuss specific plans for development in these areas. The goal is to focus resources and efforts among all four western provinces in order to ensure that the lines of communication, transportation, economics, education, utilities, agriculture and security reach every province in the West.
Afghan Minister Discusses Way Ahead for Women
COMBINED FORCES COMMAND – AFGHANISTAN COALITION PRESS INFORMATION CENTER KABUL, AFGHANISTAN - Jan 17, 2004 Release # 050117-07 - By Staff Sgt. Phillip Witzke
KABUL, Afghanistan — Once a country ruled by oppression and the gun, Afghanistan is now a country taking control of its future. With successful elections in October, the inauguration of a new president and the appointment of a new cabinet, Afghanistan is establishing itself slowly but surely.
Among the poorest nations on the globe, Afghanistan remains a country in ruins. It has been ravaged by more than two decades of war and is a country struggling to rebuild its economy, infrastructure and its cities. Among those hardest hit are its women.
Under Taliban rule, women weren’t allowed to work, were not afforded health care or the opportunity to be educated. Women were prohibited from being out in public without a male escort, denied freedom of _expression and the right of assembly and faced severe penalties, even death, for violations of Taliban regulations.
While Afghan women have been afforded more freedoms and liberties since the country was liberated from Taliban rule by U.S.-led coalition forces in late 2001, more still needs to be done. And, more is being done.
Under the Bonn Agreement of 2001, the Ministry of Women’s Affairs was established to help facilitate equality. However, the MOWA is not an implementing organization. It is intended to be a policy making institution and influencing agency to influence other ministries on behalf of women.
Taking charge of this ministry under the new presidential cabinet is former presidential candidate Dr. Massouda Jalal, the only female to run in the October elections. She is now charged with helping integrate women into a society where they were once social outcasts. There are many issues to face; chief among them is poverty.
“Of course, Afghan women have lots of difficulties and problems,” said Jalal, “but the most difficulty they are mentioning are economic problems. Since Afghanistan is a poor country, poverty has affected women most.”
The new minister is welcoming any kind of intervention in terms of assistance to women. In fact, civil affairs teams from the Combined Forces Command-Afghanistan based in Kabul recently conducted medical assistance visits, providing relief and assistance to women and children of Kabul.
While these types of efforts are eagerly accepted, they only scratch the surface of a bigger problem. The ministry must extend its reach into the provinces and districts to impact the life of women nationwide. There have already been ministry offices established at the provincial level. Now, Dr. Jalal wants to push those efforts into the districts.
“We have provincial units and in the forthcoming year we are planning to extend our provincial-level units to district-level units,” she said. “We need more construction of buildings belonging to the Ministry of Women’s Affairs. These constructions are our priority.”
What is also needed is a way for women to help support their families. Dr. Jalal sees the construction of women’s bazaars as one solution. She sees a network of women’s bazaars as another way to help women have a natural social gathering.
Helping women in need is only part of the battle. The Ministry of Women’s Affairs is also tasked with bridging the gender gap. This may well prove to be the most difficult task Jalal faces.
“The Ministry of Women’s Affairs of Afghanistan is very vulnerable because it is too young,” said Jalal. “During the past three years, it has struggled a lot to set itself up and to have a system and to find itself with its duties.”
Despite the struggle, women have made great strides toward equality. During the emergency loya jirga to elect a transitional president, Jalal, who was joined by 200 other women, finished second only to President Hamid Kharzi.
Then, 25 percent of the constitutional loya jirga was made up of women. Through their influence, women were granted the same equality as men, ending the negative traditional practices of discriminating against women.
And, of course, during the October presidential election some 41 percent of voters were women. Jalal says she is looking forward to the parliamentary elections, which are expected to be held this spring. “I am sure there will be great participation of women in the coming parliamentary election and that the Ministry of Women’s Affairs will take a great part in disseminating the message encouraging women to take part in the parliament and the election.”
Politics may well be the way women in Afghanistan stand up to be counted. Jalal will likely lead the way. “I am optimistic,” said Jalal. “I see a bright future for women in Afghanistan. I see a society of men and women in the future of Afghanistan.”
Sam Whan Corporation asks for employees' security before they resume reconstruction
Sher Mohammad Jahesh
Baghlan, Jan 16, (Pajhwok Afghan News) – A South Korean company contracted to pave and asphalt the 460 kilometer Baghlan-Andkhoy-Hairatan highway in northern Afghanistan, has asked the government to ensure the safety of its employees.
The Samwhan Corporation put forward its concerns over security following the murder of 11 Chinese road construction workers by armed men on the Pul-e-Khomri highway in summer 2004.
The head of the company in northern Afghanistan told Pajhwok Afghan News: "We have expressed our concerns over security and are busy discussing the issue with the government authorities."
He added: "We signed the contract with the ministry of public works eight months ago."
The company says that after it carried out a preliminary survey in Baghlan province on Jan 13 they have established the areas along the highway which are in need of repair and work will begin in early February. The Asian Development Bank estimates that the project will cost $US 66m.
However Gen. Abdul Khalil, security commander of Highway Brigade told Pajhwok: "We have taken the required security measures for such companies."
He underlined the importance of foreign companies in the reconstruction process and said that he discussed the security issue with the company on Jan 13 and that an agreement was reached under which Afghan security personnel will ensure the safety of the company's employees.
In exchange the Samwhan Corporation will have to pay the soldiers US$150 a month. Highways leading to the north of the country and to the two river port towns of Hairatan and Sherkhan have been completely destroyed by war and the poor quality of the roads has made traveling extremely dangerous.
THE COMING WARS
What the Pentagon can now do in secret
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH / The New Yorker Issue of 2005-01-24 and 31 Posted 2005-01-17
George W. Bush’s reëlection was not his only victory last fall. The President and his national-security advisers have consolidated control over the military and intelligence communities’ strategic analyses and covert operations to a degree unmatched since the rise of the post-Second World War national-security state. Bush has an aggressive and ambitious agenda for using that control—against the mullahs in Iran and against targets in the ongoing war on terrorism—during his second term. The C.I.A. will continue to be downgraded, and the agency will increasingly serve, as one government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon put it, as “facilitators” of policy emanating from President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. This process is well under way.
Despite the deteriorating security situation in Iraq, the Bush Administration has not reconsidered its basic long-range policy goal in the Middle East: the establishment of democracy throughout the region. Bush’s reëlection is regarded within the Administration as evidence of America’s support for his decision to go to war. It has reaffirmed the position of the neoconservatives in the Pentagon’s civilian leadership who advocated the invasion, including Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and Douglas Feith, the Under-secretary for Policy. According to a former high-level intelligence official, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff shortly after the election and told them, in essence, that the naysayers had been heard and the American people did not accept their message. Rumsfeld added that America was committed to staying in Iraq and that there would be no second-guessing.
“This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush Administration is looking at this as a huge war zone,” the former high-level intelligence official told me. “Next, we’re going to have the Iranian campaign. We’ve declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy. This is the last hurrah—we’ve got four years, and want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism.”
Bush and Cheney may have set the policy, but it is Rumsfeld who has directed its implementation and has absorbed much of the public criticism when things went wrong—whether it was prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib or lack of sufficient armor plating for G.I.s’ vehicles in Iraq. Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have called for Rumsfeld’s dismissal, and he is not widely admired inside the military. Nonetheless, his reappointment as Defense Secretary was never in doubt.
Rumsfeld will become even more important during the second term. In interviews with past and present intelligence and military officials, I was told that the agenda had been determined before the Presidential election, and much of it would be Rumsfeld’s responsibility. The war on terrorism would be expanded, and effectively placed under the Pentagon’s control. The President has signed a series of findings and executive orders authorizing secret commando groups and other Special Forces units to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as ten nations in the Middle East and South Asia.
The President’s decision enables Rumsfeld to run the operations off the books—free from legal restrictions imposed on the C.I.A. Under current law, all C.I.A. covert activities overseas must be authorized by a Presidential finding and reported to the Senate and House intelligence committees. (The laws were enacted after a series of scandals in the nineteen-seventies involving C.I.A. domestic spying and attempted assassinations of foreign leaders.) “The Pentagon doesn’t feel obligated to report any of this to Congress,” the former high-level intelligence official said. “They don’t even call it ‘covert ops’—it’s too close to the C.I.A. phrase. In their view, it’s ‘black reconnaissance.’ They’re not even going to tell the cincs”—the regional American military commanders-in-chief. (The Defense Department and the White House did not respond to requests for comment on this story.)
In my interviews, I was repeatedly told that the next strategic target was Iran. “Everyone is saying, ‘You can’t be serious about targeting Iran. Look at Iraq,’” the former intelligence official told me. “But they say, ‘We’ve got some lessons learned—not militarily, but how we did it politically. We’re not going to rely on agency pissants.’ No loose ends, and that’s why the C.I.A. is out of there.”
For more than a year, France, Germany, Britain, and other countries in the European Union have seen preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon as a race against time—and against the Bush Administration. They have been negotiating with the Iranian leadership to give up its nuclear-weapons ambitions in exchange for economic aid and trade benefits. Iran has agreed to temporarily halt its enrichment programs, which generate fuel for nuclear power plants but also could produce weapons-grade fissile material. (Iran claims that such facilities are legal under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or N.P.T., to which it is a signator, and that it has no intention of building a bomb.) But the goal of the current round of talks, which began in December in Brussels, is to persuade Tehran to go further, and dismantle its machinery. Iran insists, in return, that it needs to see some concrete benefits from the Europeans—oil-production technology, heavy-industrial equipment, and perhaps even permission to purchase a fleet of Airbuses. (Iran has been denied access to technology and many goods owing to sanctions.)
The Europeans have been urging the Bush Administration to join in these negotiations. The Administration has refused to do so. The civilian leadership in the Pentagon has argued that no diplomatic progress on the Iranian nuclear threat will take place unless there is a credible threat of military action. “The neocons say negotiations are a bad deal,” a senior official of the International Atomic Energy Agency (I.A.E.A.) told me. “And the only thing the Iranians understand is pressure. And that they also need to be whacked.”
The core problem is that Iran has successfully hidden the extent of its nuclear program, and its progress. Many Western intelligence agencies, including those of the United States, believe that Iran is at least three to five years away from a capability to independently produce nuclear warheads—although its work on a missile-delivery system is far more advanced. Iran is also widely believed by Western intelligence agencies and the I.A.E.A. to have serious technical problems with its weapons system, most notably in the production of the hexafluoride gas needed to fabricate nuclear warheads.
A retired senior C.I.A. official, one of many who left the agency recently, told me that he was familiar with the assessments, and confirmed that Iran is known to be having major difficulties in its weapons work. He also acknowledged that the agency’s timetable for a nuclear Iran matches the European estimates—assuming that Iran gets no outside help. “The big wild card for us is that you don’t know who is capable of filling in the missing parts for them,” the recently retired official said. “North Korea? Pakistan? We don’t know what parts are missing.”
One Western diplomat told me that the Europeans believed they were in what he called a “lose-lose position” as long as the United States refuses to get involved. “France, Germany, and the U.K. cannot succeed alone, and everybody knows it,” the diplomat said. “If the U.S. stays outside, we don’t have enough leverage, and our effort will collapse.” The alternative would be to go to the Security Council, but any resolution imposing sanctions would likely be vetoed by China or Russia, and then “the United Nations will be blamed and the Americans will say, ‘The only solution is to bomb.’”
A European Ambassador noted that President Bush is scheduled to visit Europe in February, and that there has been public talk from the White House about improving the President’s relationship with America’s E.U. allies. In that context, the Ambassador told me, “I’m puzzled by the fact that the United States is not helping us in our program. How can Washington maintain its stance without seriously taking into account the weapons issue?”
The Israeli government is, not surprisingly, skeptical of the European approach. Silvan Shalom, the Foreign Minister, said in an interview last week in Jerusalem,with another New Yorker journalist, “I don’t like what’s happening. We were encouraged at first when the Europeans got involved. For a long time, they thought it was just Israel’s problem. But then they saw that the [Iranian] missiles themselves were longer range and could reach all of Europe, and they became very concerned. Their attitude has been to use the carrot and the stick—but all we see so far is the carrot.” He added, “If they can’t comply, Israel cannot live with Iran having a nuclear bomb.”
In a recent essay, Patrick Clawson, an Iran expert who is the deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (and a supporter of the Administration), articulated the view that force, or the threat of it, was a vital bargaining tool with Iran. Clawson wrote that if Europe wanted coöperation with the Bush Administration it “would do well to remind Iran that the military option remains on the table.” He added that the argument that the European negotiations hinged on Washington looked like “a preëmptive excuse for the likely breakdown of the E.U.-Iranian talks.” In a subsequent conversation with me, Clawson suggested that, if some kind of military action was inevitable, “it would be much more in Israel’s interest—and Washington’s—to take covert action. The style of this Administration is to use overwhelming force—‘shock and awe.’ But we get only one bite of the apple.”
There are many military and diplomatic experts who dispute the notion that military action, on whatever scale, is the right approach. Shahram Chubin, an Iranian scholar who is the director of research at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, told me, “It’s a fantasy to think that there’s a good American or Israeli military option in Iran.” He went on, “The Israeli view is that this is an international problem. ‘You do it,’ they say to the West. ‘Otherwise, our Air Force will take care of it.’” In 1981, the Israeli Air Force destroyed Iraq’s Osirak reactor, setting its nuclear program back several years. But the situation now is both more complex and more dangerous, Chubin said. The Osirak bombing “drove the Iranian nuclear-weapons program underground, to hardened, dispersed sites,” he said. “You can’t be sure after an attack that you’ll get away with it. The U.S. and Israel would not be certain whether all the sites had been hit, or how quickly they’d be rebuilt. Meanwhile, they’d be waiting for an Iranian counter-attack that could be military or terrorist or diplomatic. Iran has long-range missiles and ties to Hezbollah, which has drones—you can’t begin to think of what they’d do in response.”
Chubin added that Iran could also renounce the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. “It’s better to have them cheating within the system,” he said. “Otherwise, as victims, Iran will walk away from the treaty and inspections while the rest of the world watches the N.P.T. unravel before their eyes.”
The Administration has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran at least since last summer. Much of the focus is on the accumulation of intelligence and targeting information on Iranian nuclear, chemical, and missile sites, both declared and suspected. The goal is to identify and isolate three dozen, and perhaps more, such targets that could be destroyed by precision strikes and short-term commando raids. “The civilians in the Pentagon want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible,” the government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon told me.
Some of the missions involve extraordinary coöperation. For example, the former high-level intelligence official told me that an American commando task force has been set up in South Asia and is now working closely with a group of Pakistani scientists and technicians who had dealt with Iranian counterparts. (In 2003, the I.A.E.A. disclosed that Iran had been secretly receiving nuclear technology from Pakistan for more than a decade, and had withheld that information from inspectors.) The American task force, aided by the information from Pakistan, has been penetrating eastern Iran from Afghanistan in a hunt for underground installations. The task-force members, or their locally recruited agents, secreted remote detection devices—known as sniffers—capable of sampling the atmosphere for radioactive emissions and other evidence of nuclear-enrichment programs.
Getting such evidence is a pressing concern for the Bush Administration. The former high-level intelligence official told me, “They don’t want to make any W.M.D. intelligence mistakes, as in Iraq. The Republicans can’t have two of those. There’s no education in the second kick of a mule.” The official added that the government of Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani President, has won a high price for its coöperation—American assurance that Pakistan will not have to hand over A. Q. Khan, known as the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb, to the I.A.E.A. or to any other international authorities for questioning. For two decades, Khan has been linked to a vast consortium of nuclear-black-market activities. Last year, Musharraf professed to be shocked when Khan, in the face of overwhelming evidence, “confessed” to his activities. A few days later, Musharraf pardoned him, and so far he has refused to allow the I.A.E.A. or American intelligence to interview him. Khan is now said to be living under house arrest in a villa in Islamabad. “It’s a deal—a trade-off,” the former high-level intelligence official explained. “‘Tell us what you know about Iran and we will let your A. Q. Khan guys go.’ It’s the neoconservatives’ version of short-term gain at long-term cost. They want to prove that Bush is the anti-terrorism guy who can handle Iran and the nuclear threat, against the long-term goal of eliminating the black market for nuclear proliferation.”
The agreement comes at a time when Musharraf, according to a former high-level Pakistani diplomat, has authorized the expansion of Pakistan’s nuclear-weapons arsenal. “Pakistan still needs parts and supplies, and needs to buy them in the clandestine market,” the former diplomat said. “The U.S. has done nothing to stop it.”
There has also been close, and largely unacknowledged, coöperation with Israel. The government consultant with ties to the Pentagon said that the Defense Department civilians, under the leadership of Douglas Feith, have been working with Israeli planners and consultants to develop and refine potential nuclear, chemical-weapons, and missile targets inside Iran. (After Osirak, Iran situated many of its nuclear sites in remote areas of the east, in an attempt to keep them out of striking range of other countries, especially Israel. Distance no longer lends such protection, however: Israel has acquired three submarines capable of launching cruise missiles and has equipped some of its aircraft with additional fuel tanks, putting Israeli F-16I fighters within the range of most Iranian targets.)
“They believe that about three-quarters of the potential targets can be destroyed from the air, and a quarter are too close to population centers, or buried too deep, to be targeted,” the consultant said. Inevitably, he added, some suspicious sites need to be checked out by American or Israeli commando teams—in on-the-ground surveillance—before being targeted.
The Pentagon’s contingency plans for a broader invasion of Iran are also being updated. Strategists at the headquarters of the U.S. Central Command, in Tampa, Florida, have been asked to revise the military’s war plan, providing for a maximum ground and air invasion of Iran. Updating the plan makes sense, whether or not the Administration intends to act, because the geopolitics of the region have changed dramatically in the last three years. Previously, an American invasion force would have had to enter Iran by sea, by way of the Persian Gulf or the Gulf of Oman; now troops could move in on the ground, from Afghanistan or Iraq. Commando units and other assets could be introduced through new bases in the Central Asian republics.
It is possible that some of the American officials who talk about the need to eliminate Iran’s nuclear infrastructure are doing so as part of a propaganda campaign aimed at pressuring Iran to give up its weapons planning. If so, the signals are not always clear. President Bush, who after 9/11 famously depicted Iran as a member of the “axis of evil,” is now publicly emphasizing the need for diplomacy to run its course. “We don’t have much leverage with the Iranians right now,” the President said at a news conference late last year. “Diplomacy must be the first choice, and always the first choice of an administration trying to solve an issue of . . . nuclear armament. And we’ll continue to press on diplomacy.”
In my interviews over the past two months, I was given a much harsher view. The hawks in the Administration believe that it will soon become clear that the Europeans’ negotiated approach cannot succeed, and that at that time the Administration will act. “We’re not dealing with a set of National Security Council option papers here,” the former high-level intelligence official told me. “They’ve already passed that wicket. It’s not if we’re going to do anything against Iran. They’re doing it.”
The immediate goals of the attacks would be to destroy, or at least temporarily derail, Iran’s ability to go nuclear. But there are other, equally purposeful, motives at work. The government consultant told me that the hawks in the Pentagon, in private discussions, have been urging a limited attack on Iran because they believe it could lead to a toppling of the religious leadership. “Within the soul of Iran there is a struggle between secular nationalists and reformers, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the fundamentalist Islamic movement,” the consultant told me. “The minute the aura of invincibility which the mullahs enjoy is shattered, and with it the ability to hoodwink the West, the Iranian regime will collapse”—like the former Communist regimes in Romania, East Germany, and the Soviet Union. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz share that belief, he said.
“The idea that an American attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would produce a popular uprising is extremely illinformed,” said Flynt Leverett, a Middle East scholar who worked on the National Security Council in the Bush Administration. “You have to understand that the nuclear ambition in Iran is supported across the political spectrum, and Iranians will perceive attacks on these sites as attacks on their ambitions to be a major regional player and a modern nation that’s technologically sophisticated.” Leverett, who is now a senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, at the Brookings Institution, warned that an American attack, if it takes place, “will produce an Iranian backlash against the United States and a rallying around the regime.”
Rumsfeld planned and lobbied for more than two years before getting Presidential authority, in a series of findings and executive orders, to use military commandos for covert operations. One of his first steps was bureaucratic: to shift control of an undercover unit, known then as the Gray Fox (it has recently been given a new code name), from the Army to the Special Operations Command (socom), in Tampa. Gray Fox was formally assigned to socom in July, 2002, at the instigation of Rumsfeld’s office, which meant that the undercover unit would have a single commander for administration and operational deployment. Then, last fall, Rumsfeld’s ability to deploy the commandos expanded. According to a Pentagon consultant, an Execute Order on the Global War on Terrorism (referred to throughout the government as gwot) was issued at Rumsfeld’s direction. The order specifically authorized the military “to find and finish” terrorist targets, the consultant said. It included a target list that cited Al Qaeda network members, Al Qaeda senior leadership, and other high-value targets. The consultant said that the order had been cleared throughout the national-security bureaucracy in Washington.
In late November, 2004, the Times reported that Bush had set up an interagency group to study whether it “would best serve the nation” to give the Pentagon complete control over the C.I.A.’s own élite paramilitary unit, which has operated covertly in trouble spots around the world for decades. The panel’s conclusions, due in February, are foregone, in the view of many former C.I.A. officers. “It seems like it’s going to happen,” Howard Hart, who was chief of the C.I.A.’s Paramilitary Operations Division before retiring in 1991, told me.
There was other evidence of Pentagon encroachment. Two former C.I.A. clandestine officers, Vince Cannistraro and Philip Giraldi, who publish Intelligence Brief, a newsletter for their business clients, reported last month on the existence of a broad counter-terrorism Presidential finding that permitted the Pentagon “to operate unilaterally in a number of countries where there is a perception of a clear and evident terrorist threat. . . . A number of the countries are friendly to the U.S. and are major trading partners. Most have been cooperating in the war on terrorism.” The two former officers listed some of the countries—Algeria, Sudan, Yemen, Syria, and Malaysia. (I was subsequently told by the former high-level intelligence official that Tunisia is also on the list.)
Giraldi, who served three years in military intelligence before joining the C.I.A., said that he was troubled by the military’s expanded covert assignment. “I don’t think they can handle the cover,” he told me. “They’ve got to have a different mind-set. They’ve got to handle new roles and get into foreign cultures and learn how other people think. If you’re going into a village and shooting people, it doesn’t matter,” Giraldi added. “But if you’re running operations that involve finesse and sensitivity, the military can’t do it. Which is why these kind of operations were always run out of the agency.” I was told that many Special Operations officers also have serious misgivings.
Rumsfeld and two of his key deputies, Stephen Cambone, the Under-secretary of Defense for Intelligence, and Army Lieutenant General William G. (Jerry) Boykin, will be part of the chain of command for the new commando operations. Relevant members of the House and Senate intelligence committees have been briefed on the Defense Department’s expanded role in covert affairs, a Pentagon adviser assured me, but he did not know how extensive the briefings had been.
“I’m conflicted about the idea of operating without congressional oversight,” the Pentagon adviser said. “But I’ve been told that there will be oversight down to the specific operation.” A second Pentagon adviser agreed, with a significant caveat. “There are reporting requirements,” he said. “But to execute the finding we don’t have to go back and say, ‘We’re going here and there.’ No nitty-gritty detail and no micromanagement.”
The legal questions about the Pentagon’s right to conduct covert operations without informing Congress have not been resolved. “It’s a very, very gray area,” said Jeffrey H. Smith, a West Point graduate who served as the C.I.A.’s general counsel in the mid-nineteen-nineties. “Congress believes it voted to include all such covert activities carried out by the armed forces. The military says, ‘No, the things we’re doing are not intelligence actions under the statute but necessary military steps authorized by the President, as Commander-in-Chief, to “prepare the battlefield.”’” Referring to his days at the C.I.A., Smith added, “We were always careful not to use the armed forces in a covert action without a Presidential finding. The Bush Administration has taken a much more aggressive stance.”
In his conversation with me, Smith emphasized that he was unaware of the military’s current plans for expanding covert action. But he said, “Congress has always worried that the Pentagon is going to get us involved in some military misadventure that nobody knows about.”
Under Rumsfeld’s new approach, I was told, U.S. military operatives would be permitted to pose abroad as corrupt foreign businessmen seeking to buy contraband items that could be used in nuclear-weapons systems. In some cases, according to the Pentagon advisers, local citizens could be recruited and asked to join up with guerrillas or terrorists. This could potentially involve organizing and carrying out combat operations, or even terrorist activities. Some operations will likely take place in nations in which there is an American diplomatic mission, with an Ambassador and a C.I.A. station chief, the Pentagon consultant said. The Ambassador and the station chief would not necessarily have a need to know, under the Pentagon’s current interpretation of its reporting requirement.
The new rules will enable the Special Forces community to set up what it calls “action teams” in the target countries overseas which can be used to find and eliminate terrorist organizations. “Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador?” the former high-level intelligence official asked me, referring to the military-led gangs that committed atrocities in the early nineteen-eighties. “We founded them and we financed them,” he said. “The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want. And we aren’t going to tell Congress about it.” A former military officer, who has knowledge of the Pentagon’s commando capabilities, said, “We’re going to be riding with the bad boys.”
One of the rationales for such tactics was spelled out in a series of articles by John Arquilla, a professor of defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School, in Monterey, California, and a consultant on terrorism for the rand corporation. “It takes a network to fight a network,” Arquilla wrote in a recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle:
When conventional military operations and bombing failed to defeat the Mau Mau insurgency in Kenya in the 1950s, the British formed teams of friendly Kikuyu tribesmen who went about pretending to be terrorists. These “pseudo gangs,” as they were called, swiftly threw the Mau Mau on the defensive, either by befriending and then ambushing bands of fighters or by guiding bombers to the terrorists’ camps. What worked in Kenya a half-century ago has a wonderful chance of undermining trust and recruitment among today’s terror networks. Forming new pseudo gangs should not be difficult.
“If a confused young man from Marin County can join up with Al Qaeda,” Arquilla wrote, referring to John Walker Lindh, the twenty-year-old Californian who was seized in Afghanistan, “think what professional operatives might do.”
A few pilot covert operations were conducted last year, one Pentagon adviser told me, and a terrorist cell in Algeria was “rolled up” with American help. The adviser was referring, apparently, to the capture of Ammari Saifi, known as Abderrezak le Para, the head of a North African terrorist network affiliated with Al Qaeda. But at the end of the year there was no agreement within the Defense Department about the rules of engagement. “The issue is approval for the final authority,” the former high-level intelligence official said. “Who gets to say ‘Get this’ or ‘Do this’?”
A retired four-star general said, “The basic concept has always been solid, but how do you insure that the people doing it operate within the concept of the law? This is pushing the edge of the envelope.” The general added, “It’s the oversight. And you’re not going to get Warner”—John Warner, of Virginia, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee—“and those guys to exercise oversight. This whole thing goes to the Fourth Deck.” He was referring to the floor in the Pentagon where Rumsfeld and Cambone have their offices.
“It’s a finesse to give power to Rumsfeld—giving him the right to act swiftly, decisively, and lethally,” the first Pentagon adviser told me. “It’s a global free-fire zone.”
The Pentagon has tried to work around the limits on covert activities before. In the early nineteen-eighties, a covert Army unit was set up and authorized to operate overseas with minimal oversight. The results were disastrous. The Special Operations program was initially known as Intelligence Support Activity, or I.S.A., and was administered from a base near Washington (as was, later, Gray Fox). It was established soon after the failed rescue, in April, 1980, of the American hostages in Iran, who were being held by revolutionary students after the Islamic overthrow of the Shah’s regime. At first, the unit was kept secret from many of the senior generals and civilian leaders in the Pentagon, as well as from many members of Congress. It was eventually deployed in the Reagan Administration’s war against the Sandinista government, in Nicaragua. It was heavily committed to supporting the Contras. By the mid-eighties, however, the I.S.A.’s operations had been curtailed, and several of its senior officers were courtmartialled following a series of financial scandals, some involving arms deals. The affair was known as “the Yellow Fruit scandal,” after the code name given to one of the I.S.A.’s cover organizations—and in many ways the group’s procedures laid the groundwork for the Iran-Contra scandal.
Despite the controversy surrounding Yellow Fruit, the I.S.A. was kept intact as an undercover unit by the Army. “But we put so many restrictions on it,” the second Pentagon adviser said. “In I.S.A., if you wanted to travel fifty miles you had to get a special order. And there were certain areas, such as Lebanon, where they could not go.” The adviser acknowledged that the current operations are similar to those two decades earlier, with similar risks—and, as he saw it, similar reasons for taking the risks. “What drove them then, in terms of Yellow Fruit, was that they had no intelligence on Iran,” the adviser told me. “They had no knowledge of Tehran and no people on the ground who could prepare the battle space.”
Rumsfeld’s decision to revive this approach stemmed, once again, from a failure of intelligence in the Middle East, the adviser said. The Administration believed that the C.I.A. was unable, or unwilling, to provide the military with the information it needed to effectively challenge stateless terrorism. “One of the big challenges was that we didn’t have Humint”—human intelligence—“collection capabilities in areas where terrorists existed,” the adviser told me. “Because the C.I.A. claimed to have such a hold on Humint, the way to get around them, rather than take them on, was to claim that the agency didn’t do Humint to support Special Forces operations overseas. The C.I.A. fought it.” Referring to Rumsfeld’s new authority for covert operations, the first Pentagon adviser told me, “It’s not empowering military intelligence. It’s emasculating the C.I.A.”
A former senior C.I.A. officer depicted the agency’s eclipse as predictable. “For years, the agency bent over backward to integrate and coördinate with the Pentagon,” the former officer said. “We just caved and caved and got what we deserved. It is a fact of life today that the Pentagon is a five-hundred-pound gorilla and the C.I.A. director is a chimpanzee.”
There was pressure from the White House, too. A former C.I.A. clandestine-services officer told me that, in the months after the resignation of the agency’s director George Tenet, in June, 2004, the White House began “coming down critically” on analysts in the C.I.A.’s Directorate of Intelligence (D.I.) and demanded “to see more support for the Administration’s political position.” Porter Goss, Tenet’s successor, engaged in what the recently retired C.I.A. official described as a “political purge” in the D.I. Among the targets were a few senior analysts who were known to write dissenting papers that had been forwarded to the White House. The recently retired C.I.A. official said, “The White House carefully reviewed the political analyses of the D.I. so they could sort out the apostates from the true believers.” Some senior analysts in the D.I. have turned in their resignations—quietly, and without revealing the extent of the disarray.
The White House solidified its control over intelligence last month, when it forced last-minute changes in the intelligence-reform bill. The legislation, based substantially on recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, originally gave broad powers, including authority over intelligence spending, to a new national-intelligence director. (The Pentagon controls roughly eighty per cent of the intelligence budget.) A reform bill passed in the Senate by a vote of 96-2. Before the House voted, however, Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld balked. The White House publicly supported the legislation, but House Speaker Dennis Hastert refused to bring a House version of the bill to the floor for a vote—ostensibly in defiance of the President, though it was widely understood in Congress that Hastert had been delegated to stall the bill. After intense White House and Pentagon lobbying, the legislation was rewritten. The bill that Congress approved sharply reduced the new director’s power, in the name of permitting the Secretary of Defense to maintain his “statutory responsibilities.” Fred Kaplan, in the online magazine Slate, described the real issues behind Hastert’s action, quoting a congressional aide who expressed amazement as White House lobbyists bashed the Senate bill and came up “with all sorts of ludicrous reasons why it was unacceptable.”
“Rummy’s plan was to get a compromise in the bill in which the Pentagon keeps its marbles and the C.I.A. loses theirs,” the former high-level intelligence official told me. “Then all the pieces of the puzzle fall in place. He gets authority for covert action that is not attributable, the ability to directly task national-intelligence assets”—including the many intelligence satellites that constantly orbit the world.
“Rumsfeld will no longer have to refer anything through the government’s intelligence wringer,” the former official went on. “The intelligence system was designed to put competing agencies in competition. What’s missing will be the dynamic tension that insures everyone’s priorities—in the C.I.A., the D.O.D., the F.B.I., and even the Department of Homeland Security—are discussed. The most insidious implication of the new system is that Rumsfeld no longer has to tell people what he’s doing so they can ask, ‘Why are you doing this?’ or ‘What are your priorities?’ Now he can keep all of the mattress mice out of it.”
Afghan volunteers bring first aid skills to their communites
by Sailab Ayubi Source: International Federation of Red Cross And Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) 14 Jan 2005
Harvest time is usually a happy period for Abdul Razaq, a 50-year-old farmer from the southern Afghan province of Helmand. Each autumn he collects the wheat from his plot of land in the village of Lashkarga.
But it was while he was out harvesting in his field that Razaq injured a finger on his right hand, cutting it with his sickle.
Blood oozed from the cut, and the old farmer and his worried children looked everywhere for help.
They called another farmer, Bismillah, who was working in an adjoining field. When he arrived, he took out some snuff from his pocket and put it on the wound, but it failed to stop the bleeding.
Then he smeared clay on the cut, which also had no effect. They all become nervous. None of them knew how to stop the bleeding.
Luckily, at that moment, Nawab was passing. Nawab is an Afghan Red Crescent community-based first aid (CBFA) volunteer
Seeing the farmer bleeding profusely, he rushed to the spot, took out his first aid materials from his bag and dressed the wound and staunched the bleeding.
Nawab later advised Bismillah, Razaq and his family, as well as other people who had gathered around Razaq's field about the dangers of using snuff and clay on a wound.
Since there was no health facility in the area, the CBFA volunteer returned to dress the old farmer's wounded finger regularly until it healed.
"I really appreciate the help of Nawab. I am thankful to him and the Red Crescent for introducing this programme," said Razaq.
Nawab has as an Afghan Red Crescent community based first aid volunteer for almost six months.
"I am delighted that I am using the knowledge and skills that I got from my training," he said.
"It is the responsibility of all volunteers working for the National Society to assist the victims of accidents and natural disasters".
The residents of Lashkarga were impressed and asked Nawab how he had acquired the skills. Nawab explained "I have been trained by the Afghan Red Crescent Helmand CBFA trainer in my village and I have been receiving first aid materials regularly through the Helmand Red Crescent branch."
All the villagers, especially the old farmer's young son, were impressed and expressed an interest in becoming CBFA volunteers. They suggested that Nawab train them in first aid.
The Afghan Red Crescent's Community Based First Aid programme was launched in Helmand province in 1997 .To date it has 512 volunteers in 13 districts. They are trained to provide first aid in different circumstances.
They operate in areas beyond the reach of mainstream health services, making their skills even more vital. The volunteers are encouraged to extend their services to other villages to provide basic health education and first aid, in so doing increasing the capacity of the community to deal with day to day incidents.
Prevention and preparedness are other key element of volunteers work in their community.
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