 |
||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Serving you since 1998 | ||||||||||||
|
|
Dutch vote troops to Afghanistan
By Wendel Broere Friday February 3, 8:08 AM
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Dutch lawmakers on Thursday voted in favour of sending up to 1,400 troops to Afghanistan after being pressed by NATO allies to join their deployment in the country's south and allow some U.S. forces to withdraw.
"The bill has been accepted," the parliamentary speaker said after observing that the largest parties had voted in favour.
The decision helps NATO expand its forces in the country. It was delayed from last year because of reservations within the Netherlands, but NATO, UN and Afghan leaders have pleaded in recent days for Dutch support for the mission.
"The cabinet wants our soldiers to contribute to security and reconstruction in Uruzgan. I have seen that there is very broad support in parliament so the mission can go ahead," Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said at the end of the debate.
The government will take the formal decision to send troops on Friday after a cabinet meeting.
With political and social unease disturbing the usually placid Netherlands, and a sluggish economy, the Dutch have been turning inward, away from a tradition of international participation.
"One of the coalition parties said it was against the Bush, Blair and Balkenende axis. This is worrying from an international point of view as it means that the government does not, in fact, have a majority," said political scientist Andre Krouwel of the Free University of Amsterdam.
NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, a Dutchman, urged his country to send troops, as did UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, speaking in The Hague on Monday.
The main parties in the centre-right government want more Dutch soldiers to join troops from Britain and Canada to help NATO expand into southern Afghanistan this year, allowing some U.S. forces fighting the Taliban to withdraw.
OPPOSITION SUPPORT
The opposition Labour Party, the second biggest party, helped sway the vote with its backing of the mission.
"If the risk is a return to repression and the terror of the Taliban, and there is a chance of success then we should not be afraid of this mission, even if it will be difficult," party leader Wouter Bos said in parliament in The Hague.
The liberal D66, the smallest party in the coalition that is trying to boost its flagging profile ahead of a 2007 election, voted against the mission, but said it would support Dutch troops when they were in the field.
The party had argued reconstruction would not be possible in the unstable central province of Uruzgan.
"Is this, in fact, not simply a terrorism-fighting mission disguised as a reconstruction effort and thus limited in its ability to act?" D66 parliamentarians said in an open letter.
The Socialists and the Greens also voted against.
The Dutch have been reluctant to take on risky military engagements since the Srebrenica massacre in 1995.
Lightly armed Dutch UN soldiers lacking air support were forced to abandon the Srebrenica enclave in Bosnia to Bosnian Serb forces, who then killed up to 8,000 Muslims who had hoped to be protected by the Dutch troops.
A small group of demonstrators stood outside parliament, one wearing a mask representing U.S. President George W. Bush and holding a puppet representing Balkenende.
At his feet lay a dozen dolls made to look bloody and bullet-riddled. "This will only make more Guantanamo Bays and won't help peace," he said, referring to the U.S prison camp.
Britain and Canada are the other main contributors to the enlarged force, and alliance officials have acknowledged it would be hard to plug any gap left by the Dutch. No-one was immediately available at NATO to comment on the outcome.
(Additional reporting by Svebor Kranjc in The Hague)
al-Qaida Fighting in Afghan Insurgency
By AMIR SHAH, Associated Press Writer Thu Feb 2, 10:45 AM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan - Al-Qaida militants are coming from Iraq to fight in the insurgency in Afghanistan, a provincial governor said Thursday after interrogating an Iraqi caught sneaking into the country illegally.
Meanwhile, police said a suicide bomber disguised as a woman blew himself up at an army checkpoint in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing five Afghans, including three soldiers.
"There is a big group coming from Iraq," Nimroz provincial Gov. Ghulam Dusthaqir Azad said. "They're linked to al-Qaida and fought against U.S. forces in Iraq. They have been ordered to come here. Many are suicide attackers."
It was not immediately possible to confirm the governor's comments with officials in Kabul. A spokesman for the U.S. military, Lt. Mike Cody, said, "We don't discuss detainees or intelligence matters."
Azad made the comments in a satellite telephone interview to The Associated Press from his office in the remote desert city of Zaranj after he questioned the Iraqi, who was identified as 35-year-old Numan din Majid from Diyala province, west of Baghdad.
Majid was arrested Monday in Zaranj, on the Afghan- Iran border, along with three Pakistanis, two of whom were believed to be militants from Kashmir, Azad said. They were all believed to have crossed into Afghanistan from Iran.
Also, five Bangladeshis were arrested in the city Tuesday and were believed to have links to the Taliban, Majid said.
The Interior Ministry confirmed the arrests Wednesday, but gave no details.
An upsurge in suicide attacks in recent months, previously rare in Afghanistan, has fueled suspicion that militants here could be copying tactics of insurgents in Iraq, but U.S. officials have said they don't have evidence of direct links between the rebellions.
Wednesday's blast occurred in eastern Khost province as Afghan soldiers were checking the assailant's vehicle, said Mohammed Ayub, the regional police chief. The attacker, sitting in the back seat, detonated explosives hidden under a woman's burqa shroud when soldiers asked to see his ID, he said.
Three Afghan soldiers, the driver of the vehicle and a farmer working nearby were killed, Ayub said. Three soldiers were wounded, as well as a second farmer.
Ayub accused the Taliban of being responsible for the attack.
"The bomber probably wanted to go into Khost city for a suicide attack there, but panicked and blew himself up when the soldiers started checking," he said.
Majid, the Iraqi who was arrested, was carrying in his pockets an Iraqi ID card and a photograph of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, Azad said. He was dressed in traditional garb and was carrying a single small bag of clothes.
"He confessed he took part in the war in Iraq against the Americans," the governor said.
He said the capture came two months after another Arab of unspecified nationality was caught sneaking across the border from Iran. He said that during questioning, the man claimed he was part of a group of 17 militants traveling individually from Iraq to Afghanistan.
"We handed him over to the anti-terrorism department and they have made several arrests based on information from him," Azad said.
There have been a series of protests across Afghanistan in recent weeks against the suicide bombings. On Thursday, more than 1,000 people demonstrated in southern Helmand province, demanding an end to the attacks, regional administrator Ghulam Muhiddin said.
He said students, Muslim clerics and other civilians took part in the rally and demanded the international community urge Pakistan to stop its alleged support of the militants.
Afghan officials have repeatedly claimed that the Taliban and other militant groups have training bases in Pakistan and are receiving support from that side of the border — an accusation Islamabad denies.
___
Associated Press correspondent Noor Khan in Kandahar contributed to this report.
Afghanistan raps European papers over cartoons of Prophet Muhammad
Thursday February 2, 9:39 PM
(Kyodo) _ Afghanistan strongly condemns the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in European newspapers, which has caused outrage in Islamic countries, Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said Thursday.
"I strongly condemn such action which is an insult to beliefs of millions of people in the world and in Afghanistan," Abdullah said at a news conference.
Abdullah, who just returned from a conference on Afghanistan in London, said such acts can give an excuse to extremists to undermine dialogue and good relations between civilizations.
The cartoons were originally published in the Jyllands-Posten newspaper last September in Denmark and reprinted last month by the Norwegian evangelical newspaper Magazinet in the name of defending free expression.
The 12 drawings published included one showing the Prophet Muhammad wearing a turban shaped as a bomb.
Islamic tradition bars any depiction of the Prophet, favorable or otherwise.
The drawings caused anger among many Islamic countries.
Saudi Arabia as the world's leading Islamic country recalled its ambassador to Denmark and initiated a boycott of Danish goods. Palestinians burned Danish flags and demanded an apology.
In many other Islamic countries, thousands denounced the caricatures during Friday prayers.
Currently, Denmark has deployed more than 100 troops in Afghanistan as part of NATO's peacekeeping mission.
Afghanistan flays Danish publication about Muslim prophet
KABUL, Feb. 2 (Xinhuanet) -- Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah on Thursday condemned a Danish publication for publishing a caricature of Muslim's Prophet Mohammad (PBUH).
"As a Muslim country and as a Muslim man we consider the act aninsult to millions of people in the world and strongly condemn it," Abdullah Abdullah told reporters here.
According to media, Danish newspaper Jylland-Post published caricature of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) very recently and several dailies in many other countries copied it Thursday.
The Afghan foreign Minister said such act would hurt the feeling of millions of people in the world and damage the dialogue among civilizations in the globe.
Earlier, an Afghan non-governmental organization, the Afghanistan Youth Association, denounced the act as blasphemy and called on the government and the parliament to formally lodge a protest with the Danish government.
The incident took place just days after Afghan President Hamid Karzai visited Denmark and exchanged views with Danish leaders on boosting bilateral relations.
Denmark, which recently announced 150 million U.S. dollars contribution to Afghanistan, has decided to double its troops' strength in Afghanistan from 180 currently to 360 this year.
Afghan Ministers Discuss Country's Security Challenge
Friday February 3, 8:38 AM
KABUL, Feb 3 Asia Pulse - The new Afghan parliament Thursday continued for a third consecutive day a debate on how to contend with the security challenge and bring lasting peace to the country.
Legislators dished out different proposals for beefing up the security situation but a consensus strategy could not be agreed despite three days of animated discussions on an intractable issue providing ample cause for concern.
Some members suggested deteriorating security in the country, especially in the south and east, was an outgrowth of the sheer incompetence of the authorities concerned.
They went as far as to seek flat-out dismissal or a reshuffle of the key security personnel at the top level - specially governors and police chiefs.
Many of the MPs believed stonewalling foreign meddling in Afghanistan should be the first step towards boosting security. Others called for the formation of a parliamentary commission on security and defence to take up the subject and come up with a workable solution to the grave problem.
However, the general consensus was that the government should take concrete measures to address the security problem.
Improvement of jail conditions was another topic that echoed in the parliament's session, with lawmakers underlining the need for prison reforms.
About 100 of the 350 members were absent from Thursday's proceedings.
(Pajhwok Afghan News)
Iran pledges another $100m aid to Afghanistan
Friday, February 03, 2006 - ©2005 IranMania.com
LONDON, February 3 (IranMania) - Iran vowed at the end of Conference on Afghan Reconstruction to donate another $100 mln aid to Afghanistan from the beginning of the next Iranian year (to start March 21, 2006), IRNA reported.
At the end of the two-day meeting in London, representatives of over 60 nations and world organizations committed to allocate an over $10 bln assistance to Afghanistan's reconstruction projects during the coming five years.
As one of the major donor states, Iran had primarily allocated a $570 mln aid to Afghanistan reconstruction plans in a conference in Berlin, Germany, four years ago.
It was reported at the end of London conference that the last installment of Iran's $570-mln donation to Afghanistan ($50m) will be paid before the end of the current Iranian year (to end on March 20, 2006).
Afghanistan's Finance minister Anwar Ul-Haq Ahady told IRNA on the sidelines of the London conference that Iranian officials have also pledged to allocate an extra aid to Afghanistan more than the promised $100-mln.
Noting that Tehran has so far, fulfilled its previous commitments in a very acceptable way, Ahady stressed that Afghan people would never forget the support of their "friendly" neighbor, Iran.
Karzai returns from conference with fraction of funds he needed
The Independent Online By Kim Sengupta and Anne Penketh 02 February 2006
The conference on Afghanistan ended yesterday with Hamid Karzai's government receiving just a fraction of what it claimed was needed to rebuild the country.
At the same time there were fresh warnings over the dangers that British forces being sent to Afghanistan will face, and confusion over how to tackle the country's massive opium production.
The Afghan government had said that a minimum of $20bn (£11bn) was needed over five years. But the total promised aid at the end of the London summit was $10.5bn. However, since 20 per cent of that was "old pledges" on the table, the real figure was $8bn.
The United States was the biggest contributor with an offer of $4bn over five years while Britain said it will give $885m. Another $1.2bn will come from the World Bank.
The Foreign Office minister Kim Howells declared the conference - co-hosted by Tony Blair, the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan and President Karzai - a "great success". But the Afghan Finance Minister, Anwar al-Haq Ahady, expressed disappointment that the total amount of funding on offer fell short of his government's expectations.
Mr Ahady said he was confident that all the money pledged would be delivered. But privately Afghan officials expressed concern about possible delays. One official said: "How soon the money arrives will be extremely important. We have had elections and we have to persuade the people that the democratic system works. It would be very, very bad if we now cannot deliver on our promise.
"It is especially bad because we are now facing the biggest extremist [al-Qa'ida and Taliban] threat since the war."
General Abdul Rahim Wardak, the Afghan Defence Minister, warned that the 6,000-strong British task force would be on the front line of the threat.
The British force will be mainly deployed in Helmand province, to counter a new offensive by a resurgent Taliban and al-Qa'ida, which has seen a hundred Americans killed in the past few months - the same number as British soldiers killed in the entire Iraq conflict. In particular, there has been a rise in the number of suicide bombings - hitherto relatively unknown in Afghanistan, but a popular weapon of the insurgents in Iraq.
General Wardak said: "We are facing a new phenomenon. They used to be mainly foreigners but now unfortunately there are some Afghans. They are religious fanatics. Suicide bombings are against our tradition, they are against our religious beliefs."
The general said there was widespread infiltration from across the "porous" border with Pakistan. He said the Pakistani government had claimed to have deployed 70,000 troops along the frontier but there appeared to be large swaths of the country that were beyond government control.
The Afghan government had reported a steady stream of foreign nationals, allegedly linked to al-Qa'ida and the Iraq insurgency, infiltrating across the border.
Yesterday Afghan forces reported the arrest of an Iraqi and three Pakistanis at Zaranj, the capital of Nimroz province in the south.
Earlier this week, five Bangladeshis were arrested in the same area. The provincial governor, Ghulam Dushtaqir Azad, said they had links with the Taliban .
The British Government has announced that British troops will be engaged in tackling Afghanistan's opium crop - the largest in the world. But the British troops will be under a Nato mandate, which does not include eradicating poppies. An international think-tank, the Senlis Council, has appointed a team of lawyers to ascertain whether British forces engaged in destroying poppy fields would be in breach of international law.
The Armed Forces minister Adam Ingram said yesterday that British troops will not engage in directly eradicating poppy fields, but they would support Afghan anti-drug operations. He said eradication without providing new sources of livelihood for the farmers would "breed resentment and anger towards Nato and the Afghan government. It will create conditions for greater resistance and insurgency with the warlords exploiting real grievances for their own malign advantage."
The conference on Afghanistan ended yesterday with Hamid Karzai's government receiving just a fraction of what it claimed was needed to rebuild the country.
At the same time there were fresh warnings over the dangers that British forces being sent to Afghanistan will face, and confusion over how to tackle the country's massive opium production.
The Afghan government had said that a minimum of $20bn (£11bn) was needed over five years. But the total promised aid at the end of the London summit was $10.5bn. However, since 20 per cent of that was "old pledges" on the table, the real figure was $8bn.
The United States was the biggest contributor with an offer of $4bn over five years while Britain said it will give $885m. Another $1.2bn will come from the World Bank.
The Foreign Office minister Kim Howells declared the conference - co-hosted by Tony Blair, the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan and President Karzai - a "great success". But the Afghan Finance Minister, Anwar al-Haq Ahady, expressed disappointment that the total amount of funding on offer fell short of his government's expectations.
Mr Ahady said he was confident that all the money pledged would be delivered. But privately Afghan officials expressed concern about possible delays. One official said: "How soon the money arrives will be extremely important. We have had elections and we have to persuade the people that the democratic system works. It would be very, very bad if we now cannot deliver on our promise.
"It is especially bad because we are now facing the biggest extremist [al-Qa'ida and Taliban] threat since the war."
General Abdul Rahim Wardak, the Afghan Defence Minister, warned that the 6,000-strong British task force would be on the front line of the threat.
The British force will be mainly deployed in Helmand province, to counter a new offensive by a resurgent Taliban and al-Qa'ida, which has seen a hundred Americans killed in the past few months - the same number as British soldiers killed in the entire Iraq conflict. In particular, there has been a rise in the number of suicide bombings - hitherto relatively unknown in Afghanistan, but a popular weapon of the insurgents in Iraq.
General Wardak said: "We are facing a new phenomenon. They used to be mainly foreigners but now unfortunately there are some Afghans. They are religious fanatics. Suicide bombings are against our tradition, they are against our religious beliefs."
The general said there was widespread infiltration from across the "porous" border with Pakistan. He said the Pakistani government had claimed to have deployed 70,000 troops along the frontier but there appeared to be large swaths of the country that were beyond government control.
The Afghan government had reported a steady stream of foreign nationals, allegedly linked to al-Qa'ida and the Iraq insurgency, infiltrating across the border.
Yesterday Afghan forces reported the arrest of an Iraqi and three Pakistanis at Zaranj, the capital of Nimroz province in the south.
Earlier this week, five Bangladeshis were arrested in the same area. The provincial governor, Ghulam Dushtaqir Azad, said they had links with the Taliban .
The British Government has announced that British troops will be engaged in tackling Afghanistan's opium crop - the largest in the world. But the British troops will be under a Nato mandate, which does not include eradicating poppies. An international think-tank, the Senlis Council, has appointed a team of lawyers to ascertain whether British forces engaged in destroying poppy fields would be in breach of international law.
The Armed Forces minister Adam Ingram said yesterday that British troops will not engage in directly eradicating poppy fields, but they would support Afghan anti-drug operations. He said eradication without providing new sources of livelihood for the farmers would "breed resentment and anger towards Nato and the Afghan government. It will create conditions for greater resistance and insurgency with the warlords exploiting real grievances for their own malign advantage."
Afghanistan: Kabul Expresses Satisfaction With London Conference Results
Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
The London Conference on Afghanistan's future ended on 1 February with all the signs that it had achieved what organizers hoped. Participating countries pledged $10.5 billion in new reconstruction aid and to strengthen hobbled institutions in Afghanistan. But the conference also appears to have shifted a greater burden for the country's fate to the Afghan government -- and turned more attention to the plight of ordinary Afghans.
LONDON, 2 February 2006 (RFE/RL) -- If the London Conference opened in an atmosphere of cautious optimism, it arguably concluded on a higher note.
Afghan Finance Minister Anwar ul-Haq Ahady welcomed the international community's engagement and its pledges of support at the two-day gathering.
"We have been heartened by the kind of support we have received in more returns since yesterday, and we are very much impressed with the kind of support we have received in pledges in the past two days," Ahady said.
Ahady also tried to dispel concerns that donor countries have not lived up to their pledges of aid.
"I am pleased to say that, actually, almost all of our donors who have pledged [in the past], they have delivered on their pledge," Ahady said. "This is a misperception that money was promised and it was not delivered."
Vote Of Confidence?
Wahidullah Shahrani, Afghanistan's deputy finance minister and an economic adviser to President Hamid Karzai, stressed after its conclusion that the conference represented an international vote of confidence in the Afghan central government.
"We are very satisfied with the outcome of this important conference for two main reasons. The first is that the international community recognized during this conference that the government of Afghanistan is in a position to take the ownership and to come with the initiative, and would lead the nation to determine and implement its development strategy," Shahrani said.
Shahrani also emphasized the conference's commitment to back his government's National Development Strategy, which sets out plans for ensuring security, governing more effectively, and safeguarding citizens' rights.
Shahrani echoed vows from other Afghan officials to devote greater attention and resources to improving the lives of ordinary Afghans He also highlighted recent achievements in the continuing effort to recover after decades of war.
"Right now, we have got 6 million children back to the schools; almost 75 percent of the people across the country have got access to basic health services," Shahrani said. "We have completed a number of key highway or road projects. They will create opportunities for economic activities. We have an agreement with the Asian Development Bank that we can bring electricity from Uzbekistan."
Welcoming Aid
Shukria Barakzai is another member of the Afghan delegation to the London Conference and a member of Afghanistan's new national parliament. She secretly educated women when such education was banned under the hard-line Taliban regime, and said on 1 February that the aid flowing from the conference would do wonders for her country.
"Really it's more than enough, I think. It's a big help for Afghanistan," Barakzai said. "As an Afghan, I am very happy it can transform our country, and of course, the agenda and the arguments was very useful. It's made our government to be more active."
Barakzai said the structure of the Karzai administration's National Development Strategy will make the government more accountable and foster closer coordination with the international community.
Barakzai said top-down improvements to the justice system and law enforcement are important. But she added that the country's long-suffering population needs to see visible improvements like new roads and schools.
"[People's] priorities, it's something normal: security, peace process, democratic process, and, of course, the schools, roads, shelter, factories. That's all very important," Barakzai said. "That's the Afghan people's needs. We need a new map, we need a new timetable, we need a new policy. The parliament also is working as a kind of observer for law."
...But Should Countries Do More?
But even as delegates to the London Conference dispersed and headed for home, at least one voice emerged to suggest that the international community is not doing enough for Afghanistan.
Fazel Beria is from the Afghan Association of London and has represented Afghanistan in international negotiations. He said that if measured by what Afghanistan has done for the world, the aid has been insufficient.
"The world was an unsafe place with all of those terrorist camps in Afghanistan, with Osama bin Laden and the Taliban government. Now they are not there," Beria said. "And if the Afghan people are participating with the world to destroy those bases, we are actually contributing much, much more to the world [by] providing security, and in return we are getting very little."
Beria suggested that even a "little" more could make an enormous difference.
Afghan Officials: Militants from Iran, Iraq Now Joining Insurgency
By Benjamin Sand Islamabad 02 February 2006 VOA
Afghan officials say militants from Iran and Iraq are now joining the insurgency in Afghanistan. The claims come after authorities captured several suspected terrorists allegedly sneaking into the country from neighboring Iran.
Afghanistan's Interior Ministry confirmed the recent arrests on Thursday.
Ministry spokesman Yousuf Stanezai says the men, all suspected militants, were detained earlier this week after illegally crossing the border from Iran.
"The police in Nimruz Province arrested four people. One man was Iraqi, one was Iranian and two were Kashmiri," he said.
The official investigation is still under way but he says the Iraqi was likely headed to southern Afghanistan, where Taleban insurgents maintain a powerful presence.
"According to the preliminary investigation the Iraqi was arrested on the way to Khandahar where he had plans to perform some terrorist activity," he added.
He says all four men had ties with terrorist groups inside Afghanistan.
The charges come amid a sharp rise in suicide bomb attacks across the country.
Once relatively unheard of in Afghanistan, there have been nearly 24 suicide bombings in the past four months.
Wednesday, a suspected Taleban insurgent, dressed as a woman, killed five people in eastern Afghanistan.
Security experts say it appears local militants are increasingly importing tactics used by Iraqi insurgents.
Now local authorities say Iraqi and other foreign militants are themselves joining the fight in Afghanistan.
Officials claim many of the attacks originate in neighboring Pakistan where they believe hundreds of militants have established temporary bases in the semi-autonomous tribal areas along the border.
Pakistan says it has deployed some 80,000 troops to secure the border area and arrest suspected Taleban and al-Qaida fugitives.
Popular resistance to the attacks is also on the rise in towns and cities across Afghanistan. The last few suicide bombings have provoked widespread public demonstrations demanding an end to the militant campaign.
More than 1,000 people joined a protest in southern Afghanistan seeking a more secure border with Pakistan and an end to the recent wave of suicide attacks.
Q&A: Afghans Likely to Be Disappointed at Conference
New York Times By ESTHER PAN February 1, 2006 From the Council on Foreign Relations
Esther Pan is a staff writer for the Council on Foreign Relations website, cfr.org.
Dr. Amin Tarzi, an Afghanistan analyst for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, spoke to cfr.org's Esther Pan ahead of a major international meeting on Afghan development in London January 31-February 1.
What do you expect to come out of this donor conference in London?
The Afghan government has high expectations, and perhaps unrealistic ones. They are thinking that this conference will guarantee them funds for at least a five-year plan, not only for reconstruction but also for counter-narcotics, including crop subsidies, which will be expensive and also expecting that the conference will have an element of guaranteeing the security of the country, from both external and internal threats. They have proposed a five-year plan for development, but the main funding for this is expected to come from foreign countries. Close to 95 percent of Afghanistan's income is actually aid donations. So the expectation is that the next five years will be basically guaranteed, not only funds but also security guarantees.
How much does that work out to? What is the dollar figure they're attaching to all of these needs?
They're not giving a dollar figure because if people read it, they'll be disappointed, because I don't think that will come in. There are certain numbers Afghanistan tosses around, but if you look at just the counter-narcotics, to give you an idea: the Afghan [proposal for] fighting narcotics is a $20 billion package, which is $5 billion or $4 billion a year. This is more than all the aid the country gets. So I think because of this, they have not given any hard numbers. They have just proposed a plan, and they are looking for as much as they can get.
This is not really a donor conference in the sense that the first two conferences were, in Tokyo [January 21-22, 2002] and Berlin [March 21-April 1, 2004]. Some people--myself included--were critical [of those conferences], saying that Afghanistan had not taken the responsibility onto its own shoulders. It's always been, okay, this is the Bonn agreement and the UN and international community are supposed to do pretty much everything. Here, at least what is happening is the Afghans are taking the lead. They are the ones who have put forward this plan and they are not asking for so much directly. But if you look at the London meeting, what is being said and the expectations are not converging. This is my biggest worry about it. The expectations of the Afghan government and what is coming up will not actually come together.
What does the Afghan government have as other funding sources if these international donor funds don't come through?
Unfortunately, right now there's not much. The country has pretty much no taxation, although the Finance Ministry in 2005 tried to collect a tax on businesses--which was criticized as being not very business-friendly. There is no income tax to speak of. Another thing that the United States is now trying to help the country with is to generate some sort of income through customs. What President Karzai has been trying very hard to accomplish is to at least get the money that comes into the country on legal trade, which is pretty significant. That is an ongoing problem, how to establish a customs system with an understanding that the center and the periphery are together, and that money that comes through Herat from Iran doesn't stay in Heart, but goes into the public treasury. If they do manage to do that, it will generate some amount of funding from the country, which makes it more independent. But there's not much more. Unfortunately, the main income, which is not going to the government, is narcotics. A country that gets more than 50 percent of its GDP from narcotics is problematic.
And what is the view in Afghanistan of the NATO security situation? It seems NATO has recommitted to sending troops to the south of the country, but some countries, including the Netherlands, are expressing some doubts about how long their troops will be there. From the Afghan perspective, how does the security situation look?
The ISAF force has been a welcome addition, and has done a very good job as far as Afghans are concerned, in the north and the west. The southern expansion, or so-called Phase III expansion...includes some very volatile provinces: Kandahar, Helmand, Nimruz, Zabol, and Oruzgan are pretty [dangerous]. To go there, the NATO mandate says we're not dealing with the counter-narcotics, we're not going to chase the bad guys, or the terrorists, or the neo-Taliban, or whoever the anti-government forces [are]. So the question is, what will they be doing? The Afghan hope is that NATO comes there, but the U.S.-led coalition, Operation Enduing Freedom, will still be there to make sure that the security is kept. This is their hope, but while they're not saying it openly, there is a fear that once NATO comes in there...the United States may opt to take some troops out and move them] east, or even out of the country. The U.S. already wants to take some 2,000 to 3,000 out of the country, but if any more were withdrawn, there's a hesitation, an understanding in Afghanistan, that NATO--at least with the mandate they have today--may not be there. The hope still is that the U.S. will retain some sort of force there for the foreseeable future.
What progress has been made with the training of the Afghan security forces?
There is some very good news, which is the ANA, or Afghan National Army. The US is the lead country training them, and they're doing very well. There is a very realistic plan about how to generate these forces, and the timeline goes all the way out to 2009. The expected full strength will be 74,000. Right now they are somewhere between 24,000 and 25,000. The forces have been very good. In the early days there were a lot of desertions, but right now because the salaries are a bit higher, they're good. And from the U.S. perspective, they have been actually fighting pretty good in battles alongside the United States, and they have actually operated on their own also. Today, the ANA is one of the brightest spots on security. But another thing about the ANA is, how long will the subsidies continue to come in? When will the Afghan government actually start to at least think of some sort of financial responsibility? How long will the U.S. actually bankroll their salaries? If that doesn't happen, that force may not [continue to] be as good as it is right now.
The biggest problem right now is the ANP, or the Afghan national police, which is in absolute disarray. The numbers are exaggerated, and the police--traffic police, border control, counter-narcotics, and the police who are more like a militia force--all have problems. There are several problems. Number one, the training is very short, sometimes a week. Most--some statistics say up to 70 percent--of the forces are illiterate. Desertion is rampant, and the worst problem right now is corruption. Where ever they go, they seem to get involved in the corruption of the local government, or narcotics. So unless the police are also trained well, they're a big problem.
And then another thing of concern is that there are now three ministries dealing with counter-narcotics. There are four different forces fighting narcotics in different ministries. The Ministry of the Interior has two, there's one in the Ministry of Defense, and then a whole new ministry was created, the Ministry of Counter-Narcotics. So there you have many many departments but neither their mandate nor their forces are very coordinated, which creates more problems.
Let's shift away from security and talk about reconstruction. How would you say reconstruction is progressing?
Some areas are doing very, very good. I think reconstruction is, unfortunately, directly related to security. Where there is security, reconstruction has gone okay. I'm looking at places like the north. A very good example is Bamian in central Afghanistan. Herat [in the west] is doing very well. There are parts of Kabul where there is a reconstruction boom. Where you really have a problem, again, is the south and the east. There you have very private reconstruction--some people have money, they build a dam here, a bridge there--but there is nothing ongoing on a grand scale. You have the PRTS, provincial reconstruction teams, but they are very small for the job. They are good and simple, but because of the security problems, not much is happening. You have to look at the map: where there is security, things have gone pretty well; where there is no security it hasn't. The problem is that if this insecurity prevails in the south and east, then you may have a country divided not only on ethnic lines, but [economic ones as well.] That could create two sides of the same country, which would make problems beyond reconstruction.
There's been some criticism that reconstruction projects that are funded by the United States or Europe are happening outside the control of President Karzai or the Afghan government, and that this is weakening Karzai's government. What do you think of those charges?
Currently, they're true. There's this NGO-bashing, which is one of the main things the newly-elected Afghan national assembly has taken up. When you travel to Afghanistan, you do see that some of the foreign companies or NGOs are taking a lot of the money for their overhead and security, and not much goes to Aghanistan. In my view, some projects that would have taken longer but employed Afghans would have been good for training Afghans and employing Afghans. They brought Pakistani and Turkish companies in to build roads rather than training Afghans. That was mainly because there were timelines that had to be met, but there is an issue there. If the Parliament has its way, you'll see less and less of the NGOs. The problem is that if the NGOs leave, will the donors give directly to the Afghan government? That's an open question, because corruption if very high in this government. So donors are reluctant to give big chunks of money to a government that doesn't seem to have control over its finances. And another open question is whether the Karzai government has direct control over certain provinces, where a long-term project can go on without foreign hands.
Afghanistan is not yet a democracy. It is trying to become a state. It has democratic institutions, but it doesn't have what it takes to become a democracy: civil society, a population who knows what democracy means, who are aware of their own rights. Afghanistan has to first become a state: the central government has to have power over its territory; defined, secure borders; and a monopoly on the use of force. Afghanistan is marching towards becoming a democratic state. How long it takes, no one knows, but it's not a democracy in the sense of a Western-style democracy.
Doyle tells of scare during Afghanistan trip
Thursday, February 2, 2006 Associated Press
MADISON, Wis. - Gov. Jim Doyle said Wednesday that while he was on a flight in Afghanistan last week, the military transport plane was feared at one point to be under missile attack.
"We were coming out of Kabul and suddenly the big C-130 we were on ... took a very hard turn and the flares went off," he said. "Apparently there had been on one of the sensors some indication that there could possibly be something."
Doyle got an informal briefing afterwards.
"I don't think there was (a missile). In the aftermath, nobody thought there was, but it was an evasive action," Doyle said. "I didn't quite expect that."
Doyle said a heat sensor on the plane apparently went off.
"That's what they believed it was, which as I understand could have come from ... some sort of heat projection from the ground. Not a missile."
Doyle discussed the incident when he met with reporters to discuss the weeklong trip to the Middle East and the latest deployment of Wisconsin National Guard troops.
Doyle, who made the trip with three other governors, visited Wisconsin troops and aid workers in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait and Pakistan. He returned Sunday.
He said the incident in the plane gave him some idea of the uncertainty for those serving in the region, with the possibility that something could happen at any time.
"That's an enormous pressure for these people, and they live with it all the time," he said.
Thirty die in severe Afghan cold
Wednesday, 1 February 2006 BBC News
At least 30 people have died due to severe winter conditions in Badakshan province in north-eastern Afghanistan.
The head of the Afghan Red Crescent aid agency, Abuzar, told the BBC 15 people were killed when an avalanche hit five villages in Ragh district.
He said 15 others had died in the province from the cold weather.
Local officials in Badakshan are waiting for helicopters to bring emergency aid, including food and medicine, he added.
The avalanche has flattened 150 houses in the five villages in Ragh district and the villages are totally cut off from the provincial capital of Faizabad, Abuzar said.
Daily Afghan Report
Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty[ 1 February 2006 ]
Blair Points To Drug, Security Challenges In Afghanistan...
British Prime Minister Tony Blair told participants in a two-day conference on Afghanistan co-hosted by Afghanistan, the United Kingdom, and the United Nations (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 31 January 2006) on 31 January that while Afghanistan "faces immense challenges," the country has made "tremendous progress" since late 2001, when the Taliban regime was ousted from power. Blair highlighted the illicit-drug problem and the continuing security challenges facing Afghanistan and pledged to send British forces to Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan. He also committed more than $800 million over the next three years to Afghan reconstruction. Blair said the international community's assistance to Afghanistan aids not only Afghans but also helps to guard against extremism in the donor countries. The London conference is intended to help Afghanistan implement a five-year plan by creating conditions for sustainable economic growth and development; strengthening state institutions and civil society; combating the remaining terrorist threat and meeting the challenge of counternarcotics; rebuilding capacity and infrastructure; reducing poverty; and meeting basic human needs. AT
...As Afghan Leader Outlines Country's Needs
President Hamid Karzai told a news conference in London on 31 January that, having successfully completing the steps outlined in the Bonn agreement of December 2001, Afghanistan is committed to a compact based on four pillars: security; governance, rule of law, and human rights; economic and social development; and counternarcotics, Radio Free Afghanistan reported (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 31 January 2006). Karzai predicted that the total eradication of illegal drugs from his country will take at least a decade. He estimated that his country requires an annual state budget of $4 billion. The World Bank places Afghanistan's revenue-to-GDP ratio among the lowest in the world, at 5 percent. As such, the country would remain heavily dependent on foreign aid and assistance. AT
U.S. Secretary Of State Hails 'Monumental Achievement' In Afghanistan
Speaking at the London conference on Afghanistan on 31 January, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Afghanistan's ongoing transformation a "monumental achievement" of the 21st century, according to the U.S. State Department's website (http://www.state.gov). Rice lauded Afghans and their leadership, as well as international efforts, for the transformation of Afghanistan "from tyranny to democracy." The first day of the conference produced some $2 billion in pledges for Afghanistan, including the U.S. administration's plan to ask Congress for $1.1 billion in new funding in 2007, BBC reported. AT
Afghan Parliamentarians Offer Differing Predictions For London Conference
People's Council (Wolesi Jirga) deputy Ramazan Bashardost told RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan on 31 January that he believes the London conference will include talk of billions in aid but result in very little real achievement on the ground. Bashardost blamed corruption within the administration of President Karzai, which he characterized as "illegal." Sayyed Ishaq Gailani, another member of the People's Council, told Radio Free Afghanistan that the London conference is bound to bring prestige and assistance to his country. AT
Moscow Views Neo-Taliban, Al-Qaeda As 'Collaborators'
Speaking at a news conference while attending the London conference on 31 January, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said his country continues to view the neo-Taliban as collaborators with Al-Qaeda, Interfax-AVN reported. Any change in the international community's view of the neo-Taliban as an element of international terrorism "would be a significant step backward" in the antiterrorism coalition's efforts, Lavrov said. Lavrov expressed concern over the election of several members of the former Taliban regime to the Afghan National Assembly, ITAR-TASS reported on 31 January. Moscow has maintained that there are no moderate Taliban members, and has opposed Kabul's policy of seeking reconciliation with most members of that former regime. AT
Pakistan's battle over Balochistan
By Zaffar Abbas BBC News, Islamabad Friday, 27 January 2006
Nawab Akbar Bugti sits in a cave in Balochistan, guarded by his poorly-attired, heavily-armed tribesmen.
With anti-personnel mines encircling his mountain hideout, the octogenarian warrior mixes 17th century guerrilla tactics with modern weaponry to take on the might of Pakistan's security forces.
Near the hideout of the Bugti tribe, another chieftain, Nawab Khair Baksh, fights a similar battle with security forces in the district of Kohlu.
Kohlu was the scene of a rocket attack last month that coincided with President Pervez Musharraf's visit to the area.
Since the attack, an estimated 100 people have died, accelerating a two-year old conflict in which Baloch militants have targeted railway tracks, power facilities and other key installations.
Pakistan's human rights commission has detailed widespread violations by the security forces, including extra-judicial killings - a report government officials say is one-sided.
No-one seems to know exactly how many civilians have died in helicopter raids on suspected militant camps or in the numerous rocket attacks on soldiers' camps.
In the words of one analyst, it's an undeclared war in which neither side is observing the rules.
New significance
So what on earth is going on in Balochistan, which is regarded as the poorest and most backward of Pakistan's four provinces?
With about six million inhabitants, Pakistan's biggest province has less than half the population of the port city of Karachi.
In mineral resources, however, it is said to be the richest province and is a major supplier of natural gas to the country.
With the government now planning to construct a deep sea port at Gwadar and a road link with Afghanistan and central Asia, Balochistan has acquired a new significance - both for Pakistan and other regional players.
And that is where the problem lies.
Nationalist anger
For decades, Baloch nationalists have been critical of the central government in Islamabad, accusing it of depriving the province its due.
They say the government took away income from natural gas and other resources, while spending only a trivial amount on the province.
The struggle for greater national rights, financial resources and against the establishment of military camps in Balochistan has now led to a tacit understanding between Nawab Bugti and Nawab Baksh.
One of Mr Baksh's six sons leads a force of trained and semi-trained Marri tribesmen, which goes by the name of the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA).
A third tribal leader, former Chief Minister Ataullah Mengal, is not involved in the armed struggle but gives it his ideological and political backing.
For these nationalist leaders, large projects such as the highway and Gwadar port scheme are another form of subjugation - serving the central government but offering little benefit to Balochistan.
The military garrisons set up in the area to secure the expected foreign investment are, for people like Nawab Bugti, also part of well-conceived plan to suppress the nationalist voice.
'Foreign involvement'
President Musharraf refers to these tribal chiefs as anti-development.
He says they oppose his projects because they will bring prosperity to the area and will end the archaic tribal system which preserves their power.
Without naming any country, he also accuses the armed Baloch militants of playing into foreign hands.
Senior officials in the security forces say they grew alarmed when intelligence agencies found more than one foreign country was involved in the province's affairs.
The countries were said to be opposed to Gwadar becoming a major trading port for central Asian nations and China.
One official said the biggest shock came when the interrogation of a group of militants revealed they had been trained in a friendly Gulf country, which allegedly feared it could lose its status as the region's biggest trading port.
But no matter what the authorities say about foreign involvement, seasoned Balochistan watchers say the problem is essentially local.
They say the Baloch people can only be tamed through political means, pointing out that this is not the first time they have taken up arms to fight those they see as outsiders.
And, they say, though the might of the armed forces might crush the people of Balochistan, it will never win their hearts and minds.
US envoy warns on efforts to build Afghanistan
By Rachel Morarjee in London February 3 2006 02:00 Financial Times, UK
Afghanistan risks sliding back into chaos if western countries do not step up efforts to bolster government control outside the capital, Ronald Neumann, US ambassador to Afghanistan, said yesterday.
"If one does not want Afghanistan to return to fragmentation, then the task is to build the government. This is a rather audacious task, and there is really no margin between fairly hefty success and very disastrous failure," Mr Neumann told the Financial Times in an interview.
Speaking after a conference in London where nations pledged $10.5bn (€8.7bn, £5.9bn) to rebuild the country over the next five years, Mr Neumann said the task was far from over. "The price of not carrying through and giving it up is a very large failure that will return Afghanistan to a very chaotic existence. People need to think about that when they are wincing at the task."
Mr Neumann's comments came hours before a suicide bomber rammed a car packed with explosives into an army convoy in south-eastern Khost province, killing three Afghan soldiers and a road-worker in the latest of a spate of suicide attacks.
US casualties in Afghanistan almost doubled to about 60 in 2005 compared with the previous year, as the Taliban began aping the suicide and roadside bombings of Iraq. Mr Neumann admitted the Taliban was not a spent force but rejected comparisons with Iraq, saying violence had not derailed elections or halted reconstruction. "It is clear the Taliban has not gone away and I would expect that we will have a violent insurgency in the south for some years to come. But I think there is a huge exaggeration of their strength."
Nato, which will send more troops to southern Afghanistan in the spring when the US reduces its presence, must take the initiative and provide a security buffer behind which the Afghan army and government could build strength. "We can't leave it in Taliban hands. They are just playing a long game, keeping the government weak and waiting for the day when theforeigners walk away and they can move back," Mr Neumann said.
The Taliban had failed to derail the government or stop reconstruction. US-funded work to provide alternative livelihoods for opium farmers in southern Helmand province had resumed after an attack on aid workers halted the programme last year, and progress was being made on road-building in the south, he added.
When Nato forces took over from the US, Mr Neumann said he did not "see any reason why security in the south should not beas good or better" than in 2005.
Spying, lying, and saying no
Asia Times By Thomas Powers Speaking Freely 2/2/06
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say.
Note: This article is based on a review of State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration by James Risen.
The challenges posed to US democracy by secrecy and by unchecked presidential power are the two great themes running through the history of the Iraq war. How long the war will last, who will "win", and what it will do to the political landscape of the Middle East will not be obvious for years to come, but the answers to those questions cannot alter the character of what happened at the outset. Put plainly, President George W Bush
decided to attack Iraq, he brushed caution and objection aside, and Congress, the press and the people, with very few exceptions, stepped back out of the way and let him do it.
Explaining this fact is not going to be easy. Commentators often now refer to Bush's decision to invade Iraq as "a war of choice", which means that it was not provoked. The usual word for an unprovoked attack is "aggression". Why did Americans - elected representatives and plain citizens alike - accede so readily to this act of aggression, and why did they question the president's arguments for war so feebly? The whole business is painfully awkward to consider, but it will not go away. If the US constitution forbids a president anything, it forbids war on his say-so, and if it insists on anything it insists that presidents are not above the law. In plain terms this means that US presidents cannot enact laws on their own, or ignore laws that have been enacted by Congress.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) is such a law; it was enacted to end years of routine wiretapping of US citizens who had attracted official attention by opposing the war in Vietnam. The express purpose of the act was to limit what presidents could ask intelligence organizations to do. But for limits on presidential power to have meaning, Congress and the courts must have the fortitude to say no when they think "no" is the answer.
In public life as in kindergarten, the all-important word is "no". We are living with the consequences of the inability to say no to the president's war of choice with Iraq, and we shall soon see how the Congress and the courts will respond to the latest challenge from the White House - the claim by Bush that he has the right to ignore FISA's prohibition of government intrusion on the private communications of Americans without a court order, and his repeated statements that he intends to go right on doing it.
Nobody was supposed to know that FISA had been brushed aside. The fact that the National Security Agency (NSA), America's largest intelligence organization, had been turned loose to intercept the faxes, e-mails and phone conversations of Americans with blanket permission by the president remained secret until New York Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau learned more than a year ago that it was happening. An early version of the story was apparently submitted to the Times' editors in October 2004, when it might have affected the outcome of the presidential election. But the Times, for reasons it has not clearly explained, withheld the story until mid-December 2005, when the newspaper's publisher and executive editor - Arthur Sulzberger Jr and Bill Keller - met with Bush in the Oval Office to hear his objections before going ahead. Even then certain details were withheld.
What James Risen learned in the course of his reporting can be found in his newly published book State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, a wide-ranging investigation of the role of intelligence in the origins and the conduct of the war in Iraq. Risen contributes much new material to our knowledge of recent intelligence history. He reports in detail, for example, on claims that Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analysts quit fighting over exaggerated reports of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction as word spread in the corridors of its headquarters in Langley, Virginia, that the president had decided to go to war no matter what the evidence said; that the Saudi government seized and then got rid of tell-tale bank records of Abu Zubaydah, the most important al-Qaeda figure to be captured since September 11, 2001; and that "a handful of the most important al-Qaeda detainees" have been sent for interrogation to a secret prison code-named "Bright Light". One CIA specialist in counter-terror operations told Risen, "The word is that once you get sent to Bright Light, you never come back."
Digging out intelligence history is a slow process, resisted by officials at every step of the way, and Risen's work will be often quoted in future accounts of the Iraq war. But nothing else in Risen's book rivals the NSA story in importance, revealing that the president not only authorized the NSA to eavesdrop on Americans without seeking court orders, but to listen in a new way, by intercepting a large volume of communications among categories of people, and then analyzing or "mining" the data in those calls for suspicious patterns that might offer "potential evidence of terrorist activity".
"This is the biggest secret I know about," one official told Risen. The eavesdropping effort is technically known as a "special access program" (SAP), which means that its existence and the information it collects are both tightly held. Within the government, Risen tells us, witting officials referred to it simply as "the program", and even the legal opinions justifying it are classified.
Risen traces the origins of the program back to the brief war that overthrew the Taliban government in Afghanistan and resulted in the capture of many al-Qaeda suspects along with their mobile telephones and computers. These suspects had been calling and e-mailing people throughout the world, many of whom, inevitably, were in the United States, raising understandable fears of new terrorist attacks. But according to Risen, the NSA does not limit itself to monitoring numbers provided by the CIA from captured al-Qaeda phone books, targets for which there is some degree of "probable cause" to think they might be terrorist-connected. Those phone numbers provide only the jumping-off point for the program. The NSA has since broadened its effort by establishing "its own internal checklist" to pinpoint phone numbers and addresses of interest, and it is likely that the items on the list are checked off by a computer program in a nanosecond, not by analysts exercising deliberate judgment.
How big is the target list? At any given moment, Risen believes, the NSA may be "eavesdropping on as many as 500 people in the United States". But his number of 500 should not be interpreted as an outer limit. The actual volume of intercepted calls is almost certainly a very great deal larger, going beyond communications between known, named persons. Modern eavesdropping seldom mirrors the classic wiretap of yesteryear when Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents with earphones might record hundreds of hours of a Mafia chief chatting with his underboss in New York's Little Italy. The idea now is to see if anyone on the phone in New York or New Jersey sounds in any way like a Mafia chief. A dinner of linguine with clams in a known Mafia hangout could be enough to warrant a further look.
The al-Qaeda phone-book numbers were the crack in the door; follow-up targets are simply numbers or e-mail addresses, leading to other numbers and e-mail addresses, all plucked from the torrents of traffic transmitted by the switching systems of the major US telecommunications companies, which daily handle 2 billion phone calls and perhaps 10 times as many e-mail messages. What Risen discovered, in short, was a program best described as "big".
A wide net
Under existing law the NSA should have sought permission from the secret FISA court in Washington before listening in on the communications of any "US persons" - basically, US corporations, citizens and others lawfully inside the United States - who had turned up in al-Qaeda phone books and directories. The law makes provision for emergencies: if investigators feel they don't have time for legal rigmarole they can act first and then seek permission within the following three days. This was not done. Bush insisted on New Year's Day that "this is a limited program ... it's limited to calls from outside the United States to calls within the United States. But they are of known - numbers of known al-Qaeda members or affiliates." But it seems clear that the NSA program quickly spilled beyond its original limits; the real reason for ignoring the FISA courts is probably a savvy guess that the courts would not approve what the Bush administration wants to do.
Listening to specific persons was only part of it, and not the greater part. What Risen learned, which has been backed up by other press accounts in recent weeks, is that the counter-terror investigators from the beginning wanted to cast the net wide - to listen to all the people in the al-Qaeda phone books, and then broaden their search to the still wider circle of people the phone-book names were in touch with, and go on to check out all their contacts as well. If the first generation of targets numbered a hundred, let's say, and each of them had been talking to a hundred people in a second generation of targets, then even a third-generation search could easily sweep up a million people. You can see why investigators desperate to prevent any repetition of the attacks of September 11 would have favored this rapid and wide casting of the net, but that sort of industrial-scale fishing expedition is exactly what the FISA courts were established to prevent.
In the days after the Risen-Lichtblau story first appeared, Bush, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the head of the NSA at the beginning of the program, General Michael Hayden, and others all defended the program as urgent, successful, justified by acts of Congress and the president's powers under the constitution, sharply limited in scope, approved by members of Congress who had been briefed on the program, and carefully managed to protect the civil liberties and other rights of Americans.
"The whole key here is agility," said Hayden.
"What we're trying to do is learn of communications, back and forth, from within the United States to overseas members of al-Qaeda," said Gonzales. "That's what this program is about. This is not about wiretapping everybody. This is about a very concentrated, very limited program focused on gaining information about our enemy."
"Dealing with al-Qaeda is not simply a matter of law enforcement," Bush said in a press conference on December 19.
It requires defending the country against an enemy that declared war against the United States ... So, consistent with US law and the constitution, I authorized the interception of international communications of people with known links to al-Qaeda and related terrorist organizations ... Leaders in the United States Congress have been briefed more than a dozen times on this program ... I've reauthorized this program more than 30 times since the September the 11th attacks, and I intend to do so for so long as ... the nation faces the continuing threat.
Bush's carefully worded statement casts a troubling new light on his insistence that Americans are fighting a "war on terror" and that he is a "wartime president". Constitutional lawyers have long argued about the limits of presidential or executive power, but all agree that the limits are more elastic in wartime, and it is increasingly evident that the Bush administration has treated this distinction as a barn door. The shock caused by the revelation of the NSA program is not centered on concern for the civil liberties of al-Qaeda terrorists but on the scale, still unknown, of the eavesdropping authorized by the president; on his refusal to use the courts or seek any change in the governing laws; and on his blanket claim that Article 2 of the US constitution gives him, as president and commander-in-chief of the armed forces, both the responsibility for defending the country and "the authority necessary to fulfill it".
Even some Republican leaders find this broad claim troubling. Senator Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate's Judiciary Committee, has announced that he will hold hearings on the NSA program. "I am skeptical of the attorney general's citation of authority, but I am prepared to listen," he said in December. "You can't have the administration and a select number of members [of Congress, those briefed by the White House] alter the law. It can't be done."
In an interview with Fox News on January 19, Vice President Dick Cheney said such briefings "have occurred at least a dozen times. I presided over most of them." One of those briefings, possibly the first, was held in Cheney's office on July 17, 2003, four months after the US invasion of Iraq and a year after the NSA program began. Present were Congresswoman Jane Harman and congressman Porter Goss, now the director of the CIA; and Senators Pat Roberts and John D Rockefeller. Briefing them were Goss's predecessor at the CIA, George Tenet, and General Hayden of the NSA. There has been no published account of what the members of Congress were told about the nature, rationale, justification and scale of the program. They were neither permitted to take notes nor to discuss what they heard with any other persons. Far from feeling that the administration had fulfilled its obligations under existing law, Rockefeller handwrote a brief letter to Cheney the same day
to reiterate my concern regarding the sensitive intelligence issues we discussed today ... Clearly, the activities we discussed raise profound oversight issues ... Given the security restrictions associated with this information, and my inability to consult staff or counsel on my own, I feel unable to fully evaluate, much less endorse, these activities. As I reflected on the meeting today, and the future we face, John Poindexter's TIA project [sprang] to mind, exacerbating my concern.
TIA stands for Total Information Awareness, an intelligence program conceived in the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in the year following the attacks of September 11. It was designed to collect and exploit digital records of all kinds from private and public compilers of information - phone records, bank records, credit-card records, police records, medical records, travel records - basically everything that is recorded about individuals. Running the program was John Poindexter, a former admiral and national security adviser under president Ronald Reagan who had been indicted and convicted on seven felony charges during the Iran-contra investigation in the early 1990s, convictions later overturned on appeal. When the New York Times first published a description of TIA in December 2002, the fact that Poindexter was running it proved a fatal debility, and in September 2003 Congress killed funding for the Pentagon's Information Awareness Office (IAO).
But Poindexter's retirement and the end of the IAO did not extinguish official hopes for "data-mining", a computer-intensive approach to finding meaning in apparently random patterns. This, in fact, is basically what the NSA has always done - collect communications from targets of interest and attack them with "tools", which are basically computer programs that seek patterns in apparently random letter and number groups. Data-mining seeks patterns in random actions - buying, selling, check-writing, getting on planes, and so on - rather than in the numbers and letters that make up codes. Data-mining is not a way to find out what persons of interest have been up to; it is a way to identify persons of interest among the general population - persons, in short, who have not been detected doing anything that might persuade a judge on the FISA court to issue a warrant for surveillance.
Checking out US persons contacted by al-Qaeda would have raised no red flags with FISA judges; the larger and more significant part of the program uncovered by James Risen - the part that the administration did not want to describe to the FISA court or to members of Congress who could have amended the law; the part, in fact, that the administration still hopes to keep secret and continue - is the use of data-mining techniques by the NSA to do what Congress refused to allow Poindexter and the Pentagon to do. And that is to generate large numbers of names - not dozens, thousands - for the FBI to investigate.
John Poindexter and Total Information Awareness were one bell that rang loudly in the mind of Senator Rockefeller after his briefing in Cheney's office. It is probable that another has rung since - the testimony of John Bolton during his confirmation hearings last summer to be US ambassador to the United Nations, when he said that on 10 occasions he had formally asked the NSA to identify the "US persons" who had been party to, or perhaps only mentioned in, communications intercepted by the agency and included in reports distributed to others in the government. The fight over the administration's refusal to identify the 19 persons who aroused Bolton's curiosity in those 10 communications was one reason Bush abandoned efforts to force a Senate vote and instead made an interim appointment of Bolton to the UN post while Congress was in recess. But the argument while it continued jarred loose additional information about the scale of NSA activity - for example, the State Department's admission that Bolton's colleagues had made more than 400 requests for the identities of US persons in NSA reports; that the NSA had been asked as many as 3,500 times by other agencies to fill in the names of US persons; and that the total number of names provided to other agencies was greater than 10,000.
Who are these people? Some of them were probably included in a database of 1,519 "suspicious incidents" compiled by the Pentagon's Counterintelligence Field Activity, an office charged with defending military bases, according to a report broadcast by NBC a few days before the original New York Times story on the NSA program. On examination, the Pentagon's "suspicious incidents" were simply public protests of the sort watched, photographed, investigated and wiretapped during the Vietnam War under the program that led to the enactment of FISA 25 years ago. At that time the Pentagon's database had ballooned to 18,000 names.
Of the numerous questions facing investigators for the Judiciary Committee, the easy ones will concern the legality of the program. It was patently illegal under FISA and the only argument for letting the president get away with ignoring FISA is that he is prepared to make a fight of it. No committee headed by Republicans will do more than chide him on the law. The questions hardest to answer will be what the NSA actually did, and whether it served any useful purpose.
A recent New York Times story contradicts Bush's claim that the NSA program was "limited ... to known al-Qaeda members or affiliates". Citing anonymous FBI officials, the Times claimed that the NSA flooded the bureau with "thousands" of names per month to check out for possible terrorist connections. Far from being a "vital tool", as described by Bush, the program was a distracting time-waster that sent harried FBI agents down an endless series of blind alleys chasing will-o'-the-wisp terrorists who turned out to be schoolteachers. And far from saving "thousands of lives", as claimed by Cheney in December, the NSA program never led investigators to a genuine terrorist not already under suspicion, nor did it help them to expose any dangerous plots. So why did the administration continue this lumbering effort for three years? Outsiders sometimes find it tempting to dismiss such wheel-spinning as bureaucratic silliness, but I believe that the Judiciary Committee will find, if it is willing to persist, that within the large pointless program there exists a small, sharply focused program that delivers something the White House really wants. This it will never confess willingly.
Tell us what we want to hear
Over the next few months the White House will be fighting a two-front war to preserve its secrets - one against the Judiciary Committee, as just described, and a second against the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has committed itself to a renewed effort to investigate the administration's drum-beating for war with Iraq by citing scary reports of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) - reports that were virtually all wrong, and in some cases were little short of fabricated.
The committee's chairman, Senator Pat Roberts, promised before the 2004 presidential election that "Phase 2" of its investigation would address the administration's actual use of the intelligence it received, flawed as it was. This was something of a minefield. On their face, many statements by Bush, Cheney, then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld appeared to go well beyond even the exaggerated claims made by the CIA. After Bush won a second term, the Republican Roberts not surprisingly dropped "Phase 2", saying he no longer saw the point. But in November Senator Harry Reid, a Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, revived Phase 2 when he invoked a rarely used parliamentary rule to call for a secret session of the Senate to discuss new evidence suggesting that substantial doubts about WMD intelligence had been suppressed before the war.
Risen found evidence of that, too. Included in his book is a new account of a prewar CIA program conceived by the agency's assistant director for intelligence collection, Charles Allen, to send Iraqi-Americans to Baghdad to ask scientist-relatives about WMD. A chief target of the new program was Iraq's effort to develop nuclear weapons, the subject of intense scrutiny after a son-in-law of Saddam Hussein defected in mid-1995 to Amman, where he described WMD programs to UN officials. Sawsan Alhaddad, a doctor working and living in Cleveland, Ohio, was one of about 30 Iraqis dispatched to Baghdad under this program in late summer 2002. When she returned in September she told CIA debriefers in a Virginia hotel room that her brother, an electrical engineer who had joined the Iraqi nuclear program in the early 1980s, had insisted the nuclear-weapons program was dead, shut down years earlier. The other Iraqis all said the same thing only months before the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003, but their reports were bottled up in the CIA.
The agency, it turns out, had heard the same thing from many sources, including Saddam's defector son-in-law, General Hussein Kamal, who was fool enough to return to Baghdad, where he was executed. But before leaving, Kamal told the UN that Iraq's WMD program, larger and more advanced than the CIA had believed before the first Gulf War in 1991, had been closed down
after visits of [UN] inspection teams. You have [an] important role in Iraq with this. You should not underestimate yourself. You are very effective in Iraq ... All chemical weapons were destroyed. I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons - biological, chemical, missile, nuclear - were destroyed ... In the nuclear area, there were no weapons. Missile and chemical weapons were real weapons. Our main worry was Iran and they were [intended for use] against them.
Kamal's report, like Sawsan Alhaddad's and many others, were never cited in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) used to persuade Congress to vote for war. The pattern is clear; evidence of Iraqi WMD, however flimsy, was treated like scripture while information contradicting that evidence, however clear, was bottled up and never left the building. On three separate occasions, for example, in mid-2001, mid-2002, and January 2003, just before the war, the CIA asked the French for their evaluation of the now-infamous reports that Iraq was trying to buy "yellowcake" uranium ore from Niger. According to the Los Angeles Times of December 11, 2005, the French intelligence chief at the time, Alain Chouet, said that the answer was the same in each instance - nothing to it.
The French were in a position to know; uranium ore in Niger was all mined by French companies. In mid-2002 the French even told the CIA that the Italian documents reporting the purchase were forgeries, something the CIA did not even attempt to examine on its own for another year; and a few months later, "at about the same time as the State of the Union address" when Bush cited the yellowcake as alarming evidence of Saddam Hussein's nuclear ambitions, the Italians also told the Americans that the documents were forgeries. In similar fashion, claims that Iraq was providing al-Qaeda with training in the use of poison gases, cited by then-secretary of state Colin Powell at the UN in February 2003, were also contradicted by reports the CIA had but chose to ignore.
In public debate it is customary at this point to ask, in a voice of amazed horror: How could this have happened? Are these intelligence professionals all community-college dropouts? Have they forgotten everything they learned in spy school? My own view is that inconvenient evidence that angers policymakers and threatens careers cannot be pushed under the rug by intelligence officers unless they are fully aware of each step in the series - they know it is evidence, they know it is inconvenient, they know it will anger policymakers, they know their careers will be threatened, and they know they are pushing evidence in the direction of a rug.
James Risen is not willing to go so far. His book is filled with evidence supporting this interpretation, but he seems reluctant to embrace it. "[Paul] Wolfowitz personally complained to Tenet about the CIA's analytical work on Iraq and al-Qaeda," Risen says in discussing the use of intelligence to justify the war. Can we be in doubt why Wolfowitz complained, or why the agency assured Powell that Iraq was training al-Qaeda, scout's honor? When CIA officers told Tenet the war would be a mistake, Risen notes, "he would just come back from the White House and say they are going to do it". Risen sums up Tenet's attitude thus: "War with Iraq was inevitable, and it was time for the CIA to do its part." That seems clear enough; surely Risen means that the agency's part was to help beat the drum for war. But then Risen swings back, like a man facing snakes on one side and alligators on the other. Why was the information reported by Sawsan Alhaddad and the other Iraqis bottled up at the agency? "Petty turf battles and tunnel vision of the agency's officials" is Risen's first answer. In the next sentence he braces up, then wilts again:
Doubts were stifled because of the enormous pressure that officials at the CIA ... felt to support the administration. CIA director George Tenet and his senior lieutenants became so ... fearful of creating a rift with the White House that they created a climate within the CIA in which warnings that the available evidence on Iraqi WMD was weak were either ignored or censored. Tenet and his senior aides may not have meant to foster that sort of work environment - and perhaps did not even realize they were doing it.
What can Risen be thinking? How could they not realize they were doing it? They were running the place.
Paul Wolfowitz, the under secretary of defense, was not the only official to let the CIA know what he wanted to hear. Rumsfeld set up a special office in the Pentagon to "re-look" the intelligence on Iraqi WMD and then urged Tenet to listen to its findings. Cheney crossed the Potomac River more than once to ask questions - the same questions, over and over. John Bolton tried to fire resistant analysts in the State Department's intelligence shop and at the CIA; they kept their jobs, but who could fail to get the message?
Robert Hutchings, a former chief of the National Intelligence Council, the group that wrote the October 2002 NIE, described Bolton's way of mining intelligence reports to come up with the administration's version of the world. "He took isolated facts and made much more to build a case than the intelligence warranted," he said. "It was a sort of cherry-picking of little factoids and little isolated bits that were drawn out to present the starkest-possible case."
These were not intellectual exercises; Bolton needed custom-built intelligence to support the administration's policies. "When policy officials came back repeatedly to push the same kind of judgments, and push the intelligence community to confirm a particular set of judgments," Hutchings said, "it does have the effect of politicizing intelligence, because the so-called 'correct answer' becomes all too clear." Has the Senate Intelligence Committee the fortitude to accept the implications of these facts and many others just like them?
The systematic exaggeration of intelligence before the invasion of Iraq and the flouting of FISA both required, and got, a degree of resolution in the White House that has few precedents in American history. Bush has gotten away with it so far because he leaves no middle ground - cut him some slack, or prepare to fight to the death. The fact that he enjoys a Republican majority in both houses of Congress gives him a margin of comfort, but I suspect that Democratic majorities would be just as reluctant, in the end, to call him on either count. Americans were ready enough to believe that one president might lie about a sexual affair; but they balk at concluding that his successor would pressure others to lie, and even would utter a few whoppers himself, so he could take the country to war.
Risen helps to explain how it was done, but lets it go at that. In his Fox News interview, Cheney did not give an inch on the necessity of the NSA spying or of the war itself. "When we look back on this, 10 years hence," he insisted, "we will [see that we] have fundamentally changed the course of history in that part of the world." A decade down the road we'll know whether Cheney is right or wrong, and whether the change is the one Americans wanted. The question now is whether the president could do it all again - take the country to war, and scrap restraints on spying, just as he pleases. The answer is yes, unless Congress and the courts can say no.
Thomas Powers is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books and is the author of Intelligence Wars: American Secret History from Hitler to al-Qaeda; The Man Who Kept the Secrets; and Heisenberg's War.
The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration by James Risen. Free Press, 2006. ISBN:0743270665. Price US$26. Hardcover, 256 pages.
Disclaimer:
This news site is mostly a compilation of publicly accessible articles
on the Web in the form of a link or saved news item. The news articles
and commentaries/editorials are protected under international copyright
laws. All credit goes to the original respective source(s).