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Afghanistan can repulse Taliban, says US ambassador
US Speaker Pelosi meets Afghan president
US elevates Pakistan to regional kingpin
Softly, softly in the Taliban's den
Taliban warn of summer offensive
US military: Afghan leaders steal half of all aid
Army probes wide-ranging contractor fraud
Afghan enemies behind lawmaker assassination: president
PM appoints point man for Afghan mission
Donors to review progress on Afghanistan Compact
Five suspected terrorists captured in Khost
Afghan women inch ahead
Money, troops not enough to save Afghanistan: analysts
India takes a slow road
Reader, she married an Afghan warlord
Fresh Canadian troops depart for Afghanistan
Pakistan, Afghanistan, Allied forces Working Group meeting Held
The will, and the time, to win
2 soldiers reprimanded for assaults
Man killed on charges of spying
Chaman - Spin Boldak railway track
Afghanistan can repulse Taliban, says US ambassador
Sun Jan 28, 12:48 AM ET
KABUL (AFP) - Afghanistan has the means to "decisively repulse" strong fighting from the Taliban this year but success lies in changing a culture of corruption, the US ambassador said.
The extension of the tour of duty of more than 3,000 US troops there by four months "is almost a doubling of America's ground combat involvement," ambassador Ronald Neumann told reporters on Saturday.
This should make it clear "we are going to fight this war and we are going to win it," he said, adding though, "We are calling on our NATO partners to do even more."
The NATO-led 37-nation International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which works alongside an 11,000-strong US-led coalition, has about 33,000 soldiers but wants a shortfall of about 10 percent to be met.
Neumann said: "I believe that we will have the means -- we, NATO, the Afghans -- to decisively repulse the fight the Taliban might bring this summer... I believe they will make a strong effort."
The insurgency was launched after the Taliban were driven from government in a US-led invasion in 2001 weeks after the September 11 attacks blamed on Al-Qaeda leaders allied with the Taliban government.
It was its deadliest last year with a spike in conventional attacks by the Taliban as well as guerrilla-style strikes like suicide bombings.
Around 4,000 people were killed, most of them rebel fighters. The toll was four times higher than that of the previous year.
Neumann said the insurgency had to be fought on the development and military levels. "You cannot build if your workers are being killed and you cannot expect to win only by guns. You have to use these things together," he said.
Progress was slow but it could be seen, for example in increased military capacity and coordination among the international partners on which Afghanistan depends.
"The questions that will still have to be addressed are the degree to which the Afghan government can reform...," he said, adding there to be an attitude overhaul.
Endemic corruption has allowed Afghanistan's opium trade, the world's largest, to flourish and undermined public trust at every level of the current government.
Decades of war in Afghanistan had led people to "protect their families and themselves by taking whatever they could get when they had a job," Neumann said.
"They did not have a reason to serve the people because they had no belief that the government they served would be there the next month or the next year," he said.
"Afghans themselves have to find enough reason to believe in the future that they move from this corrupted culture of serving themselves back to a culture they had more in the past of serving their nation," he said.
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US Speaker Pelosi meets Afghan president
KABUL (AFP) - The new Democratic Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record), met President Hamid Karzai on a short fact-finding tour of Afghanistan focused on efforts to defeat the Taliban.
Pelosi, who arrived from Pakistan where she met President Pervez Musharraf on Saturday after earlier visiting Iraq, also met members of the cabinet, parliamentarians and commanders of the US-led coalition that toppled the Taliban in 2001, the US embassy said.
The Speaker and her delegation of other senior Democratic lawmakers would meet the commander of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) before leaving Afghanistan Sunday, spokesman Joe Mellot told AFP.
"She came to see what is happening on the ground," Mellot said. Her visit was in the context of discussions about a new US strategy in Afghanistan, he said.
The United States has announced it will seek an extra 10.6 billion dollars for the war-torn country, most of it to build the Afghan security forces so they can begin to take over from the nearly 40,000 foreign troops here.
It will also extend the tour of duty of more than 3,000 US troops here by four months amid calls for the 36 other nations in ISAF to also stump up more soldiers ahead of a strong Taliban offensive expected in the spring.
The United States has 23,000 troops in Afghanistan, more than half of all the foreign troops, and has been the largest financial contributor to the post-Taliban country, providing more than 14.2 billion dollars since 2001.
ISAF is working with the coalition and Afghan security forces to defeat the Taliban and its Islamist allies, who last year surprised some of the commanders of the foreign deployments here with the intensity of their fighting.
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US elevates Pakistan to regional kingpin
By M K Bhadrakumar Asia Times Online / January 27, 2007
The hearings of the US congressional committees on intelligence in Washington in the past two successive weeks make it clear that the administration of President George W Bush has no intention of pressuring Pakistan over the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Moreover, there may be no need for the Bush administration to pressure President General Pervez Musharraf. The Pakistani leader seems to be positioning to play a profoundly meaningful role in US regional policy as a whole that will go far beyond the
limited turf of Afghanistan. In return, he can be confident of solid US backing for his controversial re-election bid as Pakistan's president in September. (Musharraf seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999.)
The Bush administration's predicament was fully revealed in the contradictory references contained in the written statement handed in by the then director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, during his testimony before the US Senate subcommittee on intelligence on January 11. On the one hand, Negroponte claimed that al-Qaeda's core elements are still "resilient" and are plotting against US national-security interests from their leaders' "secure hideout" in Pakistan and, furthermore, that the Taliban and al-Qaeda maintained "critical sanctuaries" in Pakistan.
On the other hand, Negroponte described Pakistan as the United States' "frontline partner in the war on terror", even though Pakistan remained a "major source of Islamic terrorism".
Again, Negroponte estimated that the challenges facing President Hamid Karzai's government in Kabul are "significantly exacerbated by terrorism but not exclusively attributable to it". Negroponte also put in proper perspective the Taliban challenge by saying it didn't pose any direct threat as such to the Kabul government, though it could be deterring reconstruction and "undermining popular support" for Karzai himself.
Negroponte treated with kid gloves the entire delicate issue of Taliban and al-Qaeda activities in Pakistan's tribal agencies, which is the heart of the matter. Notably, he spoke with understanding about Pakistan's genuine difficulty in cracking down on the militants' "safe haven" in the tribal agencies, given the potential for tribal rebellions and a "backlash" by sympathetic Islamic political parties in Pakistan, which are staunchly opposed to the US military presence in Afghanistan.
But the astonishing part of Negroponte's statement was his observations regarding the nexus between the "war on terror" and Musharraf's own political future. Negroponte implicitly acknowledged that Musharraf is politically vulnerable and his ability to crack down on the Taliban will, therefore, be significantly reduced in the months ahead because of the compulsions of the elections in Pakistan.
But elsewhere in his testimony, Negroponte contradicted himself by virtually expressing confidence that Musharraf's continuance in power is beyond doubt, despite the huge criticism within Pakistan about his remaining president as well as chief of army staff. Negroponte said, "There are no political leaders inside the country able to challenge his continued leadership. Musharraf's secular opponents are in disarray, and the main Islamic parties continue to suffer from internal divisions and an inability to expand their support base."
What explains such verbal jugglery? Indeed, statements at other senior levels in the Bush administration in recent days have also paid handsome compliments to Musharraf's cooperative attitude in countering the Taliban challenge, including at the level of the military leadership.
The commander of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces in Afghanistan, General David Richards, went out of his way on at least two occasions in recent weeks to express total satisfaction over Pakistan's role. He even attributed to Pakistan credit for the reduced level of Taliban activity since autumn.
In an interview with an Afghan news agency last week, Richards said the Pakistani army was fully cooperating and was doing its best to stop cross-border activities by the Taliban. He said categorically, "It is no longer the policy of the Pakistan government to see the Taliban in Afghanistan." No matter Islamabad's past policies in Afghanistan, Richards stressed, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is now fully cooperating. He then revealed that it was thanks to an ISI tipoff that it had been possible to kill prominent Taliban commander Mullah Akhtar Osmani in Helmand province last month.
"The conditions are ripe for a complete victory," Richards claimed. So what has happened to the crisis that Karzai has been complaining about in respect of Pakistan's alleged role in masterminding the Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan? Was it all a concoction by the international media? (Richards actually put the blame on the media for unduly exaggerating the Taliban challenge.)
Someone also seems to have advised Karzai to see the writing on the wall. He too has calmed down. In his presidential address to the Afghan Parliament in Kabul on Sunday, Karzai refrained from criticizing Pakistan. He vaguely attributed in a passing reference all the "Talibanphobia" to "certain Pakistani circles". Only a few weeks ago an agitated Karzai indulged in a "public display of resentment" toward visiting Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz through "hot words, gestures, body language and finger-pointing", to quote a former Pakistani ambassador in Kabul.
Evidently, Karzai has been advised by the United States to restrain himself. There is a deliberate US attempt to play down the gravity of the Afghan crisis - and Pakistan's role in it. Yet The Economist magazine wrote, "Insurgents allied to the Taliban are believed to be planning a big offensive. NATO has hopes its soldiers in Afghanistan could forestall this during the winter, through military pressure on the Taliban and huge amounts of civilian aid. That strategy is in tatters."
And indeed, the White House is to ask Congress next month for US$8 billion in new funds for Afghanistan, which is more than half the $14.2 billion Washington has spent on the country since the US-led invasion in 2001. And about 3,200 US troops who were due to end their tour of duty are to remain for a further 120 days.
A sense of alarm over the Taliban's resurgence is apparent in regional capitals, especially Moscow, Tehran and New Delhi. Top leaders of the erstwhile Northern Alliance (which spearheaded the anti-Taliban resistance) visited Tehran in recent weeks and held consultations with Iranian officials. Iranian and Indian foreign ministers visited Kabul. The Russian foreign minister was scheduled to pay a visit to Kabul on Wednesday en route to Delhi, but the visit was called off at the last minute because of "bad weather".
However, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov said in Moscow on Wednesday, "Taking into consideration the continued escalation of tension in Afghanistan, we intend to continue to provide assistance to that country, including in the military field. [This will be done] primarily to help the Afghan Army to improve its combat preparedness and equipment and ensure its ability to protect the state's interests on its own." In a recent article, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov critically referred to the United States' proclivity toward "monopolizing conflict resolution" in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, the Russian and Indian foreign ministers reviewed the regional situation, including Afghanistan, during consultations on the sidelines of President Vladimir Putin's visit to Delhi on Thursday. The indications are that Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee will visit Tehran on February 6.
Central Asian countries feel equally nervous about the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. A spurt in radical Islamist activities in the Ferghana Valley in Central Asia is noticeable. China also recently claimed to have come across extensive links between Uighur militants in Xinjiang and "international terrorist" organizations. Evidently, the "war on terror" in Afghanistan is becoming a hot topic in the region all over again.
But will the cozy US-Pakistan condominium that has been at the steering wheel in the "war on terror" in Afghanistan allow regional powers like Russia (or Iran and India) to mess around in the Hindu Kush? The exclusivity of that condominium has been an integral part of the war through the past five years.
The geopolitics of the Afghan war are seldom talked about, but they have figured throughout at the center of the closely guarded US-Pakistan agenda. For the same reason, very little is heard nowadays about the idea mooted by French President Jacques Chirac at NATO's Riga summit in late November regarding the formation if a "contact group" on Afghanistan comprising countries in the region that have an interest in Afghanistan's stability. The proposed group would have made the conduct of the war more transparent and regional powers would have found such a forum useful.
But Washington has all but smothered the French proposal. Both the US and Pakistan would be horrified if any such contact group took shape and then proceeded to demystify the hunt for the elusive Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
But there are other nuances, too. It appears that the US has broached with Pakistan the issue of "help and assistance" in respect of its standoff with Iran. At any rate, the timing of Musharraf's tour of the pro-American Sunni Arab capitals Riyadh, Cairo and Amman last weekend was important. The hurriedly arranged tour followed consultations of the US secretaries of state and defense in Riyadh.
In a rare gesture, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia personally received Musharraf at the airport at Riyadh. Also, a grateful Saudi king conferred on Musharraf the "King Abdul Aziz Prize", Saudi Arabia's highest award. For some obscure reason, Musharraf has become the first-ever Pakistani leader to receive such an honor.
The emphasis during Musharraf's discussions in the pro-American Sunni Arab capitals has been on joint "Islamic action" in tackling the crisis in the Middle East. Curiously, fleshing out Bush's new Iraq strategy, former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger recently explained at some length from another angle what such an "Islamic action" could amount to.
Kissinger wrote that Bush's Iraq strategy will require in the downstream "an international concept involving both Iraq's neighbors and countries further away that have a significant interest in the outcome". Kissinger underlined that the US will expect that "other countries must be prepared to share responsibilities for regional peace ... [since] it is impossible for America to deal with these trends unilaterally".
Equally, Pakistan and NATO seem to have finalized their agreement establishing an institutionalized framework of cooperation. NATO and the US have been pressing Musharraf for early conclusion of such an agreement. But Pakistan has been dragging its feet. Without doubt, Washington will appreciate that Musharraf has once again braved potentially vehement domestic opposition to deliver on a key US demand.
Musharraf is sending Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz to NATO headquarters in Brussels on Tuesday. A NATO spokesman hailed the visit as "vitally important", and underlined that the visit will "deepen the political relationship between NATO and Pakistan".
Formal NATO-Pakistan cooperation is bound to impact on the "war on terror" in Afghanistan. As the NATO spokesman succinctly put it, Pakistan will henceforth become "part of the solution". The million-dollar question for regional powers is whether the Taliban also will become "part of the solution".
Conceivably, a significant step was taken by the Afghan Parliament when it approved on Wednesday the formation of a National Reconciliation Commission. Speaking in Parliament, the enigmatic veteran Wahhabi leader Abdul Rasul Sayyaf strongly urged dialogue with the Taliban. Sayyaf couldn't have spoken in a vacuum. In a checkered political life spanning four decades, he has kept links with Saudi Arabia, the ISI, the Taliban, the Northern Alliance and Karzai. Who precisely motivated him on Wednesday, it is not easy to tell.
At the same time, emerging ties with Pakistan will enable NATO to begin to reduce its dependence on Russian airspace (and Russian goodwill) for ferrying supplies for troops in Afghanistan. Not only that: at a time when Israel's formal admission to NATO is under active discussion, NATO will have already established a foothold on the Persian Gulf region's eastern periphery. Most important, the configuration works to the great advantage of the US in the event of an outbreak of military hostilities against Iran, which borders Pakistan.
The rapid sequencing of these developments is interesting, to say the least. It is hardly a week since the new chairman of the US Senate Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller, told the New York Times that the Bush administration's statements about Iran were uncomfortably reminiscent of the rhetoric in the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Being a lawmaker with access to highly classified intelligence, Rockefeller's views carry particular weight. So indeed do Negroponte's.
M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for more than 29 years, with postings including ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-98) and to Turkey (1998-2001)
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Softly, softly in the Taliban's den
By Syed Saleem Shahzad Asia Times Online / January 27, 2007
KABUL - In five years, US military might, from daisy-cutter bombs to high-tech weaponry, could not smoke out the Taliban, who retreated to the mountains of Afghanistan after being forced from power in 2001.
They emerged last year of their own volition after being welcomed back into the community by various tribal groups, many of which are ready to join in a mass uprising planned for the spring.
Seasoned British officers assigned in southern Afghanistan to clean up the mess created by the Americans can sense that big trouble is simmering, but they are convinced that any aggressive policy will aggravate the situation.
They realize that they have to accept the Taliban's existence as a reality, strike peace deals with them and allow them into the political power-sharing apparatus. This, they argue, can be done through extensive reconstruction, which is the only way to isolate hardline insurgents. Military might, therefore, is to be used only for the security of the people, not for aggressive armed campaigns.
In southwestern Afghanistan, the city of Kandahar and its environs are the Taliban's main focus. However, their main strategic back yard is Helmand province, from where they raise human and material resources with money flowing from poppy cultivation. In the spring, Helmand will be the main engine for the Taliban's planned capture of Kandahar and the proposed push to Kabul.
Helmand, understandably, has in recent months been the center of the International Security Assistance Force's (ISAF's) operations, with heavy US bombings and frequent engagements between the Taliban and British ground troops.
All the same, the Taliban claim that of 17 districts in the province, they are now in control of 13, either partially or completely. The deputy British Task Force commander of Helmand province, Colonel Ian Huntley, dismisses this claim. In an interview with Asia Times Online, however, he did agree that the Taliban had secured some pockets of Helmand.
In response, the ISAF is redefining its approach, ranging from a "definition of the enemy" to the role of foreign forces in society.
"There is no military solution to the insurgency," said Nic Kay, the British regional coordinator for southern Afghanistan. Kay is a seasoned official of the Foreign Commonwealth Office (FCO) and heads all operations in Helmand province. He previously served in Pakistan and Afghanistan, besides serving as a senior desk officer handling Afghanistan and Pakistan in the FCO.
"It would be a blunder if we assess the situation with a single-track mind. We need to appreciate the fact that 'Taliban' is a generic name and there are a whole lot of reasons behind the support for the Taliban in southwestern Afghanistan," Kay told Asia Times Online in his newly built office at the British task force camp in Lashkar Gah, Helmand province.
"One of the reasons for Taliban support is loyalty to local commanders, and the sense at the moment is one of injustice, poor governance, corruption and general incompetence. Once we tackle these problems, it will be easy for us to find solutions," Kay said.
"We have conducted research, which does not have any scientific basis but it is based on our feelings. After talking to the people, we believe there are two types of Taliban - one reconcilable and the other irreconcilable. The reconcilable Taliban are about 80%, and they are disgruntled because of bad governance and corruption. The irreconcilable Taliban are those who are ideologically motivated and loyal to their command structures. They are hardly 20%. We need to carefully assess both trends separately and deal with the situation accordingly," Kay said.
In a related move, the governor of Helmand province has been replaced by Asadullah Wafa, a former royalist and expert on tribal affairs. His task is to revive tribal structures destroyed by warlords and later by the Taliban.
District shuras (councils) have been established across the province to make contact with the Taliban. The traditional structures of tribal elders and mullahs are part of the shuras, which to date have struck peace deals in Sangeen and Nawzad districts. A peace agreement in Musa Qala was secured some months ago.
"These peace agreements are actually a blessing for the people of Helmand province as they have got rid of the fighting. In the meantime, it allows us to address people's concerns, like law and order and development work," said Kay.
"For instance, three weeks ago the Afghan Auxiliary Police were deployed in Musa Qala. The police have been stationed for the protection of specific development projects like the National Solidarity Program, which is being undertaken by the Bangladeshi NGO [non-governmental organization] BRAC [Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee]. This includes the construction of new mosques and schools, and in the meantime, with the help of the shura, we have make sure that the Taliban do not disrupt these development works," Kay said.
Kay acknowledged that despite the peace agreements, the Taliban still move around relatively freely and that the shuras themselves comprise pro-Taliban people. But Kay is confident that as long as all the protocols of the agreements are implemented, gradually the writ of the Afghan government will become stronger and the hardline Taliban will be isolated.
Huntley reiterated: "Our whole counterinsurgency approach rotates around rebuilding, reconstruction and providing security. We do not aim to chase the Taliban in the population.
"In December, in Operation Baaz Tsuka, we cleared Taliban pockets around Highway 1, which is the main artery for the supplies of UK troops between Kandahar and Camp Bastion, Helmand. In addition, we aim to provide security at the Kajaki dam project [near the source of the Helmand River]. The dam will generate 500 megawatts of hydroelectric power. We conducted an operation in the north of Helmand to provide security to the whole infrastructure of dam and the transmission routes and cleared the area of insurgents," Huntley said.
The British task force in Helmand is clearly taking careful steps not to challenge the Taliban directly, but through invoking tribal structures to isolate them, and through measures such as permanent vehicle control points, which limit their movements.
These are practical steps, but some feel it might be a case of too little too late. "Had our plans been implemented two years ago, the situation now would be diametrically opposite," commented a junior official of the FCO on condition of anonymity. "We have just started our plans, and the Taliban have already reinforced their positions and geared up for their massive spring offensive. I am afraid we missed the boat."
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief.
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Taliban warn of summer offensive
Sat Jan 27, 8:36 AM ET
KABUL (Reuters) - The Taliban is gearing up for a massive summer offensive, with more than 2,000 suicide bombers ready for action and even more preparing, a senior commander said on Saturday.
The warning comes a day after a top U.S. diplomat warned Afghanistan was in for a bloody and dangerous spring after the bloodiest year since the hardline Islamist Taliban was ousted by U.S.-led forces in 2001.
"The Taliban will intensify their guerrilla and suicide strikes this summer," Mulla Hayat Khan told Reuters from a secret location. "This will be a bloodiest year for foreign troops."
He said 2,000 suicide bombers were ready -- about 40 percent of the total suicide force -- adding numbers were so high it was sometimes hard to find enough explosives and targets.
"Our war preparations have been completed to a large extent and we're waiting for summer to set in," Khan said.
More than 4,000 people died last year, a quarter of them civilians, as the resurgent Taliban fought back with what NATO generals said was surprising ferocity.
Calling the guerrillas virulent and tough, U.S. assistant secretary of state for south and central Asia Richard Boucher on Friday warned the spring would be bloody and dangerous after the traditional winter lull in fighting.
"I think we will face a strong offensive and will have a difficult and dangerous and bloody spring," he told BBC radio as NATO foreign ministers discussed Afghanistan's future at a summit in Brussels called by Washington.
"But we are also better set up to deal with it."
While urging NATO allies to do more, the United States has extended troop tours of duty -- effectively boosting its forces by 2,500 -- and announced $10.6 billion in extra aid for Afghan security forces and reconstruction.
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US military: Afghan leaders steal half of all aid
By Gethin Chamberlain, Sunday Telegraph (UK) 3:04am GMT 28/01/2007
Corrupt police and tribal leaders are stealing vast quantities of reconstruction aid that is intended to improve the lives of ordinary Afghans and turn them away from the Taliban, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.
In some cases, all the aid earmarked for an area has ended up in the wrong hands. Defence officials in the United States and Britain estimate that up to half of all aid in Afghanistan is failing to reach the right people.
Nato forces in the south of the country say some Afghan police are guilty of corruption and will steal aid if it is handed out. Tribal and mosque elders have also been accused of seizing goods, including building materials and fuel, and selling them in markets. A Pentagon official said thousands of cars and trucks intended for use by the Afghan police had been sold instead.
Last week, the US and European Union announced plans to spend an additional £7 billion on assistance to Afghanistan, of which £1.5 billion will be earmarked for reconstruction. A committee of MPs is to investigate the corruption, which has dogged operations in Afghanistan since the Taliban were driven from power in 2001.
James Arbuthnot, chairman of the Commons defence select committee, said the matter needed to be urgently addressed. "Corruption is something we will be examining," he said.
Nato commanders in southern Afghanistan are deeply concerned at the level of corruption but have resolved to press ahead with reconstruction projects in the hope of winning over the local population and improving security.
In one recent example in Kandahar province, aid distribution went ahead despite fears that it would be stolen. Sergeant Major Denis Tondreau, in charge of delivering Canadian army aid to the Pashmul area, said the Afghan police unit in one village was known for corruption and extortion. "I have been told that if I bring aid to Pasab the police will steal it," he said. "They are just a bad, bad unit. extortion, corruption and use of drugs."
But people in the area said tribal and mosque elders were also guilty of stealing aid. In the nearby town of Panjwaii, workers said aid distributed by Nato's provincial reconstruction teams had not reached the ordinary people.
Abdul Ghany, 20, said: "When the soldiers came here they gave things to the rich people. The elders took things for themselves and we received nothing."
Noor Ullah, a police intelligence officer in the neighbouring Zharey district, said tribal leaders had to be persuaded that the aid was not intended for them alone. At a heated meeting he warned them: "The equipment is not to rebuild your own homes, it is for the mosques and the whole village. It is not for individuals, it is for the community. It is not for you to take and sell it."
Aid and reconstruction work are seen as key elements of the Nato strategy in Afghanistan, and were cited by the British Government as the main reason for deploying thousands of additional troops last year.
On Friday, Nato foreign ministers signalled that they would boost their military and economic contributions amid calls for more investment in development projects to win the support of the Afghan population. Liam Fox, the Conservative defence spokesman, said he had heard first-hand of corruption affecting the reconstruction programmes when he visited Afghanistan last summer. "There is increasing corruption from top government officials down, which is making efforts to get reconstruction off the ground much more difficult," he said.
Charles Heyman, a defence analyst and former British Army major, said millions of pounds earmarked for reconstruction were being siphoned off. "It almost comes with the programme," he said. "You have to build in an element of that into any programme because you know it will leak into people's pockets."
A joint report by the Pentagon and the US state department, circulated to congressional committees last month, concluded that the Afghan police force was corrupt to the point of ineffectiveness. One Pentagon official told The Sunday Telegraph that police officers had stolen and sold at least half of the equipment supplied by the US, including thousands of cars and trucks.
The Department for International Development said progress had been made. "We work closely with local people, the governor and representatives of the national government in drawing up projects, to make sure that what we do meets the needs of local people," said a spokesman.
Among the projects funded by the department are the purchase of uniforms and winter coats for the Afghan police, a hospital generator and a mortuary.
But it confirmed that some of the £2 million allocated to projects intended to help internal refugees had been diverted to build vehicle checkpoints.
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Army probes wide-ranging contractor fraud
January 28, 2007 By JOHN HEILPRIN Associated Press via Gary Post Tribune, IN
WASHINGTON -- From high-dollar fraud to conspiracy to bribery and bid rigging, Army investigators have opened up to 50 criminal probes involving battlefield contractors in the war in Iraq and the U.S. fight against terrorism, The Associated Press has learned.
Senior contracting officials, government employees, residents of other countries and, in some cases, U.S. military personnel have been implicated in millions of dollars of fraud allegations.
''All of these involve operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait,'' Chris Grey, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, confirmed Saturday to the AP.
''CID agents will pursue leads and the truth wherever it may take us,'' Grey said. ''We take this very seriously.''
Battlefield contractors have been implicated in allegations of fraud and abuse since the war in Iraq began in spring 2003. A special inspector general office that focused solely on reconstruction spending in Iraq developed cases that led to four criminal convictions.
The problems stem in part from the Pentagon's struggle to get a handle on the unprecedented number of contractors now helping run the nation's wars. Contractors are used in battle zones to do nearly everything but fight. They run cafeterias and laundries for troops, move supplies, run communication systems and repair weapons systems.
Special agents from the Army's major procurement fraud unit recently were dispatched to Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait, where they are ''working closely and sharing information with other law enforcement agencies in the region,'' Grey said.
''Given the billions of dollars in contract dollars that have been and are being spent, it is our experience that our agents will detect millions of dollars in fraud before we are done,'' Grey said. ''And just as likely, we will be instrumental in bringing back to the U.S. government millions of dollars in recoveries.''
One case involves an Army chief warrant officer accused of taking a $50,000 bribe to steer a contract for paper products and plastic flatware away from a government contractor and to a Kuwaiti company, according to an indictment unsealed Thursday in federal court at Rock Island, Ill.
Prosecutors say the officer took the bribe while at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, while he was the Army's food service adviser for Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait, according to the indictment. The officer is also accused of trying to smuggle $40,000 in undeclared cash into the United States on a December 2005 flight from Kuwait to Dover, Del.
Other cases involve a government officer manipulating a contract in exchange for large bribes, a contractor making false claims against the government and an official accepting gratuities. The cases range in type, seriousness and complexity and involve contractors both inside and outside the United States.
The Pentagon has viewed outsourcing a wide variety of military tasks as much more efficient, leaving troops trained in combat to the business of war.
But the Government Accountability Office reported in December that the military has been losing millions of dollars because it cannot monitor industry workers in far-flung locations.
The Defense Department's inability to manage contractors effectively has hurt military operations and unit morale and cost the Pentagon money, the GAO said.
Some 60,000 contractors have been supporting the Army in Southwest Asia, which includes Iraq. That compares with 9,200 contractors in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
Commanders are often unsure how many contractors use their bases and require food, housing and protection, according to the report. One Army official said the service estimates losing about $43 million each year on free meals provided to contractors who also get a food allowance.
The new Democratic Congress plans to ramp up oversight of the billions of dollars being spent in Iraq, including dollars awarded to contractors. Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, has said he plans to target contractor abuse.
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Afghan enemies behind lawmaker assassination: president
People's Daily - Jan 27 6:13 PM
Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday blamed the enemies of Afghanistan for the assassination of parliamentarian Mohammad Islam Mohammadi and strongly condemned the move.
A religious leader and member of Afghanistan's Wolesi Jirga, or the lower house of parliament, Mohammadi who served as governor of Afghanistan's central Bamyan province during Taliban reign was gunned down on Friday in the capital city.
"The enemies of Afghanistan must understand that they will never achieve their malicious intentions by killing our innocent Ulema or religious leaders," President Karzai said in a message released by his office.
In the message, the president expressed his deep condolences and sympathies to the families of the assassinated parliamentarian Islam Muhammadi.
No group or individual has claimed responsibility for the assassination and the police have yet to arrest any one in this regard.
Source: Xinhua
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PM appoints point man for Afghan mission
Foreign affairs adviser takes on new role
CAMPBELL CLARK Globe and Mail, Canada - Jan 27, 2007
OTTAWA -- Prime Minister Stephen Harper is moving his foreign-policy adviser into a job as point man for Canada's initiatives in Afghanistan, signalling a shift in the tone of Canada's efforts in the country toward aid and diplomacy efforts.
David Mulroney, a career diplomat, was appointed yesterday as the No. 2 bureaucrat in the Foreign Affairs Department, but also handed responsibility for co-ordinating the Afghan initiatives of all government departments.
Analysts said that the unusual appointment of a senior foreign affairs official with Mr. Harper's imprimatur to lead Afghanistan initiatives clearly places diplomats at the forefront of an Afghanistan policy that had until now been led by the Department of National Defence.
"There has only been a single-pillar approach to Afghanistan up to now, and that had been through the Department of National Defence," said Fen Hampson, the director of Carleton University's Norman Paterson School of International Affairs.
He said that while much of the focus has been on the role of Canadian troops based in Kandahar, the appointment of Mr. Mulroney will send a signal inside Ottawa that greater attention is being paid "to both the development and the diplomatic-political side of it as well."
The Harper government has insisted that Canadian troops must remain in Afghanistan until the country is stable, but opposition parties have charged that the Conservatives have focused on military action but neglected development aid and diplomatic efforts.
Yesterday, Mr. Harper said military efforts are necessary to ensure security, but acknowledged more development is needed.
"It's important that we respect our obligations toward the United Nations and also the civil population and the government of Afghanistan. We need more development. We all agree," he said yesterday.
"At the same time, Afghans in the south of Afghanistan are clear, too. We need security to have development and the government will proceed on both tracks."
The Prime Minister's acknowledgment echoed the move by the United States yesterday to step up aid and military efforts in Afghanistan.
U.S. officials announced a major injection of $10.6-billion in development aid over two years, as well as an additional 3,000 troops.
A shift in the Conservatives' tone on the Afghan mission could also serve as a reply to the criticisms of opposition parties.
While the NDP has called for a withdrawal of troops, the two larger opponents, the Liberals and the Bloc Québécois, signalled this week they will not oppose the Canadian mission now, but will criticize the way the Tories are conducting it. Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion had previously called for a massive "Marshall Plan" from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to rebuild Afghanistan with more aid.
Yesterday, Liberal defence critic Denis Coderre said the appointment of Mr. Mulroney as co-ordinator of Afghan policy is "more a signal they are trying to control the damage and see how they can defuse the current political situation" than evidence they have developed an effective strategy.
The Conservatives have taken a narrow, military approach, making an open-ended commitment to the mission of Canadian troops in Afghanistan but ignoring the development and diplomatic efforts to make it succeed, Mr. Coderre said.
Several experts argue that the political debate in Canada about whether the Afghanistan mission is "balanced" between military action and aid is not really important.
The West has done too little, both in securing the country and rebuilding its economy, University of Ottawa political science professor Roland Paris argues. The West is losing ground because it has not been effective in helping the Afghan government provide its people with security and a functioning economy, he says.
"After 2001, parts of the country were basically neglected, and they were left insecure and unimproved," Prof. Paris said. "Most people who analyze this mission, who don't have a political axe to grind, are basically saying the mission is under-resourced both on the security side and the development side."
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Donors to review progress on Afghanistan Compact
Sunday January 28, 2007 (1139 PST) PakTribune.com, Pakistan -
KABUL: Delegates from more than 20 countries, including, Afghanistan will meet in Berlin on January 30th and 31st to focus on support for Afghanistan.
The meeting comes almost a year after the Afghanistan Compact and interim Afghan National Development Strategy were presented at the London Conference on Afghanistan.
A press statement from the United Nations Assistance Mission for the Afghanistan (UNAMA) said it would be the fourth session of the Joint Coordination and Monitoring Board.
The challenges faced by Afghanistan and new ways for resolving these hurdles would also be discussed in the meeting, the statement added.
Progress on the benchmarks of the Afghanistan Compact, security-sector issues, budget execution and national capacity, legislative matters and upcoming elections would also be on the agenda.
The job of the Joint Coordination and Monitoring Board, as the main political coordination forum for Afghanistan and the international community, is to oversee implementation of the Afghanistan Compact, the successor to the Bonn Agreement.
The release said since its launch in April 2006 the JCMB's membership had grown, reflecting the strong international support that Afghanistan enjoyed.
Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Afghanistans Foreign Minister Dr Rangin Dadfar Spanta will open the session. The meeting will be presided over by the two JCMB co-chairs, Professor Ishaq Nadiri, Senior Economic Adviser to President Karzai, and Tom Koenigs, Special Representative of the UN Secretary General in Afghanistan.
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Five suspected terrorists captured in Khost
Pajhwok Report
KABUL, Jan 28 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The US-led coalition and Afghan forces arrested five suspects for their links with terrorists during an operation in the southeastern Khost province.
A press release issued here said the operation was conducted early Sunday during which the five people were detained from a compound near Khost City, capital of the province.
"The combined force called for the peaceful surrender of those inside the compound, and no shots were fired. One person attempted to flee the scene but was quickly apprehended," said the release.
Clashes
Separately, clashes were reported between the coalition special operations forces and the Taliban in three areas of the southern Uruzgan province.
A press release said a joint convoy of the coalition and Afghan forces came under fire from the insurgents in Char Chino district. Close air support was requested and the engagement resulted in the death of some insurgents and the capture of three others.
In two other engagements in the same province, coalition special operation forces engaged insurgents with direct and indirect fire and again called for close air support. "These engagements lasted for more than six hours and resulted in more insurgent deaths."
One ANA soldier died of wounds he received during the second engagement. There were no injuries to the coalition's special operation forces, said the release.
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Afghan women inch ahead
"There is a quiet revolution here," said Farsona Simimi, a popular talk-show host. "I do not know whether it will succeed."
By Alissa J. Rubin Los Angeles Times January 28, 2007
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN
Each morning, the policewoman puts on her uniform, goes to her precinct office, sits behind a bare desk. And waits.
She is one of several officers appointed to make it easier for women to report domestic violence. Her job ought to be one of the busiest in the district. Instead, Pushtoon, who goes by one name, has one of the loneliest.
"Last week we had one woman. Before that there had not been anyone for several weeks," she said, twisting hands left scarred by her attempt at suicide years ago in a Taliban jail. "Women are afraid to come, but we are not allowed to go to them.
"The police chiefs will not let us. They say it is unsafe for women officers," she said.
Five years after the end of the Taliban era, there are new opportunities for women in Afghanistan, and notable efforts are underway to make their daily lives better, especially in Kabul, the capital. Improving the status of women has been a core goal of U.S. policy, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said at a congressional hearing in 2005 that enshrining women's equality in the Afghan constitution was an important advance for the entire region.
But conversations with dozens of women suggest that each step forward has been a struggle. Afghan society remains deeply uncomfortable with the idea of women gaining independence and authority. The Taliban's resurgence has reversed incremental gains, particularly in the south. If the Taliban incursions spread, more women probably will lose ground.
Families in the south that recently began allowing their daughters to go to school and wives to enroll in vocational programs have pulled them out because of Taliban attacks.
"Women's future depends so much on security. As much as security deteriorates, women's situation deteriorates," said Masuda Jalal, former acting minister of women's affairs. "At the first sign of insecurity, the head of the family protects his women and children, and the first measure they take is to keep them inside the house."
Women who have gained ground haven't talked of the constitutional principles of equality. Instead, they focus on the respect accorded women by the Qur'an and on the importance of mothers and homes, where older women have long held positions of power.
Their goal, often unstated, is to convince fathers and brothers, husbands and sons that when a woman is empowered, the males benefit as well. They hope their daughters at least will have more choices than they had.
Women are learning to drive, some at their husbands' urging so they can help with family errands. A few have opened bank accounts. Women have become a regular presence on TV talk shows, and they deliver weather reports and other news features.
According to Farsona Simimi, a popular talk-show host, "There is a quiet revolution here." But, she added, "I do not know whether it will succeed."
Educated Afghans and international aid workers say the U.S.-backed government of President Hamid Karzai has done little besides removing the Taliban restrictions. He has only one woman in his Cabinet of 25 and none among his top advisers.
Several Afghan women said that they had encouraged Karzai to do small things, such as have his wife accompany him to public events, but that he had never done so.
She was once a judge
Rahala Salim was one woman who became a judge in the 1980s under the Communists, and she recalls watching in horror as the Taliban dismantled every vestige of protection for women.
"As a judge, when I saw women coming to me crying because they had been abused, I felt responsible, I felt I had to defend their rights," said Salim, who was removed from her post by the Taliban.
Under their rule, she said, "If a man was accused of rape, it was the woman who was arrested and blamed."
Salim knew from her legal studies that Sharia, or Islamic law, offered women some legal protection. The Qur'an and "hadiths," the sayings of the prophet Muhammad, are open to an array of interpretations. And early Islam glorifies several women, including Muhammad's daughter Fatima, who is portrayed as an independent leader of her people.
"We have to know the real Sharia, we have to be able to point to passages in the holy Qur'an and say, 'Here, read this,' " Salim said. "In Islamic history, men have been the boss. They want to be the boss forever. That's why they never want women to appear in public, but that is not Islam; that is cultural tradition." The notion of Islam as a pillar of freedom came from Salim's mother.
"My mother didn't have any sons, and so my father took a second wife, and it made her extremely sad and it made her life very hard," Salim said. "She told me, 'Unless you can have enough education, you can never stand against men. You must learn Islam so you can struggle against them.'"
During the Taliban era, Salim began to teach the Qur'an. Once a week, 70 women would gather for classes -- sometimes at her house, sometimes elsewhere, so the Taliban would not become suspicious.
"l would cook something, as if we were just gathering for a meal, and then we would recite the holy Qur'an and discuss Islamic questions and then political issues," she recalled.
After the Taliban fled, Salim ran for Parliament. But she understood that she would need the mullahs behind her, and when she was elected, she asked them whether she could address families in the mosque. Her appeal opened the door for women to enter there. In her district, women never had; they prayed at home.
"It was the first time that women saw the inside of the mosque," she said. Then, with the mullahs' assent, she asked the families to send their daughters to school.
Other women have reached similar conclusions: that if they are to persuade men to stand behind them, they will need mullahs as allies and Islam as a shield.
Jalal, the former women's minister, has convened meetings of mullahs to discuss Qur'anic interpretations of women's rights. A meeting last summer in Kabul drew 100 mullahs from around the country. Jalal also has asked new "women's councils" to work closely with local mullahs. So far, the councils are active primarily in Kabul and on its outskirts.
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Money, troops not enough to save Afghanistan: analysts
The News International (Pakistan) / January 27, 2007
KABUL: A surge in US aid to insurgency-hit Afghanistan will not bear fruit if the focus remains on military action against Taliban fighters and not on reconstruction, analysts said on Friday. Washington says it will commit more troops and $10.6 billion to Afghanistan over two years, but only two billion will go towards rebuilding while the rest is earmarked for the Afghan security forces.
The Taliban gave a stark warning of the difficulties facing the Afghan government and international forces when a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a US-funded aid office in southern Afghanistan on Friday. "The former Soviet Union also spent billions of dollars on modern weapons and military facilities but they failed to defeat the resistance with hardship and weapons," Afghan analyst Waheed Mujda told AFP. "This US funding is more of a hurried political move than a deeply studied answer to the needs of this country."
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she would present the funding plan to fellow Nato ministers in Brussels on Friday as part of a revamped war strategy aimed at defeating resurgent Islamist fighters. She said $8.6 billion of the aid would go to expanding, training and equipping security forces loyal to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and two billion for reconstruction and the fight against narcotics.
The insurgency claimed the lives of 4,000 people including many rebels in 2006, the worst since US-led forces ousted the Taliban in 2001. Officials say there were nearly 140 suicide attacks, up from 27 in 2005. Afghan defence ministry spokesman Mohammad Zahir Azimi welcomed the "significant" US boost, adding: "The only solution to Afghanistan's security is the building and equipping of the Afghan national army and police."
The nascent Afghan army which is fighting Taliban guerillas alongside 33,000 Nato-led forces and over 8,000 US-led coalition troops last week received new weapons after repeated complaints of poor military facilities. But analysts said that merely pouring money into a country where corruption is rife and strong government is lacking is simply asking for trouble. "I have serious doubts the Afghan government would be able to use the funding properly.
There is a big question mark," said Talat Masood, an analyst and retired army general from neighbouring Pakistan. Analyst Mujda said that to counter the Taliban's efforts to win over or intimidate the populace, the international strategy must focus more on people's lives.
Decades of war, Taliban rule and drought have paralysed the country's economy, and promises by the Nato-led force in Afghanistan to lead reconstruction have proved largely empty. "What is important is economic reforms to make people confident in the future, to create the hope for life, to boost trust," Mujda said.
Afghanistan's new army has been hit by massive levels of desertion and allegations of corruption, and Mujda said that new weapons would not help "when their families are poor, when there is no hope and trust for the future."
"Today, Americans are scared to see the same problems of Iraq in Afghanistan and they have made a hurried decision to prevent it," he said.
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India takes a slow road
By Sudha Ramachandran Asia Times Online / January 27, 2007
BANGALORE - The resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the spurt in violent attacks in recent months have heightened India's concern over the security of Indians working in that country.
This was among the issues raised by Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee during his two-day visit to Kabul. In the Afghan capital to invite President Hamid Karzai to the upcoming summit of the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation in New Delhi, Mukherjee announced that India, Afghanistan's fifth-largest donor, is hiking its financial contribution
to Afghanistan's reconstruction and development by another US$100 million, raising its aid assistance to that country to $750 million.
India, Afghanistan and the United Nations Development Program also signed a memorandum of understanding on capacity-building there.
Mukherjee drew the attention of the Karzai government to the threat posed by the Taliban to Indians working in Afghanistan. About 3,000 are engaged in infrastructure construction, capacity-building and development projects in Afghanistan.
Indians have repeatedly been targeted by the Taliban. In 2003, two engineers working on a road project in Zabul were abducted and subsequently released. The same year, an engineer with an Afghan telecom company was shot dead. In 2005, a driver working with the Zaranj-Delaram highway project was abducted and then killed. And in 2006, an engineer with a Bahraini company was executed.
It is those who are engaged in road-building activity in Afghanistan who have been the most vulnerable.
India's involvement with road-building is bitterly opposed by both the Taliban and its sponsors in Pakistan, as the highway under construction not only will boost Afghanistan's connectivity and trade ties with the outside world, it will also enhance the trade and influence of Iran and India - countries whose relations with Islamabad and the Taliban are hardly friendly. Pakistan fears that with the completion of the highway, India's presence and influence in its neighborhood to the north, ie Central Asia, will increase manifold.
India's Border Roads Organization (BRO) is constructing the 217-kilometer Zaranj-Delaram highway in the southwest of the country. It will link Zaranj, which lies on Afghanistan's border with Iran, to Delaram, situated on the "garland highway". The garland highway links Kabul, Kandahar, Herat, Mazar-e-Sharif and Kunduz. Once the highway is completed, Zaranj will be linked to several Afghan cities.
This highway will connect Iran with the garland highway, too. Iran has been working on improving road links from its ports to towns that lie on its border with Afghanistan. It has completed construction of a vital bridge on the Helmand River marking the frontier between itself and Afghanistan, and is busy upgrading the road from Chabahar, where its new port on the Makran coast is coming up, to Zaranj.
So once the Zaranj-Delaram highway is completed, goods from Afghanistan's main cities can be brought overland to the border with Iran from where they will be transported to Chabahar, and vice versa. The Zaranj-Delaram highway will provide landlocked Afghanistan with a valuable lifeline.
Currently, Afghanistan's access to the sea is through Pakistan - via Peshawar and onward to the port of Karachi. The road link through Pakistan has been a headache for Afghanistan, with Pakistan often holding up consignments meant for Afghan reconstruction. The Delaram-Zaranj highway opens up another option for Afghanistan via Iran. What is more, the overland option through Iran to the port of Chabahar is shorter than the one currently available through Pakistan.
The land route through Pakistan is the simplest way of moving goods between India and Afghanistan. Unfortunately, Pakistan is reluctant to allow India access to Afghanistan via its territory, although such a move would earn it considerable revenue in the form of transit fees. This Pakistani stance has made the land route via Iran into Afghanistan all the more crucial for India. India hopes that the road link through Iran and Afghanistan will open up markets for its goods in Afghanistan and beyond in Central Asia. Hence the Indian interest in completing the Delaram-Zaranj highway.
Since 2003, India and Iran have been cooperating in developing the Chabahar port complex. Chabahar is closer to India than the existing port at Bandar Abbas. Iran has extended huge concessions to Afghanistan to attract it to use Chabahar port rather than the port that Pakistan is developing with Chinese help at Gwadar in Balochistan province.
Since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, Pakistan's influence in Afghanistan has fallen dramatically and that of India's has grown. None of the projects that India is involved with in Afghanistan undermines Pakistan's influence as much as the Zaranj-Delaram road link. This explains why Indians working on this project are particularly vulnerable to Taliban attacks.
Although India is keen to complete the project as soon as possible, it is behind the December 2006 completion date, with only a fourth finished. And the cost of the project, which was originally pegged at about $70 million, has almost doubled.
"The cost and time overrun has been because of the security situation," BRO chief Lieutenant-General K S Rao said recently, pointing out that the road runs through "the drug-cultivation belt where there is huge resistance to the work being done" by the BRO. The poor security situation has compelled BRO to work only eight hours a day. Initially, BRO worked on several stretches of road simultaneously, but after the killing of one of its workers in 2005, it was compelled to take up one stretch at a time to keep its workers together.
About 300 Indians work for BRO on the Zaranj-Delaram project. They are protected by about 70 personnel of the paramilitary Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP). However, ITBP personnel are not permitted to move beyond the living camps with weapons, so Afghan security personnel provide security at the work site.
BRO has drawn Delhi's attention to the need for more security, but even after a number of reviews the number of Indian security personnel has not been stepped up.
India is said to have put in a proposal to the Afghan government to send personnel of the Central Reserve Police Force to protect BRO workers, but there has been no movement on this. Pakistan is opposed to India assuming a larger security role in Afghanistan and there is concern in Delhi, too, that stepping up Indian personnel for protection will only attract more attacks from the Taliban.
India has therefore asked the government of President Hamid Karzai in Kabul to step up security for Indian workers.
BRO is clearly working against all odds. And it is not just the security situation. Nimroz province, where the highway is being built, is tough terrain to work in and suffers extreme seasonal temperatures. It is said that during their occupation of Afghanistan, the Soviets attempted road-building in this province twice but gave up.
India has indicated that it is made of sterner stuff, and for now the road-building continues, regardless of Taliban attacks and threats.
Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in Bangalore.
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Reader, she married an Afghan warlord
Christina Lamb, Kabul The Sunday Times (UK) January 28, 2007
"HONEY, don't come home now, we've got warlords in the living room," is hardly your typical excuse for a husband who fears his wife interrupting a night in with the lads. But for Debbie Rodriguez it has become such a common refrain that she has set up Kabul's first coffee bar as somewhere to wait.
The crimson-haired hairdresser from America's Midwest who came to Afghanistan to train its women in highlights and Brazilian waxing, has ended up married to a key commander for one of the country's most brutal warlords in the unlikeliest of post-Taliban alliances.
The "I'm a D girl" slogan emblazoned across her tight black T-shirt refers not to an ample breast but to General Abdul Rashid Dostum, the boss of her husband Sher. The whisky-drinking Uzbek warlord from northern Afghanistan is best known for running over his enemies with tanks, and his men were accused of suffocating hundreds of Taliban prisoners in shipping containers in 2001.
"The general has always been kind, gentle and sweet to me," said Rodriguez, 46, brushing the Kabul mud and snow off her jeans and warming her hands on a latte in her cafe. "He calls me 'Sher's long American' and has embraced me into the family. He's not this evil figure westerners believe. He's stopped drinking and he just wants peace."
She admits, however, that when anyone mentions the Taliban plaguing the British forces in southern Afghanistan, Dostum growls: "If they just gave me three months, I'd sort them out."
After three years of marriage, Rodriguez is accustomed to the Kalashnikov by the bed. But she still gets fed up with the general's summonses at any time of day or night. "Sometimes I'm like, 'Does he not own a watch?' " Rodriguez is well known in Kabul as "Debbie the hairdresser". She is the driving force behind the Kabul Beauty School which has trained more than 170 Afghan women and is the subject of her forthcoming book.
A hairdresser since the age of 15 in her mother's salon in Michigan, Rodriguez was moved by the September 11 attacks to help a disaster relief unit at ground zero in New York. For two weeks she gave massages to fire-fighters. "There is a link between physical touch and emotion and many of them really let loose," she said.
When the unit decided to set up clinics for women in Afghanistan, she begged to go along as a nurse's assistant. "I didn't know what I could do, but I just felt so much for how those women had suffered under the Taliban, maybe because I was in an abusive marriage myself that I wanted to escape."
Somehow word got out that a hairdresser was in town and Rodriguez would come back at night to her hotel room to find her door plastered with Post-it notes from journalists and aid workers begging: "Please cut my hair!" "It was like people in the desert dying for water," she laughs. "I was doing 30 haircuts a day.
"I knew the Taliban had banned beauty salons, but I couldn't understand why there weren't any operating by then, because cutting hair is not a skill you lose. I wandered all over Kabul looking. Eventually after three days I found one and I was shocked.
"They were trying to do hair with the most medieval equipment I'd ever seen. Scissors that looked like hedge-trimmers, broken mirrors, sticks for rollers, no electricity. It was like this moment of truth. Do you walk away and pretend you've never seen it or do something?" With her mother impatient for her to return to the salon and two children at college, Rodriguez initially thought she would go back, send some suitcases full of scissors and hair products and get on with her own life. "But then someone said to me, 'Don't give them a fish, teach them to fish'. It had never occurred to me that hairdressing could be part of the aid effort."
Back in Michigan, she called the number on the back of a bottle of Paul Mitchell shampoo. "I left a message saying, 'Hi, I'm Debs, I just came back from Afghanistan. The Taliban annihilated the beauty industry and we should put a school there and I want you to help me'."
Two days later the owner called and asked: "What do you need?" Rodriguez secured other donations and soon her garage was filled with 10,000 boxes of products. Another group of New York beauticians had had the same idea and between them the first Kabul Beauty School was born. Rodriguez returned to Afghanistan and in 2003 trained her first class in an outbuilding of the Ministry of Women's Affairs.
She found it extremely rewarding, with more than 90% of her graduates finding jobs. Despite Kabul's drabness, beauty is a lucrative business, particularly in preparing brides for their big day.
But running the school was a struggle. "Afghanistan dropped off the map when Iraq happened," she said. "Donations dried up."
The school lost its premises in the ministry for what she says were political and cultural reasons. The girls were denounced for "too much laughing", and the ministry accused her of stealing donations.
But Rodriguez is far too forceful a character to give up. "In many ways me and my warlord husband are the same. We're both warriors." Now she runs the Oasis Salon, where students work on the ground floor of the home she shares with Sher.
The couple were introduced by mutual friends in October 2003 and married within 20 days, despite being unable to speak a word of each other's language. "We didn't really notice because this other couple were already around translating. When we were alone he would play computer games and I would watch videos."
On top of that, he was 12 years younger and already had a wife and eight children living in Saudi Arabia. But because of his position as Dostum's foreign relations adviser and nephew of the minister for hajj (pilgrimage), Sher could not afford to be caught dating an American. "He said we either do it the Afghan way or stop seeing each other."
Asked what he meant by the Afghan way, he said: "Get married." "First I thought he was joking, then I thought, why not? It was like jumping off a cliff but my gut instinct said yes."
She admits that her gut had led her into two previous failed marriages, the second of which was to a travelling preacher who beat her up.
The couple did not tell their families at first. "His family are really conservative, they live in Mecca. I'm a Christian, I smoke, I'm a hairdresser and an American. I might as well be Satan."
Her parents found out from an article about the beauty salon which mentioned she had married an Afghan. For a long while he refused to tell his. "I felt a bit like the mistress."
It was this that made Dostum's endorsement so important. "I wanted someone important to Sher to acknowledge me." These days the pair are regulars at Dostum's palace, listening to his war stories late into the night.
Sher has learnt English, she has picked up some Farsi and they spend all year together, except for one month when he goes to his other family in Saudi. Their house is often filled with other commanders so she used her book advance from Random House to open the coffee house. A cosy place with colourful prints and jazz on the speakers, it has become a popular refuge.
"What can I say?" she shrugs. "I know it's weird. I married a warlord. What else does a girl from the Midwest do in Afghanistan, apart from becoming a hairdresser?"
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Fresh Canadian troops depart for Afghanistan
Saturday, January 27, 2007 | 1:43 PM ET CBC News Canada
Two more groups of soldiers have left Canada for a six-month tour of duty in Afghanistan as part of a troop rotation that will see their counterparts in the country's war zone return home over the next two months.
About 40 members of the First Canadian Field Hospital were given their final briefing on Friday at Canadian Forces Base Petawawa in Ontario before shipping out, while around 130 reservists and military personnel flew out of CFB Gagetown in New Brunswick.
In a drill hall at CFB Petawawa, Col. Dennis Thompson offered warm wishes, but also a warning to soldiers bound for Afghanistan.
"In 2006, Canada lost one diplomat and 36 soldiers, 15 of whom were from this base."
A total of 44 Canadian soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since 2002.
Hundreds of other soldiers from Petawawa will be deploying to Afghanistan over the next few weeks.
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Pakistan, Afghanistan, Allied forces Working Group meeting Held
'Pakistan Times' Staff Report
RAWALPINDI: The 8th Counter Improvised Explosives Device (IED) Working Group Meeting was held here Saturday at General Headquarters which was participated by delegates from Pakistan Army, Afghan National Army (ANA) International Security Assistance Force.
In the day long discussions participants dwelt at length on measures to counter the IED threat faced by the civil population as well as Security Forces on both sides of the Pak-Afghan border.
At the end of the meeting, participants expressed satisfaction over the progress made so far since establishment of the Working Group as a sub committee of the Tripartite Commission. The participants were also satisfied at the efforts being made for the elimination of landmines across the Pak-Afghan border.
The Working Group resolved to take forward the good work already done through more cooperation in the field of counter IED.
Brigadier Amir Azeem Khajwa led the Pakistan side, Brigadier General Muhammad Salim Director General Disaster Response ANA led the Afghan delegation while Brigadier General Davis Chief Engineer ISAF was heading the ISAF delegation.
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The will, and the time, to win
January 28, 2007 KABUL Toronto Star, Canada
Afghanistan | It is among the poorest countries in the world, with little infrastructure and widespread illiteracy. It has never known democracy, unity or stability. And on its forbidding ground, a desperate battle is being waged against poverty, corruption, the Taliban . . . and time. Will Canada and its NATO allies have the will to persist in a struggle that could last more than a generation? And will Afghans' patience with the presence of outsiders last equally long? Oakland Ross analyzes the volatile present and daunting future of this troubled land
It is winter on the steppes of Central Asia, and the war on terror - a war that last year claimed 4,000 lives in Afghanistan alone - has lately been taking its annual respite from carnage and woe.
If you can call it a respite.
Pauses in this conflict are never complete and death continues to taint the cold January air, even as a shroud of snow steadily thickens over the ramshackle, war-weary streets of Kabul.
This past Sunday, a car-borne suicide bomber - the first to detonate successfully in the capital in some weeks - rammed his vehicle into a NATO military convoy, managing to blow himself up, if no one else.
And several officials of the Afghan insurgent movement known as the Taliban were reported killed in a NATO air strike in the south of the country on Friday.
It was one more clash in a long and convoluted war, a contest that has no front lines, no clear territorial divisions, no easily defined measure of victory and little likelihood of concluding soon, if ever.
With some 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, based mainly in the volatile southern province of Kandahar, Canada is as deeply immersed in this drama as almost any country and bears more responsibility than most for the eventual outcome of a war that seems fated to exceed the lifespan of anyone currently waging it.
"Conflict resolution in the broader scheme takes a generation," said a NATO officer. "Some would argue it takes two."
The challenge facing Canada and her allies in Afghanistan has at least as much to do with nation-building as with pitched battles between opposing armies.
"It's the creation of a secure and stable Afghanistan," replied one diplomat in Kabul when asked to articulate that challenge.
That's a tall order, taller even than the jagged, snow-covered peaks of the Hindu Kush that shimmer above Kabul, capital of a country that has known little in the way of security or stability during the course of a long and fractious history.
Do Canada and her allies here have the weaponry, the wherewithal and the will to carry this struggle through to what very may well be a distant end, a matter of a generation or more?
Many foreign officials here express a determination to stay, combined with a conviction that this is precisely what most of Afghanistan's 30 million people devoutly wish.
"Across the vast majority of the country, the message is: they don't want us to leave," says a diplomat representing a NATO country in Kabul.
He may be right, but support for the visitors is clearly not universal. Nor is it guaranteed to last forever.
An Afghan security guard, fluent in English and paid to help protect this very diplomat in his heavily fortified compound, confided to a reporter that he, for one, wishes the foreign soldiers would go.
"We feel like we are slaves in our own country," he said. "We feel that we are a colony. We don't like it, but what can we do?"
Last May, U.S. military vehicles in the capital strayed into a traffic accident that left several Afghan civilians dead and sparked rioting that continued for hours, as incensed city dwellers chanted "Death to the Americans!" and stalked the capital in search of foreigners on whom to take out their anger.
Workers at one guesthouse, a hostelry that caters to a mainly international clientele, managed to stave off disaster only by clambering onto the roof with automatic rifles, to spray warning shots into the air.
Among the most troubled regions of the country are those in the south, near the Pakistan border, where British troops have responsibility for the province of Helmand and Canadians are fighting to secure neighbouring Kandahar province.
Last September, the two regions were the scenes of heavy and prolonged combat, as combined NATO forces launched an aggressive military operation called Medusa, an offensive that inflicted numerous Taliban casualties - no one really knows how numerous - while also wreaking widespread physical damage to villages in the region.
But criticism quickly began to mount from abroad, from human-rights groups, academics and experts in international development who argued that NATO was expending too much energy on cracking heads and blowing up buildings and too little on bolstering a blighted economy or freeing up a political system long strangled by a cult of strongman rule.
Lately, NATO has been trying to advance on both these fronts, but there is sometimes a hurried or improvised aspect to its reconstruction efforts in the south, where shipping containers filled with wheelbarrows and lumber are bestowed upon villagers who, though undoubtedly grateful for the largesse, are likely not instantly transformed into pro-Western democrats as a result.
"Some of what happens in Kandahar has a lot of feel of baubles-for-the-natives," said one expert in international development in Kabul.
NATO forces are also at work on more ambitious and possibly more effective schemes, building a new road called Route Summit in Kandahar, for example, or restoring the Kajaki hydroelectric dam in Helmand.
Thanks to these and other factors, the Afghan economy has been expanding at a brisk pace, ever since a U.S.-led multinational military force invaded the country in late 2001 to oust the Taliban from power.
"The flip side," cautioned a European diplomat, "is Afghanistan's got an incredible lack of infrastructure, incredibly low literacy rates. It's starting from such a low level."
What Afghanistan does have, in addition to a numbingly impoverished population, is a flourishing drug trade, mainly in opium, whose proceeds are channelled in part to the Taliban.
On their own, the vast poppy fields in Helmand province - a Taliban stronghold - are estimated to produce about 40 per cent of the world's supply of the drug. Neighbouring Kandahar is also an important source of opium.
"The drug trade flourishes in unstable regions," said the diplomat, who supports the Afghan government's efforts to eradicate poppy production and replace it with other crops, such as saffron, mint and pomegranates. "Why save Afghanistan to save a narco state?"
Ehsan Zia, the country's minister of rural rehabilitation and development, argues that the poppy business actually impoverishes farmers by obliging them to get rid of their livestock - in order to free up land for poppy cultivation - and by forcing them to pay high prices to purchase food they could otherwise produce on their own.
"The poppy growers are not reaping the economic benefits of poppies," he said in a recent interview. "The Taliban are really reaping the benefits of poppy production. They control trafficking."
They also appear to be able to move more or less at will across Afghanistan's southern border with Pakistan, a boundary whose precise location has long been in dispute.
Despite denials by the government in Islamabad, it is now widely assumed that the Taliban maintains a headquarters-in-exile in Quetta, the capital of the Pakistani province of Baluchistan, only a modest hike from Kandahar province.
Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay recently visited both Afghanistan and Pakistan, where he added his voice to growing international pressure on Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to seal off the porous border, although preferably not by sowing the mountain passes with land mines, as he has threatened to do.
MacKay's visit to the region also highlighted Canada's military and financial commitment to the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who was formally elected in 2004.
In all, Ottawa has either spent or pledged nearly $1 billion in development assistance to the country over a 10-year period that extends to 2011. Most of those funds are earmarked for long-term projects outside war-ridden Kandahar, where Canada's military efforts are currently focused.
"The large bulk of the program is nationwide," said a development expert in Kabul. "It's critical for Afghanistan that we don't give up on the national perspective."
But long-term development assistance is, by definition, a slow and incremental process, requiring huge investments of time as well as large infusions of cash. That is so in the best of circumstances, and Afghanistan's present straits - including war, corruption, illicit drugs and wrenching poverty - are among the planet's worst.
Just now, however, it is winter in Afghanistan, and the war is in a state of at least partial abeyance, as is usual this time of year.
But the Taliban forces have not been defeated, and they will re-emerge once again, just as surely as spring will return to the steppes of Central Asia, now trembling in the winter cold.
"I think people would be surprised not to see a Taliban spring offensive," said the European diplomat. "Next year is still going to be tough."
Next year - and the following year and the year after that.
Perhaps the real challenge for Canada and her allies in Afghanistan will be to get the job done before their welcome wears out.
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2 soldiers reprimanded for assaults
They are absolved in two Afghan detainees' suspicious deaths, but cited for failing to report one.
By Kevin Sack, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer January 27, 2007
The Army announced Friday night that it had given administrative reprimands to two Special Forces soldiers for assaulting detainees held at a base in eastern Afghanistan in 2003 and for failing to report the death of one detainee.
However, the U.S. Army Special Forces Command absolved the soldiers of any wrongdoing in the deaths of two detainees: an 18-year-old Afghan army recruit named Jamal Naseer who died after interrogation at the base in Gardez, and Wakil Mohammed, a woodcutter from the village of Wazi who was shot in the face during a search operation.
The command said in a statement that Army investigators had determined that a Special Forces soldier shot and killed Mohammed in self-defense.
Afghan witnesses dispute that Mohammed posed any threat to the soldier; they said he was pleading, without the help of a translator, not to be shot.
Both deaths were concealed from superiors until they were revealed by The Times beginning in 2004.
The statement from Special Forces Command in Ft. Bragg, N.C., did not name the soldiers who had been disciplined, nor did it provide details about which death led to the disciplinary action for failure to report.
Both detainees died in March 2003 while in the custody of a team of soldiers from the 20th Special Forces Group of the Alabama National Guard.
The team was led by Chief Warrant Officer Kenneth C. Waller, who continues to work full time for the 20th Group headquarters and is currently serving in East Africa.
Numerous Afghans who saw Naseer's body just before and after he died at the Gardez firebase described it as horribly bruised and swollen, showing signs of severe beatings and blunt trauma. But the Special Forces statement said that "all other allegations, to include voluntary manslaughter and aggravated assault of detainee Jamal Naseer, were found to be unsubstantiated."
A number of other Afghans taken prisoner by the same Special Forces unit reported that they were kicked, punched and forced to maintain stress positions. Some of those allegations were supported by doctors who examined the detainees after they were moved from the Special Forces compound.
A lengthy investigation by the Army's Criminal Investigation Command, which concluded two weeks ago, found probable cause to believe that the two soldiers had committed assault. The statement released Friday characterized the offense as "slapping detainees."
The two soldiers each received a "General Officer Memorandum of Reprimand" - an administrative punishment delivered without a criminal hearing. One Special Forces officer, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss internal military matters, described that penalty as "a high-level slap on the wrist" that typically prevents an officer from advancing up the ranks.
"It's an indication that they didn't think it warranted a court-martial or even nonjudicial punishment," said Hy Rothstein, a professor at the Naval Post Graduate School.
Maj. James O. Gregory, a spokesman for Special Forces Command, said the command "takes all allegations of abuse seriously, ensuring that they are thoroughly investigated and appropriate action is taken."
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Man killed on charges of spying
GARDEA, Jan 26 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The anti-government Taliban militants have killed a man in the southeastern Paktia on charges of spying for the US and Afghan forces.
Body of the slain was found in the Gard-i-Serai area on Friday. The man named Mohammadaki is resident of the Balakht village of the Gard-i-Serai area. Residents said his body was found hanging from a tree.
Qari Abdul Rahman, calling himself spokesman for the Taliban in that area, told Pajhwok Afghan News the man was killed three days back. "Mohammadaki was involved in spying for the Afghan and foreign forces," said the purported spokesman.
However, residents said the slain was innocent and had nothing to do with the government or the foreign forces.
Haji Amir Mohammad, resident of the Balakht village, said the deceased was running a shop in Kabul and he had come to meet his family. "He was on way from the market to his house when kidnapped by armed men." He said the killers hanged his bullet-riddled body in a tree.
Paktia police chief Abdul Rahman Sarjang confirmed the incident. He said investigations were on to arrest the culprits.
Sayed Jamal Asifkhel
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Chaman - Spin Boldak railway track
Pajhwok Report
KABUL, Jan 26 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The government of Pakistan has completed homework to establish a rail link with Afghanistan.
This was announced by Pakistan's Minister for Railways Shaikh Rashid Ahmad while speaking to journalists in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi the other day.
The minister said homework had been completed on the plan and the report had been forwarded to the government of Afghanistan. "Now, we are awaiting a go-ahead signal from President Hamid Karzai to start work on construction of the Chaman - Spin Boldak railway track.
The 11-kilometre track will join the border towns of Chaman (Pakistan) and Spin Boldak (Afghanistan). The two sides had agreed on laying of the railway track during the visit of Pakistani Premier Shaukat Aziz to Kabul in 2005.
The Pakistani minister said that the Pakistan Railways was prepared with men and material to establish the rail link from Chaman to Spin Boldak, and was waiting for the Afghanistan response.
The track will be built free of cost while the land will be provided by the Afghan government. The project, which will also cover construction of a railway station at Spin Boldak, will cost $7 million.
Since Afghanistan does not have a rail network, the entire railway operation up to Spin Boldak will be manned by the Pakistan Railways, and in return the Afghan government would be responsible for providing personnel security.
PAN Monitor
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