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Afghan police lift siege of ex-warlord Dostum
By Hamid Shalizi Sun Feb 3, 2:15 AM ET
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan police lifted a brief siege of the house of former ethnic Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum in Kabul on Sunday after he and a group of around 50 armed men beat up a former ally, a police chief said.
Famous Afghan warlord in standoff with police
Sun Feb 3, 4:44 AM ET
KABUL (AFP) - About 150 police surrounded the Kabul home of one of Afghanistan's most notorious warlords, General Rashid Dostum, for around nine hours Sunday after dozens of his men reportedly took a rival hostage.
US Qaeda strategy fatally flawed: analysts
by Michel Moutot Sat Feb 2, 2:05 PM ET
PARIS (AFP) - In its ideological struggle against Al-Qaeda, American anti-terrorist strategy too often overlooks the basic tenets of the infamous Chinese warlord Sun Tzu, namely: know your enemy.
Taliban, Al-Qaeda in the shadows in eastern Afghanistan
by Beatrice Khadige Sun Feb 3, 2:20 AM ET
SHARAN, Afghanistan (AFP) - Using tactics from executions to threatening late-night visits, the Taliban and their Al-Qaeda allies may work largely in hiding but there is no doubting their distinctive message.
NATO allies must do more in Afghanistan: Development Secretary
Sun Feb 3, 9:29 AM ET
LONDON (AFP) - Britain wants some of its NATO allies to start pulling their weight more in Afghanistan, International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander said Sunday, ahead of crunch talks on the issue.
AFGHANISTAN: Stop sale of children, rights watchdog says
KABUL, 3 February 2008 (IRIN) - The recent sale of three Afghan girls in separate incidents by parents blaming extreme poverty for their actions has sparked concern about the safety of poor children in Afghanistan and the lack
Jung defends German mission in Afghanistan
Deutsche Welle
Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung has reiterated his rejection of US and NATO demands that Germany send Bundeswehr troops to the south of Afghanistan. Jung told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper that it would not be in
Afghanistan says it appreciates efforts to save student journalist
(CNN) -- Amid international outrage over a student journalist sentenced to death for blaspheming Islam, the Afghan government Saturday said it was "fully aware of the gravity of the case."
Fall back, men, Afghanistan is a nasty war we can never win
Britain’s commanders ignored every warning that the Taliban were the toughest fighters on earth
The Sunday Times Simon Jenkins February 3, 2008
The American secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, flies to Britain this week to meet a crisis entirely of London and Washington’s creation. They have no strategy for the continuing occupation of Afghanistan. They are hanging
Iran's Embassy in Afghanistan: US Ambassador's remarks interference
IRNA, Iran 02/02/2008
Iranian Embassy in Afghanistan's Capital, Kabul, issued a communique here Friday, considering US Ambassador, William B. Woods' remarks as interference in Tehran-Kabul amicable relations.
In the communique
Afghan Prison Blues
Newsweek 02/02/2008
Why are so few Taliban in jail? Hundreds are buying their way out for cash.
Abdul Bari is looking forward to springtime, when fighting will resume in eastern Afghanistan's Ghazni province. The Taliban field officer is in line for a possible promotion to succeed his commander, Mullah Momin Ahmed
Al-Qaeda 'killing' spawns doubts
BBC News By Rahimullah Yusufzai Saturday, 2 February 2008
It was unusual for Islamist websites to break the news of the death of an important al-Qaeda operative as they did this week in the case of Abu Laith al-Libi.
Afghanistan is an American war
The Guardian ALAN HOLMAN 02/02/08
Last week, with great fanfare and lots of media coverage, the report of the Independent Panel on Canada's Future Role In Afghanistan, better known as the Manley Report, was released in Ottawa.
A Pair of Allies, Self-Destructing
The Washington Post 02/02/2008 By Jim Hoagland
The presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan fiddle furiously as the fires of terrorist violence burn across their nations.
Wolesi Jirga concludes debate on ministers' role
By Makia Monir - Mar 2, 2008 - 17:52
KABUL (PAN): Concluding its two-day debate on the role and performances of ministers a number of parliamentarians in Wolesi Jirga were critical of the performance of some of the cabinet ministers to minimize people's problems.
Afghanistan of today is not Afghanistan of 2001
By Lalit K Jha - Jan 31, 2008 - 10:43
NEW YORK (PAN): Refraining from making any comment on a latest report which said that Afghanistan is on the verge of becoming a failed state, the United States Wednesday said that Afghanistan of today is not the one
Pak paramilitary force to get $75m for counter-terrorism training
By Pajhwok Correspondent - Mar 2, 2008 - 18:40
NEW YORK (PAN): The revised Defense Authorisation Bill signed into law by President George W Bush has a $75 million provision for the Pakistan Frontier Corps (FC) to fight Taliban and al-Qaeda on the Pak-Afghan border.
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Afghan police lift siege of ex-warlord Dostum
By Hamid Shalizi Sun Feb 3, 2:15 AM ET
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan police lifted a brief siege of the house of former ethnic Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum in Kabul on Sunday after he and a group of around 50 armed men beat up a former ally, a police chief said.
The standoff highlights the problem of powerful warlords who helped tear Afghanistan apart in the 1992-96 civil war and are still waiting in the wings should President Hamid Karzai fail in the fight against Taliban insurgents and lose his grip on government.
Dostum, a fierce warlord with a reputation for brutality and treachery, beat up his former election manager Akbar Bay late on Saturday, said Kabul police chief Salem Hasaas.
One of Bay's bodyguards was shot and Dostum and his men fled to the warlord's house, Hasaas said. Bay was taken to hospital.
Dozens of police armed with assault rifles and machine guns mounted on pick-up trucks surrounded Dostum's house in a relatively upmarket part of Kabul and other officers took up positions on the roofs of neighboring houses.
One shot was fired, but it was unclear where it came from.
Shortly afterwards, police began to withdraw.
"We have received orders to hand the case over to the judiciary for investigation," said the head of the Kabul police criminal investigations Ali Shah Paktiawal.
The burly Dostum rose to command ethnic Uzbek fighters allied to the Soviet Union during the 1979-89 occupation, then switched sides as Soviet troops withdrew. He then formed and broke alliances several times during the civil war, meanwhile running much of northern Afghanistan as his personal fiefdom.
"GOVERNMENT PLOT"
At the height of his power, the burly, mustached fighter ran a mini-state centered in parts of the north and his well-equipped army kept even the Taliban at bay until 1997. He printed his own money, set up his own airline, drove an armored Cadillac and vowed never to bow to a government that banned whisky and music.
Police officers outside Dostum's house said the former warlord briefly appeared on the roof of his residence and seemed drunk as he abused them before his guards pulled him indoors.
A spokesman for Dostum said there was no truth in the accusations against the former warlord and warned of unrest if police tried to arrest him.
"This is a plot against General Dostum, the government is trying to undermine him," said spokesman and member of parliament Mohammad Alem Sayeh. "The government should know that if it tries to capture Dostum, then seven or eight provinces in the north will turn against the government."
Karzai, an ethnic Pashtun from the south, is struggling to assert his authority faced with a resurgent Taliban campaign of guerrilla warfare in the south and east and suicide bombings along the length and breadth of the country.
Karzai has also lost the backing of the Northern Alliance former mujahideen commanders, including Dostum, that helped U.S.-led troops helped overthrow the Taliban government after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
Dostum ran for president in the 2004 election gaining 10 percent of the vote. Since then President Hamid Karzai named him as a top military advisor, a post largely seen as an attempt at co-opting a powerful and unpredictable figure.
(Writing by Jon Hemming; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)
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Famous Afghan warlord in standoff with police
Sun Feb 3, 4:44 AM ET
KABUL (AFP) - About 150 police surrounded the Kabul home of one of Afghanistan's most notorious warlords, General Rashid Dostum, for around nine hours Sunday after dozens of his men reportedly took a rival hostage.
The heavily armed police arrived in the early morning, blocking off several roads in one of the city's most upmarket areas and taking positions on rooftops surrounding Dostum's mansion.
They later dispersed after a tense standoff with Dostum's men, an AFP reporter witnessed.
A top Kabul police official, General Alishah Paktiawal, told the Pajhwok Afghan News agency that around 70 of Dostum's men had stormed the nearby house of a rival, Akbar Bai, at around midnight and briefly taken him hostage.
Police had apparently wanted to arrest the attackers but were told by authorities to leave.
An official in Dostum's Jumbish-i-Milli Islami (National Islamic Movement) party, Sayed Norullah, said however there had merely been a scuffle between the guards of the two men.
Bai is a former ally of the ethnic Uzbek warlord, who is influential in northern Afghanistan, but broke ties with him last year.
Dostum fought for the Soviet government during the Afghan resistance and changed allegiances several times during the following conflicts.
His faction has been accused of war crimes during the civil war of the early 1990s.
President Hamid Karzai appointed Dostum as chief of staff to the commander-in-chief of the Afghan National Army in 2005, although the job is largely symbolic.
The incident highlights the factionalism and rivalry that runs rampant in Afghanistan, where local strongmen have their own private security forces, and is a cause of instability, along with the bloody Taliban-led insurgency.
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US Qaeda strategy fatally flawed: analysts
by Michel Moutot Sat Feb 2, 2:05 PM ET
PARIS (AFP) - In its ideological struggle against Al-Qaeda, American anti-terrorist strategy too often overlooks the basic tenets of the infamous Chinese warlord Sun Tzu, namely: know your enemy.
That is the fixed view of leading analysts, who conclude that through ignorance of the enemy it faces, ignorance of its nature, its goals, its strengths and its weaknesses, the United States is condemned to failure.
"The attention of the US military and intelligence community is directed almost uniformly towards hunting down militant leaders or protecting US forces, (and) not towards understanding the enemy we now face," said Bruce Hoffman, a professor at Georgetown University, Washington DC.
"This is a monumental failing not only because decapitation strategies have rarely worked in countering mass-mobilisation terrorist or insurgent campaigns, but also because Al-Qaeda's ability to continue this struggle is based absolutely on its capacity to attract new recruits and replenish its resources.
"Without knowing our enemy, we cannot fulfill the most basic requirements of an effective counter-terrorist strategy: pre-empting and preventing terrorist operations and deterring their attacks," Hoffman added.
Officials said Friday that Abu Laith al-Libi -- believed to have been killed when a missile fired by an unmanned US aircraft hit his Pakistani hideout -- was a top Al-Qaeda commander who led Osama bin Laden's terror network in Afghanistan.
He was in fifth position on a classified US Central Intelligence Agency wanted list seen by AFP, with a five-million-dollar (3.5 million euros) bounty on his head.
But in using the "Al-Qaeda" label when talking about suspects arrested or armed fighters killed -- indiscriminately and sometimes wrongly, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq or elsewhere -- American or Western forces create and feed a confusion which ultimately makes victims of themselves, experts say.
"(Using) body-counts as a criterion to measure effectiveness is a bit like Guantanamo: you produce a tally, you mix up Al-Qaeda members or just hired hands with people who have only the vaguest of connections, people who have none at all and finally even pure civilians," added French academic Jean-Pierre Filiu, author of "Les Frontieres du Jihad" ('The Limits of Jihad').
"When you reach that point, air-strikes and the elimination of 'wanted' individuals not only prove fruitless, but actually become counter-productive.
"These actions only intensify (Al-Qaeda) recruitment, instead of weakening the organisation.
"The problem is this innate tendency within all administrations or bodies to stack up figures, pull out statistics, use them to show how they are winning, how they are liquidating their enemies, etc," Filiu added.
The 'body-count' syndrome is actually a "trap" laid by Al-Qaeda into which the Americans have "fallen" blindly, added Lebanese-American researcher Fawaz Gerges, an international relations specialist at Sarah Lawrence College, New York.
"You cannot win this war on the battlefield, because there is none," said Gerges. "You're facing an unconventional war. The more you rely on military might, the more you lose the war of ideas against Al-Qaeda and the militants.
"In Iraq, we fell into their trap, we gave them more ideological ammunition.
"So many Muslims all over the world are now convinced, and this feeling is so entrenched, that the war in Iraq is not against Al-Qaeda, but against Islam."
Gerges detects a growing appreciation of this phenomenon "even at the heart of the American administration," expressing his belief that a "new understanding" exists which casts the outgoing George W. Bush's war against Al-Qaeda as "counter-productive".
The echoes of Sun Tzu's writings, produced at least 2,500 years ago, are everywhere, viz:
"If you know others and know yourself, you will not be imperilled in a hundred battles; if you do not know others but know yourself, you win one and lose one; if you do not know others and do not know yourself, you will be imperilled in every single battle".
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Taliban, Al-Qaeda in the shadows in eastern Afghanistan
by Beatrice Khadige Sun Feb 3, 2:20 AM ET
SHARAN, Afghanistan (AFP) - Using tactics from executions to threatening late-night visits, the Taliban and their Al-Qaeda allies may work largely in hiding but there is no doubting their distinctive message.
They exert "strong pressure" on locals to cooperate with them rather than with Afghan authorities and their international partners, says Nawab Waziri, head of the provincial council of Paktika on the border with Pakistan.
Most crudely, "they chop off heads or hands," Waziri told AFP. Scores have been killed by the insurgents like that, sometimes on allegations of "spying" for the government or foreign military forces.
But they also operate more clandestinely. "They come secretly to people in the middle of the night, masked, to tell them what to do," he said.
"There are men who are Taliban in secret in the villages... They cover their faces and talk to people in other villages."
Sometimes there are "night letters" -- written threats thrown into schools or near homes under the cover of darkness.
Relatives of these secret operators never talk about them; even if one is killed, they keep quiet, said Waziri. "The Taliban who die are not identified by their families."
Waziri, in his 40s, joined some 700 other influential men from Paktika at a shura, or traditional council, in the provincial capital Sharan last week to debate the insurgent threat.
"I ask you all to not support Al-Qaeda and to help the government," national communications minister Amirzai Sangin told the impressive gathering of tribal chiefs, clerics and others.
Paktika and another border province, Khost, are "gateways" into Afghanistan for "Al-Qaeda and of terrorism because their camps are just on the other side of the border," said the official, who had come from Kabul.
After being driven from government in late 2001 by a US-led international coalition, some Taliban and Al-Qaeda took refuge in Pakistan's tribal zones.
There they regrouped in extremist sanctuaries and training camps from which US and Afghan officials say they launch attacks into Afghanistan.
A leading Al-Qaeda commander who led the terror network in Afghanistan was believed to have been killed just across from Paktika last week when a missile fired by a US drone hit his hideout in Pakistan's North Waziristan area.
Libyan Abu Laith al-Libi, reputed to be one of Osama bin Laden's top five lieutenants, was one of 13 Al-Qaeda militants killed in the raid.
Pakistan has seen a spike in insurgent violence this year; such attacks have been rising steadily in Afghanistan over the past two years, peaking in 2007 with around 140 suicide bombings and scores of attacks that left hundreds dead.
Afghans living along the border see much of the violence, which many of them claim has a strong foreign element.
"The terrorists are trained by Pakistanis who later help them come here," said Ahmadzai Wazir, a tribal chief from the frontier district of Barmal, who wore an imposing black silk turban.
"These Uzbeks, Arabs, Turkmens launch missiles and bombs on Afghan villages," he says.
But, said the governor of Paktika, 34-year-old Akram Khepelwak, last year was "much more calm than the others with the reinforced presence of the Afghan army alongside the international soldiers."
"We are trying to convince the communities to help us block the routes of the terrorists. And there is more cooperation," he said on the margins of the shura.
Waziri, the provincial council chief, insisted there was no real support among the villagers for the insurgents. The main reason for any collaboration is just "because they are scared," he said.
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NATO allies must do more in Afghanistan: Development Secretary
Sun Feb 3, 9:29 AM ET
LONDON (AFP) - Britain wants some of its NATO allies to start pulling their weight more in Afghanistan, International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander said Sunday, ahead of crunch talks on the issue.
Germany and France are among the nations which have been criticised for failing to send forces to the areas where fighting is the most intense.
"We've made clear to our NATO partners that we do want to see appropriate burden sharing, not simply in terms of the number of troops on the ground, but where those troops are committed within Afghanistan," Alexander told BBC television.
"It's obviously a discussion that we've recognised we need to have with colleagues to make sure there is appropriate burden-sharing right across Afghanistan."
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is to visit Britain this week to discuss Afghanistan and NATO defence ministers are to hold an informal meeting in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius on Thursday and Friday.
The United States has ramped up its attempts to get other countries to get stuck into fighting the Taliban insurgency in the battle-ravaged south of Afghanistan.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force comprises some 42,000 troops from 39 countries.
Canada has warned it could withdraw its 2,500 troops if NATO fails to send reinforcements to the south.
Commanders in Afghanistan have been calling for around 7,500 extra troops to be deployed in the region.
There are about 7,800 British troops in Afghanistan, most of whom are in the restive southern province of Helmand.
"Notwithstanding all of the real challenges -- poverty, narcotics, insurgency -- we are making progress in Afghanistan," Alexander said.
"It's a desperately poor country.
"Where the roads end the Taliban begin.
"Where you have law and order and security you can eradicate poppies, and where you have insurgency it's far more difficult."
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AFGHANISTAN: Stop sale of children, rights watchdog says
KABUL, 3 February 2008 (IRIN) - The recent sale of three Afghan girls in separate incidents by parents blaming extreme poverty for their actions has sparked concern about the safety of poor children in Afghanistan and the lack of adequate legal mechanisms to effectively curb such trade.
Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) has expressed alarm over the sale of the children, who came from Herat, Kunduz and Takhar provinces.
"We are shocked over these cases," Hangama Anwary, AIHRC's commissioner on the rights of children, told IRIN in Kabul. "They pose a serious warning about a possible catastrophe which may affect poor Afghan children."
In early January, a displaced family in Shaydayee camp in Herat Province, in western Afghanistan, reportedly sold one of their twin four-month-old daughters for 2,000 Afghanis (US$40) due to their inability to feed both babies.
On 27 January, the parents of a nine-month-old girl in northern Afghanistan's Kunduz Province sold their daughter for US$20, the human rights commission confirmed. In addition to being very poor, both parents suffered from walking disabilities.
In neighbouring Takhar Province, another nine-month-old girl was sold for US$240, local Afghan news agency Pajhwok reported on 28 January quoting the provincial governor.
In all three cases only female children were offered for sale.
Philanthropic assistance
As a result of philanthropic financial contributions and assistance by government officials and local people, all three children have been safely returned to their parents, provincial officials say.
The parents of all the children have received financial assistance and the disabled parents have since been accommodated in a government-run home at the behest of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
Legal or illegal?
All the parents denied any wrongdoing but called attention to their inability to feed their children due to extreme poverty.
Those that paid for the children also felt they had done no wrong as they intended to protect the children from hunger and cold.
While over 50 percent of Afghanistan's 26.6 million people are estimated to be bellow 18 years of age, the country still does not have specific laws related to child abuse and the sale and trafficking of children.
"We are currently working to draft a law which will address various issues related to child abuse," Anwary of AIHRC said.
However, all forms of child exploitation are prohibited by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Afghanistan is a signatory.
According to Article 35 of the convention, the state must make every effort to prevent any form of "abduction of children or sale of or traffic in children".
The abuse and sale of children is also prohibited by Islamic Sharia law, which is the major source of nearly all laws and regulations in Afghanistan.
Stop further selling
AIHRC is concerned that the publicity derived from the recent cases of girls being sold may provoke other vulnerable parents to sell their children, particularly girls, in a bid to gain sympathy and financial assistance.
"We want the government to tackle the sale and abuse of children by their parents in a systematic, transparent and legal way, and not in an individual sympathetic manner," said Anwary, adding that the living conditions of poor families must be improved to end the vulnerability of their children.
Plagued by decades of conflict, Afghanistan is the fifth least developed country in the world with over half of its population living below the poverty line on less than US$1 a day, according to the country's 2007 national human development report.
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Jung defends German mission in Afghanistan
Deutsche Welle
Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung has reiterated his rejection of US and NATO demands that Germany send Bundeswehr troops to the south of Afghanistan. Jung told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper that it would not be in the alliance's interest for the lead nation in the north of the country to move some of its troops to the south. The Bundeswehr is by far the biggest contingent in the International Security Assistance Force's Regional Command North, providing 3,200 of its 4,000 soldiers. However Jung said at the same time, that Germany stood ready to help its NATO partners in case of emergency. He stressed the contribution that the German air force was making in the south, where NATO troops are being supported by several Tornado reconnaissance and Transall military transport aircraft.
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Afghanistan says it appreciates efforts to save student journalist
(CNN) -- Amid international outrage over a student journalist sentenced to death for blaspheming Islam, the Afghan government Saturday said it was "fully aware of the gravity of the case."
Afghanistan "appreciates the concern expressed on his behalf," the government said in a statement released by the Afghan Embassy in Washington.
"The office of President [Hamid] Karzai is closely monitoring the case and working with Afghanistan's judicial system to find a just solution in accordance with Afghan law and our nation's international obligations."
Parwez Kambaksh, 23, was sentenced to death after he was tried and convicted in a Mazar-e-Sharif court on January 22 for distributing an article that commented on Quranic verses that deal with women.
Part of the article discussed whether a Muslim man should have the right to marry more than one woman, and prosecutors deemed the work offensive to Islam. Watch how the case is testing the freedom of Afghanistan's press »
Kambaksh -- a journalism student at Balkh University -- said he did not write the article and said his name was added after he printed it from the Internet in October. He has been detained since then.
Kambaksh's family has said that the trial took place behind closed doors and that the young man did not have legal representation.
The student -- who is currently in a jail in Balkh province in northern Afghanistan -- has appealed the conviction. His case will be heard in the provincial court in about a month. Should the provincial judges uphold the conviction, Kambaksh can bring his appeal to the country's supreme court.
Should his appeal fail, Karzai can pardon him.
Earlier this week, a top Afghan lawmaker emphasized that the country's Senate has no say in the case, after members of the Senate expressed support of the death sentence.
Some media outlets interpreted those remarks as reflecting an official position of the Senate, a position that Josh Gross, a spokesman for the Afghan Embassy in Washington, affirmed.
However, Senate spokesman Aminaldin Mozafari said in a Thursday statement that media had inaccurately reported those statements as official, and he stressed that the courts operate independently of the Senate.
"On the case of Parwez Kambaksh, acceptance and supporting of that decision by meshrano jirga [the Senate] was a technical problem which was reported by media," he said.
"In accordance to our constitution, we respect the judicial system of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and the independency of the courts in Afghanistan, so therefore we request all the media to kindly convey our message on this issue."
Although the Senate did not vote on the issue, the Senate spokesman is authorized to speak for the legislative body.
Saturday's statement from the Afghan Embassy reiterated the Senate spokesman's statement, saying, "The Afghan Parliament has withdrawn its initial support for the judgment."
Pressure mounts
A small number of Afghans have protested in Kabul and in Balkh province, but the bulk of the outrage has been from international observers.
Media and human rights groups have called on Karzai to intervene.
The United Nations has also condemned the sentence, and the United States last week expressed concern. Washington is holding out hope for the journalist because of the active appeals process, said State Department spokesman Tom Casey.
The Independent, a British newspaper, has taken on Kambaksh's cause and has started a petition to free the student, said Anne Penketh, the newspaper's diplomatic editor.
"Three days ago, we launched our petition, which as of this morning has 38,000 signatures," she said. Penketh lauded Mozafari's statement as a sign that the newspaper has already achieved "a measure of success," but said the newspaper was still calling for Karzai to pardon Kambaksh.
"We're pressing our government to put more pressure on President Karzai," she said. "We've been trying to get hold of him -- in fact, if you're watching, President Karzai, do call."
Penketh said the issue is not just about a journalist.
"It's about human rights, and particularly women's rights in Afghanistan."
Some media groups, including Reporters Without Borders and the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, allege the charges against Kambaksh are in retaliation for his brother's investigative journalism articles, which detail human rights abuses at the hands of political and paramilitary factions in northern Afghanistan.
Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi, Kambaksh's brother and a leading independent journalist in the region, has named government officials who extort money from locals in some articles, said Jean MacKenzie, country director of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting.
In another piece, which is among the articles he is best-known for, Ibrahimi describes the "dancing boys," teenage boys who dress up as girls and dance for male patrons at parties thrown by some commanders in northern Afghanistan, MacKenzie said.
The day after Kambaksh was arrested, authorities paid Ibrahimi a visit and combed through his computer and notebooks, looking for names of sources who helped him in his reporting, MacKenzie said.
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Fall back, men, Afghanistan is a nasty war we can never win
Britain’s commanders ignored every warning that the Taliban were the toughest fighters on earth
The Sunday Times Simon Jenkins February 3, 2008
The American secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, flies to Britain this week to meet a crisis entirely of London and Washington’s creation. They have no strategy for the continuing occupation of Afghanistan. They are hanging on for dear life and praying for something to turn up. Britain is repeating the experience of Gordon in Khartoum, of the Dardanelles, Singapore and Crete, of politicians who no longer read history expecting others to die for their dreams of glory.
Every independent report on the Nato-led operation in Afghanistan cries the same message: watch out, disaster beckons. Last week America’s Afghanistan Study Group, led by generals and diplomats of impeccable credentials, reported on “a weakening international resolve and a growing lack of confidence”. An Atlantic Council report was more curt: “Make no mistake, Nato is not winning in Afghanistan.” The country was in imminent danger of becoming a failed state.
A clearly exasperated Robert Gates, the American defence secretary, has broken ranks with the official optimism and committed an extra 3,000 marines to the field, while sending an “unusually stern” note to Germany demanding that its 3,200 troops meet enemy fire. Germany, like France, has rejected that plea. Yet it is urgent since the Canadians have threatened to withdraw from the south if not relieved. An equally desperate Britain is proposing to send half-trained territorials to the front, after its commanders ignored every warning that the Taliban were the toughest fighters on earth.
Meanwhile Nato is doing what it does best, squabbling. Gates has criticised Britain for not taking the war against the insurgents with sufficient vigour. Britain is furious at America’s obsession with spraying the Helmand poppy crop and thus destroying all hope of winning hearts and minds. Most of the 37,000 soldiers wandering round Kabul were sent on the understanding that they would do no fighting. No army was ever assembled on so daft a premise.
Nato’s much-vaunted 2006 strategy has not worked. It boasted that its forces would only be guarding reconstruction and training the Afghan police. There would be no more counterproductive airstrikes against Pashtun villages. The Taliban would be countered by American special forces, with the Pakistan army attacking their rear. Two years ago anyone expressing scepticism towards this rosy scenario was greeted at Nato headquarters in Kabul with guffaws of laughter. Today that laughter must be music in Taliban ears.
Kabul is like Saigon at the end of the Vietnam war. It swarms with refugees and corruption while an upper crust of well-heeled contractors, consultants and NGO groupies careers from party to party in bullet-proof Land Cruisers. Spin doctors fighting a daily battle with the truth have resorted to enemy kill-rates to imply victory, General Westmoreland’s ploy in Vietnam.
This is a far cry from Britain’s 2001 pledges of opium eradication, gender-awareness and civic-governance classes. After 87 deaths and two years of operations in Helmand, the British Army cannot even secure one dam. Aid successes such as a few new schools and roads in the north look ever more tenuous as the country detaches itself from Kabul and tribal elders struggle to make terms with Taliban commanders.
There is plainly no way 6,000 British troops are ever going to secure, let alone pacify, the south. More soldiers will simply evince more insurgency. More American raids across the Pakistan border merely offer propaganda to Al-Qaeda in its radicalisation of the tribal areas. It was just such brutalism that preceded the Soviet escalation of the counterinsurgency war in the 1980s, and the rise of the (American-backed) precursors of the Taliban.
The best news out of Kabul is the increased disenchantment of the wily Afghan president, Hamid Karzai. Last week he vetoed the West’s offering of a former leader of Britain’s Liberal Democrats, Lord Ashdown, to co-ordinate operations in Kabul, whatever that might mean. Liberal democracy is not high on Karzai’s priority list.
He attacked the British for drawing the Taliban into his unregulated domain. When outside agents were thought to be negotiating with Taliban elements behind his back, he instantly expelled them from the country.
Meanwhile he has taken to making his own choice of provincial governors and commanders, often warlords enmeshed in the booming drugs trade. That trade offers Afghanistan its one staple income.
While the international community in Kabul wails that Karzai is too close to the druglords, the warlords and various sinister Taliban go-betweens, they are at least his warlords and his go-betweens. When Britain sacked the ruthless tribal chief, Sher Mohammed Akhundzada, as governor of Helmand, Karzai was furious and rightly predicted it would lead to a surge in Taliban aggression.
For all his faults, Karzai is both an elected leader and a canny one. He is a virtual prisoner of the Nato garrison in Kabul but Afghanistan remains his country and if he thinks he can cut deals across its political heartlands, let him. If he wants Nato to stop bombing Taliban bases in Pashtun villages and killing Pashtun tribal leaders, then it should stop.
Withdraw the opium eradication teams from Helmand. Let Karzai barter money for power and power for peace. The foreign “governance” pundits in Kabul might dream of Afghanistan as a latterday Sweden, but they are never going to bring Pashtuns, Baluchis, Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks into a stable federation.
Only an Afghan stands any chance of doing that, and the one Afghan on offer is Karzai.
Common sense advocates a demilitarisation of the occupation, with a withdrawal of western troops to Kabul where they can try to protect the capital and the northern trade routes. In provinces to the south and east, Karzai’s money, weapons and negotiating skills must deliver what results they can. The West cannot possibly police Afghanistan with anything remotely like the resources it has available.
Behind such a policy shift should lie an even more crucial one. For the past two decades intelligence lore has held that nothing happens along the Afghan/Pakistan frontier without agencies of the Pakistan army being involved. The latter’s pro-Taliban strategy through the 1990s was based on its obsession with “defence in depth” against India. Pakistan wanted Afghanistan stable, friendly and medieval. The security of the Punjab rested on the containment of the Pashtun tribal lands straddling the Pakistan/ Afghanistan border.
George W Bush’s reckless elevation of Al-Qaeda after 2001 promoted a small group of alien Arab guests into global warriors for Islam. It also destroyed Islamabad’s hold over the Taliban. America bribed the Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf with $1 billion a year to declare a U-turn and fight his former allies.
Musharraf duly broke his non-intervention treaty with the Pashtun and sent his army against them. The Taliban’s influence increases with every attack and with every American bombing of villages. The Pakistan army is suffering greater losses in this war than either the British or the Americans.
Wise heads in Islamabad know that they must withdraw from the border and restore respect for tribal autonomy. Nothing else will incline the Pashtun and other tribes to reject Al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies. The alternative is a growing insurgency that must destabilise whatever democratic regime might emerge from this month’s Pakistan elections. That prospect is far worse than whatever fate might befall Afghanistan.
There is no sensible alternative to ending military operations against the Pashtun, flying under whatever flag. Like Iraq’s Kurdistan, Pashtunistan is a country without a state. It has been cursed by history, but it returns that curse with interest when attacked. Fate has now handed it a starring role in Britain’s nastiest war in decades, and offered it the power to wreck an emergent democracy of vital interest to the West.
To have set one of the world’s most ancient and ferocious people on the warpath against both Kabul and Islamabad takes some doing. But western diplomacy has done it. Now must begin the agonising process of escaping that appalling mistake.
simon.jenkins@sunday-times.co.uk
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Iran's Embassy in Afghanistan: US Ambassador's remarks interference
IRNA, Iran 02/02/2008
Iranian Embassy in Afghanistan's Capital, Kabul, issued a communique here Friday, considering US Ambassador, William B. Woods' remarks as interference in Tehran-Kabul amicable relations.
In the communique, a copy of which was faxed to IRNA, we read, "Such baseless remarks are due to lack of proper information, and the illogical continuation of the endless antagonist US baseless accusations against the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Woods in a press conference in Kabul on Wednesday put under question Iran's policy towards the Afghan Government, once again repeating the baseless US accusation that Iran is sending weapons for the opponents of President Hamid Karzai's Central Government.
The Iranian Embassy's communique answering another US interference in Iran's internal affairs regarding repatriation of some Afghan nationals that have been living in Iran illegally for years, adds, "This plan is aimed at repatriation of the entire illegal foreign nationals, including a number of our Afghan brethren, but implementing it has been temporarily halted due to several reasons, including the cold season, and requests made by local Afghan officials." It adds, "The order to halt the repatriation process was issued by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to avoid occurrence of hardships for them in the cold season, and the matter has been officially informed to the Afghan Foreign Ministry."
The Embassy Communique stresses, "The two neighbor countries' bilateral ties, as both countries' presidents have reiterated, are constructive, based on mutual respect, and in a way to secure both nations' interests, while Iran's general policy has always been based on assisting Kabul in reconstruction of Afghanistan and restoration of peace and stability throughout the country."
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Afghan Prison Blues
Newsweek 02/02/2008
Why are so few Taliban in jail? Hundreds are buying their way out for cash.
Abdul Bari is looking forward to springtime, when fighting will resume in eastern Afghanistan's Ghazni province. The Taliban field officer is in line for a possible promotion to succeed his commander, Mullah Momin Ahmed, who was killed in action late last year. Until the snows melt, though, Bari is quietly enjoying his freedom. "Thank God and my cousin," Bari told NEWSWEEK last week at his winter quarters on the Pakistani border. "Without them I'd be dead or spending many years in prison."
Bari was arrested on terrorism charges a little more than a year ago, when police caught him visiting relatives in Kabul. He ditched his mobile phone—filled with Taliban contacts—by passing it to his cousin, a woman in her 20s, but the cops seized a notebook containing his scribbled will. That evening the city's deputy police chief paraded Bari in handcuffs on television and called him the leader of a squad of suicide bombers that had infiltrated the capital. "Not true!" Bari shouted. But the officer had "proof" that Bari was on a suicide mission: the will in the notebook. The next day Bari was handed over to the government's draconian National Directorate of Security.
Bari was facing a decade or more in prison—if he survived. The NDS, controlled by a powerful and nearly untouchable political clique from the Panjshir Valley, runs its own secret court system. Canadian forces in Afghanistan stopped transferring captured Taliban to the directorate three months ago, because of allegations of NDS torture and corruption. But Bari's cousin acted quickly. By the third day, Bari says, she got in to visit him at the NDS lockup, bringing him food and paying off officers to stop beating and interrogating him. Instead of being hauled before a clandestine NDS court and sentenced, 52 days after his arrest Bari was back in the field with Taliban forces. The price, he says, was $1,100 in bribes to NDS officers. He also says the main topic of conversation among Taliban inmates was how payoffs were being arranged for their release.
Corrupt Afghan cops, judges and jailers are sabotaging the war effort in Afghanistan. While no official statistics are publicly available, hundreds of captured militants every year appear to be buying their way out of official custody. NDS spokesman Saeed Ansari denies that the directorate has ever taken payment for releasing prisoners. Nevertheless, sources in the U.S. and Afghan governments and inside the Taliban itself have told NEWSWEEK that in Afghanistan's detention system, freedom is always up for sale. "It's very true," says a U.S. counterterrorism official, declining to be named on such a sensitive issue. "It happens a lot, on a regular basis." The official rattles off the noms de guerre of fighters whose backdoor releases have caught the attention of U.S. authorities: " 'Red Eye' 'Uncle' 'Mullah Crazy' ... It's a continuing thing."
And it's everywhere. In southern Afghanistan, Western residents have remarked for years on the relative scarcity of Taliban detainees in local police holding cells, despite the hundreds of insurgents who are arrested there every year. In Ghazni province, Bari boasts that 60 to 70 percent of Taliban fighters detained by the local police are turned loose as soon as payoffs can take place. A senior government official in an- other eastern Afghan province, speaking anonymously because the topic is so sensitive, says Kabul's jails don't seem much better at keeping dangerous men locked up. His forces have captured "a significant number" of Taliban and sent them with "strong evidence" to Kabul. He expected them to be in jail a long time, he says, but thanks to crooked cops and the corrupt judicial apparatus, many detainees have already returned to the insurgents' ranks in his province. "It's a serious issue," he says, adding that the whole system urgently needs a cleanup.
Bari and other Taliban sources say their group has a network of agents across eastern and southern Afghanistan whose job it is to buy freedom for captured insurgents. The size of the bribe—from a few hundred dollars to more than $10,000—depends on various factors: how important the detainee is, what his mission was and what type of weapons he was carrying. The price and the complications rise exponentially with every transfer of a detainee up the official chain of command. If struck by a twinge of conscience, notoriously underpaid local members of the Afghan National Police can tell themselves that if they don't accept a payoff, someone higher on the ladder will. Too often, they're right.
Quick money is hard to resist in a land where the average person lives on a few hundred dollars a year. Taliban fighters Mullah Obeid and Mullah Hasinullah say they were arrested in different Ghazni districts late last year and taken to the provincial capital's police headquarters at the same time. The cops let them phone their relatives on one condition: that they urge their kin to raise cash and bring it as fast as possible. Hasinullah was out in two days, and Obeid in four. The cost was $3,000 for the pair, along with the weapons they had been carrying and the motorbikes they were riding when they were arrested.
Their families might have been spared the expense if the cops had been a little more patient. According to Mulvi Assad Khan, a Taliban intelligence agent in Ghazni who spent four years in an NDS prison—a governor was determined to keep him in jail —the Taliban's bribery fund for the four southern provinces alone amounts to $500,000. (The sum is uncheckable and may be an exaggeration.) Besides giving cash to police and NDS officers for the release of prisoners, the network also reimburses the detainees' families—in part or sometimes fully—for bribes the relatives have paid. Assad Khan says the Taliban agents know the right people to contact in the police and NDS, and crooked law enforcers also know the routine, often sending a message to the Taliban when they have a valuable militant in custody.
Even the Taliban sometimes marvel at the coziness of their dealings with law enforcers. Mullah Jumah Khan, a red-bearded, black-turbaned insurgent leader in his 30s, says he and five of his men were arrested in the summer of 2006 during a botched ambush in Helmand province. After confiscating their weapons, land mines and remote-control detonators, the cops took them to the district police station, allowing them to inform their families. When tribal elders arrived the next morning, Jumah Khan says an officer agreed to help them if the prisoners promised to quit the insurgency—a routine but meaningless stipulation—and put up a large-enough sum of cash. They said yes.
To seal the deal, the cops, the prisoners and the elders all drove to police headquarters in the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah. Jumah Khan and his men were held not in a cell but in a separate room, where they were fed and treated well while the price of their freedom was negotiated. After much haggling, the cops and the elders settled on a payment of $10,000 for the six men, Jumah Khan says. The police kept the elders' two pickup trucks as collateral until they got the money, but within days the six were free. "It's funny," says Jumah Khan. "We kill each other on the battlefield, but once a mujahedin is arrested, the police become friendly for a price." He's still leading missions for the Taliban in Helmand.
All the same, the shameless venality of some Afghan cops is too much to stomach even for former detainees like Jumah Khan. Villagers in the south complain that innocent civilians are often detained along with Taliban suspects just for the bribes. Jumah Khan speaks of one notoriously corrupt district police official in Helmand province who openly brags of making at least 20 arrests a day, picking up anyone he wants, Taliban or not. The crooked cop's standard price for freedom is $1,000 a head, according to Jumah Khan, who says the theory is that anyone in the district can afford that much because Helmand is flooded with narcodollars. Nearly half the world's annual opium harvest originates in that one province.
Many Afghan cops stay clean despite the filth among them. That's one reason some unlucky prisoners go all the way to the NDS. When that happens, buying their freedom becomes a longer, more complicated process—but it can be done, according to Taliban fighters. Black-bearded Hazrat Mohammad, 38, a former NDS prisoner, told his story to NEWSWEEK as he crouched over a gas heater, huddled in a heavy jacket at his mud-brick house on the Pakistani frontier. In late 2006, senior Taliban officers sent him to establish a foothold in the far northern Afghan city of Sheberghan. Police in the predominantly Uzbek town soon quickly spotted the Pashtun newcomers and arrested Khan along with his three fighters, transferring them to the NDS provincial office in the main city of Mazar-e Sharif. Mohammad's captors warned him that unless his relatives bought his release in a hurry, he could go to jail for years on terrorism charges.
A brother managed to get there in two days, but NDS officers said he was too late. They could no longer just let Mohammad go, they said, because Afghan radio had publicly reported his arrest. Mohammad says they tortured and interrogated him for two weeks before shipping him to NDS headquarters in Kabul. Eventually Mohammad's brother was able to strike a ransom deal: he would deposit $8,000 with a Kabul money-changer, who would release the cash to NDS officers once their prisoner was free. Two months later Mohammad walked out of the NDS detention center and phoned the money-changer, telling him the NDS men could have their $8,000. So far the Taliban's agents have repaid the family for half that amount.
Mohammad is only happy he didn't end up in American hands. Once a prisoner reaches a U.S.-run detention center, there's little hope of a getaway. One rare exception was the escape of Al Qaeda's No. 3 man, the Libyan known as Abu Yahya al-Libi, who broke out of the high-security U.S. lockup at Baghram air base with three other Qaeda prisoners in 2005. No Americans appear to have been involved in the plot, but U.S. government investigators think corrupt Afghan guards may have assisted in the jailbreak. Several former detainees told NEWSWEEK that Afghan police and NDS officers had threatened to turn them over to U.S. forces, largely as a way of extracting bigger bribes and speeding up the payments. Capture by the Afghan National Army is feared for similar reasons; the ANA works closely with U.S. forces and is carefully monitored by them, making bribery difficult.
Former detainees who talked to NEWSWEEK for this story were reluctant at first to discuss their experiences. They worried that exposing the extent of the corruption might draw the authorities' attention, making it tougher for other captured insurgents to bribe their way to freedom. That risk doesn't seem to bother some alumni of the revolving-door jails. An example is Taliban commander Mullah Sorkh Naqaibullah—also known as the Red Mullah—who recently gloated to the BBC that he had just bought his way out of an NDS jail in Kabul. The price, he said, was $15,000. He said it was the third time since 2004 that crooked law enforcers had set him free in exchange for cash. Now he's back home in Helmand province, once again leading a band of insurgents. The Taliban owe an incalculable debt to crooked cops. They would never have gained power the first time without the public's overwhelming disgust at the pre-Taliban regime's rampant corruption and abuses of power. The insurgents' greatest wish is that it might happen again.
With Mark Hosenball in Washington
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Al-Qaeda 'killing' spawns doubts
BBC News By Rahimullah Yusufzai Saturday, 2 February 2008
It was unusual for Islamist websites to break the news of the death of an important al-Qaeda operative as they did this week in the case of Abu Laith al-Libi.
Two such websites - Ekhlaas.org and as-Sahab - which usually carry statements from al-Qaeda leaders, reported the story.
These websites and al-Qaeda and its affiliates usually deny any report of their operatives' deaths because the loss of a leading member of the network could be demoralising for its rank and file.
This change could mean one of two things.
Perhaps it was no longer possible to keep secret al-Libi's killing in an apparent US missile strike on a hideout of militants in a village near Mir Ali town in North Waziristan.
Or perhaps the intent was to say that he was dead, even though he may be alive, and prompt all those closing in on him to give up the chase.
'Significant loss'
Conclusive evidence about his death is difficult to obtain as the village near Mir Ali is presently outside the writ of the government of Pakistan.
It is also far from the bases of the US and Nato forces in neighbouring Afghanistan.
Even four days after the missile strike on Khushali Torikhel Wazir village, 2km (1.2 miles) south of Mir Ali, the Pakistan government was still unable to officially confirm or deny anything about the airstrike or provide details about the death toll and the identity of those killed.
The government and the military have been finding it difficult and risky to send men to the targeted village to seek details about the missile attack.
The new governor of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), Owais Ahmad Ghani, told reporters that the government had finally sent officials to the village.
However, it is doubtful if the government would share any information gained with the media and the public.
In the absence of more solid information, there is lots of hearsay and speculation.
Pakistani Taleban in North Waziristan are claiming that al-Libi was not among the 13 mostly Arab and Central Asian militants who intelligence sources say were killed in the missile strike by a pilotless, CIA-operated Predator aircraft.
However, they conceded that al-Libi had been seen in that area recently.
Some reports suggested that al-Libi was not present at the targeted house at the time of the attack, but that his deputy Abu Sahel was there and had been killed.
Disruption
If al-Libi was killed in the airstrike, this would be a significant loss for al-Qaeda.
It has been some time since someone considered as important has been killed.
Although the network is known to quickly replace its fallen or captured operatives, the loss of such an important member would be painful for the group and could degrade its effectiveness and disrupt its immediate plans for attacks against the US and its allies.
Apart from the operational impact, al-Libi's death could also have political and symbolic effects because he was seen a few times with al-Qaeda's deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in video-tapes and had given speeches to preach "jihad" and attract Muslims to his cause.
If al-Libi's death is confirmed in the airstrike in Pakistan, the belief that Dr Zawahiri or even Osama bin Laden were also hiding in the Pakistani tribal areas such as Waziristan will gain more strength.
This would put greater pressure on the Pakistan government to hunt down al-Qaeda and Taleban operatives hiding in Waziristan and elsewhere in the country.
The US too would find justification for its troops to be allowed to deploy in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan to carry out operations against the hideouts of the wanted al-Qaeda and Taleban fighters.
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Afghanistan is an American war
The Guardian ALAN HOLMAN 02/02/08
Last week, with great fanfare and lots of media coverage, the report of the Independent Panel on Canada's Future Role In Afghanistan, better known as the Manley Report, was released in Ottawa.
This week, with almost no fanfare and little coverage, the Afghan Study Group Report was released in Washington.
Both reports are about the on-going war in Afghanistan and the role each country should play. Both said more is better.
Canada had a panel of five, including two former politicians, two former high-ranking bureaucrats, one of whom had been an ambassador, and a former journalist. The American panel was much larger, 19 in all. Six were former ambassadors, a Marine general who had been Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, and a number of businessmen and scholars.
Afghanistan, where Canadian forces make up six per cent of the NATO troops stationed there, is Canada's major foreign initiative. For the Americans, who have more than 50 per cent of the foreign forces in Afghanistan, it's the forgotten war, vastly overshadowed by Iraq.
One the reasons for this is that, for budget purposes and other institutional reasons, the two wars are linked. But Iraq, with five times as many troops, eight times as many casualties, and billions and billions more costly, understandably, gets the most attention.
The American panel says the United States needs to get serious about Afghanistan, that it needs to decouple it from Iraq. It also suggests there should be a high-ranking official in the government charged with co-ordinating and orchestrating all aspects of U.S. policies towards Afghanistan.
This latter recommendation mirrors one made in the Manley report, that a similar position be established in Ottawa to do the same thing.
Like the Manley report, but maybe a little more specific, the American panel also sees the need for a high-level international co-ordinator, under a UN mandate, to ensure all international assistance programs and civilian efforts are carried out to the benefit of the Afghan government. Both reports also saw the need for a better balancing of military actions and development initiatives.
On reflection, and on rereading the Manley report, it is remarkable that there is such little mention of the role the Americans play in Afghanistan. There are only six references to the United States, mostly as being just one in a list of participants.
But the Americans know who's in charge, pointing to the two strategic command structures in Afghanistan. One, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is controlled by the American general in charge at NATO headquarters in Europe. The other is Operation Enduring Freedom, commanded out of MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla.
Both commands involve multinational forces, but as the American report clearly states and the Manley report failed to mention, "American commanders and key staff officers are interspersed at virtually all critical positions."
There may be 39 foreign countries involved in Afghanistan, but there is no question who is running the show, and it isn't President Hamid Karzai, his generals or anyone other than the Americans. And seeing as they are spending more money and have 50 per cent of all the foreign troops, maybe that's the way it should be.
Perhaps the fact the Manley report didn't draw Canadians' attention to just how heavily involved the Americans are is an indication of how strongly the panel wants Canada to stay in Afghanistan, with as much support from a majority of Canadians as possible.
John Manley, and the others, are astute enough to know that many Canadians would be reluctant to stay if they believed the mission was being driven by an American agenda.
And it might have been a tad disingenuous of them to write "in 2005, Canada chose, for whatever reason, to assume leadership" in Kandahar. Mr. Manley and all of his panel members would be well aware that many Canadians believe, for whatever reason, the move to Kandahar was taken to pacify the Bush administration, which was upset that the Canadian government wouldn't participate in the Iraq war.
Since taking on the Kandahar mission, Canada now has the dubious distinction of suffering a higher ratio of casualties than any other foreign army in Afghanistan.
It is one thing for politicians to send young men off to fight for freedom and democracy, but it is inconceivable anyone in authority would ever admit those soldiers might be dying just to keep peace with our largest trading partner. Even if it might be true.
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A Pair of Allies, Self-Destructing
The Washington Post 02/02/2008 By Jim Hoagland
The presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan fiddle furiously as the fires of terrorist violence burn across their nations.
Hamid Karzai and Pervez Musharraf suddenly seem more concerned with protecting their positions and perks than with keeping their countries out of the grasp of extremist Islamic forces.
Rule One of counterinsurgency campaigns is that you can't help foreign leaders who won't help themselves. It is time to apply that rule to the recent quixotic and self-defeating actions of both these men.
Last weekend, Karzai abruptly pulled out of a carefully developed plan to install a high-powered U.N. special representative in Kabul to consolidate lagging reconstruction efforts. To make matters worse, the about-face was reportedly abetted by an American diplomat's free-lancing on Karzai's behalf.
Karzai's rejection of Britain's Paddy Ashdown, who gained a reputation as a forceful and imaginative administrator for the United Nations in Bosnia, is at one level a story of diplomatic intrigue and betrayal. But its meaning lies in two broader points.
The long U.S. presidential campaign -- which still has nine months to run -- is a time of danger as well as excitement and education for the nation. Hustling for votes necessarily focuses on promises for the future and castigations of the past. This distracts attention from present crises that are mutating or worsening.
Moreover, at some point, any deal that ties together foreign powers and embattled local leaders -- the former swapping money, arms and troops for the latter's promises of stability at home and political support abroad -- becomes a liability for both. The fate of various South Vietnamese generals and the deposed shah of Iran is part of the American experience with this Third World reality, which may now be surfacing in Central Asia.
Diplomats and soldiers labored for three months to negotiate and codify a strong mandate for Ashdown, who was enthusiastically backed by Washington, London, Berlin and other NATO capitals.
At one point, there was even tentative agreement to give him coordinating responsibility not only for the badly fragmented civilian reconstruction and development efforts of the United Nations and the European Union but also for NATO operations. But this "triple hat" arrangement was whittled down to the U.N. job, largely because of that organization's reservations about working closely with the alliance.
Karzai interviewed Ashdown in Kuwait in December and then approved his nomination in private communications. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon did the same three weeks ago in Madrid. Then came the bolt from the blue while Karzai was attending a business conference in Davos, Switzerland. On second thought, it seemed that Ashdown would remind Afghans of Britain's 19th-century colonial presence in their country -- and possibly complicate Karzai's chances to be reelected next year.
"Both the American and British forces guaranteed to me they knew what they were doing, and I made the mistake of listening to them" at first, Karzai told a British journalist in Davos, putting distance between himself and his benefactors.
Ashdown had no silver bullet for Afghanistan. But this episode points up Karzai's increasingly erratic style of governing as suicide bombings and Taliban attacks on civilians increase. His turnaround creates dangerous new delays in counterinsurgency efforts, which urgently need to be strengthened and clarified, according to an authoritative Atlantic Council report issued last week by Gen. James L. Jones, the retired NATO commander.
The incident will further undermine the international community's dwindling confidence in Karzai, who was installed with U.S. support after the 2001 invasion. Zalmay Khalilzad, the current U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was a key figure in that political process. Khalilzad's closeness to Karzai may explain why he offered little support to Ashdown in contacts at the United Nations while other U.S. officials were pushing hard to save the nomination, according to administration reports.
Khalilzad came under White House fire last week for sitting down beside the Iranian foreign minister at a Davos panel instead of perhaps driving a stake through that worthy's heart. The State Department learned of this outrage only when referred to film appearing on YouTube. That's farce. Free-lancing on the Ashdown appointment was tragedy.
Pakistan's Musharraf was also basking in the Davos glow as part of an interminable tour of Europe even while extremists extended their control in Pakistan's badlands. He is finding it inconvenient now to be seen as America's collaborator in the war on global terrorism, forbidding Washington to pursue that fight kinetically in the big stretches of Pakistan that provide sanctuary for al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
The United States still has a chance to save Karzai and Musharraf from the extremists. Washington has no chance, however, of saving them from themselves. That task belongs to them.
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Wolesi Jirga concludes debate on ministers' role
By Makia Monir - Mar 2, 2008 - 17:52
KABUL (PAN): Concluding its two-day debate on the role and performances of ministers a number of parliamentarians in Wolesi Jirga were critical of the performance of some of the cabinet ministers to minimize people's problems.
For the second successive day on Sunday ministers of agriculture, urban development, deputy of health ministry, director of Afghan National Disaster Management Authority (ANDMA), defence ministry spokesman and representative of Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS) were summoned to answer MPs questions about their preparedness to provide relief to the affected people during the recent cold wave in the country.
MPs criticized the performances of the emergency committee and argued that they failed to provide necessary aid to affected people.
Aziz Ahmad Nadim, member of economic commission of the lower house said the commission discussed the issues of price hike and winter with ministries of economic, commerce, finance and agriculture four months back, they promised to take appropriate measures, but nothing happened.
He added the ministers of agriculture and commerce did nothing in this regard, even the parliament and international community confirm this claim.
Nadim said: "We will continue replacing the ministers until we find someone who can serve the country"
Alam Gul Kochi, another MP said the nation knows that all ministers performed very poorly and cheated the nation. He added agriculture minister never showed up for nomads' commission of the lower house, when he was asked.
Jamil Karzai, MP from Kabul said the 25 ministers of the cabinet are unable to work for Kabul city how can they reach to provinces?
After two days discussion the lower house decided a commission should be set to provide aid to affected people.
Mirwais Yasini, first deputy of the lower house said a commission from representatives of the affected provinces and economic commission of the lower house will be established and will recommend their suggestions to emergency committee.
He added the commission will also work on a mechanism which will explain how the aid should be distributed and propositioned to provinces.
Yasini said the commission will be established on Sunday.
Session started with chaos as the deputy health minister Nadera Hayat asked MPs to quiet during members address: "I request you not to whisper or make fun of cabinet members when they are delivering speech"
These words raged the MPs and asked her to leave the house, finally she left the house.
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Afghanistan of today is not Afghanistan of 2001
By Lalit K Jha - Jan 31, 2008 - 10:43
NEW YORK (PAN): Refraining from making any comment on a latest report which said that Afghanistan is on the verge of becoming a failed state, the United States Wednesday said that Afghanistan of today is not the one which was in 2001. During these years a lot of progress has been made.
There are real challenges in Afghanistan. Were in a fight. Were in a fight in Afghanistan, with the Afghans, against violent extremists. There are a lot of different challenges that we have on the military side and on the civilian side, but I can tell you that Afghanistan of today is not the Afghanistan of 2001, the State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack told reporters in Washington.
Responding to question on the latest report on Afghanistan by Tom Pickering and General Jones, McCormack said: Afghanistan of the years 1999 and 2000, 2001, was a failed state. We know what a failed state looks like. It was Afghanistan under the Taliban. The while Afghanistan of today has a variety of different challenges, it is not Afghanistan of 2001.
Asserting that the country has made a lot of progress in the post-Taliban era, McCormack said: While it is a sovereign country, its a proud country, they need the international communitys assistance. And were ready to continue our assistance. Its important for the future of the Afghan people, its important for the region, and its important for global security that we succeed both on the security front but also on the front of civilian reconstruction.
Observing that its an ongoing fight on the military side and on the civilian side, he said theres nothing to say that if the international community does not help the Afghans succeed, that they will not continue to make progress. As a matter of fact, if the international community doesnt help them, they probably wont continue to make progress. I think its very likely they wont. But as I said, the Afghanistan of today is not the Afghanistan of 2001, he said.
Stating that the international community is in the process of helping the Afghans construct an infrastructure, he said: We are helping the Afghans create institutions that are recognizable parts of a thriving, functioning
democracy. Were trying to help them overcome decades, if not more, of violence and fighting and fractiousness along ethnic and religious lines.
So Afghanistan has a ways to go, but theyve come a long way, he said.
McCormack said Afghanistan is not a country that is endowed with an abundance of natural resources. They dont have oil and they dont have, you know, the kind of fertile farming ground that you see between the Tigris and Euphrates in Iraq. They have a gritty, tough, determined people. They have been blessed with that certainly. But they didnt its not a country that came along with a lot of those kinds of natural resources, he said.
Conceding that there the country is facing a number of challenges, he said this does not mean that the international community would abandon them in midstream. As a matter of fact, all it does is underscore the fact that we need to continue to help them, that we need to rally the support of the international community in helping the Afghan people build a different kind of nation, a different kind of state, he said.
Reiterating that Afghans future fate has a direct bearing on global economy, McCormack said there are violent extremists who are fighting in Afghanistan, fighting along that border area with Pakistan, who want to turn the clock back on the progress that has been made in Afghanistan. They want to turn the clock back on the progress that's been made in Pakistan.
As a baseline, I think there is an understanding in NATO that what happens in Afghanistan does affect their security at home. It does affect the security in that region. It does affect security globally, he said.
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Pak paramilitary force to get $75m for counter-terrorism training
By Pajhwok Correspondent - Mar 2, 2008 - 18:40
NEW YORK (PAN): The revised Defense Authorisation Bill signed into law by President George W Bush has a $75 million provision for the Pakistan Frontier Corps (FC) to fight Taliban and al-Qaeda on the Pak-Afghan border.
The funds would be used to train and equip the paramilitary force to better conduct counter-terrorist operations along the frontier, the new defence budget said. A revised version of the original bill passed by the Congress last month had been vetoed by Bush.
Among other things, the bill requires Defence Secretary Robert Gates to submit a report on enhancing security and stability in the region along the border. It also requires notification of reimbursements to Pakistan for logistical, military or other support provided for US military operations.
The president will coordinate with other US agencies to produce a comprehensive plan that outlines the strategic direction of American activities in Afghanistan including concrete performance indicators and measures of progress.
The bill also approves the creation of the office of a Special Inspector for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) to provide oversight of Defence Department rebuilding funds.
Gates will have to submit a detailed plan for sustaining the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), including a long-term strategy and budget, a mechanism for tracking funding and actions to ensure Afghan institutions support the ANSF.
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