 |
||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Serving you since 1998 | ||||||||||||
|
|
Afghan row may make NATO two-tiered alliance
By Kristin Roberts
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - NATO risks a split between countries that are willing to fight and those that are not because some European states refuse to send more troops to Afghanistan, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Wednesday.
NATO defence ministers meet on Afghanistan after public spat
Wed Feb 6, 12:16 AM ET
BRUSSELS (AFP) - NATO defence ministers will hope to put recent public displays of disunity behind them when they meet in Vilnius on Thursday, following open US criticism of its allies' efforts in Afghanistan.
'Real test' for NATO in Afghanistan: Rice
by Lachlan Carmichael
LONDON (AFP) - NATO is facing a "real test" to defeat militants in Afghanistan but is making progress and working to deny them a new safe haven in neighboring Pakistan, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday.
Rice Tries to Convince Europe on Afghanistan
By HELENE COOPER and NICHOLAS KULISH The New York Times February 7, 2008
LONDON — With criticism of the war in Afghanistan increasing on both sides of the Atlantic, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday that European governments needed to convince their people that sending troops
US Secretary of State admits Afghanistan problems during UK visit
by Lachlan Carmichael Wed Feb 6, 3:20 AM ET
LONDON (AFP) - Top diplomat Condoleezza Rice Wednesday played down fears that Afghanistan could become a lost cause but admitted the United States was in a "bumpy" bid to press more allies into sharing the burden there.
The President Who Would Be King
By AMIN SAIKAL and WILLIAM MALEY February 6, 2008 The New York Times Op-Ed Contributors
Canberra, Australia
AFGHANISTAN is spiraling downward. Terrorist strikes in Kabul and an assassination campaign against local officials, schoolteachers and religious figures in the southern provinces have illustrated the reach of the Taliban and the vulnerability of the government.
CHARLIE WILSON’S WHOPPERS
By Arthur Kent Policy Options, January 2008 Institute for Research on Public Policy
So it’s off to the movies, and why not? Friends have emailed to say: “you must see Charlie Wilson’s War – you’re in it!”
Germany to send more troops to Afghanistan
BERLIN, Feb. 6 (Xinhua) -- Germany has decided to send a combat unit to northern Afghanistan at the request of NATO, German Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung said Wednesday.
Afghanistan: Government raps emergency response commission as winter death toll rises
KABUL, 6 February 2008 (IRIN) - The lower house of the Afghan National Assembly has issued a 10-day ultimatum to the national emergency response commission to boost and expand humanitarian assistance to thousands
Afghan opium output may drop slightly in 2008: UN
by Bronwen Roberts
KABUL (AFP) - Afghanistan's vast and lucrative opium production may drop slightly this year from a record spike, but world-high cannabis output is likely to rise, a United Nations survey released Wednesday said.
US envoy voices cautious optimism about Afghan drug fight
Wed Feb 6, 9:40 AM ET
TOKYO (AFP) - A US official voiced cautious optimism Wednesday about progress in the fight in Afghanistan against drugs, which he warned were undermining the war-torn country's reconstruction.
UN: Afghan rebels growing more opium
By JOSEPH COLEMAN, Associated Press Writer Wed Feb 6, 6:23 AM ET
TOKYO - Opium cultivation in rebel-controlled areas in southern and southwestern Afghanistan is expected to grow this year, fueling the Taliban insurgency with more drug money, a U.N. report said Wednesday.
INTERVIEW-UK aid effort in Afghanistan "dysfunctional"
By Luke Baker
LONDON, Feb 6 (Reuters) - Britain's aid efforts in Afghanistan are failing, undermining military gains and fuelling the Taliban insurgency, a think-tank with long experience in the country said on Wednesday.
U.S. military identifies detained Taliban commander in Afghanistan
KABUL, Feb. 6 (Xinhua) -- A Taliban fighter detained by the U.S.-led Coalition forces early last month has been identified as a local commander of militants in south Afghanistan, a statement released by the Coalition here on Wednesday said.
General says Afghan insurgency steady
By PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press Writer Wed Feb 6, 11:40 AM ET
WASHINGTON - The top U.S. general in Afghanistan on Wednesday challenged the widely held view that the insurgency there is worsening, saying he thinks "it's probably stayed about the same."
Canada's Conservatives ready to risk election over Afghanistan
by Michel Comte
OTTAWA (AFP) - Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper is prepared to head to the polls if Canada's cleaved Parliament votes next month against prolonging its Afghanistan combat mission, officials said Wednesday.
Canada PM tells Sarkozy it may pull out of Afghanistan
Wed Feb 6, 1:52 AM ET
OTTAWA (AFP) - Prime Minister Stephen Harper has told French President Nicolas Sarkozy that Canada will withdraw its troops from Afghanistan unless NATO sends reinforcements, his spokeswoman said.
Coalition soldier killed in Afghanistan
Wed Feb 6, 1:29 AM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan - A roadside bomb hit a U.S.-led coalition vehicle in volatile Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, killing one soldier and wounding two others.
Afghan Official Accused of Pecking With Impunity
By Al Kamen Wednesday, The Washington Post February 6, 2008; A17
Afghan President Hamid Karzai says he's not intervening for now in the controversial case of Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, 23, a reporter and journalism student who was sentenced to death by a three-judge panel two weeks ago
Afghanistan: Prosecutor Suggests 'Some People' Cannot Be Tried
By Ron Synovitz Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty February 6, 2008
Afghanistan's attorney-general says criminal charges are pending against Abdul Rashid Dostum -- a senior military adviser to the president and a powerful ethnic Uzbek militia commander who allegedly abducted his former
Northern Warlord Flexes His Muscles
Personal feud becomes a test of the government’s ability and resolve to rein in powerful men with private armies.
Institute for War & Peace Reporting By Hafizullah Gardesh and Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi in Kabul (ARR No. 282, 06-Feb-08)
Even for General Abdul Rashid Dostum, it was an unusual sight. The burly former militia commander, atop his Kabul home, openly defied the police cordons surrounding him. Protected by his private militia and backed by
Intrigue takes Afghanistan to the brink
By M K Bhadrakumar Asia Times Online / February 6, 2008
The people in the Amu Darya region in northern Afghanistan would vouchsafe that General Rashid Dostum's behavior can be depended on as an unfailing barometer of their country's political climate. The tough Uzbek leader
Pakistani Taliban declare truce, military denies it
Wed Feb 6, 9:29 AM ET
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Taliban militants fighting Pakistani troops near the Afghan border declared a ceasefire on Wednesday but a military spokesman said that while fighting had died down no truce had been agreed.
Afghan couple convicted of immigration fraud
By Lalit K Jha - Jun 2, 2008 - 10:48
NEW YORK (PAN): An Afghan couple residing in Maryland has been sentenced to nearly two years of imprisonment for an alleged immigration fraud in the United States, a district attorney said.
Afghan row may make NATO two-tiered alliance
By Kristin Roberts
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - NATO risks a split between countries that are willing to fight and those that are not because some European states refuse to send more troops to Afghanistan, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Wednesday.
"I worry a great deal about the alliance evolving into a two-tiered alliance in which you have some allies willing to fight and die to protect people's security and others who are not," the Pentagon chief said.
"And I think that it puts a cloud over the future of the alliance if this is to endure and perhaps even get worse," he told a congressional committee.
The United States is trying to persuade its allies to do more fighting in Afghanistan, where attacks by Taliban and al Qaeda fighters have soared in the last two years.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reinforced the message on a visit to London, where she noted that only a small number of NATO nations had troops in the most dangerous areas. "We believe very strongly that there ought to be a sharing of that burden throughout the (NATO) alliance," she said.
Rice said governments needed to be truthful with their people and tell them what was needed to fight Islamist Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan, which re-emerged as a dangerous force after being ousted from power by the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.
"Our populations need to understand that this is not a peacekeeping mission. It's a counter-insurgency fight," Rice told a news conference with British Foreign Secretary David Miliband.
Most of the fighting against the Taliban in the south of the country is shouldered by Canada, Britain, the United States and the Netherlands. They all want others to contribute more.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told parliament on Wednesday he wanted NATO allies at a summit in Bucharest in April to commit to a fair sharing of the task.
SHARING THE AFGHAN BURDEN
"We have 15 percent of the troops in Afghanistan ... We need a proper burden sharing not only in terms of personnel but also in terms of helicopters and other equipment," he said.
Britain announced a rotation of its troops in Afghanistan but said their numbers -- around 7,700 -- would remain about the same. Brown said Britain planned to send new helicopters and other equipment in the next few months.
U.S. officials have criticized Germany for its unwillingness to send trainers into Afghanistan's restive south. Under its parliamentary mandate Germany can send only 3,500 soldiers to the less dangerous north as part of the 42,000-strong NATO mission.
Berlin again rejected mounting pressure on Wednesday to put its troops in the south and said it would send additional forces only to the north.
Gates, who will attend a NATO defense ministers meeting in Lithuania this week followed by a security conference in Munich, said he would again press NATO members on the this. "I ... once again will become a nag on the issue," he said.
Rice's London visit was partly to smooth ruffled feathers over a recent remark by Gates in which he questioned the preparedness of some NATO members for counter-insurgency in southern Afghanistan.
The United States has 29,000 troops in Afghanistan, about half of them attached to NATO's 40,000-strong force. Washington plans to send another 3,200 Marines to the war zone in March and April.
NATO's top commander in Afghanistan said on Wednesday his force would be "minimalist" even if he received more troops. "There's no question that it's an under-resourced force," U.S. Army Gen. Dan McNeill told reporters at the Pentagon.
Under U.S. counter-insurgency doctrine, McNeill said, there should be some 400,000 security personnel -- foreign and Afghan -- to fight the Taliban and other insurgents.
McNeill said he did not expect NATO to provide anything like the 400,000 figure but said the West had to step up efforts to train Afghan forces, especially the police.
Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak backed the call for more foreign troops. "For the transitional period there is a requirement for more troops," he said on a visit to Estonia. "The cause was that the threat is much higher than anticipated in 2001," he said.
The United Nations said on Wednesday that Afghanistan, the world's biggest opium producer, is set for another bumper crop this year, giving a windfall for the Taliban who tax farmers.
(Additional reporting by Andrew Gray in Washington, Sue Pleming in London and David Mardiste in Tallinn; Editing by David Storey)
Back to Top
Back to Top
NATO defence ministers meet on Afghanistan after public spat
Wed Feb 6, 12:16 AM ET
BRUSSELS (AFP) - NATO defence ministers will hope to put recent public displays of disunity behind them when they meet in Vilnius on Thursday, following open US criticism of its allies' efforts in Afghanistan.
"This is a critical week for the alliance," said Christopher Langton of the International Institute for Strategic Studies on Tuesday.
"There is a big question over countries' ability to sustain operations for what is now coming to a seventh year, and that is a weakness in NATO which perhaps it had not foreseen when it set out on this venture," he said.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates stoked the troop numbers row last month when he unleashed rare public criticism of the NATO forces deployed in southern Afghanistan, saying "most of the European forces, NATO forces, are not trained in counter-insurgency."
The very public attack shocked the countries engaged there even if he didn't name them; the very US-friendly Britain, Canada and Denmark.
Diplomats at the NATO headquarters in Brussels attributed the outburst in print to the need for Gates to justify the announcement that over 3,000 additional US troops would be sent to Afghanistan, with 2,200 to be deployed in the southern Helmand province, a Taliban stronghold.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has repeatedly warned that Ottawa will pull its 2,500 soldiers out of restive southern Afghanistan if it does not get reinforcements from other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation nations.
However European allies whose forces are already stretched by engagements elsewhere -- including Iraq, the Balkans and Africa -- say they don't have much more to give.
Last week US Defense Secretary Gates upped the ante by writing letters to all the NATO allies to ask for troops and equipment, especially helicopters, for Afghanistan.
The message was aimed particularly at well-resourced European nations Germany, France, Italy and Spain with troops stationed in the capital Kabul or in the north and west of the country where they aren't greatly exposed to Taliban attacks.
A senior US official at NATO said Tuesday that the real problem was "that the letter hit the press".
Washington has also sent Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice out to chivvy European allies.
She headed to London on Tuesday days after British International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander joined the call for its NATO allies to start pulling more weight.
The focus is to win hearts and minds, and troop reinforcements, ahead of a NATO summit in Bucharest on April 2-4.
So far the results have been mixed.
While France deemed Gates' letter "courteous", German Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung responded with a "direct and stern" letter himself, according to newspaper reports.
The US has denied the letter they sent to Germany was particularly harsh, while admitting the message was "in some cases... more specific."
Jung on Friday ruled out stationing soldiers in southern Afghanistan, saying the German mandate did not allow for sending troops into the turbulent region.
NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer on Sunday joined the call for Germany to send more troops to Afghanistan.
However a Scheffer spokesman said the secretary general wants an end to the "very public calls" for more troops and hopes to bring the force generation process back behind closed doors during the two-day meeting in Lithuania.
While many others would also like to see the troop calls made discreetly, successive bouts of mainly US calls have had their effect.
In less than two years the NATO figures have gone from 16,000 to 42,000, including around 18,000 US troops and 7,000 British.
There are another 20,000 with the US-led Coalition.
Eleven nations have promised reinforcements or materiel in recent months.
Most recently Belgium announced Friday it would send four fighter jets and an extra 140 soldiers to Afghanistan this year, as the United States ratcheted up pressure on its NATO allies for reinforcements.
The perils that troops from anywhere face in Afghanistan was highlighted again on Tuesday when a soldier from the US-led coalition was killed by a mine in Helmand.
The death brought to 14 the number of foreign soldiers killed since the start of the year in Afghanistan, with 218 killed last year, according to an AFP toll.
Back to Top
Back to Top
'Real test' for NATO in Afghanistan: Rice
by Lachlan Carmichael
LONDON (AFP) - NATO is facing a "real test" to defeat militants in Afghanistan but is making progress and working to deny them a new safe haven in neighboring Pakistan, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday.
Rice and her British counterparts stepped up calls for NATO allies to provide more combat troops, underlining the urgency of the task which is not a peacekeeping mission but a full-blown counter-insurgency battle.
"The alliance is facing a real test here and it is a test of the alliance's strength," Rice told reporters at a joint press conference with British Foreign Secretary David Miliband.
"But we shouldn't underestimate the transformation that NATO itself has gone through in really learning how to fight this fight," she told reporters.
The talks come the week after Germany rebuffed US calls for more troops in the battle-scarred south, the scene of most of the fighting against the Islamist Taliban militia, in a tiff played out publically.
Commanders in Afghanistan have been calling for around 7,500 extra troops. The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) comprises some 42,000 troops from 39 countries.
The United States and Britain are the biggest contributors and the two countries are lobbying hard ahead of NATO defence and foreign ministers' meetings in the next few weeks climaxing in a summit in Bucharest in April.
Rice, who also held talks with Prime Minister Gordon Brown, said the allies were engaged in "a different fight than the one NATO was structured to do", conceding: "It has taken some time".
Brown's office said they had "agreed on the need for greater burden sharing among NATO allies and discussed the ways in which we could build the international coalition's contribution in the run up to the April NATO summit."
Rice said NATO's support for the pro-Western government of President Hamid Karzai also amounted to rebuilding the country and its institutions as well as fighting the drug trade and corruption.
But she appeared to imply NATO countries may not be fully behind the mission in Afghanistan because their people failed to understand the underlying problem.
"Our populations need to understand this is not a peacekeeping mission. This is a counter-insurgency problem and that's different," she said.
Rice also said the United States and NATO were working closely with Pakistan to deny the Taliban and Al-Qaeda the "kind of territorial base they once had" in Afghanistan to launch the September 11, 2001 attacks.
"We're working with Pakistan in what has essentially been an ungoverned area for its entire existence. The Pakistani army has tough work to do there," Rice said, referring to tribal areas along its northern border with Afghanistan.
In Washington US Defense Secretary Robert Gates admitted that NATO allies' unwillingness to contribute forces to Afghanistan has put a cloud over the future of the alliance.
"I worry a great deal about the alliance evolving into a two-tiered alliance, in which you have some allies willing to fight and die to protect peoples' security, and others who are not," he said.
"And I think that it puts a cloud over the future of the alliance, if this is to endure and perhaps even get worse," he said.
Protestors staged a demonstration outside Downing Street against the talks with Rice.
"Condoleezza Rice is attempting to shore up the collapsing US-led occupation of Afghanistan and the disaster that is Iraq," said a spokesman for the Stop The War Coalition.
"We are making it clear to Miss Rice that the British people want an end to the 'special relationship' with the US and an end to British participation in Bush's wars. She is not welcome in this country."
Back to Top
Back to Top
Rice Tries to Convince Europe on Afghanistan
By HELENE COOPER and NICHOLAS KULISH The New York Times February 7, 2008
LONDON — With criticism of the war in Afghanistan increasing on both sides of the Atlantic, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday that European governments needed to convince their people that sending troops to Afghanistan — and keeping them there — should remain a priority for NATO.
“I do think the alliance is facing a test here,” Ms. Rice said during a visit to London. “Populations have to understand that this is not just a peacekeeping fight.”
But underscoring the challenge for the United States, which wants Europe to significantly increase its troop strength in Afghanistan, Germany announced Wednesday that it would send only enough additional troops to replace a Norwegian contingent of about 250. United States diplomats consider the number paltry.
The German defense minister, Franz Josef Jung, rejected a sharply worded letter last week from his United States counterpart, Robert M. Gates, asking that Germany send soldiers and helicopters to southern Afghanistan, where the Taliban insurgency has increased in ferocity and the heaviest fighting has taken place. Instead, Mr. Jung said on Wednesday that it would deploy only a rapid reaction force in northern Afghanistan in the summer to replace the Norwegians.
“An expansion into the south is out of the question,” Reinhold Robbe, armed forces commissioner for the lower house of Parliament, said on German television. “That is the consensus in all of the parties.”
As the Taliban insurgency has gathered steam, Bush administration officials have been trying to prod reluctant European allies to send more troops to bolster the United States contingent of almost 30,000. The Pentagon recently announced that it would send 3,200 more marines to Afghanistan.
Germany has come under perhaps the greatest pressure to increase its commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s force in Afghanistan. It has roughly 3,200 troops there, making it the third-largest contributor after the United States and Britain.
“Partners in an alliance have to also understand the domestic debates in a partner country like Germany,” said Peter Schmidt, a security analyst at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin. “The Americans quite often show up in Europe and the president tells us, ‘Look I’ll never get that through Congress.’ Something similar is happening here.”
Bush administration officials have been on the defensive about Afghanistan since a critical report released last week by a group whose co-chairman was Gen. James L. Jones, a former NATO supreme commander. The report concluded, “The U.S. and the international community have tried to win the struggle in Afghanistan with too few military forces and insufficient economic aid, and without a clear and consistent comprehensive strategy to fill the power vacuum outside Kabul and to counter the combined challenges of reconstituted Taliban and Al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan.”
A United Nations report this week said that opium production, which officials believe has helped to finance the Taliban and Al Qaeda, had increased. And on Tuesday, the director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, told a Senate panel that Al Qaeda was gaining in strength from its refuge in Pakistan and was steadily improving its ability to recruit, train and position operatives capable of launching attacks inside the United States.
Ms. Rice, appearing in a joint news conference with her British counterpart, David Miliband, after meetings in London, said the Taliban and Qaeda were increasing their offensives against civilian targets because they had so far failed in their campaigns against NATO and the United States military.
“It doesn’t take much courage to kidnap a teacher or take over a school,” she said.
But Mr. Miliband signaled the growing frustration felt in Europe over the Afghan government’s inability, so far, to confront the Taliban, or to crack down on opium production. He stressed the need for a “joint effort” between NATO and the Afghan government, and called for “mutual responsibility.”
And he said that Britain had no plans to add troops to its force in Afghanistan. “We’re not there to create a colony,” he said.
Helene Cooper reported from London and Nicholas Kulish from Berlin.
Back to Top
Back to Top
US Secretary of State admits Afghanistan problems during UK visit
by Lachlan Carmichael Wed Feb 6, 3:20 AM ET
LONDON (AFP) - Top diplomat Condoleezza Rice Wednesday played down fears that Afghanistan could become a lost cause but admitted the United States was in a "bumpy" bid to press more allies into sharing the burden there.
The US secretary of state arrived in London for high-level talks with her close British allies about their common drive to draft more NATO forces into crushing a resurgent Taliban in southern Afghanistan.
The talks were also part of developing a longer-term strategy.
Alluding to ruffled feathers within the alliance, Rice said she hoped the need to "tell the truth" about mission needs would not be taken as a "desire to denigrate" contributions some allies have made.
She did not name the allies, but Germany last week rejected US appeals for sending combat troops to the south and barely disguised its irritation with the reportedly "stern" way they were made.
"We have made no secret about it that there are certain allies that are in much more dangerous parts of the country," Rice told reporters aboard the plane from Washington to London.
"And we believe very strongly there ought to be a sharing of that burden throughout the alliance," she said.
Washington has already publicly praised countries like Britain, Canada, Denmark and the Netherlands as well as non-NATO member Australia for taking on dangerous missions in Afghanistan.
Her talks here with Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Foreign Secretary David Miliband precede meetings with NATO defense and foreign ministers over the next few weeks that will culminate in an allied summit in Bucharest in April.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates will discuss the situation in the south with his counterparts in Vilnius at the end of the week, she added.
Rice said the summit would tackle "an assessment" for the next several years that she hopes will pave the way for Afghan security forces to hold ground captured from insurgents as well as to break militant links with the drug trade.
"That's a reason to intensify our discussions about Afghanistan and a reason to have an opportunity to meet face to face with the Brits," said the top US diplomat.
Rice said it was "an extraordinary fact" that a traditional military alliance that was forged decades ago during the Cold War in Europe had agreed to take on a complex insurgency in central Asia.
But she admitted the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation was still grappling with the challenge.
"So it's bumpy. There's a lot of maturing that the alliance is having to do to do this," she said.
The top US diplomat also minimised fears aired in Washington and London in the last week that NATO may not defeat the Taliban -- more than six years after the Islamist movement and their Al-Qaeda allies were ousted from Afghanistan.
When asked about new studies that Afghanistan could become a "failed state" that could again harbour a global Islamist threat, she shook her head saying: "I think the Afghan effort is moving forward. There are certainly challenges."
She also played down the threat from the Taliban.
"It continues to have a very strong insurgency that, while I don't think it's a strategic threat to the government, it's a continued threat to the population's security," she said.
Rice said there was still a desire for an international figure to coordinate efforts in Afghanistan after senior British diplomat Paddy Ashdown withdrew his bid for the job, citing objections from the Afghan government.
She said President Hamid Karzai himself had long supported such a figure, which she said would most likely be a European and not an American.
The talks here will also touch on Iran, Iraq and Kosovo.
Back to Top
Back to Top
The President Who Would Be King
By AMIN SAIKAL and WILLIAM MALEY February 6, 2008 The New York Times Op-Ed Contributors
Canberra, Australia
AFGHANISTAN is spiraling downward. Terrorist strikes in Kabul and an assassination campaign against local officials, schoolteachers and religious figures in the southern provinces have illustrated the reach of the Taliban and the vulnerability of the government.
The common reaction of the United States and Afghanistan’s other foreign backers has been to call for more international troops and to reaffirm their commitment to the government of President Hamid Karzai. But this approach has done little to alter the situation, because the root causes of Afghanistan’s deepest ills lie elsewhere.
Perhaps the biggest problem is that Afghanistan’s 2004 Constitution is inappropriate and ineffective. The strong presidential system it embodies has not served the country well.
At the time, many historians and constitutional scholars warned that such a system wouldn’t work in a war-torn state with so many tribal and ethnic divisions. Presidential systems typically produce many disgruntled losers intent on challenging or undermining the victor. In addition, they can also put too much formal power in the hands of the winner, leading to personalized politics in which lesser politicians fight viciously over access to the president.
Yet, paradoxically, the actual powers of the president are often less than they appear on paper, while his responsibilities are heavy and the expectations that citizens have of him are unrealistic. It is all too easy to create a job that no one could do adequately.
This is precisely what has happened to President Karzai. A decent and incorruptible man, he has nonetheless grown increasingly isolated from the public. His position has been undermined by associates in the executive branch who lack his personal qualities, and by the allocation of ministries to various factions as political prizes.
The result is a corrupt and dysfunctional government in which senior positions are filled not on the basis of merit but by family, tribal, ethnic and factional connections. The president and his key advisers increasingly attract the blame for all the failures of Afghanistan’s transition; the presidential system is cracking under the weight of the burdens it is expected to carry.
Afghanistan does have a two-chamber Parliament, and although it is far from ideal, it has provided a venue for a range of voices to be heard. Unfortunately, the executive branch has seen no compelling reason to coordinate its functions with the legislative. The relationship is so tense that President Karzai and Muhammad Yunus Qanooni, the speaker of the lower house (the Wolesi Jirga), haven’t been on speaking terms for the last six months.
Given its history of weak state structures in ever-changing relationships with tight-knit tribal and ethnic societies, Afghanistan would be far better served by a more inclusive parliamentary system of government. This would mean a ceremonial rather than an executive president, a prime minister and other cabinet members drawn from the upper and lower houses of Parliament, and stronger local and regional governments that would make ordinary Afghans feel connected to the political system.
Such a decentralized system would ensure that the government had a working parliamentary majority that could hold the executive branch accountable. At present, Mr. Karzai really answers to a fractious cluster of foreign donors, not to elected Afghan legislators, a situation that has made the Afghan public understandably skeptical of the democratic experiment.
A number of President Karzai’s political rivals have argued in favor of a parliamentary system, and for this reason alone, it seems, his supporters have spurned the idea. This is a pity: constitutional questions of this sort go far beyond the turmoil of day-to-day politics, and deserve measured and thoughtful responses.
In Afghan tradition, the proper forum for considering changes of this scope is the Loya Jirga, or grand assembly. It was the 2003 Loya Jirga that finally established the present constitutional arrangements. There is now a need for another grand assembly to repair them. This might cost Mr. Karzai his job, but it could also save his country.
Amin Saikal is the director of the Center for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University and the author of “Modern Afghanistan.” William Maley is the director of the Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy at the university and the author of “Rescuing Afghanistan.”
Back to Top
Back to Top
CHARLIE WILSON’S WHOPPERS
By Arthur Kent Policy Options, January 2008 Institute for Research on Public Policy
So it’s off to the movies, and why not? Friends have emailed to say: “you must see Charlie Wilson’s War – you’re in it!”
Strange, I don’t recall contributing as much as a cameo to a $75 million Hollywood movie. On the way to the multiplex, I have to wonder: did I hold my own with Tom Hanks and Philip Seymour Hoffman? Was I in the moment with Julia Roberts? How did I perform under Mike Nichols direction, and did I lift Aaron Sorkin’s dialogue off the script?
But no, it turns out to be that other persona - the real one. That pre-recorded, archived, 1980’s me; that camera-packing reporter. The guy who tramped across Afghanistan, filming the exploits of the mujahideen guerrillas, and regularly provided bombardment fodder for the Soviet Union’s occupation forces.
No Oscar hopes, no red carpets – just that old Red Army. Yet there’s my voice-over, about half a minute of it, along with four of my shots, helping to tell the story not long before the closing credits come up – gulp! – without me.
But let’s put aside, for the moment, little things like credit and copyright. The motion picture is based on the book, Charlie Wilson’s War, written by an accomplished CBS reporter named George Crile. I was fortunate enough to meet George and appear in a panel discussion with him in New York when the book was published. His death at the age of 61 was a huge loss not only to his wonderful family, but to our craft, too. And it robs me of the opportunity I’d most dearly like to have right now: shooting the breeze with George, a fellow trooper from the circus of US network news, and debating the merits of Hollywood’s treatment of his book.
I’m certain George would stress, as he did when we met, that Charlie Wilson’s War was not intended to be an all-encompassing account of the Afghan catastrophe. Against that, however, Nichols’ and Hanks’ big-screen treatment sounds the clarion of historical fact. In its profuse publicity and within the film itself, the producers tell audiences that this is a real story, about a real Congressman, Charlie Wilson, who wheedled, massaged and flannelled a significant covert military aid program out of that Sleepy Hollow on the Potomac known as Washington DC.
In selling itself this way, the motion picture has at least a passing obligation to accuracy, however limited the scope of its story. And there’s an exciting opportunity here: to reveal to Americans, with an entertaining drama, how it is that more of their tax dollars were invested in Afghanistan than in any other CIA covert operation to that time, and yet resulted, on September 11th, 2001, in the most outrageous act of blowback the US has experienced – so far.
Sadly, it’s an opportunity the makers of Charlie Wilson’s War fail miserably to grasp. Instead they’ve spent $75 million and 97 minutes to unveil a weird and most unwelcome innovation to the movies – a textual anti-climax. The final frame lights up with Charlie Wilson’s words: “…we fucked up the endgame.”
Which is, of course, where the real Afghan story begins. But the reality and the lessons of blowback are clearly too complicated a tale for Hanks and Nichols, so Charlie Wilson’s War contents itself with a romp through the corridors and bedrooms of American power. Occasionally, Afghanistan gets a look-in. Special effects create menacing renditions of Soviet helicopter gunships, but the Afghan civilian victims in the film’s short, sharp attack scenes don’t come off as anything more than luckless day-players. Are they running from a gunship or the director, shouting at them to get on with it and die so he can cut back to DC?
Morocco’s Atlas mountains are a strong substitute for the valleys of Afghanistan, and the expanse of the refugee camps is impressive. But where are the Afghan faces? Wrapping a few turbans on Moroccan Berbers just doesn’t cut it, and the Keystone Kops-style mujahideen Stinger crews are – unintentionally – a laughing stock of botched detail and performance. On a $75 million budget, couldn’t the production have sent a second unit to Afghanistan, for authentic faces and dress and texture?
The movie is emphatically false in its reference to the CIA’s dealings with Afghanistan’s most accomplished resistance commander, Ahmed Shah Massoud, the “Lion of the Panjshir.” History tells us that Massoud was constantly undercut by the CIA’s middleman in its covert anti-Soviet aid program, the Pakistan military’s Inter-Services Intelligence branch, the ISI. The Pakistanis feared Massoud: a charismatic Afghan nationalist, he stood the best chance of uniting his country – which risked presenting Pakistan with a new regional competitor.
So rather than channelling US aid to Massoud, an ethnic Tajik, the ISI handed over American arms and money to fundamentalist militants from Afghanistan’s majority Pashtun tribes, notably ghouls like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani. Both these men now top America’s list of most wanted Afghan terrorists. Yet under Charlie Wilson’s CIA scheme, they received – in every sense - the Lion’s share of Stingers, other arms and cash.
You wouldn’t know that from watching Mr. Nichols’ movie. Neither Hekmatyar nor Haqqani are mentioned. But when Philip Seymour Hoffman and his CIA sidekicks are depicted in the bowels of their Langley, Virginia headquarters, they conclude that if anyone received Stingers, it should be Ahmed Shah Massoud. (Amid raucous laughter, the spooks transpose an infamous Afghan sexual slight about Pashtun Kandaharis to Massoud’s predominantly Tajik Panshiris. This is not only unforgivably dumb, it will reinforce the view among Tajik Afghans that Washington continues in its prejudice against non-Pashtuns – a conviction borne out by the Bush administration’s stacking of the Karzai regime with corrupt Pashtun stooges.)
Ironically, there’s no stronger proof of the film’s misrepresentation of Massoud than the television news story the producers raided for this correspondent’s voice track and footage. This was a 10-minute piece I wrote and narrated specifically for BBC2’s Newsnight program in 1986. There is only one place the producers of Charlie Wilson’s War could have unearthed a videotape copy of this broadcast: the BBC archives.
In 1986, I trekked across the Hindu Kush to Massoud’s haunts in northern Afghanistan. With camera rolling, I asked him about US military aid. This was the commander’s response, as transcribed from the Newsnight story: “I’ve heard nothing, seen nothing of the Stinger rockets. My personal view and that of the mujahideen, and of all the people of Afghanistan is this. The West always talks, but they don’t take any practical steps to reduce the problems and pains of my people. We hear on the radio about the help that is on the way, but all we end up with is some medical supplies, or very small financial help. It’s negligible. We haven’t seen anything else.”
The man wasn’t kidding. Twice during my stay, we were bombed by low-flying Soviet SU-25 ground attack planes. Massoud’s men defended themselves with one heavy machine-gun, captured from the Russians. The guerrillas emerged unscathed from their soufs or shelters, but eleven civilians were killed in the second raid.
While it’s true that Massoud eventually received a few token Stingers, more than half the estimated 1,000 missiles channelled through the ISI to the mujahideen ended up with Hekmatyar, Haqqani and other extremist commanders. These brigands accounted, too, for most of 300-odd Stingers that went missing after the Soviet withdrawal, forcing the CIA to institute a costly buy-back program – which rewards the thieves by $100,000 or more for each missile. It’s unknown how many Stingers are still out there, whether their expired battery packs can be replaced, or how their sensors and warheads would now perform.
The movie ignores these facts, while triumphantly reeling off a list of statistics. A ticker tape states how many helicopters were shot down in 1987, how many jets and tanks destroyed in ’88. Excuse me, Tom and Mike, but I was there. Reliable numbers were the first victims of the Afghan war. The Russians, the guerrillas, the Pakistanis and Americans – all of them brazenly fiddled the stats. The CIA had no observers on the ground in Afghanistan. Sure the Soviet military bled, but the ISI goosed the mujahideen’s strike ratio to keep American aid flowing.
Charlie Wilson’s War isn’t the first Hollywood picture to choose myth over substance and it won’t be the last. But the callous ease with which these millionaire moviemakers pillage the archives for their fable is a tendency, in Tinseltown, that factual filmmakers should take measures to redress. I know a lot of moviegoers who sat through the credits of Charlie Wilson’s War just to see who recorded the battlefield footage. So who gets screen credit? Networks and news agencies and image archives – an almost indecipherable cluster of logos and bugs and acronyms.
But these gripping sequences aren’t the work of companies, they were filmed by men and women. Some were professional freelancers, others adventurers and daredevils. Many were young Afghans striving to document their country’s resistance to foreign oppression. Nearly all were underpaid and frequently risked their lives. Yet their contribution to the historical record languishes without proper acknowledgement, as the makers of Charlie Wilson’s War so disgracefully demonstrate.
Especially sad is the treatment of our most accomplished colleague, British cameraman Andy Skrzypkowiak. A former British commando, Andy was the crafty shooter who captured those close-quarter shots of the mujahideen ambushing Russian road convoys. His work for ITN and BBC documenting Massoud’s fighters is profoundly admired by his peers. This rugged, driven man gave his life to his art: gunmen loyal to Massoud’s rival, Hekmatyar, captured and killed Andy. His images live on, but here, sadly, they serve mainly the hyper-commercial zeal of the networks and studios, and the suits are evidently too busy counting the cash to give credit where credit is due.
I can hear those execs and their minions now, chiming in with that old Hollywood wheeze: “Well this isn’t a documentary.” But what, exactly, is Charlie Wilson’s War? Take a look at NBC/Universal’s publicity, then the moviemakers’ interviews, and the resulting fusion might best be described as true-life-screwball-comic-saga. Is that what America needs? Or is this just a candy-coloured light show, a parable to pretty up the fog of war?
We can’t help thinking about that closing line, “we fucked up the endgame.” And those numbers the characters throw around, the $5 million covert aid budget that balloons to an even billion by the movie’s end. The point that urgently needs to be made, on screen or in government, is this: Washington’s blowback-prone spending of 20 years ago hasn’t taught us a thing. Today we’re witnessing nothing less than an orgy of mismanagement of American tax dollars in Afghanistan – something we all need to understand as the next 9/11-style outrage draws nearer.
Billions click over like inches on the Bush odometer. The Congressional Budget Office reports that the current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have cost more than $600 billion – Afghanistan about a fifth of that total, or more than 120 times the amount Charlie Wilson purportedly secured against the Soviets. That’s 120 times more with a poorer result: the Taliban and al Qaeda aren’t thinking about going away after six years, they’re coming on strong.
But let’s not fade to black, not just yet. This story’s still unfolding. The West can still succeed in Afghanistan, if we stop lying to ourselves and get down to the honest business of defeating terrorists.
And oh yes, look out for next summer’s blockbuster, The Son of Charlie Wilson’s War: Quest For the Rightful Credits. Coming to a law firm near you…
Arthur Kent has reported regularly from Afghanistan since 1980. He gave evidence before the Canadian government’s recent independent review of Canada’s mission to Afghanistan, and is credited in the panel’s final report as a Domain and Subject Matter Expert.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Germany to send more troops to Afghanistan
BERLIN, Feb. 6 (Xinhua) -- Germany has decided to send a combat unit to northern Afghanistan at the request of NATO, German Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung said Wednesday.
"The 250 German combat soldiers, who will replace a 350-strong Norwegian force as a quick reaction force, would be deployed in the summer," Jung told reporters in Berlin.
"We cannot allow a gap to develop," Jung said, adding that the Norwegian force is leaving Afghanistan in July.
The request by NATO has raised concerns in Germany over a shift of the German military roles in Afghanistan from the previous reconstruction, security and training missions.
Last week, the German government rejected a separate request from the United States to send more troops to more volatile southern Afghanistan.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote a strongly-worded letter to his German counterpart last week, asking for additional combat troops in southern Afghanistan.
The German soldiers should continue to focus on their reconstruction, security and training missions in northern Afghanistan, Jung said.
Some 3,000 German troops are currently deployed in relatively peaceful northern Afghanistan under the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
Back to Top
Back to Top
Afghanistan: Government raps emergency response commission as winter death toll rises
KABUL, 6 February 2008 (IRIN) - The lower house of the Afghan National Assembly has issued a 10-day ultimatum to the national emergency response commission to boost and expand humanitarian assistance to thousands of people affected by extremely cold weather and heavy snow.
"If (government) officials fail to reach and assist affected people within 10 days, we will go for impeachment and a vote of no-confidence," warned Yunus Qanoni, speaker of the house, at the end of a parliamentary debate on disaster management on 4 February.
The ultimatum applies to government bodies sitting on the commission, whose meetings are also attended by UN agencies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).
Latest figures compiled by the Afghanistan National Disasters Management Authority (ANDMA) show that over 650 people - mostly children and the elderly - have died since December as a result of sub-zero temperatures, snow and cold-related respiratory diseases.
Members of parliament (MPs) summoned ministers and other high-ranking officials on 3-4 February for questioning after local media outlets criticised the response to the current winter crisis and spiralling food prices.
Tonnes of food and non-food items have been distributed to vulnerable and disaster-affected families in several provinces, but MPs have been critical of relief operations and demanded that officials "do more and better".
Uncoordinated response
Government bodies, NGOs, UN agencies, NATO-led Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) and many private sector actors have participated in relief activities and distributed relief mostly in an uncoordinated, and often unilateral, manner which, according to ANDMA, has created operational confusion.
"Lack of coordination has been a major problem for us," said Abdul Matin Edrak, head of ANDMA in Kabul. "We call on UN agencies, NGOs and PRTs to ensure greater and improved coordination with the national emergency response commission."
The commission, in collaboration with UN agencies, earmarked US$2,500,000 for winter disaster management operations.
Additionally, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) pre-positioned 22,000 metric tonnes of mixed food items in 18 vulnerable provinces. The plan was to distribute the food through food-for-work and/or food-for-education programmes.
Winter lasts until April in many parts of Afghanistan, and officials say needs have outstripped initial preparations and more aid is needed now.
Institutional weaknesses
ANDMA and other government departments involved in relief activities say their efforts to manage disasters and provide an adequate humanitarian response have been hindered by poor resources, low capacity and unexpectedly heavy snowfall which has blocked access to many rural communities.
"The level of needs is beyond our capacity," Edrak of ANDMA told IRIN, adding that his organisation needed comprehensive capacity-building, technical resources and financial support.
A UN disaster assessment and coordination team that visited Afghanistan in July 2006 made 73 recommendations for an urgent "revitalisation and modernisation" of the country's disaster management capacity. Over 20 months have passed but Afghanistan still has a weak and underdeveloped disaster management body, officials such as Edrak of ANDMA conceded.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Afghan opium output may drop slightly in 2008: UN
by Bronwen Roberts
KABUL (AFP) - Afghanistan's vast and lucrative opium production may drop slightly this year from a record spike, but world-high cannabis output is likely to rise, a United Nations survey released Wednesday said.
Opium from Afghanistan, which makes up more than 90 percent of world supply, will likely earn Taliban insurgents tens of millions of dollars over the year, UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) chief Antonio Maria Costa said.
It will continue to be grown at an "alarming rate" in the insurgency-hit south and southwest, perhaps more than last year when it accounted for 78 percent of total opium cultivation in Afghanistan, said the survey.
But decreases were expected in the north and centre, areas that see less of an insurgency by the Taliban, who were in government until 2001, and where the government has more authority.
"Afghanistan is becoming a divided country, with clear drugs and insurgency battle lines," Costa said in a statement.
A 10 percent "tax" paid by most farmers in the south would generate close to 100 million dollars for insurgents this year and extra money would reach the militants by running heroin labs and through drug exports, Costa said.
Sometimes this tax goes to mullahs and corrupt local security commanders.
The survey found that overall around 192,000 hectares (474,000 acres) of opium poppy, used to make heroin, has been planted in Afghanistan -- most of it in the south.
This was a decrease of about 1,000 hectares from last year, a record high for Afghanistan.
Final output would depend on the success of government eradication drives and agricultural yields, said a statement released with the survey. Output was 8,200 tons last year, up 34 percent on 2006.
"Opium cultivation in Afghanistan may have peaked, but the 2008 amount will still be shockingly high," Costa said.
Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta said Afghanistan was determined to slash poppy production by 25 percent this year.
"Afghanistan believes we have only one choice," Spanta said. "Poppy can destroy us or we destroy the poppy. We don't have any other choice."
"We believe this year we can reduce 25 percent of poppy production in Afghanistan," said Spanta, in Tokyo for a meeting of Afghanistan's donors where the UN survey was released.
The US official in charge of anti-drug policy in Afghanistan, Thomas Schweich, was optimistic the total amount of opium produced here would dip this year with the north and east becoming almost "poppy free".
Schweich told reporters in Tokyo that the world should not underestimate the impact of drugs on the country's development.
"It has a threat to undermine everything else that Japan, the United States and other countries are doing in Afghanistan," he said.
The survey said the sharpest increase in opium cultivation was expected in the arid southwestern province of Nimroz which borders Iran and Pakistan and is a major trafficking area.
"They are turning Nimroz into a blooming desert," said Christina Oguz, the UNODC's representative in Afghanistan in a separate statement.
Drugs traffickers were often able to give farmers more support than the government, she said.
"They provide easy advance credit against future opium harvests. They provide seeds and fertilisers. They bore wells so that poppy can be cultivated in arid areas."
The latest UN survey also found that of 469 villages polled, 18 percent reported growing cannabis, compared with 13 percent last year, and output was likely to grow on last year's 70,000 hectares.
In "addition to supplying 90 percent of world opium, Afghanistan has become the world's biggest supplier of cannabis," Costa said.
The country's internationally backed efforts to cut back opium -- which feeds heroin into Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia -- include persuading farmers to grow other crops, and eradication of opium poppy fields.
Back to Top
Back to Top
US envoy voices cautious optimism about Afghan drug fight
Wed Feb 6, 9:40 AM ET
TOKYO (AFP) - A US official voiced cautious optimism Wednesday about progress in the fight in Afghanistan against drugs, which he warned were undermining the war-torn country's reconstruction.
"We are seeing some positive trend," said Thomas Schweich, the State Department official in charge of anti-drug policy in Afghanistan, after a meeting of the country's donors in Tokyo.
"We think that the total amount of opium produced in Afghanistan will go down a little bit this year," Schweich told reporters. "We think that the north and the east will be almost poppy free this year."
According to a United Nations survey released here, Afghanistan's vast and highly lucrative opium production, which makes up more than 90 percent of world supply, may drop slightly this year from a record spike.
"That's not to say the problem will be resolved this year," he said. "It will take many years to resolve the narcotic problem in Afghanistan. But we are optimistic. We will be seeing progress in the next 12 months."
Afghanistan's internationally backed efforts to cut back on opium include persuading farmers to grow other crops and, more controversially, eradication of poppy fields.
Schweich said the world should not underestimate the impact of the narcotics issue on the country's development.
"It's more than a drug problem. It has a threat to undermine everything else that Japan, the United States and other countries are doing in Afghanistan," he said.
"It undermines the political system. It undermines the legitimate political activities of the government. It undermines economic development activity," he added.
He noted that opium production is used to finance Taliban insurgents.
"We've found that Taliban and people who are fighting troops, particularly in the south of Afghanistan, are relying increasingly on drug money to finance their activities and their violent efforts," he said.
Back to Top
Back to Top
UN: Afghan rebels growing more opium
By JOSEPH COLEMAN, Associated Press Writer Wed Feb 6, 6:23 AM ET
TOKYO - Opium cultivation in rebel-controlled areas in southern and southwestern Afghanistan is expected to grow this year, fueling the Taliban insurgency with more drug money, a U.N. report said Wednesday.
The report, by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, said that Afghanistan, in turmoil since a U.S.-led military operation toppled the repressive Taliban regime in 2001, is also steadily increasing its production of marijuana.
Afghanistan supplies some 90 percent of the world's illicit opium, the main ingredient in heroin, and the Taliban rebels fighting the U.S.-led forces receive up to $100 million from the drug trade, the U.N. estimates.
"Indeed, it is the insurgents, the Taliban, that are deriving an enormous funding for their war by imposing ... a 10 percent tax on production," said Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the U.N. agency.
Afghanistan cultivated a record 477,000 acres of opium in 2007, a 14 percent increase over the previous year. Total production, spurred by unusually high rainfall, increased even further, by 34 percent.
The one bright spot in the report, which was released on the sidelines of an international meeting on Afghanistan in Tokyo, was that the area under cultivation outside of the rebel strongholds was expected to fall.
That meant overall cultivation area would stay even or fall slightly in 2008, the report said, though wet weather could boost the productivity of each poppy plant.
Costa and Gen. Khodaidad, Afghanistan's acting counter-narcotics minister, attributed the stall in overall growth of cultivation to eradication efforts and programs aimed at convincing farmers to switch to legal crops.
"The pre-planting campaign is the best way to fight drugs in Afghanistan because we involved the local people ... and we're encouraging people not to grow poppy," said Khodaidad, who, like many Afghans, uses one name.
The report showed mixed results in the battle against opium in 2007. Poppy cultivation increased in eight provinces and decreased in 26, including 13 that became poppy-free.
For the coming year, 12 of Afghanistan's provinces — mainly in the central and northern regions — are likely to remain poppy-free, and decreases recorded elsewhere in the east, north and northeast "may result in an overall decrease in poppy cultivation in 2008," the report said.
Nearly a third of villages said they had received cash advances from drug traffickers to grow poppy. All respondents in the southern region and 72 percent in the west said they paid taxes to anti-government entities, including mullahs, local commanders and the Taliban, the report said.
The U.N. report suggested "effective prevention campaigns and eradication efforts" could help control spring cultivation and rid more regions of the crop.
The Senlis Council international policy think tank said, however, that the report showed current approaches were ineffective and counterproductive.
"You need short-term economic incentives and solutions, such as trying to make use of the poppy crop for medicinal use, and producing crops with a high market value, such as saffron," said Jorrit Kamminga, Senlis' director of policy research.
However, none of Afghanistan's legal crops — such as maize, rice or cotton — can match the income from opium poppies, estimated at $2,024 per acre, the report said.
In addition to opium, the survey found an increase in cannabis cultivation, with 18 percent of villages planning to grow it in 2008, compared with 13 percent last year, when some 172,970 acres of cannabis crops were cultivated.
Christina Gynna Oguz, a U.N. representative in Afghanistan, said the study suggested officials should offer incentives to farmers in the more secure north not to grow poppy.
But in the south, officials have to face an alliance between drug traffickers, corrupt officials, and insurgents.
"So there you will have to fight all these three elements, meaning that you must have much more emphasis on interdiction and fighting corruption," she said.
Despite the failure to curb poppy production, Zalmai Afzali, the spokesman for the Ministry of Counter Narcotics, said there would be no major change in the strategy to combat the problem, which he blamed on the lack of security.
The report was issued as Tokyo hosted an annual international conference on the country's reconstruction on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The 24-member Joint Coordinating and Monitoring Board monitors the Afghanistan Compact, a five-year blueprint to promote security, the rule of law, human rights and development.
Afghan Foreign Minister Dadfar Spanta said Kabul planned to destroy 123,500 acres of opium cultivations in 2008, and he called for more international help in the fight to convince farmers not to plant poppy.
"We need technical and financial support from the international community to create a new perspective for Afghan farmers," he told reporters after the Compact talks ended.
___
On the Net:
U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, http://www.unodc.org
____
Associated Press writer Veronika Oleksyn in Vienna, Austria, contributed to this report.
Back to Top
Back to Top
INTERVIEW-UK aid effort in Afghanistan "dysfunctional"
By Luke Baker
LONDON, Feb 6 (Reuters) - Britain's aid efforts in Afghanistan are failing, undermining military gains and fuelling the Taliban insurgency, a think-tank with long experience in the country said on Wednesday.
The Senlis Council, an international policy group with offices across Afghanistan, said research in the country's violent southern provinces in recent weeks showed next to no impact from Britain's Department for International Development.
"DFID in Helmand is dysfunctional, totally dysfunctional. Basically it should be removed and its budget should go to the army, which might be better able to deliver assistance," Norine MacDonald, Senlis's president, told Reuters.
Senlis's outspoken comments come at a testing time for Britain, the United States and their NATO allies, with the seven-year struggle to bring security to Afghanistan under intense scrutiny and widely seen as falling backwards.
The Department for International Development (DFID), the government's foreign aid arm, has spent 490 million pounds ($980 mln) on Afghan reconstruction and development since 2001 and is budgeted to spend another $210 mln this year.
But Senlis, which has more than 50 employees conducting research in Afghanistan, said there was little evidence of aid and development projects working and said refugee camps that lacked aid were now hotbeds of Taliban recruitment.
"If DFID think they are making a difference in Lashkar Gah and other towns, they clearly haven't been out to take a look. I haven't seen any signs of DFID aid or development projects," MacDonald said, referring to the main city in Helmand province.
DFID dismissed the criticism, saying it had spent around $70 million in Helmand in the past two years, building roads and bridges, providing sanitation and wells, and supplying funds to boost small business development.
"Our funding has helped the Afghan government to set up almost 500 community development councils, empowering local communities to meet their needs," a spokesman for DFID said.
The organisation said it was aware of 23,000 internally diplaced people in Lashkar Gah and said it was working with the United Nations and other agencies to provide aid to them.
LOOKING FOR SUPPORT
Senlis's criticism comes a time when Western powers our struggling to coordinate their effort to help Afghanistan.
The United States has criticised its European allies saying many of them don't know how to conduct counter-insurgency operations and that others have shown a distinct unwillingness to commit more troops to combat roles in Afghanistan.
Around 42,000 troops under NATO command are currently serving in Afghanistan, a fraction of the force in Iraq.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice flew to Britain on Wednesday for talks with Foreign Secretary David Miliband, ratcheting up efforts to coordinate the Afghanistan operation and see if it can strengthened.
But there are also frictions between NATO and the Afghanistan leadership. Afghan President Hamid Karzai last month rejected the United Nations' choice of Britain's Paddy Ashdown -- a former high representative in Bosnia -- to be "super-envoy" to the country, regarding him as too much of a "viceroy".
Senlis said in its report "Afghanistan - Decision Point 2008" that NATO needed to double its force if it were to have any impact against the Taliban, which it said was fully entrenched throughout southern regions of the country.
MacDonald said Taliban militants, or those allied to the movement, were in control of most roads in Helmand and were running checkpoints dressed in stolen Afghan police uniforms. (Editing by David Clarke and Ralph Boulton)
Back to Top
Back to Top
U.S. military identifies detained Taliban commander in Afghanistan
KABUL, Feb. 6 (Xinhua) -- A Taliban fighter detained by the U.S.-led Coalition forces early last month has been identified as a local commander of militants in south Afghanistan, a statement released by the Coalition here on Wednesday said.
"Coalition forces in Afghanistan have identified a Taliban commander, detained during an operation on Jan. 1 in Zabul province as Shah Noor," the statement said.
Noor, nicknamed as Agha Jan, the statement added, had organized several attacks including roadside bombs against Afghan and international troops serving in Zabul province.
However, Taliban militants fighting Afghan, U.S. and NATO troops have yet to make any comment.
Conflicts and Taliban-related insurgency had left more than 6,000 people dead in 2007, while observers predict more militants attack in 2008 in the post-Taliban Afghanistan.
Back to Top
Back to Top
General says Afghan insurgency steady
By PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press Writer Wed Feb 6, 11:40 AM ET
WASHINGTON - The top U.S. general in Afghanistan on Wednesday challenged the widely held view that the insurgency there is worsening, saying he thinks "it's probably stayed about the same."
Speaking to Pentagon reporters, U.S. Gen. Dan McNeill also said some of the reasons American forces are having better success there than NATO allies is they come with more money to hand out for reconstruction projects and they stay longer — serving controversial 15-month tours of duty that are straining the U.S. Army, compared to six-month tours typically served by other nations.
The comments by McNeill — commander of the 39-nation International Security Assistance Force — comes as the Bush administration reviews its efforts in the six-year-old war, which last year experienced it most violent year yet.
And it follows an independent report last week that said Afghanistan risks sliding into a failed state and becoming the "forgotten war" because of deteriorating international support and a growing violent insurgency being fought by a resurgent Taliban.
Asked if believes the insurgency is growing, McNeill said: "I think that it's probably stayed about the same as what it was."
McNeill said the difference is there are some 8,000 to 9,000 more troops on the battlefield there now, compared to a year ago, and so more people are exposed to more dangers.
"They've stuck their noses in dark holes in which noses that were international have not been stuck before," he added.
"We exposed ourselves to a lot more things than the force has exposed themselves to in times past," McNeill said. "And that more than anything created the increased levels of violence that are so often referred to in the news, and that people fail to realize what caused those. (There) wasn't a resurgent Taliban."
Overall, there are about 43,000 troops in the NATO-led coalition now, compared to a force of about 35,500 when McNeill took command a year ago. Of the current total, 16,000 are U.S. troops. There are an additional 13,000 U.S. troops there training Afghan forces and hunting al-Qaida terrorists.
Alluding to recent comparisons between the ability of U.S. forces to conduct counterinsurgency missions and that of the NATO forces, McNeill said American troops have several advantages — more time on the ground and more money to use freely for reconstruction.
He said that while the longer 15-month tours are a strain on the U.S. force, they give the soldiers and commanders on the ground time to "develop a relationship with the terrain, with the indigenous people and their leadership, and with the enemy. And they have sufficient time to exploit that relationship to their advantage."
Also, he said commanders have fewer bureaucratic roadblocks in their ability to spend money for counterinsurgency battles and the rebuilding needed in the immediate aftermath.
NATO allies, he said, accept that such U.S. operations are more effective.
"That's not a derisive comment about anybody or anything, certainly not members of the alliance," he said. "It's just that, clearly, the U.S. has put the effort into making this piece of it right."
Back to Top
Back to Top
Canada's Conservatives ready to risk election over Afghanistan
by Michel Comte
OTTAWA (AFP) - Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper is prepared to head to the polls if Canada's cleaved Parliament votes next month against prolonging its Afghanistan combat mission, officials said Wednesday.
"The government will introduce a motion in the House based on the Manley Report later this week," said Sandra Buckler, spokeswoman for the prime minister, citing a report on Canada's future role in Afghanistan.
"We expect debate to begin next week," she said.
Local media said the Conservative government is prepared to give notice Thursday of the motion to extend the troop deployment.
If the government were to lose, it would plunge the country into an election, Liberal leader Stephane Dion told reporters. Harper "made that very clear," he said.
The actual vote in Parliament would precede a ballot on the next federal budget, also expected in March, said Dion.
Tuesday evening, the prime minister met with Dion to try to hammer out a common front. Dion has said he would keep troops in Afghanistan, but not in a combat role.
"I suggested to him (Harper) if he was ready to contemplate a non-combat role for Canada, (I would support him). He was not ready for that. On that, we have a big difference," Dion said.
"So under the circumstances, I clearly explained to the prime minister that this mission would require Liberals to make a compromise with respect to our principles -- something that we cannot do."
The New Democrats and the Bloc Quebecois have said they want Canada's soldiers returned home at the end of their current mandate in February 2009.
Last month, a report by a committee led by former Liberal deputy prime minister John Manley urged Canada to keep its 2,500 troops in Afghanistan only if its NATO allies send at least 1,000 additional troops and equipment, including helicopters and drones, to bolster the Canadian force.
Heeding its findings, Harper has said he will bring Canada's troops home in February 2009 unless NATO allies step up their support for the mission.
He has informed US President George W. Bush, Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown, France's President Nicolas Sarkozy and NATO's secretary general of Canada's position.
Dion said he would like Canada to play a larger development role in Afghanistan, such as helping to rebuild the war-torn nation's infrastructure, training its military and police, and offering pointers on good government.
As well, he said Afghanistan still needs help to stem corruption, its illegal poppy trade and the alleged torture of detainees.
The Liberals will present amendments to the Conservatives' motion in these areas for the minority Parliament to consider, Dion said. "We'll do our best to convince other colleagues in the House to come to our position.
"You need to be prepared to fight, but a combat role is when you are proactively seeking engagement with the enemy," he commented.
According to the latest polls, the Conservatives and Liberals are tied in public opinion.
Canada has deployed 2,500 troops in Afghanistan's volatile southern Kandahar province as part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) battling Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters.
Since 2002, 78 Canadian soldiers and a senior diplomat have died in roadside bombings and in melees with the insurgents.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Canada PM tells Sarkozy it may pull out of Afghanistan
Wed Feb 6, 1:52 AM ET
OTTAWA (AFP) - Prime Minister Stephen Harper has told French President Nicolas Sarkozy that Canada will withdraw its troops from Afghanistan unless NATO sends reinforcements, his spokeswoman said.
Speaking by telephone Tuesday, Harper first thanked Sarkozy "for the assistance France has provided to Canadians seeking to leave Chad in the wake of the violence there," spokeswoman Sandra Buckler said in an e-mail.
They then discussed a new report by a committee led by former deputy prime minister John Manley that urged Canada to keep its 2,500 troops in Afghanistan only if its NATO allies send at least 1,000 additional troops and equipment, including helicopters and drones, to bolster the Canadian force.
Heeding its findings, Harper has said he will bring Canada's troops home at the end of their current mandate in February 2009 unless NATO allies step up their support for the mission.
Harper has already informed US President George W. Bush, Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown and NATO's secretary general of Canada's position.
NATO defense ministers will meet this week in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Canada deployed 2,500 troops in Afghanistan's volatile southern Kandahar province as part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) battling Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters.
Since 2002, 78 Canadian soldiers and a senior diplomat have died in roadside bombings and in melees with the insurgents.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Coalition soldier killed in Afghanistan
Wed Feb 6, 1:29 AM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan - A roadside bomb hit a U.S.-led coalition vehicle in volatile Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, killing one soldier and wounding two others.
The coalition troops were conducting a joint security patrol with Afghan forces on Tuesday when their vehicle hit a mine planted on a road along the Helmand River, the coalition said in a statement. It did not give further details of the nationalities of the victims.
Other soldiers in the patrol discovered and neutralized two additional roadside bombs in the area.
Helmand has been the front line of the bloodiest battles between foreign troops and insurgents in the past few years. It is also the world's top opium poppy-producing region.
Afghanistan saw a record level of violence last year. More than 6,500 people — mostly insurgents — were killed in 2007, according to an Associated Press tally of figures from Afghan and Western officials.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Afghan Official Accused of Pecking With Impunity
By Al Kamen Wednesday, The Washington Post February 6, 2008; A17
Afghan President Hamid Karzai says he's not intervening for now in the controversial case of Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, 23, a reporter and journalism student who was sentenced to death by a three-judge panel two weeks ago for blasphemy. Kambakhsh had handed classmates a report, perhaps a satire, he found on the Internet that questioned why Muslim men are allowed to have four spouses but women don't have the same right.
After a five-minute trial with no lawyer, Kambakhsh was given a piece of paper saying he had acted against Islam and should be executed, according to his brother.
The case has sparked an international outcry, with human rights and news organizations condemning the arrest and sentence. Demonstrators in Kabul have demanded that the sentence be overturned. Lawmakers have been split.
The press groups, greatly aided by the blogosphere, are playing hardball. A Kabul Press editorial on Jan. 30 noted that Afghanistan's Senate supported the death sentence and noted Washington Post photos of the vice president of that chamber, Sayed Hamed Gailani, kissing first lady Laura Bush's hand at the State of the Union address in 2006.
"Kissing the hand of a woman is also a crime in Islamic law," the editorial said. "Shouldn't Hamed Gailani be arrested and tried?"
Well, our photos prove only intent to smooch. Could have been one of those "air kisses."
In any event, the Afghan Senate by the end of the week withdrew its support for the death sentence, noted its backing of defendants' rights to counsel (not unlike, for example, Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335) and to appeals, and said the earlier statement of support was a "technical mistake."
Meanwhile, Karzai is waiting for the courts to sort things out.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Afghanistan: Prosecutor Suggests 'Some People' Cannot Be Tried
By Ron Synovitz Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty February 6, 2008
Afghanistan's attorney-general says criminal charges are pending against Abdul Rashid Dostum -- a senior military adviser to the president and a powerful ethnic Uzbek militia commander who allegedly abducted his former election campaign manager last weekend.
But Attorney General Abdul Jabar Sabit claims that actually bringing Dostum to court will be difficult because it could lead to fresh factional fighting in northern Afghanistan -- where Dostum's militia holds sway. With some of Dostum's supporters threatening to take up arms if he is brought to trial, the case dramatically underscores the absence of the rule of law in those parts of Afghanistan where warlords still reign.
In an exclusive interview, Sabit tells RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan that prosecutors accuse Dostum of charges including kidnapping, breaking and entering, and assault. "These are not political accusations -- it is a criminal case," Sabit says.
He also says that a police investigation determined that on February 2, Dostum and about 50 members of his militia attacked the home of Akbar Bay, Dostum's former election campaign manager, who is also variously described in the Afghan media as a tribal leader and the head of an ethnic Turkic organization. Sabit says they then illegally entered Bay's home, beat him and members of his family, insulted female relatives, and abducted Bay.
But Sabit suggests that Dostum is such a powerful commander in northern Afghanistan that, in the current security environment, he might be above prosecution. "Anyone who commits a criminal act must be brought to justice," Sabit said. "But in reality, I must admit that there will be some difficulties. In this war situation, in many cases, it is difficult for us to implement the law."
Sabit says that "because of the war there is no law, and you cannot implement the law in the south of the country or in many districts -- even in those places where the rule of law does exist, sometimes we cannot enforce the law over some people."
Sign Of The Times
Dostum has changed sides and alliances many times during Afghanistan's 30 years of war. He has been a key ally of U.S. forces since late 2001 in the fight against the Taliban. Dostum also became an adviser in Afghan President Hamid Karzai's transitional administration after the collapse of the Taliban regime.
After the presidential election of 2004, Karzai kept Dostum in the central government without appointing him as a minister. Instead, Karzai named Dostum as a special aide and gave him the title of "chief of staff to the commander in chief of the armed forces."
That move was generally regarded as an effort to avoid friction ahead of parliamentary elections in September 2005. But it also has helped reduce clashes between Dostum's militia and rival factions in northern Afghanistan.
The current governor of Balkh Province, Atta Mohammad Noor, is among those rivals whose own militia clashed periodically with Dostum's fighters in the struggle to control territory after the Taliban was driven from the north. Noor tells Radio Free Afghanistan that some political factions might try to use the current dispute over the case against Dostum as a pretext for partitioning the country and transforming the Islamic republic into a federation.
"We will not allow anybody to speak on their own as though they represent all of northern Afghanistan. The north is part of Afghanistan," Noor says. "The division of this country is an unattainable goal for those people who try to take advantage of this situation."
'Civil War'
Meanwhile, Dostum's allies and supporters have threatened violence if he is brought to trial.
On February 3, after Afghan Interior Ministry police surrounded Dostum's house in Kabul, Dostum spokesman Mohammad Alem Sayeh rejected the accusations against the militia commander and suggested that "seven or eight" northern provinces could slide into civil war "if anyone touches even one hair on Dostum's head."
An opposition political movement to which Dostum to also has threatened "catastrophic consequences" if the ethnic Uzbek general is put on trial. Sayed Hussain Sancharaki is the spokesman for the United National Front of Afghanistan -- a political group formed in 2005 by factional commanders and politicians who had once fought against the Taliban regime as the former Northern Alliance.
"General Dostum has a high profile among his people and is one of the famous political and military figures of Afghanistan," Sancharaki says. "He is [Karzai's] chief of staff for the armed forces and he is a senior member of the United Front of Afghanistan. It is natural that any kind of action against him will have repercussions. The consequences will be very dangerous -- catastrophic -- for the stability of Afghanistan."
Experts say Dostum is one of several factional militia commanders in northern Afghanistan who have been using the threat of a resurgent Taliban during the past year to get new weapons and more forcefully protect their interests.
"Obviously, what is happening in the north is really the growing Balkanization of the country," Sam Zia-Zarifi, a spokesman for Human Rights Watch (HRW) and a field researcher in Afghanistan who has monitored programs by the United Nations and Afghan government to disarm the factional militias, told RFE/RL recently. "It has been an ongoing trend in Afghanistan for warlords who are ostensibly allied with the government to entrench themselves even more fully."
He added that "a lot of [warlords] are now swollen with the narcotics trade -- profits from the sale of poppy and heroin...[and] have a lot of political clout because many of them have allies in the parliament, if they are not directly members of the parliament."
"The next step," he said, "is to openly flex their military muscle."
Zia-Zarifi said illegal ethnic Tajik and Hazara militias in the north also appear to be hoarding weapons. He concluded that divisions and mistrust between regional commanders and the central government could exacerbate tensions at a time when the security situation already is on a razor's edge.
(Radio Free Afghanistan correspondent Hamida Osman contributed to this report from Kabul)
Back to Top
Back to Top
Northern Warlord Flexes His Muscles
Personal feud becomes a test of the government’s ability and resolve to rein in powerful men with private armies.
Institute for War & Peace Reporting By Hafizullah Gardesh and Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi in Kabul (ARR No. 282, 06-Feb-08)
Even for General Abdul Rashid Dostum, it was an unusual sight. The burly former militia commander, atop his Kabul home, openly defied the police cordons surrounding him. Protected by his private militia and backed by thousands in the north, Dostum once again showed that he is above the law.
The incident began late on February 2 when Dostum, accompanied by some 50 gunmen, staged a raid on the home of a political rival, Akbar Bay.
According to Kabul police chief Mohammad Salim Ehsas, the general was somewhat the worse for drink. His men assaulted Akbar Bay and several of his family members.
Zmaray Bashiri, spokesman for the ministry of the interior, confirmed this account at a press conference the following day.
“Dostum, along with [parliamentarians] Hashem Ortaq and Alem Sayee attacked the house of Akbar Bay, leader of the Turkic Council, while they were drunk. They were accompanied by 60 to 70 armed men, who beat Akbar Bay and one of his sons,” said Bashiri. “Dostum left the scene when the police arrived, and Akbar Bay was taken to hospital.”
The police then laid siege to Dostum’s home in central Kabul for several hours, until ten in the morning on February 3. The general could be seen on the roof, shaking his fist in defiance. His men, well-armed and ready for a fight, could also be seen on the roof and behind the walls of the compound.
But as the police attempted to make arrests, protests broke out throughout the northern provinces where Dostum has his power-base. In Jowzjan, Sar-e-Pul, Faryab, Balkh, and Samangan, hundreds of men poured into the streets to condemn the police action.
In Jowzjan’s capital, Shiberghan, where Dostum has his headquarters, his supporters burned down the office of Akbar Bay’s organisation.
Akbar Bay is a former Dostum ally who broke with the general and his Junbesh-e-Milli-ye-Islami (National Islamic Movement) party last year to form his own party, the Shura-ye-Turktabaran-e-Afghanistan, or Turkic Council of Afghanistan. Unlike Dostum, who comes from the large Uzbek minority of northern Afghanistan, Akbar Bay is a Turkmen, although his group’s “Turkic” name suggests an appeal to both these related ethnic groups.
Dostum’s political party, Junbesh-e-Milli, encouraged the protests. Sayed Noorullah, the party’s leader - Dostum has officially distanced himself from direct involvement in Junbesh - held a press conference in Mazar-e-Sharif, the capital of Balkh province, to voice outrage at the treatment of the general.
“Those who attacked Dostum’s house want to destabilise the situation in the north,” he thundered. “Dostum is not alone: all the Uzbek and Turkmen tribes are with him. This siege is not within the remit of the interior ministry. Dostum stands above the interior ministry.”
Originally the head of an irregular military unit fighting for the Soviet-backed regime against the mujahedin, Dostum switched sides and became one of the “warlords” who caused devastation in the subsequent internecine strife. There were persistent allegations of human rights abuses committed by his troops.
Routed by the Taleban regime, the general returned in 2001 as an ally of the United States-backed Coalition.
Since March 2005, Dostum has been chief of staff to the Afghan armed forces’ commander-in-chief, a post that carries little real weight. His appointment was seen as largely ceremonial and as a way of keeping the general out of mischief and out of the north.
Dostum has chafed at his lack of influence, and has been active in the opposition bloc Jabha-e-Motahed-e-Milli, or National United Front, an umbrella group which has made no secret of its desire to replace the current administration of Hamed Karzai. The National United Front issued a statement of support for Dostum after the incident.
The standoff aptly illustrates Dostum’s position. It may have started out as a private, drink-sodden brawl, but ended up as a direct challenge to the power of central government.
Noorullah warned of even more serious consequences in the event that the government tried to rein in Dostum and his political associates.
“Nine of the northern provinces of Afghanistan will erupt if such actions are repeated,” he said.
Latif Pedram, head of the National Congress Party and a former presidential candidate, went even further at a press conference in Kabul on February 4. He had been with the party that entered Akbar Bay’s home, but denied the interior ministry’s charge that Dostum was also present.
Pedram told reporters that the entire north would secede from the control of central government if the authorities tried to take action against Dostum.
“The government was forced to end the siege of Dostum’s house when they learned of the large demonstrations in the north,” he said.
Atta Mohammad Noor, the powerful governor of Balkh province and a long-time opponent of Dostum, told reporters that any talk of secession was nonsense.
“Personally, I have no animosity towards Dostum,” he told reporters in Balkh. “But those who say that all of the northern provinces back Dostum are just dreaming. I would never allow anyone to plot against the central government.”
Akbar Bay, speaking from his bed in Charsad Bestar Hospital on February 4, told his version of the story.
“At midnight, Dostum, along with Latif Pedram … and two parliamentarians Mohammad Alim Sayee and Mohammad Hasem Ortaq, with hundreds of men came to my house and beat me, along with one of my sons and two of my guards. If the police had not arrived in time they would have killed me,” he said.
Akbar Bay told reporters that Dostum was looking for some documents that he had in his possession.
He accused Dostum of committing murder and mayhem, and announced that he planned to mobilise the entire north against Dostum and Junbesh.
Recently, Akbar Bay has made public accusations that Dostum has been involved in the assassination of several well-known Uzbek political figures. He also said that the general had dealings with the Taleban.
The interior ministry’s Bashiri told IWPR that Dostum had indicated that he was ready to accept the rule of law, and was willing to answer questions about the incident.
“In our view, this is a criminal case and the police did their duty normally,” he said. “The file and all the details have been sent to the chief prosecutor.”
Political analyst Fazel Rahman Oria told IWPR that, in his opinion, the affair stems from a longstanding enmity between Dostum and Akbar Bay.
“This is not the first time Dostum has attacked Akbar Bay,” he told IWPR. “He has tried to kill him before. Dostum considers Akbar Bay the main threat to his power, and he thinks that Akbar Bay is being supported by America.”
This personal feud aside, Dostum’s open challenge to the central government was quite serious, said Oria.
“Dostum is putting pressure on the government. He wants to show people that the government is subject to him. And, indeed, this is true,” said the analyst, arguing that this incident showed how weak the government was in the face of the warlords’ growing power.
“Right now, all the warlords back Dostum,” he said. “They regard his success as their own. Others will draw lessons from this incident, and the nation will be held further in thrall to the warlords.”
Another political observer, Ahmad Sayedi, agreed, pointing to the dangerous implications this local confrontation could have for Afghan politics.
“The people are now alienated from the government,” he told IWPR. “They do not trust the government, and certain political and military circles are taking advantage of this. They are saying Karzai is the one who appointed Dostum to his post, and now he can’t control him.”
Many Kabul residents were shocked and dismayed by the incident.
Safia, 40, from the Deh-Afghanan area of the capital, told IWPR that Dostum’s triumph in this affair would embolden the other warlords, the commanders whom many Afghans hold responsible for the destruction of the civil war years.
“In the wake of Dostum’s actions, other warlords may have been a little afraid of the central government will now get bolder. They will perpetrate even more murder, robbery and extortion,” she said. “These men have no other profession. Their safety is derived from the country being unstable, so they do not want the situation to get better.
“Karzai should just resign if these thieves have established a haven right under his nose and he can do nothing about it.”
Hafizullah Gardesh is IWPR’s local editor in Kabul. Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi is an IWPR staff reporter based in Mazar-e-Sharif.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Intrigue takes Afghanistan to the brink
By M K Bhadrakumar Asia Times Online / February 6, 2008
The people in the Amu Darya region in northern Afghanistan would vouchsafe that General Rashid Dostum's behavior can be depended on as an unfailing barometer of their country's political climate. The tough Uzbek leader from Shibirghan keenly reacts when tensions begin to mount in his country. The brief three-year spell between 1998 and 2001 was an exception when the Taliban regime forced him into exile in Ankara, Turkey. But no sooner had the September 11, 2001, attacks taken place, Dostum found his way back to Afghanistan.
On Sunday night, Dostum appeared on the roof of his villa in the upmarket Kabul district of Wazir Akbar Khan and showered invectives at a detachment of 100 Afghan police officers who surrounded his compound with assault rifles and machine guns mounted on pick-up trucks. (The police later lifted the siege after receiving orders "to hand the case over to the judiciary for investigation".)
The "case" involved an incident earlier in the evening when Dostum, accompanied by 50 heavily armed men, entered the house of his estranged former political aide Akbar Bay and allegedly assaulted and kidnapped him. The police later rescued Bay and had him hospitalized. Two of Bay's bodyguards were shot. Dostum's associates later alleged that the Afghan government was plotting against their leader. They warned, "If General Dostum is surrounded and anyone touches even one hair on Dostum's head, they must know that seven or eight northern provinces will turn against the [Kabul] government."
They feigned indignation, "Certainly, we were not expecting that from the security forces - particularly from the Interior Ministry - to surround the house of General Dostum in Kabul, [he] holds a higher position than the Interior minister." Dostum, who leads the political party Junbish-i-Milli and holds the symbolic post of chief of staff to the commander in chief, has an uncanny knack for appearing on the center stage whenever Afghan politics is at a crossroads. Of course, the most famous instance was in 1990.
That was also in Kabul in another extraordinary tension-filled time when the blame game had already begun, the Soviet Union was on the wane as a superpower, Mohammad Najibullah's regime was on its last legs and the Afghan mujahideen forces were stealthily advancing on their capital city - like the Taliban today. In the summer of that fateful year, Dostum, who was the Praetorian Guard of Najibullah's regime, began negotiating with Ahmad Shah Massoud, blurring enemy lines, possibly with Soviet encouragement, and paved the way for the mujahideen takeover in Kabul. The rest, as they say, is history.
Vying to succeed Karzai
That is why such incidents as Sunday night's can be pregnant with possibilities. It happened in the prestigious residential district of Kabul where the Afghan elite and foreigners live, far away from the Uzbek heartland on the Amy Darya, which is Dostum's power base, and such incidents often tend to have strong undercurrents that may simply refuse to go away. At any rate, as Radio Liberty pointed out, Dostum "consistently chafed at central authority out of Kabul" and caused "embarrassment" to President Hamid Karzai's government and highlighted a "smoldering debate over the influence of current and former warlords whose actions undermine the rule of law and public confidence in central authorities".
But what remains unclear from the Radio Liberty report is whether Dostum acted on his own, which is improbable, or whether he felt encouraged to enact a drama, which is not unlikely. Dostum can be theatrical - in fact, he mostly is. No doubt, as the Western media highlighted, Sunday's incident underscored that even in the capital city of Kabul, Karzai's authority has weakened.
The incident comes soon after another Northern Alliance leader, Abdullah Abdullah (whom Karzai unceremoniously removed from office as foreign minister) , suddenly showed up in the US out of nowhere after a gap of nearly three years, meeting influential think-tankers and American officials and leveling devastating criticism against Karzai's leadership qualities as president.
The protagonists of the erstwhile Northern Alliance are coming out of the woodwork. But are they being encouraged to do so? Even though the presidential election is due only in end-2009, an element of uncertainty has gradually come to envelop the Afghan political landscape - the sort of haze that one associates with long sunsets. Former Afghan Interior minister Ali Ahmad Jalali, who fell out with Karzai, is also being lionized in Western capitals as a potential candidate in the presidential race.
The friends of Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador to the United Nations and an ethnic Pashtun, have launched an altogether independent campaign sponsoring his candidacy to the post of president. From all appearances, the search has begun for a worthy successor to Karzai.
Britain's covert operations
Therefore, the latest "leak" by the Karzai government about Britain's controversial role in the "war on terror" has hidden meanings. If the calculation of Western intelligence is to threaten Karzai by reviving the political profile of his detractors, that doesn't seem to work. Karzai is certainly not impressed. He is retaliating. Over last weekend, the intelligence apparatus in Kabul has almost dealt a fatal blow to Britain's reputation in the "war on terror". Such a thing couldn't have happened without political clearance at the highest level in Kabul.
The Independent newspaper of London reported on Monday that according to Afghan intelligence sources, Britain has been talking to the Taliban without the knowledge of the Karzai government and working on a top-secret plan to train renegade Taliban fighters in a special camp and set them against Mullah Omar's militia. The training camp is to be set up outside Musa Qala in Helmand province. The Independent claims unnamed British diplomats, the UN and other Western officials have confirmed the outline of Britain's clandestine project. Apparently, British agents have been paying the Taliban out of slush funds.
Indeed, we may be seeing only the tip of the iceberg. But the sensational leak leads us to reassess many recent happenings - the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's much-touted operation to capture Musa Qala on December 11; the Afghan government's expulsion of the acting head of the European Union mission in Kabul, Michael Semple, a Briton, and the third-ranking United Nations diplomat in Afghanistan, Mervyn Patterson, an Irishman, on December 25; Mullah Omar's sacking of senior Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah on December 29.
The big question is: was Britain acting alone? Most certainly, not. US forces played a big role in the Musa Qala operations in December. In fact, B-52 bombers attacked Musa Qala before the Americans and British entered what was left of the town. After Musa Qala's "liberation", on January 13, American ambassador in Kabul William Wood visited the town and met renegade Taliban commander Mullah Abdul Salaam in charge of the area.
Wood told the Taliban commander: "You can count on the support of the United States ... The eyes of the world will be on Musa Qala ... We want to see the voice of the people of Musa Qala represented in the government of Lashkar Gah and the government of Kabul through [Mullah Salaam's] voice. And we want to see the government of Kabul and the government of Lashkar Gah represented in Musa Qala through [Mullah Salaam's] voice."
Karzai strikes back
Exactly a week after Wood's meeting with Mullah Salaam in Musa Qala, Karzai struck. While on a visit to Davos, Switzerland, in a series of high-profile press interviews with the Western media, he displayed an uncharacteristic defiance. He told the Times newspaper of London, "We [Afghans] suffered after the arrival of the British forces. Before that, we were fully in charge in Helmand. When our governor was there, we were fully in charge. They came and said, 'Your governor is no good.' I said, 'All right, do we have a replacement for this governor, do you have enough forces?' Both the American and the British forces guaranteed to me they knew what they were doing and I made the mistake of listening to them. And when they came in, the Taliban came."
He then told the BBC that Paddy Ashdown couldn't become the UN's super envoy to Afghanistan. Thereafter, Karzai went on to comment in his interview with Die Welt, "I'm not sure sending more [NATO] forces is the answer." In yet another interview with CNN, Karzai pointed the finger at the "misguided policy objectives" of certain countries and organizations, which he refused to name, as contributing to the violence in Afghanistan. Talking to The Washington Post, Karzai said, "It [war] will make a difference when the Americans are clear and straightforward about this fight," adding that the US should "mean what they say ... [and] do what they say".
Significantly, in the Washington Post interview, Karzai went out of the way to underline that his problem was not with Islamabad or Tehran. He said he found Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf "more cognizant of the problems of extremism and terrorism. And that's a good sign, and I hope we will continue in that direction ... we do see eye-to-eye more than before on this question ... Oh, he [Musharraf] absolutely agrees that there is a problem and that we have to fix it."
On Afghan-Iranian relations, Karzai point-blank said, "We have had a particularly good relationship with Iran the past six years. It's a relationship that I hope will continue. The United States very wisely understood that it was our neighbor and encouraged that relationship ... the United States has been very understanding and supportive that Afghanistan should have a relationship with Iran."
Karzai was hitting back at Washington and London. Make no mistake about it. He was retaliating against a systematic Western attempt to undercut his political stature and his authority. How much of the Western game plan stems from a well-thought out strategy aimed at replacing Karzai is difficult to tell at the moment. But, without doubt, there is an attempt to browbeat him and to discredit Karzai's own endeavor in the recent period to distance himself from his Western backers.
Karzai's refusal to allow the hare-brained American plan to eradicate opium poppies by crop spraying; his warming up to Musharraf; his refusal to review the decision to expel the two EU and UN diplomats, despite heavy diplomatic pressure from London; his insistence on friendly feelings toward Tehran; his spats with Britain; his pouring cold water on the candidacy of Ashdown (knowing full well it was a joint Anglo-American decision at the highest level) - surely, a pattern has emerged.
Afghan sense of independence
Maybe, as the Independent newspaper sarcastically noted, Karzai is simply overworked. "He [Karzai] has not had a holiday since September 11, 2001, and he is showing signs of fatigue, contributing to the whispering campaign against him and talk of his 'misjudgment' in taking on the powerful donor countries. Maybe he should consider a - short - vacation soon," the daily concluded a highly critical commentary.
But what the Western capitals don't want to concede easily is that Karzai would have his reasons - including some genuine ones - for putting the powerful donor countries in their place. First, he is as proud an Afghan as any in the Hindu Kush, no matter the circumstances of his elevation as the president of Afghanistan six years ago.
Today, he is in an unenviable position. On the one hand, he is denounced in the Afghan bazaar as a "US puppet", and on the other hand the powerful donor countries constantly trample on his authority and conduct themselves as if Afghanistan is NATO's colonial outpost.
Karzai seems to have decided that he won't allow himself to be taken for granted any longer. A limit is certainly reached when a powerful donor country begins its own clandestine "war on terror" on Afghan soil directed against Afghan people without even informing him or anyone in his government - and Afghan intelligence operatives learn about it accidentally from the memory stick of a laptop. The sensational leak by Afghan intelligence about Britain's covert war in Afghanistan must be seen in perspective. If Anglo-Afghan relations have sunk to such a low point, is Karzai to be blamed?
Given the backlog of history in the region, Britain should never have cast itself in a lead role in an Afghan war, howsoever compelling the geopolitical compulsions of containing Russia or China might be. Afghans still take pride in the Anglo-Afghan wars. Equally, it is a gross error of judgement on Washington's part to have overlooked this fact.
Besides, NATO's war isn't going too well, to say the least. Karzai cannot be faulted if he visualizes that it is an uphill task for the lame duck administration in Washington to bring about an historic course correction to the war at this stage.
He would be sensing that the blame game is poised to escalate and it is prudent to distance himself. Again, Karzai is savvy enough to read the political message when powerful donor countries begin to destabilize him by openly or surreptiously sponsoring his detractors, like Abdullah or Jalali or Dostum. He feels bitter that he has been used by Western powers and is now being summarily dumped.
It shouldn't come entirely as a surprise, therefore, if Karzai too - somewhat like his counterpart in neighboring Pakistan - chooses to drape himself in the Afghan flag and declare unilateral independence. Beyond the call of self-respect or good old-fashioned nationalism, it is also a shrewd survival instinct in challenging Afghan conditions.
Washington could consult the Soviet archives and still learn a few things about Afghanistan - how the comrades in Kabul in the 1980s and 1990s, who veteran Politburo members in Moscow considered to be their helpless surrogates in an impoverished Third World country, often dictated how proletarian internationalism should operate under pristine Marxist-Leninist principles.
M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for over 29 years, with postings including India's ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and to Turkey (1998-2001).
Back to Top
Back to Top
Pakistani Taliban declare truce, military denies it
Wed Feb 6, 9:29 AM ET
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Taliban militants fighting Pakistani troops near the Afghan border declared a ceasefire on Wednesday but a military spokesman said that while fighting had died down no truce had been agreed.
But in a setback for Pakistani forces, a general commanding operations against the Taliban fighters in South Waziristan was killed along with seven others in a helicopter crash on Wednesday but the military spokesman said it was probably an accident.
"There is no report of any fire from the area or any sabotage activity," Major-General Athar Abbas said, adding the pilot had reported a technical fault. There was no sign of any militant activity, Abbas said.
A spokesman for the militants said a decision to call a ceasefire was taken at a shura, or council meeting, chaired by Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban and a prime suspect in the assassination of pro-Western opposition leader Benazir Bhutto in late December.
"The government has shown leniency over the past four or five days," Maulvi Omar, a spokesman for Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or the Taliban Movement of Pakistan, told Reuters by telephone.
"That's why we are declaring a ceasefire."
Abbas described it as no more than a lull.
"As the miscreants have stopped attacking and firing, so there is a pause," Abbas said. "But the operation will continue."
Several senior officers, including two brigadiers, were killed in the crash along with Major-General Javed Sultan, commander of forces in the Kohat region, which South Waziristan falls under.
Nearly 300 people have died in militant-related violence since the start of the year, including six killed on Monday when a suicide bomber rammed his motorcycle into a military bus near army headquarters in Rawalpindi, the garrison town next door to the capital, Islamabad.
Growing insecurity has raised fears about nuclear-armed Pakistan's stability as it heads towards an election on February 18 that was delayed after Bhutto's assassination.
The Waziristan region is regarded as a sanctuary for al Qaeda and Taliban militants who fled there after U.S.-led forces ousted them from Afghanistan in late 2001.
Pakistani troops have been trying for years, with varying degrees of success, to clear these areas of militants, who also attack Western and Afghan government troops across the border.
(Reporting by Zeeshan Haider; editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and David Fogarty)
Back to Top
Back to Top
Afghan couple convicted of immigration fraud
By Lalit K Jha - Jun 2, 2008 - 10:48
NEW YORK (PAN): An Afghan couple residing in Maryland has been sentenced to nearly two years of imprisonment for an alleged immigration fraud in the United States, a district attorney said.
Nadia Naeem (29) and Mohammad Amin Daudzai (45) were convicted by a federal jury of conspiracy to obstruct proceedings before a US agency, immigration fraud and false statements.
Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein said they were sentenced to 22 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release.
According to trial testimony, documents filed with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees indicate that Nadia Naeem was born in Kabul in 1978. Naeem, along with her mother and two siblings, was admitted into the US as refugees on July 26, 2000.
An individual admitted into the United States with refugee status, but who has not yet attained lawful permanent resident (LPR) status, can apply for refugee benefits for her spouse.
In 2001, Naeem filed a petition with the INS seeking to have Nabi Nabil (30), also born in Kabul, enter the US as a refugee, based on the claim that both were married in Pakistan in the year 2000.
The petition was approved and Nabil admitted into the country as a refugee in 2004. Naeem and her parents subsequently applied for and attained the green card.
Mohammad Amin Daudzai, who was also allowed into the US as a refugee in 1981, became a naturalised American citizen in 1988. In 2003, prior to Nabils entry into the country, Naeem and Daudzai celebrated their marriage at the Best Western Potomac View in Oxon Hill, Maryland.
Naeem, her mother and her two siblings moved into Daudzais home in Brandywine in Maryland. When Nabil also moved into the Brandywine home in March 2004, Naeem was seven months pregnant.
She gave birth to a son on May 29, 2004. According to trial testimony, there is an extremely high probability that Naeem and Daudzai are the biological parents of her son and that Nabil and Naeem are siblings.
In a March 2006 interview with immigration officials concerning Nabils application, Naeem and Nabil presented letters from a co-worker and landlords, falsely stating they were a legally married couple.
Witnesses testified that in November 2005 Nabil lived alone and Naeem with Daudzai in Brandywine. When questioned about her relationship with Daudzai, Naeem falsely stated she barely knew Daudzai, was not certain of his first name and denied they were married or had a son together.
Daudzai later became a civilian employee of the US Army Test and Evaluation Command in 1989, and was granted to secret/sensitive compartmented information security clearance in 2002.
On November 2, 2005, as part of a security re-investigation, Daudzai submitted a security form to the US Army Test and Evaluation Command. The form required him to disclose spousal information and the names and citizenship of any foreign national relative or associate with whom he is bound by affection, obligation, or close and continuing contact.
Evidence showed that Daudzai falsely described his marital status as never married and listed his deceased parents as his only relatives or associates. According to witness testimony, on December 13, 2005, during an interview with military officials, Daudzai lied while denying Naeem was a joint account-holder on one of his credit cards.
When questioned about other joint financial accounts with Naeem, Daudzai failed to disclose he had submitted an application for mortgage refinancing in November 2004 that listed himself, Naeem, and his brother as joint tenants on the title for the Brandywine house.
The case was investigated by the FBI. This case clearly demonstrates our resolve to investigate those who seek to criminally exploit our immigration system, said James Dinkins, Special Agent in Charge for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Baltimore
Back to Top
Disclaimer:
This news site is mostly a compilation of publicly accessible articles
on the Web in the form of a link or saved news item. The news articles
and commentaries/editorials are protected under international copyright
laws. All credit goes to the original respective source(s).