 |
||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Serving you since 1998 | ||||||||||||
|
|
KARZAI SACKS ATTORNEY GENERAL AS CHAOS SPREADS
By Arthur Kent skyreporter.com / July 17, 2008
Never one to be accused of moving swiftly, much less decisively, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has finally fired his accident prone Attorney General, Abdul Jabar Sabet.
More US troops may go to Afghanistan this year
By LOLITA C. BALDOR Associated Press Thu Jul 17, 1:23 AM ET
WASHINGTON - Pentagon leaders on Wednesday signaled a surge in U.S. forces in Afghanistan "sooner rather than later," a shift that could send some units there within weeks, as officials prepare to cut troop levels in Iraq.
Afghan leader visits site where US-led strikes hit wedding
Thu Jul 17, 10:36 AM ET
JALALABAD, Afghanistan (AFP) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai flew Thursday to a remote village to commiserate with families of 47 civilians killed when US-led coalition air strikes hit a wedding party, his office said.
Doubts over US Afghan operation
By Alastair Leithead BBC News, Kabul Thursday, 17 July 2008
There are conflicting reports of civilian casualties in a US-led military operation in west Afghanistan.
Civilian casualties fuel Afghan conflict
The News International (Pakistan) Thursday, July 17, 2008
KABUL: The killing of civilians in foreign military air strikes is shattering Afghans' support for keeping international troops in their troubled land and driving angry young men into the arms of the Taliban, analysts say.
Nangarhar Elders Demand Retribution for US Air Strike
Afghan tribal leaders demand justice following an air raid they say wiped out a wedding party.
Institute for War & Peace Reporting By Ezatullah Zawab in Nangarhar and Hafizullah Gardesh in Kabul (ARR No. 297, 16-Jul-08)
“Karzai should hand over the murderers so that we can hang them, or else he should resign,” said Rai Khan, shaking with anger. “If he does not do one or the other, then we will leave our homes and take matters into our own hands.”
Militant groups now fight in Afghanistan
'Complex insurgency' poses a revitalized threat to U.S., NATO
The Washington Times - National Security
Kathy Gannon ASSOCIATED PRESS Thursday, July 17, 2008
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan-In early June, about 300 fighters from jihadist groups came together for a secret gathering here, in the same city that serves as headquarters to the Pakistani army.
Iran Pours Cash Into Afghanistan, Seeking Leverage Against U.S.
Bloomberg By Bill Varner July 17, 2008
The flags of Iran, Afghanistan and Tehran-based Abad Rahan Pars Road & Construction Co. fly above a railroad work camp west of the Afghan city of Herat, signaling another commercial incursion from across the border.
15 insurgents killed in raid in west Afghanistan
By AMIR SHAH Associated Press July 17, 2008
KABUL, Afghanistan - U.S. Special Forces and Afghan troops called in airstrikes during a raid on a militant cell in western Afghanistan on Thursday, killing 15 insurgents while freeing 15 hostages, officials said.
Taliban leader killed in Afghanistan
Kabul, July 17 (Xinhua) Afghan army and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in a joint operation have killed a senior Taliban leader in southern Afghanistan's Helmand province, an ISAF statement said Thursday.
US shifts focus to Pakistan threat
By Kim Ghattas BBC News, Washington Thursday, 17 July 2008
Increasingly worried about the threat from militant groups inside Pakistan, the US is trying to develop a comprehensive approach to tackling the security challenges this poses to Afghanistan, coalition forces there and, potentially, to the US itself.
Obama's Afghan Plan Raises Questions
Analysts say proposal to stabilise the country sounds good, but has several potential pitfalls.
Institute for War & Peace Reporting By Jennifer Koons in London (ARR No. 297, 17-Jul-08)
If elected president in the autumn, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama aims to redirect America’s foreign policy focus to combating terrorism in South Asia, but questions remain about the feasibility of his strategy
Obama's brave (new?) world
By Pepe Escobar Asia Times Online / July 17, 2008
WASHINGTON - Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama is the man with the plan for Iraq and Afghanistan. Presidential in tone and delivery, quoting Harry S Truman and Dean Acheson, George Kennan
Militants ready for a war without borders
By Syed Saleem Shahzad Asia Times Online / July 17, 2008
KARACHI - From thinly disguised insinuations against Pakistan following the suicide attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul this month to outright accusations against Islamabad by the Afghan government over the unrelenting Taliban-led insurgency
Pak to host economic cooperation conference on Afghanistan
17 Jul, 2008, 1753 hrs IST, PTI
ISLAMABAD : Pakistan is scheduled to host the third Regional Economic Cooperation Conference on Afghanistan in the federal capital during August 26-27.
Iran Pours Cash Into Afghanistan, Seeking Leverage Against U.S.
Bill Varner
July 17 (Bloomberg) -- The flags of Iran, Afghanistan and Tehran-based Abad Rahan Pars Road & Construction Co. fly above a railroad work camp west of the Afghan city of Herat, signaling another commercial incursion from across the border.
Afghanistan: chemicals used for heroin production seized in UN-backed operation
UN News Centre
17 July 2008 – More than three tons of precursor chemicals used to produce heroin were recently seized in Afghanistan in an operation supported by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
McCain and Obama vow to hit Al-Qaeda
Written by www.quqnoos.com foreign desk Wednesday, 16 July 2008
America's two presidential candidates want more focus on Pakistan's tribal belt
AMERICA’S two heavyweight presidential contenders, Barack Obama and John McCain, have both said they will do more to clamp down on "terrorist activity" along the Afghan-Pakistani border in an attempt to halt cross-border attacks in Afghanistan.
Rediscovering treasures of Bamiyan
By Alastair Leithead BBC News, Bamiyan Thursday, 17 July 2008
When the Buddhas of Bamiyan were carved out of the mountainside, the Roman Empire still held sway.
Northern Alliance blamed for Afghan violence
Dawn - National July 16, 2008
PESHAWAR-The Hizb-i-Islami of Afghanistan has accused the Northern Alliance of orchestrating the bloodshed and growing violence in Afghanistan and said the alliance had launched a propaganda campaign against Pakistan with India’s support.
Danish civilian projects in Afghanistan lack personnel
STOCKHOLM, July 16 (Xinhua) -- Denmark's claim to be in Afghanistan primarily to support the civilian population is short of personnel, according to reports reaching here from Copenhagen Wednesday.
Canada rejects Guantanamo plea
Al Jazeera / July 17, 2008
Canada has said that it will not seek the repatriation of a young Canadian held at Guantanamo Bay, despite the release of video footage showing him in an obvious state of distress.
Slipping Back Into Chaos: Karzai's Afghanistan
Hamid Karzai Panned for Weak Leadership While Iraq's Al-Maliki Gets Praise
ABC News By MARCUS BARAM July 15, 2008
While Afghanistan continues to slip into chaos, with a sharp increase in Taliban-led attacks on U.S. troops, a booming opium harvest and stalled reconstruction efforts, questions are being raised about President Hamid Karzai's
Back to Top
KARZAI SACKS ATTORNEY GENERAL AS CHAOS SPREADS
By Arthur Kent skyreporter.com / July 17, 2008
Never one to be accused of moving swiftly, much less decisively, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has finally fired his accident prone Attorney General, Abdul Jabar Sabet.
The bearded, blustery former aide to fugitive warlord and al Qaeda cohort, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Sabet was bizarrely elevated to the AG’s post two years ago with the help of the US and British Embassies in Kabul – and the connivance of controversial strongmen in and around Karzai’s court.
As documented over the past 18 months at skyreporter.com in our Afghan Heroin and Afghan Media series of film reports (pls see Recent Stories), Sabet’s repressive outbursts led the embattled president to begin searching for a replacement a year ago.
Last July, Karzai was poised to shunt Sabet from the AG’s post to a provincial governorship, a move that had to be delayed when Sabet angrily resisted, and the president could find no reasonable replacement.
In a new twist to this Keystone Kops melodrama, Sabet claims he’ll stand for president in next year’s elections. Karzai's office has seized upon the move as grounds for firing Sabet, whose candidacy, they say, could "politicize" the AG's office.
Plenty of informed observers stand ready to put an “X” beside Sabet’s name, but hardly in the context the candidate has in mind. For further reference on the man and what he stands for, here’s an excerpt from COVERING UP KARZAI & CO., published in July, 2007 by Policy Options, the monthly publication of Canada’s Institute for Research on Public Policy:
Supporters of one of his (Sabet’s) victims, the respected former chief of border police at Kabul Airport, General Aminullah Amerkhel, don’t mince words: Sabet, they say, was acting on behalf of Kabul’s leading druglords when he had Amerkhel removed from his post in October, 2006.
Circumstantial evidence appears damning. Amerkhel was an accomplished drug-buster: his face had become well known to viewers of Afghanistan’s TV news channels as he and his men nabbed smugglers almost daily. Then, in January of 2006, he challenged corruption up the chain of command. He told reporters that too often, he would arrest a courier - kilogram bags of pure heroin in hand - only to see the smuggler released the next day, on orders from above.
Since Amerkhel’s suspension by Sabet, arrests have plummeted. Only five traffickers have been collared at the airport in the six month period up to May, 2007. Amerkhel regularly racked up five or six per week.
So is Hamid Karzai’s Attorney General really in league with the heroin gangs? It’s a question that should interest the government of Canada for at least two reasons. First, heroin profits help finance the Taliban's war effort. Second, Sabet boasts to friends of enjoying residency in Canada: his wife and children live in Montreal.
Yet officials in Ottawa at Foreign Affairs, Immigration and the Prime Minister’s Office have refused since mid-March to confirm the status of President Karzai’s rogue Attorney General. Sabet’s past is littered with reasons that he should never have gained entry into Canada, particularly due to his long history of association with the black prince of Afghan extremists, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
Sabet was a longtime counsellor to Hekmatyar, once the United States' most-favoured anti-Soviet guerrilla leader, but now on their most-wanted list of terrorists. In 1992, Sabet's continuing links with Hekmatyar led to his dismissal from a job at the Voice of America in Washington D.C. He was denied residency in the United States.
Sabet turned next to Canada, immigrating with his family to Montreal in 1999, where he became a familiar face at the downtown mosque, Masjid as-Salam. Sources within Montreal’s Afghan community confirm that Sabet portrayed himself as a simple refugee to gain residency, and that he failed to disclose the previous denial of re-entry into the U.S. Thus he allegedly committed two “material misrepresentations” with regard to Canadian regulations. Sabet is said to have collected welfare until his return to Kabul in 2003, where he picked up a lawyer’s position at the Interior Ministry.
Then, in an ironic twist typical of U.S. policy in Afghanistan, Sabet used his smooth command of English to form a relationship with a U.S. Justice Department adviser who was seeking favourable reviews of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. As a result, Sabet led an Afghan government inspection of the site, declaring afterward that there were "only one or two" complaints from prisoners, and that "conditions of the jail were humane. The rumours about prison conditions were all wrong."
Soon after, both the U.S. and British embassies in Kabul began lobbying for Mr. Sabet's promotion, according to an aide of President Karzai's who witnessed the sessions. Mr. Sabet was nominated as attorney general just months later, in August, 2006. How that nomination was approved by parliament says much about the power structure in Kabul.
In order to insure enough votes for Sabet, a deal was brokered by Karzai’s aides between the candidate and a key Karzai ally, Abdul Sayyaf. This brigand is one of Afghanistan’s most feared warlords, a leading force of disunity among the militias that devastated Kabul in the civil war of the early 1990’s. Today, Sayyaf’s an MP - and leader of the parliamentary minority.
In return for Sabet lending support to the controversial amnesty bill that Sayyaf and other accused war criminals pushed through the house early last year, the nominee secured his confirmation as Attorney General. Since then, Sayyaf’s hold over Sabet has strengthened.
Sayyaf is frequently accused of land grabbing by citizens of villages to the west and north of the capital. A British lawyer happened to be in Sabet’s office when one such dispute came forward. A grieving widow alleged that her home had been occupied by one of Sayyaf’s militia commanders. The Attorney General listened for a time, then leaned across his desk and yanked the letter of complaint from the widow’s hands. He tore it up and ordered her to leave.
According to a senior Justice Ministry source, most if not all of Sabet’s key staff appointments have been cleared through Sayyaf, particularly that of his deputy of narcotics affairs, General Stanakzai. This left Sayyaf with two trusted henchmen in key counter-narcotics posts: earlier, he had used his influence to place a close aide named Sadat in the Interior Ministry’s hierarchy.
Sabet, meanwhile, has been equally determined to succeed in the game of connections. Just days after securing the Attorney General’s chair, he elevated a minor police officer named Nadir Hamidi to the rank of full general and made him his deputy. Within weeks, Gen. Nadir - known widely as “Choor,” or briber - fled Afghanistan to Dubai, his pockets stuffed with several hundred thousand dollars of state funds.
Sabet ducked accusations that he’d helped Nadir escape. Then he made an even more disruptive appointment. General Kasim is a former security chief of Baghlan province, north of Kabul. A Hekmatyar loyalist like Sabet, he was facing corruption charges – until the Attorney General had his file wiped clean and installed him as chief of Kabul’s District Ten police station.
There, he’s been a useful tool for Sabet’s barnstorming “anti-vice” raids on foreign-owned Kabul restaurants. (In one incident in February of 2007, Kasim’s men helped themselves to seized alcohol, according to foreign aid workers who witnessed the raid. An hour later, one of the expats was stopped at a checkpoint and beaten by policemen “whose breath reeked of vodka.” He filed a complaint, which now languishes at the Interior Ministry.)
More spectacularly, Kasim and his men have been the Attorney General’s storm troopers in putting the squeeze on Kabul’s vibrant young news media. On April 17th of last year, enraged by the coverage of one of his speeches by Tolo TV, Afghanistan’s most popular independent channel, Sabet ordered Kasim and more than a hundred armed policemen to bring the errant journalists to his office. The police stormed Tolo TV’s studios, arresting seven journalists, including four from other agencies covering the raid. Several of the reporters were rifle-butted and punched.
All of this occurred without warrants, as in the Amerkhel case. Saad Mohseni, Tolo TV’s director, protested: "Sabet has shown that he is totally unfit to hold his position. Our international allies must tell the president this type of official is not acceptable to the Afghan people."
The U.N. agreed, denouncing the raid as “unlawful.” But from the U.S. and its NATO allies, including Canada, there has been only silence. President Karzai, feeling no heat from his foreign sponsors and pressured by allies like Sayyaf, an avowed foe of the news media, had only this to say: “The Attorney General we have today is one that is in a head-on clash with the bad guys.”
The concurrent practices of going soft on criminals while cracking down on the media should tell the people of western democracies everything they need to know about the Karzai regime, say its critics. “We are facing the old difficulties of Afghanistan’s history in the last 25 years,” says Shukria Barakzai. “Who is there who isn’t working for his own pocket, who is there who isn’t a warlord or criminal?
“The president is completely isolated from the people. He only listens to this mafia group inside the palace.”
Whose reach, the evidence shows, goes far into the countryside.
Back to Top
Back to Top
More US troops may go to Afghanistan this year
By LOLITA C. BALDOR Associated Press Thu Jul 17, 1:23 AM ET
WASHINGTON - Pentagon leaders on Wednesday signaled a surge in U.S. forces in Afghanistan "sooner rather than later," a shift that could send some units there within weeks, as officials prepare to cut troop levels in Iraq.
Senior military officials are looking across the services to identify smaller units and other equipment that could be sent to Afghanistan, according to a defense official.
Although there are no brigade-sized units that can be deployed quickly into Afghanistan, military leaders believe they can find a number of smaller units such as aviation, engineering and surveillance troops that can be moved more swiftly, said the official, who requested anonymity because the discussions are private.
The moves are expected to happen within weeks rather than months, the official said.
The decisions are being made against the backdrop of shifting priorities for the U.S. military, and were discussed during a meeting Wednesday of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Military leaders are weighing requests from commanders in Afghanistan for more troops, aircraft and other assistance. And they are trying to determine the right balance between the needs of the force in Iraq, versus troops in Afghanistan who are facing a Taliban resurgence.
To date, the fight in Afghanistan has taken a back seat to Iraq, which has been the strategic priority. While Iraq will remains the top goal, it now appears the military believes there should be a more urgent emphasis on Afghanistan than there has been.
Faced with an increasingly sophisticated insurgency, particularly along Afghanistan's border with Pakistan, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Wednesday that sending more troops would have a significant impact on the violence.
"I think that we are clearly working very hard to see if there are opportunities to send additional forces sooner rather than later," Gates told Pentagon reporters. But, he added that no final decisions or recommendations have been made.
His comments suggested an acceleration in what had been plans to shift forces there early next year. And they came as the political discourse on Afghanistan as a key military priority escalated on both Capitol Hill and the presidential campaign trail.
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who recently returned from meetings with commanders in Afghanistan, said they clearly want more troops now.
"It's a tougher fight, it's a more complex fight, and they need more troops to have the long-term impact that we all want to have there," said Mullen, who also met last week with Pakistani leaders.
The Pentagon has been wrestling with how to provide what they say is a much needed military buildup in Afghanistan, while they still have 150,000 troops in Iraq. Gates and Mullen have repeatedly said they would have to reduce troop levels in Iraq before they could dedicate more forces to Afghanistan.
Mullen, who was in Iraq last week, told reporters that he is likely to recommend further troop reductions there this fall. He said he found that conditions in Iraq had improved more than he expected.
"I won't go so far as to say that progress in Iraq from a military perspective has reached a tipping point or is irreversible — it has not, and it is not," Mullen told a Pentagon press conference.
"But security is unquestionably and remarkably better. Indeed, if these trends continue I expect to be able early this fall to recommend to the secretary and the president further troop reductions," he said.
The military buildup in Iraq that began more than 18 months ago has ended, now that the last of the five additional combat brigades sent in by President Bush last year has left the country.
Its departure marks the end of what the Pentagon called the "surge." And it starts the 45-day evaluation period that Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, told Congress he would need to assess the security situation and determine how many more troops he could send home.
Neither Gates nor Mullen would detail how they intend to juggle the military requirements in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they spoke more aggressively about meeting Afghan needs more quickly.
Gates said commanders are looking at moving forces around to take advantage of a small boost in French troops expected in Afghanistan. But he ruled out rolling back some of the promises the Pentagon made to soldiers limiting their deployments to 12 months.
"I think we're looking at a variety of options on how to respond here," Gates said. "I will tell you that I have sought assurances that there will be no return to longer-than-12-month deployments, so that's not something we're considering."
Also, he said he is not aware of any plans to extend the deployments of any U.S. troops currently there.
Gates and Mullen also has strong words for Pakistan, saying Islamabad must do a better job preventing Taliban and other insurgents from crossing the border into Afghanistan to wage attacks.
The absence of pressure from the Pakistanis, Gates said, is giving militants a greater opportunity to penetrate the porous mountain border. He said the key is to further convince the Pakistani government that their country is also at great risk from the insurgents.
Gates said it is an exaggeration to say that the border problems have escalated into a war between Pakistan and Afghanistan. And he also dismissed as untrue suggestions that the U.S. is massing troops along the border preparing to launch attacks into Pakistan.
His comments came as U.S. troops abandoned a remote outpost in eastern Afghanistan where militants killed nine of their comrades this week in a large, coordinated attack. Elsewhere in the frontier region, NATO launched artillery and helicopter strikes in Pakistan after coming under insurgent rocket fire, officials said.
There are currently 36,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, including 17,500 with the NATO-led force, and 18,500 who are fighting insurgents and training Afghan forces.
___
On the Net:
Defense Department: http://www.defenselink.mil Back to Top
Back to Top
Afghan leader visits site where US-led strikes hit wedding
Thu Jul 17, 10:36 AM ET
JALALABAD, Afghanistan (AFP) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai flew Thursday to a remote village to commiserate with families of 47 civilians killed when US-led coalition air strikes hit a wedding party, his office said.
The president, who rarely travels in Afghanistan because of the threat from extremist insurgents, flew to Deh Bala near the border with Pakistan by helicopter and met more than 100 tribal elders for two hours, it said.
"I have not come here today to make political speeches, I have come to share your grief," he told the gathering according to audio copies handed to the media, who were not invited to the event.
Karzai also met relatives of the victims -- mostly women and children -- of the July 6 strikes which the coalition has said killed only militants.
The president said his government would send to Mecca the head of every family that had lost someone. A Muslim is expected to make the pilgrimage if they have the means.
He also promised land to those affected by the strikes, according to the audio copies.
One of the elders, Abdul Satar, said ordinary people had become a "shield" in the fight between insurgents and government.
"We have become a defending shield against terrorists. We do not allow anyone to use our territories against this government but we still get killed," he said in the material provided to media.
Civilians are regularly caught in the crossfire of an insurgency launched after the hardline Islamic Taliban regime was removed from power in late 2001 in a US-led invasion.
Most are killed in rebel attacks but dozens have also been killed in military action this year.
A statement from the president's office about the visit said 45 civilians were killed in the strikes in Deh Bala of Nangarhar province.
An investigation said 47 had died, including the bride, an official has told AFP.
The coalition has also been accused of killing another 15 civilians in an air strike in Nuristan province two days before the Nangarhar incident.
The force, which is helping the government fight an insurgency led by the hardline Taliban, has said it knows of only militants killed in the strikes but is investigating.
It admitted on Wednesday to killing eight civilians during an air strike against militants in southwestern Afghanistan which an Afghan official said killed 12 people including nine women and a boy.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Doubts over US Afghan operation
By Alastair Leithead BBC News, Kabul Thursday, 17 July 2008
There are conflicting reports of civilian casualties in a US-led military operation in west Afghanistan.
Nato forces say two Taleban commanders were killed in Herat province. One of them is a leading tribal elder.
Local tribal elders claim dozens of people, including civilians, also died in the American attack.
Earlier, US forces admitted killing eight civilians in a neighbouring province - the latest in a series of bombing incidents involving civilians.
'Prisoners'
The first reports of the operation in Herat province came from tribal elders who claimed huge numbers of people had been killed or injured in a US-led attack from midnight until mid-morning in Shindand district.
They said a high-profile tribal leader had died and houses had been destroyed.
There were also unconfirmed reports of demonstrations in the Zerkoh valley, a fiercely independent tribal area where US forces have clashed with local fighters before.
But Nato put out a statement saying that the coalition and Afghan security forces had conducted a successful operation against high priority Taleban targets.
They confirmed a significant number of insurgents had been killed, including Haji Nasrullah Khan, who they described as a Taleban leader.
He is an important tribal elder and last year when US forces were accused of killing civilians in the same area, President Karzai sat alongside him at a shura, or public meeting, and passed on his condolences for those killed or injured.
A spokesman for the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) said they had no evidence of civilian casualties or accidental damage and added that more than a dozen men were found handcuffed and imprisoned in appalling conditions in one of the compounds.
There have been reports in Shindand of smuggling and links between the tribes and the Taleban but Haji Nasrullah Khan was well connected and his death could see President Karzai coming under pressure from tribal allies to whom he was linked.
The different accounts and the complexities of Afghan tribal structures show how confusing the line is between those considered insurgents or Taleban and powerful local leaders, particularly when it comes to the issue of reconciliation and trying to encourage those opposed to the government to switch sides.
'Air support'
Earlier, US forces said they had killed eight civilians in neighbouring Farah province after they were attacked from a number of houses in Bakwa district.
Their statement said a routine patrol came under sustained attack from machine-gun fire on Tuesday from houses adjacent to the road.
"The coalition returned fire and called for close air support on the enemy positions," the statement said.
"A house was hit - eight civilians were killed, two others injured. Coalition forces never intentionally target non-combatants, and deeply regret any occurrence such as this where civilians are killed and injured as a result of insurgent activity and actions."
The issue of civilian casualties has again come up as there have been a number of incidents over the last couple of weeks.
On Thursday President Hamid Karzai visited families of those killed in the eastern province of Nangarhar who had reported that more than 50 people from a wedding party died after being bombed by American aircraft.
President Karzai offered them his condolences and some financial assistance.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Civilian casualties fuel Afghan conflict
The News International (Pakistan) Thursday, July 17, 2008
KABUL: The killing of civilians in foreign military air strikes is shattering Afghans' support for keeping international troops in their troubled land and driving angry young men into the arms of the Taliban, analysts say.
International troops do not target civilians and say they do their utmost to avoid harming them, but even as Taliban suicide bombers kill more innocents, it is foreign forces and the Afghan government they support that bear the brunt of the backlash.
"Such acts provoke public hatred towards internal and foreign forces and force people to join the enemy who encourages them to carry out terrorist and suicide attacks," said the state-run Hewad newspaper after the first of two controversial air strikes this month. First, Afghan officials say, US aircraft killed 15 civilians in the northeast on July 4, then just three days later, hit a wedding in the east, killing 47, mostly women and children.
"The Americans will soon face new resistance with new motives if they continue such operations and do not care even a little about the lives of the people," the state-run daily Anis said. While the US military first of all denied civilians had been hit, then launched what is likely to be a lengthy investigation, most Afghans have already made up their minds.
"Such arbitrary bombing raids and brutal killings have been repeated so many times during the past nearly seven years that now it is difficult to believe these foreign forces have come to our country for assistance," the pro-government Weesa daily said.
"There is a perception problem," said Nato's civilian spokesman in Afghanistan, Mark Laity. "But it is a perception problem not a reality problem. The reality is that we are very careful and the number of mistakes we make is very small." The perception though that international forces are not careful enough when launching air strikes is becoming entrenched in Afghan public opinion, and officials have been known to make hasty claims of civilian casualties.
The Taliban also claim troops wantonly kill civilians almost every day, adding to the fog of war. The remoteness of most air strikes, the speed with which bodies are buried and a cultural taboo against mostly male reporters seeing wounded women in hospitals also make verifying claims and counter-claims a major problem. More than 250 Afghan civilians were killed by Afghan and foreign forces in the first six months of this year, the United Nations says.
Nato disputes the figure and says it is much lower. The Taliban have killed many more civilians, at least 450 so far this year, according to the UN, and as many as 80 per cent of the victims of suicide bombs are innocent bystanders. Even so, after such attacks ordinary Afghans more often than not blame local and foreign security forces for failing to stop them from happening, rather than those who carried them out.
A suicide bomb attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul last week that killed 58 people was no different. "Such incidents in Kabul where, apart from Afghan security forces, a countless number of foreign security forces are based, show security bodies are in fact not capable of doing anything or they deliberately do not want to do anything and are involved in the incidents," the independent Rah-e Nejat daily said.
Air strikes by both Nato's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan are either pre-planned targeted air strikes, or in response to calls for assistance from troops in combat.
The level of preparation that goes into pre-planned strikes means mistakes are extremely rare, Laity said. But when troops' lives are threatened from militants firing from, for example a walled compound, "you are entitled to reply even if you cannot be 100 percent sure there are not civilians in the compound. That is the right of self-defence," he said.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly called for international troops to coordinate their operations more with Afghan forces so as to avoid civilian casualties. But if most mistakes happen when air strikes are called in during the heat of battle, it is hard to see how that could have an effect. Mistakes do and will continue to happen.
"The problem is this is a war," Laity said. "Although our weapons are remarkable and our people incredibly well-trained, although the rules of engagement and the principles under which we operate are of the highest standard, we are not perfect."
Back to Top
Back to Top
Nangarhar Elders Demand Retribution for US Air Strike
Afghan tribal leaders demand justice following an air raid they say wiped out a wedding party.
Institute for War & Peace Reporting By Ezatullah Zawab in Nangarhar and Hafizullah Gardesh in Kabul (ARR No. 297, 16-Jul-08)
“Karzai should hand over the murderers so that we can hang them, or else he should resign,” said Rai Khan, shaking with anger. “If he does not do one or the other, then we will leave our homes and take matters into our own hands.”
Rai Khan, an elder from the Haskamena district of Nangarhar province in southeastern Afghanistan, was speaking for a community shocked by a United States bombing raid on July 6 that local residents say left close to 50 members of a wedding party dead, including the bride.
Now they want President Hamed Karzai to deliver justice in the form that their traditions demand.
The incident occurred in the village of Khetai as the bridal party was making its way to the groom’s house.
As is the tradition in Afghan weddings, a large delegation is sent to escort the bride from her parents’ house to her new home. The procession, called a “wara”, is made up mostly of women and children from both families.
At 6.30 that morning, the procession had been walking for over three hours, partly to escape the blistering heat of the Nangarhar summer.
They sang as they went, in keeping with centuries-old wedding traditions. But suddenly their song was interrupted by the sound of explosions.
When the dust cleared, the bride, Ruhmina, was dead, along with at least 44 members of the wedding party.
“When I reached the area, I heard my grandson screaming,” said Lala Zareen, the groom’s father, whose daughter was also among the dead. “He was saying, ‘Grandpa, please help me, I’m stuck. I am fine, just get me out from under this rock.’ But I couldn’t do anything. I knew he wouldn’t survive. I just put some burned clothing under his head, and left him for God.”
Lala Zareen’s brother, Malek Zareen, paced back and forth in a small room at his home, tears streaming down his face.
“We lost 15 members of our own family,” he said. “Eight members of the bride’s family were killed, and 22 other relatives were martyred. My nephew Attiqullah has lost his mind.”
Attiqullah, the groom, is only 15. His father had hurried to arrange the wedding after his own wife passed away. Lala Zareen had given his elder daughter in marriage in exchange for a fiancée for Attiqullah. Such exchanges are common in many parts of Afghanistan, where it can be expensive to get a bride for a son.
With no women left in the household, Lal Zareen needed someone to cook and clean for the male members of the family.
When an IWPR reporter visited Attiqullah, he was lying in a dark room, murmuring to himself and apparently blanking out the tragedy.
“It’s my wedding party – my brothers and sisters have gone to the bride’s house to bring her here. They’re on the way; when they arrive you may congratulate me,” he said.
The wedding party made it to within 30 minutes of Attiqullah’s house when they were attacked by US planes, say residents. Almost no one survived.
“When I got there, I saw pieces of bodies scattered around. I couldn’t even make out which part was which. It was just flesh, everywhere,” said Lal Zareen.
Residents of Khetai say it was impossible to identify the remains, so they buried the 45 victims in 28 graves.
In addition to the 45 who were killed outright, another ten people were injured, say eyewitnesses. At the time of writing, the death count had risen to close to 50.
The Afghan government launched an investigation, sending a commission to look into the locals’ claims.
Dr Borhanullah Shinwari, a member of the delegation, told IWPR that all those killed were innocent civilians.
“We saw the scene of the incident,” he said. “There were no military men there.”
Shinwari echoed the elder’s demand for some form of justice.
“The perpetrators should be dragged into court and judged, as a lesson to others,” he said. “People’s patience has gone. They can no longer tolerate this.”
First Lieutenant Nathan Perry, a spokesman for the US-led Coalition Forces in Afghanistan, told IWPR that the military makes every effort to avoid civilian casualties, but were taking the allegations seriously.
“We are conducting our own investigation,” he said in a telephone interview.
However, he refused to retract previous statements that all of those killed were hostile combatants.
“We are looking into it, getting more information,” he said. “It would not be a fair assessment to say that we are backing down from previous statements.”
The issue of civilian casualties inflicted by foreign troops in Afghanistan is highly sensitive one, and has prompted President Karzai to issue heated warnings to his western allies.
Nangarhar has had its share of tragedy - a shooting incident involving US Marines in March 2007, killed 19 civilians. The US unit involved was ordered to leave the country, and the military launched a rare “court of inquiry” into the incident, the results of which have not been made public.
Just 48 hours before the latest incident involving the wedding party, US planes attacked a convoy in the eastern province of Nuristan.
Provincial governor Tamrin Nuristani said close to 30 civilians were killed in that attack. Coalition forces had dropped leaflets warning that the area was going to be hit. Locals say the cars that were bombed belonged to non-governmental organisations and other non-combatants trying to leave town after heeding the warning.
The latest attack has rekindled the resentment that many in Nangarhar feel for the foreign troop presence.
“The Coalition operates on its own,” said Hamesha Gul, the local government chief in Haskamena district. “They don’t ask the government, which is why they target a wedding procession instead of the Taleban and al-Qaeda.”
In Nangarhar, the provincial council declared a three-day mourning period and closed its doors. Members of the local assembly joined the growing demands for justice.
“This was a deliberate act,” said Abdul Aziz Khairkha, deputy head of the Nangarhar council. “If the government cannot stop these kinds of incidents, then we will rise up against it.”
General Zaher Azimi, spokesman for the Afghan defence ministry, would not comment. President Karzai’s office reiterated its support for the foreign forces in the country in general, although presidential spokesman Humayun Hamidzada would not comment directly on what had happened in Nangarhar. He did, however, acknowledge the problem of civilian casualties.
“We confirm that civilians are killed in military operations, but these are accidents,” he said at a press conference in Kabul on July 15. “Foreign forces are our colleagues and friends. Still, we condemn any civilian casualties.”
According to a recent United Nations report, civilian deaths during the first six months of 2008 are 60 per cent higher than in the same period last year. Official figures put the death toll at close to 700 civilians; humanitarian aid agencies say privately that the figure is significantly higher, since many victims classed as “insurgents” are actually non-combatants.
The official tally for civilians and anti-government forces killed in the whole of 2007 was close to 8,000.
The civilian casualties are causing a severe backlash in Afghanistan. According to senators in the Meshrano Jirga, the upper house of parliament, the gulf between the people and the foreign forces is widening daily.
“If these forces do not change their strategy and stop these wilful operations, the people will revolt,” said senator Abdullah Haghayeghi, speaking at a press conference in Kabul on July 6.
Another member of parliament, Engineer Ahmadzai, called on the United Nations Security council to set legal limits for the foreign forces in Afghanistan.
“These heedless operations carried out by Coalition forces are causing death and displacement,” he said.
In Nangarhar, the sense of anger is growing.
“Give these to Hamed Karzai,” said one elder, pointing to piles of bloodstained clothing, shoes and other articles belonging to those killed in the bombing. “Tell him, ‘These are gifts from the women who walked barefoot and hungry to the ballot box to vote for you, in spite of the dangers. And you sent them bombs as gifts, courtesy of your foreign friends.’”
Malek Jabar, a tribal elder from the Oghaz area, where the incident took place, told IWPR that the killings could lead people to go over to the Taleban.
“We Afghans have become so servile that we can no longer demand vengeance from foreigners on our own soil,” he said. “If those who committed this action are not handed over to us, we will have to join the opposition. At least they do not kill our women and children.”
Another tribal leader in Oghaz, Malek Zarbaz, warned that the bombing could have far-reaching consequences for this part of Afghanistan, which borders on Pakistan. While the Oghaz area has been relatively peaceful, the entire border suffers from frequent incursions by insurgents coming in from Pakistan.
“If the perpetrators of this crime are not handed over to us or put on trial, we are no longer Afghans,” said Malek Zarbaz. “We have kept this border secure, but we will not keep it that way any longer.”
Ezatullah Zawab is a freelance reporter in Nangarhar. Hafizullah Gardesh is IWPR’s local editor in Kabul.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Militant groups now fight in Afghanistan
'Complex insurgency' poses a revitalized threat to U.S., NATO
The Washington Times - National Security
Kathy Gannon ASSOCIATED PRESS Thursday, July 17, 2008
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan-In early June, about 300 fighters from jihadist groups came together for a secret gathering here, in the same city that serves as headquarters to the Pakistani army.
The groups were launched long ago with the army's clandestine support to fight against India in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir. But at the meeting, they agreed to resolve their differences and commit more fighters to another front instead: Afghanistan.
"The message was that the jihad in Kashmir is still continuing but it is not the most important right now. Afghanistan is the fighting ground, against the Americans there," said Toor Gul, a leader of the militant group Hezb-ul Mujahideen, in an interview at the beginning of July. The groups included the al Qaeda-linked Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, banned by Pakistan and branded terrorists by the U.S., he said.
The U.S. military says militant attacks in eastern Afghanistan have increased 40 percent over last year. For two straight months, the death toll of foreign troops in Afghanistan has exceeded that of Iraq.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
On Sunday, nine U.S. soldiers were killed in an ambush in Afghanistan's eastern Kunar province, the deadliest single attack for the U.S. since June 2005.
Pakistani military and European intelligence officials, speaking to Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because the information is sensitive, confirmed the June meeting and said it was the second such gathering this year. A senior military official described the inability to prevent the meetings as "an intelligence failure."
Despite growing pressure on Pakistan to quell Islamic militancy, jihadist groups within its borders are, in fact, increasing their cooperation to attack U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, according to interviews with a wide range of militants, intelligence officials and military officers.
Militants say they operate with minimal interference, and sometimes tacit cooperation, from Pakistani authorities, while diplomats say the country's new government until now has been ineffectual in dealing with a looming threat.
"Where there were embers seven years ago, we are now fighting flames," a serving Western general told Associated Press, referring to both Afghanistan and Pakistan's border regions. He agreed to be interviewed on the condition that his identity and nationality were not revealed.
A Pentagon report released late last month described a dual terror threat in Afghanistan: the Taliban in the south, and "a more complex, adaptive insurgency" in the east. That fragmented insurgency is made up of groups ranging from al Qaeda-linked Afghan warlords such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's radical Hezb-i-Islami group to Pakistani militants such as Jaish-e-Mohammed, the report said.
Hekmatyar's is the strongest rebel group in Afghanistan's Kunar province, where Sunday's deadly ambush occurred. His group has also had close contacts with jihadist groups in Pakistan.
In the past, the Taliban were suspicious of the mujahideen groups with close associations to the Pakistani military and intelligence. But now Gul, who fights alongside Hekmatyar's men in Kunar province, said they are united in the fight for Afghanistan. He told AP he had been to Kunar in the last two months but refused to be more specific.
Mark Laity, NATO spokesman in Afghanistan, said Pakistan's new civilian government has reduced its preventive military action and is trying to negotiate peace deals with the militants. He expressed concern that the deals were leading to "increased cross-border activity."
The Pakistani government also appears to be loosening its grip on the volatile northwest, where the influence of Islamic extremists is expanding. Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is believed to be hiding along the rugged, lawless Afghan-Pakistan border.
Pakistan's Mohmand and Bajaur tribal areas are emerging as increasingly strong insurgent centers, according to Gul, the militant. His information was corroborated by Pakistani and Western officials. Both those tribal areas are right next door to Afghanistan's Kunar province.
"Before there were special, hidden places for training, but now they are all over Bajaur and Mohmand," he said. "Even in houses, there is training going on."
A former minister in President Pervez Musharraf's ousted government, who did not want to be identified for fear of reprisals, said that insurgents were being paid between 6,000 and 8,000 rupees - the equivalent of $90 and $120 - a month in Mohmand and that grain was being collected to feed them. He did not identify the source of the donations but said Pakistan's army and intelligence were aware of them.
Maulvi Abdul Rahman, a Taliban militant and former police officer under the ousted hard-line regime, said that jihadist sympathizers in the Middle East are sending money to support the insurgents and that more Central Asians are coming to fight.
Rahman said that under a tacit understanding with authorities, militants are free to cross to fight in Afghanistan as long as they do not stage attacks inside Pakistan, which has been assailed by an unprecedented wave of suicide attacks in the past year.
"It is easy for me now. I just go and come. There are army checkposts, and now we pass and they don't say anything. Pakistan now understands that the U.S. is dangerous for them," he said. "There is not an article in any agreement that says go to Afghanistan, but it is understood if we want to go to Afghanistan, 'OK, but leave Pakistan alone.'"
The Taliban appears to have considerable latitude to operate. Last month Baitullah Mehsud, the chief Pakistani Taliban leader, held a news conference attended by dozens of Pakistani journalists in South Waziristan tribal region. Authorities did nothing to stop it, although the Pakistani government and the CIA have accused Mehsud of plotting the December assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto.
Journalists who attended said there were no security forces to be seen as a convoy of as many as 20 vehicles passed into the Mehsud hideout - not far from where the army itself had taken an entourage of foreign journalists just a week earlier.
Tensions in Pakistan's anti-terror alliance with the United States are growing. U.S. air strikes during a border clash with militants on June 10 killed 11 Pakistani paramilitary troops - the deadliest incident of its kind, prompting a sharp rebuke by Pakistan's army to Washington.
Pakistan's army vehemently denies giving covert aid to militants and points out that 1,087 of its soldiers have died in the tribal regions since 2002 - more than the U.S. military and NATO have lost in Afghanistan.
"If anyone says the army is providing sanctuary, nothing could be further from the truth," army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said. He criticized the U.S. and NATO forces for failing to capture insurgents when they cross into Afghanistan or stop them from coming into Pakistan.
"Is it the responsibility of only one side to stop the border crossings?" he asked.
A senior government official also said Pakistan - which once backed the Taliban but formally abandoned its support after the Sept. 11 attacks on America - has become the scapegoat for U.S. and NATO failures in Afghanistan.
"Maybe one or two individuals are allowing things to happen, but as a policy it makes no sense to me," said the official, who had the authority to speak only if his name were not used. He denied that the army was helping militants. "Just because we were in bed with them once doesn't mean we are today."
However, the Afghan government has directly accused Pakistani intelligence of plotting a recent assassination attempt on President Hamid Karzai and the July 7 bombing outside the Indian Embassy in Kabul that killed at least 58 people.
Such claims are virtually impossible to substantiate. However, retired Pakistani general Talat Masood said the army still treats militants and Afghan rebels as "assets" because of its deep conviction that India is expanding its influence in Afghanistan and using its consulates there to foment an ethnic rebellion in Pakistan's troubled southwest Baluchistan province.
"There are certain [militant] groups that have the full blessing of the army, some to which they are neutral and some they are against," he said.
Although Pakistan has received some $10 billion in mostly military aid since 2001, the army mistrusts the United States - worried that it could one day abandon Pakistan and even turn its guns on a country where it has repeatedly voiced concern that al Qaeda's leadership is regrouping.
"They still believe in the same thing - that America will leave them tomorrow," Mr. Masood said, "and we'll be left high and dry with India strong and a hostile government in Afghanistan and that we will have no friends."
Back to Top
Back to Top
Iran Pours Cash Into Afghanistan, Seeking Leverage Against U.S.
Bloomberg By Bill Varner July 17, 2008
The flags of Iran, Afghanistan and Tehran-based Abad Rahan Pars Road & Construction Co. fly above a railroad work camp west of the Afghan city of Herat, signaling another commercial incursion from across the border.
Surrounded by a mud-brick wall in the style of an ancient desert fortress, the site houses 1,000 Afghans and Iranians building tracks to link Mashhad in northeastern Iran with Herat, about 200 miles away. The line will run alongside a highway the company completed in 2006 and transmission wires that feed Iranian electricity to Herat's 350,000 residents.
``Every single day Iran is trying to have more influence, and where there is money, there is political power,'' said Masoud Sana, the Herat Chamber of Commerce's international relations director. ``The Iranians are always trying to find out information about what the Afghan government is going to do next.''
While the world focuses on tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan 800 miles to the east, U.S. officials keep watch on Iran's expanding presence in Herat and the surrounding province of 2 million people. The region might play a major role if conflict erupts over Iran's nuclear program.
Should Iran's nuclear ambitions spark hostilities, it would use its sway in western Afghanistan as a ``bargaining chip,'' said Afghan-born Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and former envoy to Kabul. If attacked, Iran ``could make life difficult for us'' in Afghanistan, he said in an interview.
`Operatives Everywhere'
Iran has ``intelligence operatives everywhere, military commanders who work for them'' in the region who could be deployed to stir up trouble, including riots, said Barnett Rubin, an Afghanistan specialist at New York University's Center on International Cooperation.
For now, Tehran's investment of $500 million in the region has helped the U.S. by minimizing the influence of the Taliban extremists who once ruled the country and the sort of violence they have inflicted on southern and eastern Afghanistan. Iran paved half of Herat's streets and 40 miles of highway leading north, built schools and health clinics and partnered with Afghan companies in an industrial park.
``It's not just investments, but also trade,'' said Ali Shah Ahmedi, the 43-year-old manager of Herat's Tejarat Hotel. ``I have Iranian businessmen staying here all the time, coming to buy or sell goods'' such as packaged foods and motorcycles.
Afghanistan's `Dubai'
Sana, 42, holds forth from his office in the Herat Trade Center, a modern nine-story building of gleaming blue glass that helped inspire residents' nickname for their city: ``the Dubai of Afghanistan.'' A hotel, law offices and a finance company that supports farmers are connected by an Afghanistan rarity: an elevator.
Traffic lights in Herat work, in contrast to the capital, Kabul, so vehicles flow smoothly around the Blue Mosque, an 800- year-old, blue-tiled landmark. Herat is cleaner than Kabul, with more trees and parks, and less dangerous, with fewer visible police and troops.
Ties between Iran and Herat run deep. The city was the capital of 15th-century Persia, and Iran held Herat until midway through the 19th century. Heratis, mostly Sunni Muslims, today speak a dialect closer to the Farsi spoken in Tehran than the Dari used in Kabul.
Predominantly Shiite Iran opposed the Sunni Taliban -- who refused to educate girls when they ran Afghanistan, among other strictures -- as extreme.
Political Transition
After the Taliban were toppled for harboring the terrorists behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Tehran's government helped the U.S. and the UN begin the political transition that led to Hamid Karzai's election as president.
Iran's leaders feel that contribution wasn't properly acknowledged, said Manouchehr Mottaki, its foreign minister. The slight explains their refusal to help fight the Taliban's current insurgency, he said.
``We limit our cooperation with Afghanistan to helping reconstruct the country,'' Mottaki told reporters at the UN on July 2.
William Wood, the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, said Iran now helps arm the Taliban. Tehran's policy is to ``make everyone a loser'' in Afghanistan, he said in a Kabul interview.
Karzai is ``walking a very fine line'' and doesn't accuse Iran of actively supporting the insurgents, said Humayun Hamidzada, the president's chief spokesman.
`Positive Role'
``President Karzai believes Iran has a positive role to play in Afghanistan,'' Hamidzada said last week in Kabul. ``We are working with the U.S. and Iran, and don't want to become the battleground for their conflict.''
Iran's presence in Afghanistan will be an issue for the next U.S. president. Democratic candidate Barack Obama and Republican rival John McCain both view Iran's regional influence as a threat, though they differ on how to contain it. The two said this week that Afghanistan needs more U.S. military might to battle the Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorists.
Some Afghans view Iran's involvement in Herat as less than benevolent. Iran forced 200,000 Afghan refugees back across the border in recent years, some of whom contributed to crime and poverty in Herat, said Jamila Naseri, a lawyer with the Legal Aid Organization of Afghanistan.
Sana said Herat's Chamber of Commerce this month rejected a request from the Iranian Chamber of Commerce for expanded ties. One reason was Iran's attempt two years ago to undermine a Herat distribution facility for Super Cola, a soft drink. Iran flooded the region with a cheaper beverage until Afghanistan taxed the import heavily.
``They'll keep trying, though,'' Sana said. ``Iran is here to stay.''
To contact the reporter on this story: Bill Varner in Herat, Afghanistan, at wvarner@bloomberg.net
Back to Top
Back to Top
15 insurgents killed in raid in west Afghanistan
By AMIR SHAH Associated Press July 17, 2008
KABUL, Afghanistan - U.S. Special Forces and Afghan troops called in airstrikes during a raid on a militant cell in western Afghanistan on Thursday, killing 15 insurgents while freeing 15 hostages, officials said.
NATO, meanwhile, said its troops in the south have killed a senior Taliban commander, while the U.S.-led coalition reported its forces along with Afghan security forces killed "several militants" in the same region.
Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, a Defense Ministry spokesman, said 15 militants, including two Taliban commanders, were killed during the operation in the western province of Herat.
Gen. Jalandar Shah, the Afghan army's corps commander for western Afghanistan, said U.S. Special Forces assisted Afghan troops during the operation.
Humayun Azizi, head of the provincial council, said the raid targeted a militant cell in the Zerko area of Shindand district that was involved in kidnappings, roadside bombings and other attacks.
Azimi said the raid in Shindand freed 15 hostages held by the group.
"During the operation a number of men were discovered handcuffed and imprisoned in appalling conditions in one of the insurgent compounds; they are now receiving medical care," a NATO statement said.
Four civilians were wounded during the operation and were brought to Herat hospital for treatment, Azizi said.
Abdul Shukur, the Shindand police chief, said three houses were destroyed. He said two local militant commanders and two of their sons were among the dead.
Separately, NATO said its troops have killed Bismullah Akhund, an insurgent leader in the southern province of Helmand. Akhund was killed on Saturday in Helmand's Naw Zad district, the alliance said in a statement.
NATO accused Akhund of supplying weapons and roadside bombs that have killed Afghan and foreign forces in the area — a hub of the insurgency raging in Afghanistan.
The U.S.-led coalition said "several militants" were killed in the Nahr Surkh district of Helmand on Wednesday. The militants had tried to engage patrolling coalition and Afghan forces "from a fortified position with small-arms fire and (rocket-propelled grenades)," the coalition said in a Thursday statement.
Also Thursday, the coalition said its troops along with Afghan security forces uncovered and destroyed a large weapons cache in northern Afghanistan, a usually quiet region.
More than 1,000 mortar rounds, 60 anti-aircraft rounds and several tons of small-arms ammunition and weapons were found Wednesday in the compound in She Shanben village of Sheberghan District in Jawzjan province following tips from local residents, according to a coalition statement.
__
Associated Press writer Rahim Faiez contributed to this report.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Taliban leader killed in Afghanistan
Kabul, July 17 (Xinhua) Afghan army and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in a joint operation have killed a senior Taliban leader in southern Afghanistan's Helmand province, an ISAF statement said Thursday.
Mullah Bismullah Akhund was a senior leader of the insurgent group responsible for supplying weapons and explosives to the rebel fighters, the statement said.
Bismullah was closely associated with local Taliban leader Mullah Rahim, whose brother was also killed during the July 12 operation, it added.
Taliban-led insurgency, which has become more intense this year, has killed more than 2,000 people including over 700 civilians till date this year in Afghanistan.
Back to Top
Back to Top
US shifts focus to Pakistan threat
By Kim Ghattas BBC News, Washington Thursday, 17 July 2008
Increasingly worried about the threat from militant groups inside Pakistan, the US is trying to develop a comprehensive approach to tackling the security challenges this poses to Afghanistan, coalition forces there and, potentially, to the US itself.
US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates said on Tuesday he was "working very hard" to look into ways of sending additional troops to Afghanistan to counter the flow of insurgents from Pakistan.
A day earlier, a bipartisan bill was introduced in Congress, proposing to triple US humanitarian aid to Pakistan in order to boost civilian ties and move away from the more traditional military-to-military ties between the two allies.
The moves are also in response to growing US frustration with what it sees as Pakistan's lack of action against the pro-Taleban militants operating along the border with Afghanistan and its concern about peace deals that Islamabad has been signing with some of the radical groups in the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas.
"The bottom line is this: we are seeing a greater number of insurgents and foreign fighters flowing across the border with Pakistan unmolested and unhindered. This movement needs to stop," said Adm Michael Mullen, the US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has just returned from a trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Redeployment
On Sunday, an insurgent attack in Afghanistan killed nine US troops. Adm Mullen said the group that launched the attack trained in safe havens in Pakistan.
"We see this threat accelerating, almost becoming a syndicate of different groups who heretofore had not worked closely together," added Adm Mullen, speaking during a joint press conference with Mr Gates in Washington.
Although no recommendations about troop deployments have been made yet, Mr Gates's statement was the strongest and clearest to date that the US feels it needs to shift focus from Iraq to Afghanistan to deal with the growing insurgency there.
The US military is also hoping that with the return of five brigades from Iraq next week, its forces will be not be as thinly stretched and it will have more flexibility in its deployments.
Adm Mullen said that while additional US troops would have a big impact on the flow of insurgents, "it would be much better if there was that pressure on the Pakistani side".
During a visit to Washington last week, the Pakistani foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, insisted that his country was doing all it could to fight the militants.
But Washington remains unimpressed and is pursuing somewhat unilateral actions to deal with the threat, including launching military strikes from Afghanistan across the border into Pakistan.
This has also considerably raised the tension between the two allies, especially after 11 Pakistani soldiers were killed in such a strike in June.
Release deals
Part of the problem is the sense that there is a leadership vacuum in Islamabad, five months after the elections, with the ruling coalition there wrangling about how to get rid of President Pervez Musharraf.
"The ruling coalition is in a state of disarray and it is hard to guess as to who is calling the shots. No one knows what kind of working relations this government has with the military high command," said a journalist from the Pakistan English language daily, The News.
Since the start of the year, the newly-elected civilian government has been signing peace deals with tribes and militants, hoping to bring some stability to the volatile border areas.
Under the agreements, the Pakistani military has been withdrawing from the areas and releasing militants from prison. But this has angered the US and Afghanistan, who have warned that in past these kind of agreements only led to an increase in violence.
Nato officials say that cross-border attacks increased by 50% in May. There is also concern about the content of the deals. A state department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, recently said the deals were relatively secretive and it was unclear whether they included any specific prohibition of cross-border attacks and movements, something the US has been pushing for.
During the Pentagon press conference on Wednesday, Mr Gates said it was important that the Pakistani government understood the threat posed by the militants to Pakistan itself.
"One of the things that is really important is the civilian government gaining a full appreciation of the magnitude and reality of the danger posed to them by these groups and the lack of control or pressure in the FATA and in the north-west province," he said.
But the US is also concerned about the threat posed further afield by the militants and specifically to the US.
"I believe fundamentally if the United States is going to get hit, it is going to come out of the planning of the leadership in the FATA - al-Qaeda specifically," said Adm Mullen in June after another visit to Pakistan.
"That is a threat to us that must be dealt with."
Reorientation bill
The growing security threat and the failure of the Pakistani military to deliver is what prompted the bipartisan bill introduced on Tuesday by Democratic Senator Joseph Biden and Republican Senator Richard Lugar, which will bring the amount of non-military aid to Pakistan up to US$7.5bn (£3.75bn) over five years for development projects like schools, roads and clinics.
"For far too long, our policy towards Pakistan has been in desperate need of a serious overhaul," said Mr Biden, with Mr Lugar adding that "the legislation recognises that strengthening democracy and countering terrorism go hand-in-hand".
The bill "urges a reorientation of engagement towards the Pakistani people rather than merely towards the Pakistani government, military or civilian".
It also calls for greater accountability on security assistance and makes military aid conditional on the performance of the Pakistani military, although the president can waive this requirement in the interest of national security.
The senators are hopeful that the bill will be signed by the president and pass by year's end. But there are fears that it may be too late for a US war of the hearts and minds in Pakistan, and that the military approach will prevail for some time.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Obama's Afghan Plan Raises Questions
Analysts say proposal to stabilise the country sounds good, but has several potential pitfalls.
Institute for War & Peace Reporting By Jennifer Koons in London (ARR No. 297, 17-Jul-08)
If elected president in the autumn, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama aims to redirect America’s foreign policy focus to combating terrorism in South Asia, but questions remain about the feasibility of his strategy, including how easily the United States will be able to disentangle itself from Iraq and whether more troops will lead to success in Afghanistan.
In a major foreign policy address in Washington DC, on July 15, the Illinois senator detailed his plan to draw down American forces in Iraq during his first 16-months in office and redeploy at least two additional combat brigades or roughly 10,000 more US soldiers to Afghanistan.
But analysts are divided about the merits of decreasing US military involvement in Iraq at a time when the drop-off in violence in the country has been largely attributed to the deployment of 30,000 additional American troops on the ground.
“Taking troops out of Iraq is totally unrealistic,” said Toby Dodge, senior fellow for the Middle East at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “Back in 2005 and 2006, Bush tried to draw down troops and limit casualties and that nearly led to a full-blown civil war.”
The so-called American troop “surge” came to an end this month and General David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, will spend the next 45 days assessing the security situation ahead of his expected testimony before Congress in September.
“I am sceptical that Obama will be able to shift to the degree that he has proposed in Iraq,” said Sam Brannen, a security analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC. “I have been wrong so far about Iraq since progress is slowly being made and so I hope I continue to be wrong.”
Brannen said he questioned the plan to decrease troop levels when upcoming events may require their presence to ensure continued stability in the country.
“With the upcoming provincial elections and the national election looming on the horizon and with the US occupation now becoming a domestic political issue pushed by [Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki], we’ll have a tough time in Iraq and it will be difficult to move troops.”
The Iraqi provincial elections are expected to be held before the end of the year and the national elections are scheduled for the end of 2009. Under Obama’s plan, the US would begin a measured withdrawal from the time he takes office through the summer of 2010.
Obama has welcomed Maliki’s own call for a staged pullout as “an enormous opportunity” to implement his strategy.
But Dodge called Maliki’s statements political posturing in an effort to get the upper hand in ongoing talks about a new agreement for American troops to remain in the country into next year.
“The only reason Maliki says he is backing a troop pullout is because he’s in negotiations with the Bush administration and he’s trying to show that he wants more autonomy over his government,” said Dodge. “In reality, Maliki realises that the presence of US troops has contributed to the progress on the ground that he is now taking credit for.”
However, not everyone predicts Obama’s strategy for withdrawal will lead to renewed unrest.
“I don’t agree with those who say that a measured troop withdrawal would squander the gains from the surge,” said Dana Allin, senior fellow for transatlantic affairs at IISS. “You’re not going to have a perfect Iraq and that shouldn’t be our goal. If you can withdrawal safely and responsibly and carefully that’s about the best chance of success you’ll get.”
Freeing up enough troops from Iraq to send to Afghanistan is part of the Democratic senator’s two-pronged plan to combat the rising threat of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in the region: increasing the US military presence in the country and dramatically beefing up foreign aid for an enhanced reconstruction effort.
While his campaign team have kept details under wraps for security reasons, the senator plans to make his first trip to Afghanistan as early as this week.
The trip comes amid one of the most violent summers for US and allied troops in the country. In the deadliest attack against coalition forces since 2005, nine American soldiers were killed on July 13 when they came under heavy fire at a military base in eastern Afghanistan near the border with Pakistan.
Last month, 28 US coalition soldiers were killed while fighting in Afghanistan.
Commanders on the ground have attributed the increased violence to the renewed strength of Taleban militants and their associates as well as the lax security along the 2,400-kilometre Afghan-Pakistan border. Violence has risen by 40 per cent in eastern Afghanistan this year, US army major general Jeffrey Schloesser told reporters during a teleconference from Afghanistan in June.
“Obama has been calling for additional forces for almost two years now and as he said in his speech [on July 15], the focus of this administration – almost the obsession of this administration – and Senator McCain with the war in Iraq has [cast] Afghanistan as the forgotten war and that’s why the situation has deteriorated there,” said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer now at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC.
Riedel, who also acts as an unpaid adviser to Obama on Afghanistan and South Asia, said additional troops in the region would fulfil a number of functions, primarily in the southern part of the country where NATO commanders on the ground “simply do not have enough troops to secure the area”.
“These additional troops wouldn’t necessarily be border guards, but they would be used to help existing forces – including the British troops – in the Kandahar and Helmand provinces,” said Riedel.
While more troops on the ground may offer initial benefits, the long-term costs could be higher than Obama realises, according to Brannen.
“Additional troops along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border may in the short-term decrease the ability of the Taleban to penetrate into Afghanistan from Pakistan along known routes of infiltration,” he said. “However, it is a [long] border along mostly rugged terrain, and it is likely the Taleban will simply move their activity where US troops aren’t. Border protection missions aren’t easy anywhere, let alone a war zone.”
More troops will also lead to more American fatalities, he said.
“It’s worth noting that more troops mean more potential targets and more chances of US casualties inflicted by Taleban ambush, IED (improvised explosive device) and other tactics that are mainly responsible for the increase in casualties over the past few years,” said Brannen.
Tackling this threat depends on the willingness of Pakistani authorities to crack down on a resurgent Taleban and al-Qaeda operatives who have found sanctuary in the country’s border regions.
Though allies of the Bush administration, Pakistani officials have come under fire for holding talks with militants in tribal areas – which, Washington argues, has led to increased attacks against US and NATO troops along the border.
“The war in Afghanistan cannot be won without a new strategy of dealing with Pakistan,” said Riedel. “This is part of Obama’s much broader plan that tries to improve the economic situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
Taking a carrot-and-stick approach, the Democratic senator has pledged that his administration would press Pakistan to root out militants – and reward it for doing so with a massive increase in foreign aid.
“We must expect more of the Pakistani government, but we must offer more than a blank check to [President Pervez Musharraf] who has lost the confidence of his people,” said Obama on Jul 15. “It’s time to strengthen stability by standing up for the aspirations of the Pakistani people.”
He announced his support for a bipartisan bill introduced in the Senate this week calling for tripling non-military aid to Pakistan to 7.5 billion US dollars over the next five years.
Increased economic aid is also a central component of Obama’s plan to stabilise Afghanistan, particularly as a means of staving off the potential for further resentment and anger among Afghans at the increased military presence in their country. In the south of the country, the presence of western troops has fueled sympathy for the Taleben and drawn young men into their ranks.
“As time goes on if we fail to manage the expectations of the Afghan people, it starts to seem like we have some sort of ulterior agenda because how could the richest nation on earth deploy all of these soldiers but do so bad on reconstruction,” said Brannen.
Experts have welcomed Obama’s plan to put one billion dollars toward more community-based civil reconstruction and development programmes.
“The best approach is to have effective, well-coordinated, community-based reconstruction and development projects in the provinces and villages along the border,” said Thomas E Gouttierre, dean of international studies and programs and director of the Center for Afghanistan Studies at the University of Nebraska.
Gouttierre, who visits Afghanistan several times a year to monitor reconstruction efforts, said that involving local citizens in rebuilding projects will also reduce the appeal of Taleban militants looking to recruit disaffected Afghanis to their cause.
“We cannot build a great wall of Afghanistan,” he said. “Improved security and more coordination and effective reconstruction efforts that demonstrably improve the quality of living for the individual Afghan and his family offer the only real combination that will work over the short and long term.”
But it remains to be seen whether the American public will back a plan that calls for bringing troops home from Iraq only to send them over to Afghanistan.
Brennan said that for the moment Americans continue to see Afghanistan as a “good war” that is “worth fighting”.
“The bad guys are clearer. The mission is clearer,” he said. “That is where this form of radical Islamist terrorism came from. It is not from the Middle East. It is from the Soviet-Afghan conflict and the Taleban takeover and al-Qaeda’s presence.”
Nevertheless, some analysts contend that more long-term military deployments, increased casualties and foreign aid to a region that still remains largely unfamiliar to most Americans may not play well for an Obama administration back home.
“Most Americans think we won the war [in Afghanistan] in 2001 and it should be behind us,” said Robert Guttman, director of the Center on Politics & Foreign Relations at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington DC. “If things get out of hand and we start to lose more and more troops, they will be surprised and you can expect some push back.”
Jennifer Koons is an IWPR reporter in London.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Obama's brave (new?) world
By Pepe Escobar Asia Times Online / July 17, 2008
WASHINGTON - Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama is the man with the plan for Iraq and Afghanistan. Presidential in tone and delivery, quoting Harry S Truman and Dean Acheson, George Kennan and George Marshall - the greatest generation - Obama, in a major foreign policy speech in Washington on Tuesday, outlined what he calls his "new overarching strategy".
He said he would "focus this strategy on five goals essential to making America safer: ending the war in Iraq responsibly; finishing the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban; securing all nuclear weapons and materials from terrorists and rogue states; achieving true energy security; and rebuilding our alliances to meet the challenges of the 21st century".
To say that Obama's plan - sketched earlier in an op-ed piece for The New York Times - is more realistic, thoughtful and sensible than that of rival Republican Senator John McCain's "road to victory" in Iraq would be an understatement.
But ... the devil in those (brave) details
Does Obama's proposed redeployment in Iraq automatically translate into no US troops in Mesopotamia by the summer of 2010?
No. It translates into "a residual force to perform specific missions in Iraq: targeting any remnants of al-Qaeda; protecting our service members and diplomats; and training and supporting Iraq's security forces, so long as the Iraqis make political progress."
There are many problems with this proposition. Al-Qaeda in Iraq is just a component of the Islamic State of Iraq - an umbrella jihadi organization. Al-Qaeda has no more than 1,000 jihadis in total. Moderate Sunnis could get rid of them whenever they feel like it. Obama even admits "true success will take place when we leave Iraq to a government that is taking responsibility for its future - a government that prevents sectarian conflict, and ensures that the al-Qaeda threat which has been beaten back by our troops does not re-emerge."
So if Iraqis are in charge of their own security, one doesn't need US soldiers who, by the way, did not beat back al-Qaeda; US taxpayer's money, distributed to the Sunni Awakening Councils to the tune of US$300 a month for each former guerrilla, did.
Obama also does not explain how many soldiers will be part of his US "residual force" in Iraq. Hundreds? Thousands? Without speaking Arabic, with no access to local intelligence, mistrusted by local populations, what exactly would they be doing stranded in the desert sands? And who will judge who is a terrorist and who's not? The government in Baghdad or, once again, Washington?
Now for those lofty goals
US corporate media have given a blank check to McCain on foreign policy. McCain is a war hero masterfully playing the likable guy role and the media fall for it like babies. As for McCain's policies, essentially they spell the "surge" in troops in Iraq is working, the war may go on for 100 years, we're on the way to "victory", and let's bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.
Obama for his part recognizes that "in fact - as should have been apparent to President [George W Bush] and Senator McCain - the central front in the war on terror is not Iraq, and it never was."
The problem is that, for Obama, the central front is Afghanistan. That's when he runs into trouble - when he has to tackle the "broader strategic goals".
Obama promised he would "send at least two additional combat brigades to Afghanistan, and use this commitment to seek greater contributions - with fewer restrictions - from NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] allies".
Obama suggests tenuous hints of a mini-Marshall Plan for Afghanistan, already promised - and not delivered - by the Bush administration after the fall of the Taliban in late 2001: "That's why I've proposed an additional $1 billion in non-military assistance each year, with meaningful safeguards to prevent corruption ... We cannot lose Afghanistan to a future of narco-terrorism."
But Obama essentially frames the US mission in Afghanistan as a fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The problem is, the US has not captured any major al-Qaeda operative in the area for a long time. And the historical al-Qaeda leadership is ensconced either in the Waziristans or in Chitral - Pakistani tribal areas, not Afghanistan.
So what purpose would serve Obama's extra 10,000 US troops in search and destroy missions in eastern Afghanistan - bound to inflict inevitable, non-stop "collateral damage" to loads of Pashtun civilian peasants and villagers?
Even the Pentagon now openly admits it is fighting an asymmetrical war in Afghanistan against a motley crew of Taliban, disgruntled Pashtun tribal chiefs and warlords financed by US intelligence in the 1980s - from Gulbuddin Hekmatyar to the Haqqanis. This has nothing to do with al-Qaeda. It's about fiercely independent Afghans refusing what they identify as foreign occupation - by the US and NATO. This is symmetrical to Sunnis and Shi'ites fighting foreign occupation in Iraq.
Obama is a big fan of NATO. He says. "We need a stronger and sustained partnership between Afghanistan, Pakistan and NATO to secure the border, to take out terrorist camps, and to crack down on cross-border insurgents."
Barnett Rubin of New York University, arguably the top US expert on Afghanistan, would tell Obama that the key to solve the "war on terror" is not Iraq. But it's not Afghanistan either. It is Pakistan.
Obama seems to agree, when he says he's "co-sponsoring a bill with Joe Biden and Richard Lugar to triple non-military aid to the Pakistani people and to sustain it for a decade, while ensuring that the military assistance we do provide is used to take the fight to the Taliban and al-Qaeda".
But Obama seems to ignore that Pakistan is a feudal society run by roughly 50 families where the only solid institution is the army - and the intelligence services. Even the Council on Foreign Relations, in a new report on the tribal areas along the Pakistan/Afghanistan border, admits "the Pakistani government lacks the political, military or bureaucratic capacity to fix the tribal areas on its own".
Obama for his part is unable to spell out how - with just a fistful of dollars - he'll be able to "fix" tribal areas that have been living in fierce independence for centuries. Even assuming the money would reach the tribal areas, it is not certain it would erase the structural root of "terror" - social inequality in a rugged, impoverished land.
The giveaway
So Obama's "broader strategic goals" include an unspecified "residual force" in Iraq and more combat brigades in Afghanistan. Is this so radically different from McCain? Obama in fact may have given away his true position in April, during General David Petraeus' US Senate hearings. That's when Obama, face to face, asked Petraeus, the head US military man in Iraq, a truly revealing question - ignored by US corporate media:
"When you have finite resources you have got to define your goals tightly and modestly ... you don't necessarily have to answer this, maybe this is a rhetorical question. If we are able to have the status quo in Iraq right now without US troops, would that be a sufficient definition of success? It's obviously not perfect, there is still violence, there are still traces of al-Qaeda, Iran has influence more than we would like, but if we have the current status quo and yet our troops have been brought down to 30,000, would you consider that as success, would that meet our criteria or would that not be good enough and we have to devote even more resources to it?"
The current status quo in Iraq - and with at least 30,000 "residual" US troops. Withdrawal it isn't. Is this "change we can believe in", part of a new "overarching strategy" - or is this the same status quo as defined by half a century of continuous, many would say imperial, US foreign interference?
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Militants ready for a war without borders
By Syed Saleem Shahzad Asia Times Online / July 17, 2008
KARACHI - From thinly disguised insinuations against Pakistan following the suicide attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul this month to outright accusations against Islamabad by the Afghan government over the unrelenting Taliban-led insurgency, the blame game has entered a critical time: a major regional battle could erupt in a matter of days.
Last week, US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen paid a sudden visit to Pakistan during which he revealed to Pakistani leaders and military officials the possibility of surgical strikes on Taliban and al-Qaeda networks operating in the border regions and that coalition forces in Afghanistan would not hesitate to conduct hot-pursuit raids into Pakistan.
Mullen urged Pakistani leaders to play their part from their side. He pin-pointed the North and South Waziristan tribal areas as a focal point, along with the areas of Razmak, Shawal, Ghulam Khan and Angor Ada along the border with Afghanistan. Across the divide, Khost province is considered a likely target for carpet bombing and an offensive by the Afghan National Army.
Pakistani army chief General Ashfaq Pervez Kiani was quick to call in senior strategic analysts, who pointed out that the military would only follow the directions of the civilian government. Yet just days earlier, Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gillani had announced that all decisions concerning military operations would be decided by the army chief. This does not bode well for Pakistan's whole-hearted cooperation.
But regardless of how sincerely the Pakistani army fights against the Taliban, the fact is that the Taliban have already staged a virtual coup in North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) bordering Afghanistan.
They have established a reign of terror against which the state writ is powerless. In all districts, the Taliban have taken security officials hostage to press their demands that a strict Islamic code be enforced. Many officials have been killed when the Taliban's wishes have not been granted.
As a result, the middle and lower members of the security forces are effectively non-functional and answer to the Taliban's call across NWFP.
This has left the secular and relatively liberal government of the province, led by the Awami National Party, with no choice but to form "defense committees" at the district level to organize civilians against a complete Taliban take-over.
Across the border, a similar situation exists in Ghazni province, close to the capital Kabul, where, apart from the provincial headquarters, the Taliban call the shots in all districts once dusk descends - the district administrations and the police simply give up control, giving the Taliban freedom of movement.
In Kunar and Nooristan provinces, the Taliban are fighting for similar dominance and already most security checkpoints have been abandoned out of fear of the Taliban.
On Monday, a high-level al-Qaeda shura (council) concluded in Miramshah in North Waziristan with instructions to all members with families to retreat to safe locations in expectation of the Afghan war spreading into Pakistan's tribal areas.
Not that this alarms al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban. They reason that should coalition forces seriously enter into Pakistan (they have in the past sent unmanned Predator drones on raids into Pakistan), the reaction in Pakistan, even among liberals, would be so fierce that the Pakistani army would not dare to follow up with action of its own. This would leave the militants with a free hand to launch operations inside Afghanistan.
The shura also noted that militant ranks in the region had received their biggest boost since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, including growing numbers from Muslim countries.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Pak to host economic cooperation conference on Afghanistan
17 Jul, 2008, 1753 hrs IST, PTI
ISLAMABAD : Pakistan is scheduled to host the third Regional Economic Cooperation Conference on Afghanistan in the federal capital during August 26-27.
The conference is a follow-up to the Kabul Conference of December 2005 and New Delhi Conference of November 2006, state-run APP news agency quoted sources in the Economic Affairs Division as saying on Thursday.
Eleven regional countries, the G-8 nations and international organisations like the UN, World Bank, Asian Development Bank and Shanghai Cooperation Organisation are scheduled to participate in the conference.
The sources said the conference would have the single-point agenda of the economic development of Afghanistan in particular and the region in general.
The issues expected to be discussed at the proposed Islamabad Conference are mining, energy, infrastructure, health, labour, human resource development, and overland trade and transit issues between countries and regions.
Pakistan and Afghanistan are currently engaged in a bitter war of words over a fresh wave of terrorist attacks in Afghanistan, including the suicide bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul.
Afghanistan has accused Pakistani intelligence agencies of being involved in the attacks. Islamabad has denied the charges, saying they could affect bilateral relations and the overall security situation.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Iran Pours Cash Into Afghanistan, Seeking Leverage Against U.S.
Bill Varner
July 17 (Bloomberg) -- The flags of Iran, Afghanistan and Tehran-based Abad Rahan Pars Road & Construction Co. fly above a railroad work camp west of the Afghan city of Herat, signaling another commercial incursion from across the border.
Surrounded by a mud-brick wall in the style of an ancient desert fortress, the site houses 1,000 Afghans and Iranians building tracks to link Mashhad in northeastern Iran with Herat, about 200 miles away. The line will run alongside a highway the company completed in 2006 and transmission wires that feed Iranian electricity to Herat's 350,000 residents.
``Every single day Iran is trying to have more influence, and where there is money, there is political power,'' said Masoud Sana, the Herat Chamber of Commerce's international relations director. ``The Iranians are always trying to find out information about what the Afghan government is going to do next.''
While the world focuses on tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan 800 miles to the east, U.S. officials keep watch on Iran's expanding presence in Herat and the surrounding province of 2 million people. The region might play a major role if conflict erupts over Iran's nuclear program.
Should Iran's nuclear ambitions spark hostilities, it would use its sway in western Afghanistan as a ``bargaining chip,'' said Afghan-born Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and former envoy to Kabul. If attacked, Iran ``could make life difficult for us'' in Afghanistan, he said in an interview.
`Operatives Everywhere'
Iran has ``intelligence operatives everywhere, military commanders who work for them'' in the region who could be deployed to stir up trouble, including riots, said Barnett Rubin, an Afghanistan specialist at New York University's Center on International Cooperation.
For now, Tehran's investment of $500 million in the region has helped the U.S. by minimizing the influence of the Taliban extremists who once ruled the country and the sort of violence they have inflicted on southern and eastern Afghanistan. Iran paved half of Herat's streets and 40 miles of highway leading north, built schools and health clinics and partnered with Afghan companies in an industrial park.
``It's not just investments, but also trade,'' said Ali Shah Ahmedi, the 43-year-old manager of Herat's Tejarat Hotel. ``I have Iranian businessmen staying here all the time, coming to buy or sell goods'' such as packaged foods and motorcycles.
Afghanistan's `Dubai'
Sana, 42, holds forth from his office in the Herat Trade Center, a modern nine-story building of gleaming blue glass that helped inspire residents' nickname for their city: ``the Dubai of Afghanistan.'' A hotel, law offices and a finance company that supports farmers are connected by an Afghanistan rarity: an elevator.
Traffic lights in Herat work, in contrast to the capital, Kabul, so vehicles flow smoothly around the Blue Mosque, an 800- year-old, blue-tiled landmark. Herat is cleaner than Kabul, with more trees and parks, and less dangerous, with fewer visible police and troops.
Ties between Iran and Herat run deep. The city was the capital of 15th-century Persia, and Iran held Herat until midway through the 19th century. Heratis, mostly Sunni Muslims, today speak a dialect closer to the Farsi spoken in Tehran than the Dari used in Kabul.
Predominantly Shiite Iran opposed the Sunni Taliban -- who refused to educate girls when they ran Afghanistan, among other strictures -- as extreme.
Political Transition
After the Taliban were toppled for harboring the terrorists behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Tehran's government helped the U.S. and the UN begin the political transition that led to Hamid Karzai's election as president.
Iran's leaders feel that contribution wasn't properly acknowledged, said Manouchehr Mottaki, its foreign minister. The slight explains their refusal to help fight the Taliban's current insurgency, he said.
``We limit our cooperation with Afghanistan to helping reconstruct the country,'' Mottaki told reporters at the UN on July 2.
William Wood, the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, said Iran now helps arm the Taliban. Tehran's policy is to ``make everyone a loser'' in Afghanistan, he said in a Kabul interview.
Karzai is ``walking a very fine line'' and doesn't accuse Iran of actively supporting the insurgents, said Humayun Hamidzada, the president's chief spokesman.
`Positive Role'
``President Karzai believes Iran has a positive role to play in Afghanistan,'' Hamidzada said last week in Kabul. ``We are working with the U.S. and Iran, and don't want to become the battleground for their conflict.''
Iran's presence in Afghanistan will be an issue for the next U.S. president. Democratic candidate Barack Obama and Republican rival John McCain both view Iran's regional influence as a threat, though they differ on how to contain it. The two said this week that Afghanistan needs more U.S. military might to battle the Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorists.
Some Afghans view Iran's involvement in Herat as less than benevolent. Iran forced 200,000 Afghan refugees back across the border in recent years, some of whom contributed to crime and poverty in Herat, said Jamila Naseri, a lawyer with the Legal Aid Organization of Afghanistan.
Sana said Herat's Chamber of Commerce this month rejected a request from the Iranian Chamber of Commerce for expanded ties. One reason was Iran's attempt two years ago to undermine a Herat distribution facility for Super Cola, a soft drink. Iran flooded the region with a cheaper beverage until Afghanistan taxed the import heavily.
``They'll keep trying, though,'' Sana said. ``Iran is here to stay.''
Back to Top
Back to Top
Afghanistan: chemicals used for heroin production seized in UN-backed operation
UN News Centre
17 July 2008 – More than three tons of precursor chemicals used to produce heroin were recently seized in Afghanistan in an operation supported by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
Nearly 3,200 kilos of the chemicals, including 2,229 kilos of ammonium chloride and 736 kilos of sodium carbonate, were hidden in sacks of fertilizer and rice and smuggled across the Pakistani border by truck.
The shipment was intercepted in Kabul by the Counter Narcotics Police in Afghanistan (CNPA), as part of the UNODC-supported “Operation Tarcet,” which targets the smuggling of precursor chemicals into the strife-torn nation, which supplies more than 90 per cent of the world’s heroin.
Working with UNODC and regional governments, the CNPA has stepped up its efforts to intercept consignments of smuggled precursors through its participation in Operation Tarcet, which began in Afghanistan and now covers the region.
Operation Tarcet has also led to the recent seizure of five tons of acetic anhydride, a chemical needed to produce heroin, in the southern Iranian city of Bandar Abbas, and a 14-ton seizure of the same precursor in Karachi, Pakistan.
“This seizure shows that regional and targeted collaboration works,” says Jean-Luc Lemahieu, Chief of UNODC’s Europe and Asia Section. “Dealing with the drug issue is a shared responsibility. Translating this shared responsibility into action is the art.”
Operation Tarcet aims to educate law enforcement officials on identifying and intercepting smuggled chemical shipments, and to intercept consignments using modern methodologies.
It is part of UNODC’s broader “Rainbow Strategy” to counter Afghan opium production, trafficking and consumption, through cross-border cooperation, intelligence, precursor control, money flows and drug demand reduction.
Back to Top
Back to Top
McCain and Obama vow to hit Al-Qaeda
Written by www.quqnoos.com foreign desk Wednesday, 16 July 2008
America's two presidential candidates want more focus on Pakistan's tribal belt
AMERICA’S two heavyweight presidential contenders, Barack Obama and John McCain, have both said they will do more to clamp down on "terrorist activity" along the Afghan-Pakistani border in an attempt to halt cross-border attacks in Afghanistan.
Speaking at a town hall in New Mexico, Republican contender John McCain vowed to get Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden if he became president.
"When I am commander-in-chief, there will be nowhere the terrorists can run, and nowhere they can hide," the senator said at a town hall in New Mexico to a standing ovation.
The Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, said if Pakistan failed to act against known terrorist strong-holds in its tribal regions, US troops would move in to "take out high-level terrorist targets like bin Laden if we have them in our sights."
Tensions between Pakistan and America threatened to boil over last month when Pakistan accused US warplanes of killing 11 of its soldiers on the Paksitani side of the border with Afghanistan.
The current US administration, the Afghan government and NATO have accused the Pakistani government of allowing insurgents time to regroup and re-arm, increasing insurgent attacks on Afghan soil.
Obama said Iraq was never the central front on the "war on terror" and he vowed to "take the fight" to Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan by redeploying troops from Iraq.
He said it was "unacceptable" that top Al-Qaeda members bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahari were still at large almost seven years after the attacks on the World Trade Centre killed almost 3,000 Americans.
"The Taliban controls parts of Afghanistan. Al Qaeda has an expanding base in Pakistan that is probably no farther from their old Afghan sanctuary than a train ride from Washington to Philadelphia. If another attack on our homeland comes, it will likely come from the same region," Obama said.
Senator McCain also said the US must focus more on Pakistan, but he criticised Obama for failing to support the "troop-surge" in Iraq, which he said had “much improved” security in the country.
"Senator Obama will tell you we can't win in Afghanistan without losing in Iraq. In fact, he has it exactly backwards. It is precisely the success of the surge in Iraq that shows us the way to succeed in Afghanistan," McCain said.
He proposed sending three more brigades – about 3,500 troops each – to Afghanistan and doubling the Afghan army to 160,000 soldiers. Obama said he would send at least two brigades.
On Pakistan, McCain agreed with Obama, arguing the US needed to focus more on the country’s tribal areas.
He said local tribes should be armed against terrorists who are given safe haven in the region.
"We must convince Pakistanis that this is their war as much as it is ours. And we must empower the new civilian government of Pakistan to defeat radicalism with greater support for development, health, and education," he said.
McCain also echoed Obama’s call for more non-military assistance to Afghanistan, but he failed to say exactly how much extra cash the Afghan government would get. Obama pledged to boost aid by $1 billion per year.
Speaking later to reporters, McCain said President Karzai had failed to match Iraqi Prime Minister’s Nuri al-Maliki’s strength.
"Karzai has not been effective," he said.
Obama recently saids that karzai had "failed to get out pof his bunker" to tackle the country's big issues such as corruption and local governance.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Rediscovering treasures of Bamiyan
By Alastair Leithead BBC News, Bamiyan Thursday, 17 July 2008
When the Buddhas of Bamiyan were carved out of the mountainside, the Roman Empire still held sway.
They towered over a rich valley in what is now central Afghanistan, where caravans of traders would stop and rest on the Silk Road as they transported goods between east and west.
For centuries the two huge statues stood guard over Bamiyan.
But in 2001, just months before they were forced from power, the Taleban dynamited what they considered un-Islamic representations of the human form.
Today all that remains are the recesses where they stood, and the labyrinth of fragile caves surrounding them.
Iconic art
Today there isn't even a paved road connecting the valley to Kabul, but yet inside the caves are a reminder of Bamiyan's past wealth and glory and a new claim to fame that could put the province back on the map.
Inside those caves the steep, narrow steps are crumbling, there are cracks in the mud tunnels carved into the mountainside, and still visible high in the echoing chambers are pieces of Buddhist iconic art which are now thought to be the oldest oil paintings in the world.
Japanese, European and American scientists restoring the cave murals dating back to around 650AD, discovered oil was used in the paint.
Yoko Taniguchi, one of the Japanese experts working on the caves, told reporters this is the earliest known use of this technique in the history of art.
She said it was previously thought the technique originated in Europe during the Renaissance, eight centuries later.
But wandering through the Buddhist temples carved out of the rock, there is little left of the murals destroyed in the last 30 years of war after surviving for centuries.
A tourist guidebook to Afghanistan written in the 1960s and 70s by Nancy Dupree, a famous traveller who dedicated much of her life to the country, gave an account of the artwork as it was then.
Fragments
"The rest of the hall is elaborately decorated in a varied palette of burnt sienna, green, lapis lazuli blue, and yellow ochre depicting flowers, trees, stylised floral sprays, cornucopias and figures of kneeling worshipers," she wrote.
"A series of Buddhas dressed in sombre-hued maroon robes and framed with aureoles against an azure background walk on lotus pads set among flowers."
There's little evidence of this today apart from a few scraps of colour and detail here and there, but there are isolated caves higher up the mountain, impossible to get to without a rope, where some of the best examples still survive.
A combination of the vibration from artillery shells, the Taleban chiselling away the depictions of faces and hands, and looting put paid to most of the paintings.
But there are enough fragments left to give a hint of what it must have been like.
The views from the caves looking out over the valley are stunning and there is another twist to the story of the Buddhas of Bamiyan.
A Buddhist pilgrim wrote around the time the paintings were finished in the mid seventh century of the amazing statues - but he described three.
According to his account, the third reclining Buddha was a 1,000 feet long and lay on the valley floor.
It would be remarkable if it was buried beneath the river sediment and two teams of archaeologists, one from France another from Japan, are in a race to find it.
It sounds like an Indiana Jones film, but there have been many interesting archaeological discoveries in Bamiyan and this beautiful valley may not yet have revealed all its secrets.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Northern Alliance blamed for Afghan violence
Dawn - National July 16, 2008
PESHAWAR-The Hizb-i-Islami of Afghanistan has accused the Northern Alliance of orchestrating the bloodshed and growing violence in Afghanistan and said the alliance had launched a propaganda campaign against Pakistan with India’s support.
In a two-page statement in Pashto issued here on Wednesday, the Hizb rejected reports that Pakistan was behind the conflict in Afghanistan and said that the government in Islamabad had always supported the Karzai regime.
“Pakistan, being a staunch ally of the US in the war on terror, backed Afghanistan.”
The statement said that elements of the Northern Alliance were burning down schools, killing innocent people, including Ulema, the elderly and children, and destroying public property to defame the ‘Mujahideen’.
The Hizb said people should identify the elements who were responsible for deterioration in the law and order situation and take them to task.
It said that all Afghans knew that the Northern Alliance wanted to get monetary benefits from India and for that purpose it was maligning Pakistan.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Danish civilian projects in Afghanistan lack personnel
STOCKHOLM, July 16 (Xinhua) -- Denmark's claim to be in Afghanistan primarily to support the civilian population is short of personnel, according to reports reaching here from Copenhagen Wednesday.
Financial aid for educational, health and infrastructure projects is not being supported by qualified personnel, and two of the three advisors sent to Afghanistan's Helmand province last year have since left their positions, the local media reported.
"I can't understand how we can only have one advisor in Helmand. The consequence is that the projects take longer to complete, and the quicker we get them done the quicker we get our soldiers home," said Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen, head of research for the Danish Institute of Military Studies.
There are currently 750 Danish soldiers in Afghanistan. Denmark has set aside over 400 million kroner (about 80 million U.S. dollars) this year in financial aid to rebuilding projects.
"It might be difficult for them to swallow, but we ought to force advisors to go," said Peter Viggo Jakobsen, defense and security researcher at the University of Copenhagen's Department of Political Science.
But Danish Development Cooperation Minister Ulla Tornas said she will not to force advisors to go to Afghanistan, adding that it don't get good workers if the Danish government sends them there against their will.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Canada rejects Guantanamo plea
Al Jazeera / July 17, 2008
Canada has said that it will not seek the repatriation of a young Canadian held at Guantanamo Bay, despite the release of video footage showing him in an obvious state of distress.
Politicians had called for the Canadian government to push Washington to return Omar Khadr, who is charged with killing a US doctor in a grenade attack in Afghanistan in 2002, when he was 15 years old.
The footage, which was released by Khadr's lawyers, shows Khadr crying out for his mother during an interrogation by Canadian agents in February 2003.
But Stephen Harper, Canada's prime minister, says Khadr should still face trial.
"Our position has not changed and it's not going to. We're not going to blow in the wind on something as fundamental as this," Kory Teneycke, Harper's chief spokesman, said.
"Making a change at the 11th hour because his legal team is pursuing an aggressive media strategy is not in the interests of due process ... We're about doing what the right thing is," he said.
'Rehabilitation' call
Khadr was taken to Afghanistan by his father Ahmed Said Khadr, who is alleged to have financed al-Qaeda, as well as being an associate of Osama bin Laden.
Khadr senior was killed in a battle with Pakistani forces in 2003.
"I am suffering but I am holding [on] because I know there are other hundreds who are suffering like Omar and I wish I could do something," Maha Elsamnah, Khadr's mother, said on Tuesday.
"If they think Omar would need rehabilitation I would love it and I know Omar would need rehab. Omar will need somebody to reassure him that he still deserves to live," she said.
Jonathan Kay of the National Post newspaper, which is a strong supporter of Harper, said Khadr should be allowed to come home.
"Millions of people [around the world] are now wondering why Canada's government has acquiesced - and as the video shows, even participated - in the unconscionable treatment of a blubbering boy soldier," he wrote on Wednesday.
Layne Morris, a US army sergeant who was injured in the July 2002 battle that ended with Khadr's capture, said the Canadian interrogators should have been tougher on Khadr.
"I think Omar is where he belongs. I hope he stays there for a good long time ... as long as he's a danger to either the United States or Canada or any kind of western civilisation," he told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Slipping Back Into Chaos: Karzai's Afghanistan
Hamid Karzai Panned for Weak Leadership While Iraq's Al-Maliki Gets Praise
ABC News By MARCUS BARAM July 15, 2008
While Afghanistan continues to slip into chaos, with a sharp increase in Taliban-led attacks on U.S. troops, a booming opium harvest and stalled reconstruction efforts, questions are being raised about President Hamid Karzai's leadership of the troubled country.
Karzai, known for his debonair fashion sense, was hailed as the face of Afghanistan's future when he was promoted by the coalition forces that overthrew the Taliban in 2001.
In the early days after he decisively won the 2004 presidential election, he was widely praised for his steady leadership during the country's fragile new era. But in recent months Karzai has come under fire, literally and figuratively.
Karzai, who narrowly survived an assassination attempt in April, has taken the brunt of the blame for not acting forcefully against a resurgent Taliban and for failing to stem endemic corruption in the security forces and reconstruction teams in the desperately poor country.
Things have deteriorated so badly that some Afghans say they preferred the rule of the Taliban, which imposed strict Shariah religious law in the country from 1996 to 2001, according to Afghanistan experts.
"I just got a letter from someone in Kandahar," says Barnett Rubin of the Council on Foreign Relations. "He says the situation is worse than it was under the Taliban. There is no clean water and no security."
The perception of Karzai's failures are even more glaring in light of the stunning rebound of Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki, who turned around a reputation for weak leadership by taking forceful action against Shiite militias and consolidating his political base.
After Maliki ordered his forces to retake Basras, ordinary Iraqis celebrated by downloading his face onto their cell phones as screen savers and President Bush praised him, saying that the decision demonstrated Maliki's "leadership and his commitment to enforce the law in an even-handed manner."
Though the two leaders rule over vastly dissimilar countries Afghanistan is a rural and tribal culture where power is largely decentralized, while Iraq's relatively educated population has long been ruled by a strong leader Karzai and Maliki's disparate fortunes are striking nonetheless.
Afghanistan Troop Deaths Surpass Iraq For U.S. forces, Afghanistan's deterioration is critical. With its violent sectarian fighting and homegrown insurgency, Iraq has long taken the focus of the American public and American policymakers off Afghanistan. But renewed violence in Afghanistan poses an increasingly imminent threat.
In May 2007, 126 American soldiers were killed in Iraq compared to 11 in Afghanistan. Of course, there are roughly four times as many troops in Iraq.
The situation is now reversed, with June U.S. and coalition troop deaths in Afghanistan surpassing those in Iraq, where there are roughly four times as many troops, for the second month in a row. On Sunday, nearly 200 Taliban fighters overran an American-run outpost in a well-coordinated attack, killing nine U.S. soldiers, the worst single loss for the American military in the country since June 2005.
In addition, attacks using improvised explosive devices rose 35 percent last year, according to a recent Pentagon report that laid the blame for the poor state of Afghan security forces on corruption, a shortage of trainers, and "a lack of unity of effort within the international community."
In a press conference this morning, President Bush emphasized a commitment of U.S. troops to the country.
"We are surging troops in Afghanistan. We'll analyze the situation, of course, make a determination based on the conditions on the ground," Bush said. "And we make sure a strategy works that not only provides security, but provides economic follow-up after security has been enhanced."
Bush pledged to investigate Karzai's claim that Pakistan's intelligence service was to blame for a recent terrorist attack, and he acknowledged the recent flow of violent extremists from Pakistan to Afghanistan.
"First of all, we'll investigate his charge and we'll work with his service to get to the bottom of his allegation," Bush said. "No question, however, that some extremists are coming out of parts of Pakistan into Afghanistan. And that's troubling to us, it's troubling to Afghanistan, and it should be troubling to Pakistan."
'Incapable of Making Strong Decisions' Although Afghanistan experts attribute much of the country's troubles to the lack of international aid and security training, they emphasize that Karzai is not the right man to lead the country out of its morass.
"If you're looking for someone to correct things that are going badly and you've got someone who's looking over his shoulder all the time, then that's not the right leadership," says Marvin Weinbaum, a scholar in residence at the Middle East Institute.
"Karzai seems very indecisive and seems incapable of making strong decisions," Weinbaum says. "He is a conciliator who operates like a tribal chief, buying off a little bit here and there, striking deals with people who are pretty unsavory."
Weinbaum says Karzai's recent saber-rattling threat to send forces into Pakistan to fight militants responsible for cross-border attacks was intended to shore up his nationalistic credentials as he gears up for the 2009 elections.
The situation has become so volatile and unstable that some predict those elections will be postponed due to security concerns.
"If it continues like this, it will endanger the elections," says Ahmed Rashid, the author of "Descent Into Chaos," who says that the sanctuary given to Taliban fighters in Pakistan is the single greatest problem facing Afghanistan.
Rashid blames the lack of American focus on the resurgence of the Taliban, explaining that Karzai is frustrated with the lack of resources necessary to tackle the security situation in his country.
But he says Karzai's conciliatory leadership style, which was appropriate to bring the country together after the Taliban was overthrown, has become a liability in recent years when a "tough hand" is required to deal with the resurgent militants.
"There is increasing criticism of his lack of good governance, not dealing with corruption, not dealing with drugs, and not taking a firm stance to deal with the security problems," Rashid says.
No Prosecution for Warlord Karzai has been widely criticized for his decision not to prosecute or remove Uzbek warlord Abdus Rashid Dostum, the commander in chief of the Afghan Army, who was accused of brazenly beating up and kidnapping his former election manager in Kabul in February.
"People were saying, 'Why didn't Karzai fire Dostum?'" Rubin says. "[Dostum]'s very influential in the provinces and has armed groups that would answer his call. Karzai wanted to know if he could count on backup from NATO and he was told no. & Karzai could have said, 'It's important, and I'm going to do what I have to do' without getting the OK. He's a conciliator and he's not a chief executive."
Afghan Ambassador to the U.S. Said. T. Jawad defended Karzai, explaining that Dostum is one of many individuals incorporated into the Afghan government with the blessing of the international community and the Afghan government.
"There are individuals in the government whom you and I would like to see brought to justice, but we have to have the proper system set up to deliver justice to every criminal," he says. "Are we better off starting another cycle of violence or should we wait to have the necessary institutions in place? For the sake of stability, both the Afghan government and the international community has not emphasized delivery of justice as a priority at this time."
International Community to Blame? Yet Rubin says Karzai's failings are not the cause of Afghanistan's problems. Instead, he lays the blame on the international community and U.S. strategy in the region.
"He is not the president of Pakistan, and he has been pointing out that militants coming over from Pakistan is one of the greatest threats to Afghanistan, but no one has been listening to him in [Washington] D.C," Rubin says.
Jawad echoed those comments, claiming, "When 200 armed men cross over from Pakistan and attack a military outpost, this has not much to do with the Afghan government or corruption within that government this has to do with insurgents and Taliban fighters getting sanctuary in Pakistan."
The ambassador explained that the ability of the Afghan government and Karzai to deliver services and provide protection to its people has been hampered by a lack of financial resources and human capital, adding that there have significant gains in education and health services.
"It is not fair to give credit to the international community for what works and to blame the Afghan government for what doesn't work so well."
Middle East experts emphasized that Karzai and Maliki cannot be credibly compared.
"Maliki and the U.S. may have finally got the notion of how to do it right," says Weinbaum. "But you can't place him alongside Karzai. The countries really are that different. The insurgency challenge in Afghanistan is very different, there is less in the way of human capital to work with, people you can turn to take on responsibility. In Iraq, you had fairly functional educational system. That doesn't exist in Afghanistan, where they've had 30 years of constant warfare."
The United States did not devote enough resources to training Afghan police and to reconstruction of the country, says Rubin. "The fundamental problem is that we have enunciated maximal goals and then used minimal resources to achieve them," he says.
That situation leaves Karzai without much leverage or power to exert against the Taliban and corrupt warlords in his country, Rubin says.
"Talking big while having no stick is not effective."
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).