 |
||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Serving you since 1998 | ||||||||||||
|
|
NATO force denies Afghan civilian casualty report
July 18, 2008
KABUL (Reuters) - The NATO-led international force in Afghanistan rejected on Friday reports from Afghan officials that it killed more than 50 civilians in air strikes the previous day in the west of the country.
Family devastated by Kabul embassy blast
By Bilal Sarwary BBC News, Kabul Friday, 18 July 2008
When the phone rang in the early hours, Khan Mohammad Khan was asleep.
Kabul bomb, politics over-shadow India-Pakistan talks
By Krittivas MukherjeeJuly 18, 2008
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Pakistan's top foreign official travels to India next week to resume peace talks but suspicion of Pakistan's hand in last week's deadly bomb attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul could overshadow progress.
Separate attacks kill four security guards in southern Afghanistan
Fri Jul 18, 8:45 AM By The Associated Press
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Police say a roadside bomb and a militant attack have killed four private Afghan security guards in the country's insurgency-wracked south.
Experts question whether Afghan troop surge can work
Thu Jul 17, 2:05 PM
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The Pentagon is pushing for more troops to go to Afghanistan but experts question whether a new "surge" can shut down the insurgency flourishing in Pakistan's safe havens.
Kabul bomb, politics overshadow India-Pakistan talks
Reuters - World News By Krittivas Mukherjee Fri Jul 18, 2008
NEW DELHI -Pakistan's top foreign official travels to India next week to resume peace talks but suspicion of Pakistan's hand in last week's deadly bomb attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul could overshadow progress.
Afghan Opposition Backs Obama Troop Plan, Has Doubts on McCain
By Bill Varner
July 17 (Bloomberg) -- The political party likely to pose the toughest challenge to Hamid Karzai's re-election as president of Afghanistan next year is supporting Barack Obama's plan to boost U.S. troop strength in the country.
Fact Check: Obama's position on Afghanistan
By The Associated Press Thu Jul 17, 8:51 PM ET
WASHINGTON - Just what is the best way to explain Barack Obama's stand on Afghanistan — has he shown great leadership or is he a Johnny come lately? Potential Obama running mate Sen. Joe Biden has used both descriptions.
Al-Qaida draws more foreign recruits to the war in Afghanistan
By Kathy Gannon The Associated Press Thu Jul 17, 2:48 PM
PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Afghanistan has been drawing a fresh influx of jihadi fighters from Turkey, Central Asia, Chechnya and the Middle East, one more sign that al-Qaida is regrouping on what is fast becoming the most active front of the war on terror groups.
The dangers of teaching girls in Afghanistan
guardian.co.uk, UK Janet Swinney Jul 17, 2008
For Jamila Niyazi, simply going to her office is a death-defying act. Jamila is principal of Lashkar Gah girls high school in Helmand province Afghanistan, and oversees the education of 7,000 pupils. She has already received the dreaded "night letters"
Childhood ends at 11 for some Afghan girls For others, an education begins
By Alexander Panetta THE CANADIAN PRESS July 17, 2008
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - This is the story of two Afghan girls.
How to Save Afghanistan
By RORY STEWART / KABUL time.com Thursday, Jul. 17, 2008
It is summer now in Kabul, the snow has largely melted from the 15,000-ft. (4,600 m) peaks, and I am sitting with my friends Hussein, Nabi and Zia in the garden of a 19th century fort. Nearby, 10 carpenters who work with my nongovernmental organization (NGO)
No Japanese SDF mission to Afghanistan
July 18, 2008
TOKYO, July 18 (UPI) -- Japan, reacting to rising violence in Afghanistan, has decided against sending its Self-Defense Forces to help in that country's reconstruction.
Americans' Faith in Afghan War Fades
War Fatigue, Frustration Play Into Americans' Decreasing Interest in War
By EMILY FRIEDMAN July 18, 2008 — ABC News
The Pentagon and presidential rivals Barack Obama and John McCain all seem to agree on the need to send more troops to Afghanistan, but they are at odds with much of the country these days on the need to send more Americans into the lawless Afghan mountains.
Pakistani police arrest 55 Afghan immigrants
Written by www.quqnoos.com foreign desk Thursday, 17 July 2008
Raids signal start of clamp down on illegal immigrants
PAKISTANI police have arrested 55 Afghans in Baluchistan in a crack down on illegal immigrants.
Back to Top
NATO force denies Afghan civilian casualty report
July 18, 2008
KABUL (Reuters) - The NATO-led international force in Afghanistan rejected on Friday reports from Afghan officials that it killed more than 50 civilians in air strikes the previous day in the west of the country.
At least four men were killed in the strikes, a spokesman for the regional police command had said on Thursday. Witnesses said 17 people were also wounded.
But other reports, by Shindand District Chief Mullah Lal Mohammad and a tribal elder, Haji Zalmai, said that more than 50 civilians had been killed in the strikes in the villages of Farmakan and Bakhtabad in the western province of Herat.
"ISAF has thoroughly investigated and rejects claims that ISAF forces killed more than 50 civilians in the Shindand area," the International Security Assistance Force said in a statement.
"Our extensive investigation reveals that the closest airstrikes carried out were 13 km to the South East of these villages. ISAF therefore rejects these claims as baseless."
In a statement released on Thursday the U.S. military had said the raid was against "high priority Taliban targets" and that two "Taliban leaders" and a "significant number of insurgents" were also killed. It said there was no evidence of any civilian casualties.
However, the U.S. military confirmed on Thursday that it had killed eight civilians in an air strike on Tuesday in the neighboring province of Farah.
The U.S. military says it is also investigating reports by Afghan officials that around 60 civilians were killed in two separate air strikes by U.S.-led coalition forces this month in eastern Afghanistan.
The issue of civilian casualties is a highly sensitive one for the Western-backed government and undermines Afghan support for the presence of foreign forces who are fighting the Taliban-led insurgents in Afghanistan.
There has been a sharp rise in violence in Afghanistan this year, the bloodiest since U.S.-led and Afghan forces overthrew the hardline Taliban in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
(Reporting from Kandahar by Ismail Sameem; Writing by Jonathon Burch; Editing by Alex Richardson)
Back to Top
Back to Top
Family devastated by Kabul embassy blast
By Bilal Sarwary BBC News, Kabul Friday, 18 July 2008
When the phone rang in the early hours, Khan Mohammad Khan was asleep.
A resident of the northern English city of Sheffield, he thought it was a call from an advertising company.
When the phone kept ringing incessantly, Khan Mohammad answered.
It was a neighbour from across the world in Kabul whose message carried the type of news you dread receiving when you get a phone call at such an unusual hour.
At first, Khan Mohammad was told his son had been injured.
"They made me talk to my son. But when they told me to come to Kabul I knew something was wrong. When I rang my son-in-law he couldn't talk, but his friend told me everything."
Speaking to the BBC in Kabul, Khan Mohammad breaks down as he recalls those bitter moments.
On the morning of Monday 7 July, eight members of his family stood outside the Indian embassy in Kabul when a massive suicide bombing killed five of them, including his daughter, daughter-in-law and three grandchildren. They were among more than 50 people killed.
His three other grandchildren escaped with injuries.
'Where is my mother?'
Like hundreds of other Afghans, Khan Mohammad's family members were waiting outside the embassy for visas when the bomb went off.
They were planning to apply for British visas when they reached the Indian capital, Delhi.
"My daughter was going to visit us and my daughter-in-law was going to join her husband. Instead, they got killed," says an inconsolable Khan Mohammad.
Friends and relatives are still dropping by to offer Fateha (prayers) and our talks are interrupted when the grandchildren start crying again.
"Where is mother? I want to see mother," his granddaughters wail. Khan Mohammad's attempt to pacify them with sweets is unsuccessful.
One relative says they had to search through several hospitals before they could find all the bodies.
"The explosion was so powerful, so many people couldn't even find their loved ones. It was very hard for us to have so many people killed from one family. I can't accept it."
No group claimed responsibility for the attack but the Afghan government has accused Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency of involvement, something that Pakistan denies.
Khan Mohammad says it was the work of the enemies of Islam.
"These criminals claim they are Muslims and humans. How can they kill so many innocent people? They are criminals and responsible for the blood they have shed," he says.
However, Khan Mohammad holds the Afghan government responsible for the attack and urges President Hamid Karzai to appoint what he calls "capable people" to ensure the safety of Afghans.
"We need professional people to be in charge, we don't need corrupt people. Those people should be in charge who care for Afghanistan, not those who are interested in filling their pockets."
'Bloody Monday'
The suicide attack on the embassy was the deadliest in Kabul since the fall of the Taleban in 2001.
Some local newspapers have christened the day "Bloody Monday".
Another man affected by the attack is 43-year-old Shah Mohammad. His nephew is still missing. He too believes that the Afghan government has failed.
"Pakistan's ISI is our enemy but our security forces have the responsibility to track these men. I have been looking for [my nephew's] body. His wife and children keep asking me where he is," says Shah Mohammad.
"Kabul has had more than 10 police chiefs in the last few years. Mr Karzai should get serious with the lives of Afghans.''
Just before I leave Khan Mohammad's house, he has a final message for President Hamid Karzai.
"Karzai must appoint good Afghans for important positions; many other families pay the price. Today they killed my family and took away everything from me - tomorrow they will take it from many others."
Back to Top
Back to Top
Kabul bomb, politics over-shadow India-Pakistan talks
By Krittivas MukherjeeJuly 18, 2008
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Pakistan's top foreign official travels to India next week to resume peace talks but suspicion of Pakistan's hand in last week's deadly bomb attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul could overshadow progress.
While ties have warmed since a peace process started in 2004, after the countries nearly went to a fourth war, there has been little progress in their main dispute over Kashmir, and both suspect each other's involvement in revolts raging in border areas.
The Indian government also faces a confidence vote in parliament on Tuesday and with doubts about its survival, analysts say there will no breakthroughs between the two sides.
Efforts to build trust received a setback last week when India's national security adviser blamed Pakistan's intelligence service for a suicide car-bomb attack in Kabul that killed 41 people, including two Indian diplomats.
Analysts say the attack will reinforce India's fear Pakistan's new civilian government, formed four months ago, had failed to clamp down on state-sponsored violence towards India.
"Tensions on account of terrorism will continue," G. Parthasarathy, India's former High Commissioner to Islamabad, told Reuters.
"It is clear the civilian government has no control over the terrorist activities directed against India."
India accuses Pakistan of backing a 20-year-old separatist revolt in Kashmir, which both sides claim in full but rule in part, and trying to hit Indian interests abroad.
In the last two years India has suffered bomb attacks by suspected Islamist militants on cities outside Kashmir, including Mumbai, New Delhi, Hyderabad, Varanasi, and in May, Jaipur.
Pakistan has denied a hand in these attacks, and for its part is suspicious of the role of Indian consulates in Afghanistan.
Senior Pakistani military officers and bureaucrats privately accuse India of helping separatists wage a low-level insurgency in the western province of Baluchistan.
They also say India is helping to destabilize the Pashtun tribal region on the Afghan border as it takes Pakistani troops away from the Indian border.
POLITICAL LIMBO
Yet, the two sides will want to be seen as engaging on a host of issues, including confidence-building measures (CBMs), co-operation on terrorism and the Kashmir dispute.
"There maybe some cosmetic progress on the CBMs, but nothing substantial," B. Raman, former head of India's external spy agency, said. "They need to be seen as talking."
India is under no pressure to make concessions on Kashmir and no one is expecting a breakthrough when Indian and Pakistani foreign secretaries meet on July 21-22.
But before the lull in peace efforts amid political turmoil in Pakistan, both sides had made some progress with border disputes, one over the Siachen glacier in the Himalayas, the other over the Sir Creek on their maritime boundary.
Analysts say building on those gains looked unlikely, thanks to doubts about the survival of the Indian government.
"All eyes are on the vote, and at this point no government will make an issue of Siachen or Sir Creek," Raman said.
As India's ruling coalition faces a confidence vote after its communist allies withdrew support protesting a nuclear deal with the United States, decisions on key issues have been put on hold.
"Because of the uncertainty of the (vote) outcome, certain things are on hold," said Suresh Tendulkar, member of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's economic council.
(Editing by Alistair Scrutton and Jerry Norton)
Back to Top
Back to Top
Separate attacks kill four security guards in southern Afghanistan
Fri Jul 18, 8:45 AM By The Associated Press
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Police say a roadside bomb and a militant attack have killed four private Afghan security guards in the country's insurgency-wracked south.
Helmand provincial police chief Mohammad Hussein Andiwal says the roadside blast occurred around 6 a.m. Friday in the province's Nava district. Three guards were killed and four wounded.
Zabul deputy provincial police chief Jailani Khan says Taliban militants attacked a convoy carrying supplies for NATO forces Thursday. The 30-minute gunbattle in his region killed an Afghan security worker and wounded five.
More than 2,500 people - mostly militants - have died in insurgency-related violence this year in Afghanistan, according to an Associated Press tally of official figures.
Canada currently has about 2,500 troops serving in Afghanistan, primarily in the southern part of the country.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Experts question whether Afghan troop surge can work
Thu Jul 17, 2:05 PM
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The Pentagon is pushing for more troops to go to Afghanistan but experts question whether a new "surge" can shut down the insurgency flourishing in Pakistan's safe havens.
"That's a totally open question," said Michael O'Hanlon, an expert at the Brookings Institution.
US commanders in Afghanistan have asked for 10,000 more combat troops for what until recently was thought of as a forgotten war. US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Wednesday he wanted to send more forces "sooner rather than later."
The push comes on the back of a "surge" strategy in Iraq that succeeded in bringing down violence dramatically over an 18 month period with the addition of five combat brigades.
But Pentagon officials acknowledge that what worked in Iraq cannot be neatly translated to a very different situation in Afghanistan, which is larger, poorer, more populous and contains some of the world's most difficult fighting terrain.
"The environment in Iraq and the environment in Afghanistan are very different. The enemy in Iraq and the enemy in Afghanistan are very different -- the terrain, the conditions," said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman.
"There is a certain amount of planning that takes place, and appropriately takes place, for the environment, and the mission and the enemy you are going to be deployed against," he said.
Pentagon officials have not said how many additional forces can be mustered or what they will do with them, but it's clear that a top priority is to stop the flow of fighters into Afghanistan from safe havens in Pakistan.
"The border there is a really critical issue that we're going to have to solve," Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Wednesday.
The Pakistani government, however, has resisted US entreaties to do more to control their side of the border, pulling army troops out of the region under a truce struck with militants in March.
"It's very clear that additional (US) troops will have a big impact on insurgents coming across that border," Mullen asserted Wednesday.
But others are doubtful that more US combat troops can seal an ill-defined border that runs through towering mountains and open desert.
"You cannot seal borders," British Defence Minister Des Browne said here last week.
"We could not seal 26 miles of border between north and south of Ireland with 40,000 troops. Please do not demand of Pakistan and Afghanistan that they they try to seal the many hundreds of kilometers of mountainous border between these two countries," he said.
Moreover, sending more troops into a country with a long history of resistance to outside forces may further inflame the insurgency, some experts warn.
"The past history is that a large footprint in Afghanistan has engendered a quick turn by locals," said Sam Brannen, an analyst at the Center for International and Security Studies.
"There is a historical threat there that says that Afghans don't like large occupying forces," he said.
"If this was a NATO surge, I would tell you it's exactly what the country needs but a US surge is risky," he said.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force has grown from 37,500 in January 2007 to 53,000 today, and there are now about 70,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, including American forces not under ISAF.
The Afghan National Army is supposed to grow to 80,000 troops by the end of this year, but that pales in comparison to the 566,000 security force members in Iraq.
And despite the growth in the international forces, the insurgency also has spread over the past two years, gaining intensity and lethality with tactics borrowed from Iraq -- roadside bombs, suicide attacks, and ambushes.
An assault on a combat outpost Sunday that left nine US soldiers dead showed new levels of sophistication that US military officials believe has come from improved training inside Pakistan.
"I think one of the reasons you add forces now is it's hard to know what else to do," said O'Hanlon.
"You hope that it will make a meaningful difference, but you also hoped that about the previous increment of forces, which as you know has already gone up quite a bit in Afghanistan compared to earlier years.
"There is no way to know whether this 10,000 would be the magic 10,000 to get us over the hump," he said.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Kabul bomb, politics overshadow India-Pakistan talks
Reuters - World News By Krittivas Mukherjee Fri Jul 18, 2008
NEW DELHI -Pakistan's top foreign official travels to India next week to resume peace talks but suspicion of Pakistan's hand in last week's deadly bomb attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul could overshadow progress.
While ties have warmed since a peace process started in 2004, after the countries nearly went to a fourth war, there has been little progress in their main dispute over Kashmir, and both suspect each other's involvement in revolts raging in border areas.
The Indian government also faces a confidence vote in parliament on Tuesday and with doubts about its survival, analysts say there will no breakthroughs between the two sides.
Efforts to build trust received a setback last week when India's national security adviser blamed Pakistan's intelligence service for a suicide car-bomb attack in Kabul that killed 41 people, including two Indian diplomats.
Analysts say the attack will reinforce India's fear Pakistan's new civilian government, formed four months ago, had failed to clamp down on state-sponsored violence towards India.
"Tensions on account of terrorism will continue," G. Parthasarathy, India's former High Commissioner to Islamabad, told Reuters.
"It is clear the civilian government has no control over the terrorist activities directed against India."
India accuses Pakistan of backing a 20-year-old separatist revolt in Kashmir, which both sides claim in full but rule in part, and trying to hit Indian interests abroad.
In the last two years India has suffered bomb attacks by suspected Islamist militants on cities outside Kashmir, including Mumbai, New Delhi, Hyderabad, Varanasi, and in May, Jaipur.
Pakistan has denied a hand in these attacks, and for its part is suspicious of the role of Indian consulates in Afghanistan.
Senior Pakistani military officers and bureaucrats privately accuse India of helping separatists wage a low-level insurgency in the western province of Baluchistan.
They also say India is helping to destabilize the Pashtun tribal region on the Afghan border as it takes Pakistani troops away from the Indian border.
POLITICAL LIMBO
Yet, the two sides will want to be seen as engaging on a host of issues, including confidence-building measures (CBMs), co-operation on terrorism and the Kashmir dispute.
"There maybe some cosmetic progress on the CBMs, but nothing substantial," B. Raman, former head of India's external spy agency, said. "They need to be seen as talking."
India is under no pressure to make concessions on Kashmir and no one is expecting a breakthrough when Indian and Pakistani foreign secretaries meet on July 21-22.
But before the lull in peace efforts amid political turmoil in Pakistan, both sides had made some progress with border disputes, one over the Siachen glacier in the Himalayas, the other over the Sir Creek on their maritime boundary.
Analysts say building on those gains looked unlikely, thanks to doubts about the survival of the Indian government.
"All eyes are on the vote, and at this point no government will make an issue of Siachen or Sir Creek," Raman said.
As India's ruling coalition faces a confidence vote after its communist allies withdrew support protesting a nuclear deal with the United States, decisions on key issues have been put on hold.
"Because of the uncertainty of the (vote) outcome, certain things are on hold," said Suresh Tendulkar, member of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's economic council.
(Editing by Alistair Scrutton and Jerry Norton)
Back to Top
Back to Top
Afghan Opposition Backs Obama Troop Plan, Has Doubts on McCain
By Bill Varner
July 17 (Bloomberg) -- The political party likely to pose the toughest challenge to Hamid Karzai's re-election as president of Afghanistan next year is supporting Barack Obama's plan to boost U.S. troop strength in the country.
The United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan was ``very happy'' to learn of Obama's vow to fight al-Qaeda in Pakistan and send at least two more combat brigades to Afghanistan, spokesman Sayed Sancharaki said in an interview today at his home in Kabul.
``Our leaders favor Obama more than Bush, who the government likes,'' and have concerns about Republican presidential candidate John McCain's commitment to the Afghanistan conflict, Sancharaki said, referring to President George W. Bush. ``Obama says the main fight against terrorism is in Afghanistan, and he is right.''
An Islamic Front successor to Karzai might give an Obama administration crucial domestic backing for expanding the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan. The conflict in the country has lasted almost seven years.
Obama, a senator from Illinois and the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, reiterated in a speech in Washington this week his intent to focus more military efforts on Afghanistan.
McCain, his Republican rival from Arizona, also is talking about more military strength in Afghanistan. He used a campaign stop in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to call for the addition of at least three more brigades -- with about 3,500 personnel in each.
Northern Alliance
The United Islamic Front is a coalition of leaders of the Northern Alliance, including former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, who helped the U.S. defeat the Taliban in 2001.
Sancharaki said party leaders such as Rabbani have long been concerned that Bush ``only sees the Afghan people through the eyes of Karzai.'' Bush thinks that ``if he has Karzai, he has all of Afghanistan, but he is mistaken.''
He said Rabbani and the other party leaders have the same concern about McCain, who he said has mistakenly focused his campaign on the war in Iraq.
At the same time, Sancharaki cautioned that there is widespread feeling on all sides of the political spectrum in Afghanistan that no amount of U.S. soldiers will completely calm the country unless greater progress is made on reconstruction projects.
Speeches Assessed
Ahmad Razi of Karzai's press office said that, while the Obama and McCain speeches were ``being discussed'' at the presidential palace, Karzai had no reaction yet.
Most Afghans support the idea of more U.S. troops, no matter who sends them, according to Paul Fishstein, director of the Kabul-based Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, which tracks the nation's progress.
``Afghans just want things to work better, and if they are convinced that more U.S. soldiers will make a difference they will be all for that,'' Fishstein said. ``But if there is no strategy in place to make the addition of troops meaningful, their tolerance of foreign intervention may run out.''
Few Afghans have closely followed the U.S. presidential contest, in part because of a 30 percent illiteracy rate that is one of the highest in the world, according to Moshtaq Ahmad Qadari, an official at Herat University in western Afghanistan who follows U.S. politics.
Qadari said ordinary Afghans who have a sense of U.S. politics identify more with Obama than McCain.
``They think that Obama understands the situation better, that he has better ideas than McCain,'' Qadari said. ``For my part, I am pleased with both because we need more U.S. troops to go to the parts of the country that are the most dangerous. Only the U.S. will do that.''
Back to Top
Back to Top
Fact Check: Obama's position on Afghanistan
By The Associated Press Thu Jul 17, 8:51 PM ET
WASHINGTON - Just what is the best way to explain Barack Obama's stand on Afghanistan — has he shown great leadership or is he a Johnny come lately? Potential Obama running mate Sen. Joe Biden has used both descriptions.
Republicans were quick to point out the discrepancy in Biden's stance Thursday in a case that shows the risk of having a former rival rise to your defense in a political spat.
Biden's criticism came last year when he was running against the freshman Illinois senator for the Democratic presidential nomination, while the praise came this week in response to GOP attacks.
THE SPIN:
As Obama prepares for his first visit to Afghanistan, Republicans are criticizing him for failing to hold a single hearing on NATO's mission in the country as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee's Subcommittee on European Affairs.
"He's going to go to the American people and say, `I want to be commander in chief,'" Republican presidential candidate John McCain told reporters Thursday, "and yet he has been the chairman of the subcommittee that oversights NATO and he has never had a hearing nor has he ever visited Afghanistan."
South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, the top Republican on the panel, sent Obama a letter this week urging him to have a hearing on Afghanistan after his visit. DeMint got a response by letter from Biden, who explained the full committee that he chairs has held three hearings on the issue in the past two years.
"Sen. Obama has displayed great leadership on this issue," Biden wrote, pointing out that Obama chaired the confirmation hearing for the ambassador to NATO and nearly a year ago called for the deployment of at least two additional combat brigades to Afghanistan.
But when Obama made the call for those extra brigades last summer in the midst of the primary campaign, Biden had a different take. The Delaware Democrat's campaign manager issued a statement saying Obama had a "Johnny come-lately position" on Afghanistan and was late to the debate.
"Thank you, Sen. Biden, for proving the point that Barack Obama has no credibility on Afghanistan," said RNC spokesman Alex Conant in a statement Thursday.
In response, Biden spokeswoman Elizabeth Alexander said it's not news that Biden and Obama were rivals last year. But she said Biden is supporting Obama now because he will broaden his foreign policy focus away from just Iraq, unlike McCain.
THE FACTS:
In a February debate, Obama acknowledged he hadn't had any oversight hearings because he only became chairman as he launched his presidential bid. He's not been around Capitol Hill much since then — nor has McCain.
The subcommittee's jurisdiction includes "all matters, policies and problems concerning the continent of Europe, including the European member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization."
Obama may have missed a chance to build his foreign policy credentials by making use of his leadership position. Biden could tell him about that — he was the leading Democrat on the Europe subcommittee for nearly 20 years and used the position to become one of the Senate's leading foreign policy experts.
But some observers of the committee have said major issues like a war in Afghanistan are typically examined by the full committee — as Biden argued was more appropriate in his letter to DeMint.
But the RNC pointed out to reporters Thursday that Obama only attended one of the three full committee hearings on Afghanistan that Biden mentioned in his letter. And in Biden's "Johnny-come-late" statement, he criticized Obama for asking only one question unrelated to Afghanistan at that March 8, 2007, hearing.
But the Democrats aren't the only ones with a mixed-message messenger on the issue. DeMint skipped the one hearing that Obama chaired on the NATO ambassador's nomination, and McCain also has missed multiple Armed Services Committee hearings on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars while campaigning for president.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Al-Qaida draws more foreign recruits to the war in Afghanistan
By Kathy Gannon The Associated Press Thu Jul 17, 2:48 PM
PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Afghanistan has been drawing a fresh influx of jihadi fighters from Turkey, Central Asia, Chechnya and the Middle East, one more sign that al-Qaida is regrouping on what is fast becoming the most active front of the war on terror groups.
More foreigners are infiltrating Afghanistan because of a recruitment drive by al-Qaida as well as a burgeoning insurgency that has made movement easier across the border from Pakistan, U.S. officials, militants and experts say.
For the past two months, Afghanistan has overtaken Iraq in deaths of U.S. and allied troops, and nine American soldiers were killed at a remote base in Kunar province Sunday in the deadliest attack in years.
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned during a visit to Kabul this month about an increase in foreign fighters crossing into Afghanistan from Pakistan, where a new government is trying to negotiate with militants.
Two U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, told The Associated Press that the U.S. is closely monitoring the flow of foreign fighters into both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Jihadist Web sites from Chechnya to Turkey to the Arab world featured recruitment ads as early as 2007 calling on the "Lions of Islam" to fight in Afghanistan, said Brian Glyn Williams, associate professor of Islamic history at the University of Massachusetts.
Williams has tracked the movement of jihadis for the U.S. military's Combating Terrorism Centre at West Point.
Local Afghans in the border regions are increasingly concerned about the return of the "Araban" or "Ikhwanis," as Arab fighters are known in the Pashtun language, Williams wrote in a CTC paper.
He said there were rumours of hardened Arab fighters from Iraq training Afghan Pashtuns in the previously taboo tactic of suicide bombing.
Turkey also appears to have emerged as a source of recruits.
Williams estimated as many as 100 Turks had made their way to Pakistan to join the fight in Afghanistan.
"The story of Turkish involvement in transnational jihadism is one of the best kept stories of the war on terror," said Williams.
"The local Afghans whom I talked to claim that the Turks and other foreigners are more prone to suicidal assaults than the local Taliban."
Dozens of Turkish Islamic militants have trained in al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan and taken part in attacks there, said Emin Demirel, an anti-terrorism expert in Turkey.
He said images of attacks on mosques or Muslim villages provide propaganda for recruiting young Turkish Muslims.
"Nowadays, they are effectively using the Internet to communicate with fellow militants, and police have difficulty in keeping tabs on several of the jihadist sites," said Demirel.
Just a couple of weeks later, newspapers in Pakistan reported that four Turkish nationals with suspected links to al-Qaida had been arrested by authorities on a bus.
They were found with explosives, ammunition and jihadi sites on their laptop computers.
A senior official in Turkey's Interior Ministry said it has no information to corroborate claims of an increase in the number of Turks fighting in Afghanistan.
The official asked not to be identified because Turkish rules bar civil servants from making statements to the press.
Back to Top
Back to Top
The dangers of teaching girls in Afghanistan
guardian.co.uk, UK Janet Swinney Jul 17, 2008
For Jamila Niyazi, simply going to her office is a death-defying act. Jamila is principal of Lashkar Gah girls high school in Helmand province Afghanistan, and oversees the education of 7,000 pupils. She has already received the dreaded "night letters" which threaten her with death. These have been followed by disturbing phone calls.
In Afghanistan, threats to teachers and students are not to be taken lightly. The country's education ministry calculates that in the year ended March 2008, nearly 150 students and teachers were killed, and around 100 schools burned down. The situation is most perilous in southern and eastern areas, where the Taliban are resurgent. But just last year, gunmen riding a motorcycle fired on girls outside a school in Kabul, killing two and injuring six.
According to the United Nations, the country now has a record 5.7 million children in education, but only 35% of these are girls and the figure is not increasing. An estimated 1.2 million girls are missing out on schooling. In some provinces, girls' enrolment may be as low as 1%. A third of state schools are reserved for boys, and there are not enough female teachers. In a country where the literacy rate for women aged 15–24 years is only 14%, compared with a rate of 51% for men in the same age group, this is a desperate situation.
"Educating a girl changes her destiny, as well as those of her future children," says Ann Cotton, executive director of Camfed, "and it ensures that she that she can contribute to the economic life of her community." Better educated women have healthier children, stand a better chance of surviving childbirth and can earn money for themselves and their families. In 2004 the World Bank found that a one-year increase in the schooling attainment of all adult females in a country is associated with an increase in GDP per capita of around US$700 per annum. It also found that education enables women to develop the skills and the confidence to become active in their communities and to participate in the political process.
All of this is a far cry from the reality of Afghan women. Most are not allowed to work outside the home. Traditionally, girls are married off in their early teens, and many die in childbirth. The infant mortality rate in 2006, though improving, was 135 per 1,000, which is the third worst in the world. An estimated 1,600 women die per 100,000 live births. In some parts of the country the rate is as high as 6,500 (whereas the average rate for other developing countries is 450 and, for developed, countries nine). The current food crisis is encouraging families to marry off their daughters as quickly as possible in exchange for a dowry. In May, a BBC reporter uncovered a case of a girl giving birth at the age of 10.
In many developing countries, poverty is the obstacle to girls' participation in education. But many governments are working hard towards millennium targets by alleviating this barrier. They calculate that learning will pay dividends in the longer-term. For example, with the support of Unicef and the World Bank, many African nations are part of an initiative to engage the poor in learning by abolishing school fees, and are busy working through the resourcing and curriculum issues this raises. All kinds of imaginative approaches are being developed to place education within the reach of the poorest children, especially girls. The Indian government has undertaken to pay the costs for the first girl child in every poor family to attend primary school. Haryana state government provides free bicycles for girls who do not have a school within their own village. The 'rider' is that each girl must appear for the class VIII examination before she owns the bike in full. Village panchayats (councils) are offered financial incentives to achieve 100% female enrolment in school.
In Afghanistan however, girls face deeply entrenched cultural barriers to their participation in education, and a poor understanding of their human rights. International agencies have found that gender-based violence is endemic throughout society. Where adults are supportive of girls' education they have fears for their safety if they venture outdoors.
Aid agencies continue their efforts to create safe environments in which girls and women can study, but the Taliban, now flexing their muscles again in large areas of the country, make it clear that anyone deemed to be colluding with "the infidel", can expect the worst. "Collusion" in this case means being in receipt of income or support from a Western-backed government department or NGO, or benefiting from any of their services. This makes constructive help very difficult. How can the global community help girls and women who find themselves trapped inside this punitive situation? This is a question we have barely begun to ask, let alone to answer.
Ironically, women hold 25% of the seats in the country's parliament – one of the highest percentages worldwide – guaranteed under the 2004 constitution. In the circumstances, it is hard to see how, beyond the short-term, women with appropriate knowledge and skills can arise from a female population with so few opportunities for learning.
The Karzai government is steadily losing its credibility with the population, and charges of corruption on a large scale abound, placing the Taliban, once again in a strong position. As Western military and economic resources are stretched, in diplomatic circles the talk is of negotiations with the opposition.
What form could such negotiations possibly take, and where will the rights of women and girls feature? The challenge is to help men of a fundamentalist Islamic persuasion see that the rights of women and girls are inextricably bound up with their own, and with the well-being of the nation as a whole. Otherwise, any millennium target will be a fond imagining. Does the West have negotiators with the necessary skills and insight for this task, and will any negotiating team actually include them?
Back to Top
Back to Top
Childhood ends at 11 for some Afghan girls For others, an education begins
By Alexander Panetta THE CANADIAN PRESS July 17, 2008
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - This is the story of two Afghan girls.
One of these 11-year-olds was brimming with hope and chattering away in her open-air classroom about her love for mathematics and her ambitious dreams.
The other 11-year-old girl was forced to marry her father's friend, never saw the inside of a classroom, and lost her will to live before reaching adolescence.
This is the story of Najia and Sher, whose contrasting lives speak to the tragic powerlessness of many Afghan women - and to the renewed hope many are finding in a burgeoning education system.
A morbid hospital photo of Sher serves as a solemn reminder of how childhood often ends for girls in Afghanistan.
Girls as young as 11 are considered just old enough for a husband.
Their parents collect lucrative $10,000 dowries from wealthy grooms-to-be, and these pre-teens are sent off to become housewives and start raising families.
Last year 60 Kandahar girls sought to escape their fate through suicide, provincial officials say. Like Sher, many wound up as hospital burn victims after dousing themselves with gasoline and setting themselves ablaze.
Then there are girls like Najia.
This bright-eyed child with the shiny red headscarf has very different designs for her future.
"I want to be a doctor," says the talkative girl. "I want to serve my country by helping sick people. My parents tell me: 'Go to school. In our time there was no education system. Especially under the Taliban - you couldn't go to school. So take advantage."'
Seven years after the fall of the Taliban, this expressive child who covers her mouth to stifle her frequent giggles remains a rarity in this country."
Less than one-third of Afghan children go to school and the rate is even lower in Kandahar province.
Girls comprise just 17 per cent of the province's students, and the overall literacy rate among women here looks like a statistic from another century: Only five per cent can read.
But if the Canadian government and international donors have their way, there will be far more girls like Najia.
Canada's $90-million education program in this country includes $1.5 million for classrooms like Najia's.
She will soon complete her third successive grade in just over a year, as part of a Save the Children program aimed at getting kids into classrooms and caught up in time for high school.
One glimpse into her classroom is enough to induce culture-shock in a North American visitor.
In this outdoor courtyard behind a mud-brick home, there are no glassy-eyed gazes from pupils. No bored yawns, vacant stares, or surreptitious chatter.
On the carpeted floor of this yard, children don't crowd the spots near the back of the rug; these seven-to 12-year-olds are desperate to be called to the front.
They clamour for the teacher's attention, with a burst of tiny fingers and hands springing skyward whenever he asks for a volunteer.
When they hear their names, they leap toward the blackboard and race through basic facts, multiplication tables, and word-spelling as swiftly as they sprint across the room.
Before each high-speed reply to the teacher's question, they begin by thanking God: "In the name of Allah, the most beneficent, the most merciful, five times five is 25."
Most Afghan women will never experience this.
Only 2,000 students in Kandahar are enrolled in these free, accelerated learning classes. But Canada has put forward $1.5 million to help the Save the Children organization double its number of classes by next year.
There are also programs for older women who've never gone to school.
More than 12,000 adults - mostly women - are enrolled in a United Nations-led program to teach basic literacy, math, and nutrition.
To gain permission from their skeptical husbands, families are given flour and cooking oil if they let their women come to school.
One Canadian government employee says she's seen the program double in size since last year.
While many remain leery of a Western, secular education, she says those who've passed through the system have marvelled at the benefits of being able to read.
Women suddenly realized they'd been getting short-changed in their carpet-weaving or tailoring business when they learned to read forms and count customers' change.
"They were proud, they were confident," said Sandra Choufani, a Canadian diplomat who just completed a one-year Afghan tour.
"They used to have no idea what the (customers) were giving them."
There are tens of thousands of others who remain unconvinced.
The farther away you stray from downtown Kandahar city, the more likely you are to find parents who believe that boys should be earning money and girls should be thinking of marriage - not studying multiplication tables.
Choufani has a ready reply for them.
Women die every day in Afghanistan from pregnancy complications, usually because even if they experience pain they will refuse to go see a male doctor.
It's anathema to southern Afghanistan's culture for a woman to let a male stranger shake her hand or see her face uncovered - let alone examine her body.
Choufani frequently heard women in rural areas dismiss the value of an education, and then complain about the lack of female doctors.
She asked them to draw the link.
"They would say, 'No (an education) is unnecessary,"' Choufani said."Then they would say, 'We want female doctors.' ... Women couldn't make the connection that there were no female doctors because women weren't going to school."
That argument apparently won some converts to the cause of schooling.
A local women's leader offers a more traditional gender-based argument in favour of education.
Runa Tareen, the director of women's affairs for Kandahar province, also plans to marry off all three of her daughters once they complete the ninth grade.
"They will also be mothers. They can also educate their children," Tareen said in an interview.
"If they can give a good education to their children, that will make them good wives as well."
She says boys can always find a manual job without any schooling - but a woman who wants to work needs an education first.
Tareen carries around a grim hospital photo illustrating the fate of one girl who never got the chance.
Sher Banu was forced to marry her father's friend at age 11. She quickly escaped from her marital home, which resulted in a punishment of two years in prison, and she vowed never to return to live with that man.
She died in hospital soon after her release, her entire body blackened from self-inflicted burns.
Wrapped around her face was a light red headscarf, just a shade less bright than Najia's.
Back to Top
Back to Top
How to Save Afghanistan
By RORY STEWART / KABUL time.com Thursday, Jul. 17, 2008
It is summer now in Kabul, the snow has largely melted from the 15,000-ft. (4,600 m) peaks, and I am sitting with my friends Hussein, Nabi and Zia in the garden of a 19th century fort. Nearby, 10 carpenters who work with my nongovernmental organization (NGO) are creating a library for a buyer in Tokyo. They're fitting slivers of wood into a delicate lattice and carving flowers into the walnut shutters. They work fast and smile often. But Nabi, a gentle-voiced 66-year-old cook, is not smiling. He is pessimistic about his country. "We have been promised progress by every government since 1973," he growls, "but it is getting worse and worse."
Nabi's pessimism is very common now in Afghanistan. There has been a dramatic series of recent attacks by the Taliban: a mass assault on a jail freed hundreds of prisoners, and a suicide bombing outside the Indian embassy on July 7 killed 40 and injured over 100. Many of these assaults are planned and supported from safe havens across the border in the tribal areas of Pakistan. Western troop casualties are climbing; the last two months exceeded the monthly death toll in Iraq. On July 13, nine U.S. soldiers were killed when Taliban fighters swarmed over their base in the eastern province of Kunar — the worst attack in three years.
But terrorism and insurgency are only part of what's going wrong in Afghanistan. In 2002, I walked safely along the length of the road between Herat and Obey in western Afghanistan. Recently aid workers were carjacked on that road, and it is now considered too dangerous for aid agencies, effectively closing the main access to the central regions of the country. In provinces close to Kabul, such as Wardak, Ghazni and Logar, which were easy to visit two years ago, foreigners are regularly attacked and girls' schools burned at will. Afghanistan produces 92% of the world's opium (used to make heroin) and 35% of its cannabis and has a flourishing trade in looted antiquities. In a vicious cycle, narcotics, corruption and the absence of law and order are rotting the heart of the government and crippling the economy. Despite massive Western investment, Afghanistan is close to being a failed state.
What should we do about it? Many policymakers want to throw more money and troops at the problem. Both Barack Obama and John McCain say that as President, they would send additional combat brigades — from 7,000 to 15,000 troops — to tame the insurgency in Afghanistan. At a June conference in Paris, Western governments committed an additional $20 billion in aid, in the hope that this would finally bring success in counterinsurgency, counternarcotics, rule of law, governance and state-building — and eventually allow us to withdraw from Afghanistan with honor.
But just because Afghanistan has problems that need to be solved does not mean that the West can solve them all. My experience suggests that those pushing for an expansion of our military presence there are wrong. We don't need bold new plans and billions more in aid. Instead, we need less investment — but a greater focus on what we know how to do.
What We've Done Right
When I walked across Afghanistan, shortly after the U.S.-led invasion had toppled the Taliban regime, there was no electricity in the 400 miles (640 km) between Herat and Kabul. The villages along the route were led by tribal chiefs, mullahs or guerrilla commanders who had little to do with their neighbors, let alone with the central government. Most districts that I visited had no schools or clinics. As a civil servant — I was on leave from my job in Britain's Foreign Office — I was surprised by how poor Afghanistan was and how ungoverned.
In 2006, after 11 months as a regional administrator in southern Iraq, I returned to Afghanistan to set up an NGO called the Turquoise Mountain to restore part of the old bazaar of Kabul and support traditional crafts. The garbage was then 7 ft. (2 m) deep in the streets, 200 yd. (180 m) from the presidential palace; there was no drainage, sewerage or water supply. Once famous traditional buildings were collapsing, and the craft-masters of ceramics, woodwork and jewelry were dying without passing on their skills. Most of the children in the area were not in school, most people were unemployed, few women were literate, and most of their children died before their first birthday.
The past six years, however, have made me optimistic about many aspects of Afghanistan. The community with which I work in the old city is hardworking, decisive and determined. In less than two years, we have cleared mountains of garbage, established clinics and primary schools, created jobs, restored the buildings and shops of the bazaar and attracted visitors and customers back into the area. I have been impressed also by the flexible and imaginative support that we began to receive from private philanthropists around the world and from Canadian and American development agencies.
There has been dramatic progress in many other parts of the country. Since 2001, 6.4 million children have been educated, and there has been a massive increase in access to basic health care. Western funding and assistance have helped create an efficient central bank, a stable currency, an elected parliament, telecommunications and infrastructure projects and a credible army. Some foreign aid goes directly into the hands of elected councils in over 20,000 villages, allowing them to initiate their own rural-development projects. Many of the villages I visited six years ago now have electricity and access to clinics and schools.
What's Gone Wrong
For all those improvements, however, it's clear why my friend Nabi is so pessimistic. The government has not established its authority or credibility. Civil servants lack the most basic education and skills. Perhaps a quarter of teachers are illiterate, and the majority are educated only one grade level above their students (if they are teaching second grade, they have a third-grade education). Many civil servants are corrupt. The police are notoriously predatory and violent. In much of the center and the north of the country, communities have benefited from small amounts of investment in development, health and education, but their contact with civil servants is minimal, and people remain very poor. In the south and the east, along the Pakistani border, the vacuum of government has become an opportunity for gangsters and the Taliban. These are the areas where almost all the world's opium is produced and where Western forces are fighting a costly counterinsurgency campaign.
Many of these problems cannot be solved by the West, however many billions we spend or thousands of troops we deploy. Our money and expertise, which have helped make the central bank and the Afghan National Army professional and competent, cannot prevent the widespread corruption in the police and legal system. A central bank is relatively small, dealing with narrow issues such as currency and interest rates on which international economists can offer practical, technical advice. An army is able to develop its esprit de corps and drills in barracks, isolated from the broader society. But policemen and judges are much more connected to society and much more exposed to local politics and corruption. This is why most developing countries have relatively effective central banks and armies but corrupt and despised police forces. It's also why everyone finds it easier to build roads than to create rule of law, easier to build a school than a state. Afghans deal with most crimes outside the court system, using a traditional leader as an arbitrator. No amount of legal training can help a judge faced with drug lords who are prepared to kill his family. It is almost impossible for outsiders to reform this kind of system.
Fighting the Taliban is equally problematic. Western troops can win any conventional battle against ill-armed extremists, but both history and the latest doctrine on counterinsurgency suggest that ultimate victory will require control of Afghanistan's borders, hundreds of thousands of troops and a much stronger and more legitimate Afghan state, which could take Afghans decades to build. The West does not have the resources to match our ambitions in counterinsurgency, and we never will.
In any case, the preoccupations of the West — fighting terrorism and narcotics — are not the priorities of Afghans like Nabi, Zia and Hussein. Their major concerns are the state of the economy and basic services. Nabi has to keep working in a guesthouse kitchen at the age of 66 to feed his family. Like most other Afghans, he can barely afford bread: the price of flour has tripled in the past year as a result of a surge in global commodity prices. Unpredictable and uncontrollable events such as this may prove much more important than any international policy for the survival of the Afghan state. As Nabi says, "We are fed up with war. I am supporting five unemployed sons. Why can the government not create jobs?"
Getting Out of the Way
So what exactly should we do about Afghanistan now? First, the West should not increase troop numbers. In time, NATO allies, such as Germany and Holland, will probably want to draw down their numbers, and they should be allowed to do so. We face pressing challenges elsewhere. If we are worried about terrorism, Pakistan is more important than Afghanistan; if we are worried about regional stability, then Egypt, Iran or even Lebanon is more important; if we are worried about poverty, Africa is more important. A troop increase is likely to inflame Afghan nationalism because Afghans are more anti-foreign than we acknowledge and the support for our presence in the insurgency areas is declining. The Taliban, which was a largely discredited and backward movement, gains support by portraying itself as fighting for Islam and Afghanistan against a foreign military occupation.
Nor should we increase our involvement in government and the economy. The more responsibility we take in Afghanistan, the more we undermine the credibility and responsibility of the Afghan government and encourage it to act irresponsibly. Our claims that Afghanistan is the "front line in the war on terror" and that "failure is not an option" have convinced the Afghan government that we need it more than it needs us. The worse things become, the more assistance it seems to receive. This is not an incentive to reform. Increasing our commitment to Afghanistan gives us no leverage over the government.
Afghans increasingly blame us for the problems in the country: the evening news is dominated by stories of wasted development aid. The government claims that in 2007, $1.3 billion out of $3.5 billion of aid was spent on international consultants, some of whom received more than $1,000 a day and whose policy papers are often ignored by Afghan civil servants and are invisible to the population. Our lack of success despite our wealth and technology convinces ordinary Afghans to believe in conspiracy theories. Well-educated people have told me that the West is secretly backing the Taliban and that the U.S.'s main objective was to steal Afghanistan's emeralds, antiquities and uranium — and that we knew where Osama bin Laden was but had decided not to catch him.
Playing to Our Strengths
A smarter strategy would focus on two elements: more effective aid and a more limited military objective. We should target development assistance in provinces where we have a track record of success. Our investment goes further in stable and welcoming places like Hazarajat than it can in hostile, insurgency-dominated areas like Kandahar and Helmand, where we have to spend millions on security and the locals do not contribute to the project and will not sustain it after our departure. We should focus on meeting the Afghan government's request for more investment in agricultural irrigation, energy and roads. And we should increase our support to the most effective departments, such as education, health and rural development; they are good for the reputation of the Afghan state and the West. Creating more educated, healthier women and men and better transport, communications and electrical infrastructure may be only part of the story, but they are essential for Afghanistan's economic future.
Our efforts in nation-building, governance and counternarcotics should be smaller and more creative. This is not because these issues are unimportant; they are vital for Afghanistan's future. But only the Afghan government has the legitimacy, the knowledge and the power to build a nation. The West's supporting role is at best limited and uncertain. The recent elimination of the opium crop in Nangarhar, for instance, was driven by the will and charisma of a local governor and owed little to Western-funded "capacity-building" seminars. The greatest recent improvements in local government have come about through the replacement of local governors rather than through hundred-million-dollar training programs. Since these successes are often difficult to predict, we should invest in numerous smaller opportunities rather than bet all our chips on a few large programs.
Our military strategy, meanwhile, should focus on counterterrorism — not counterinsurgency. Our presence has so far prevented al-Qaeda from establishing training camps in Afghanistan. We must continue to prevent it from doing so. But our troops should not try to hold territory or chase the Taliban around rural areas. We should also use our presence to steer Afghanistan away from civil war and provide some opportunity for the Afghans themselves to create a more humane, well-governed and prosperous country. This policy would require far fewer troops over the next 20 years, and they would probably be predominantly special forces and intelligence operatives.
This strategy is far from ideal. But it's the best option we've got. It might not allow us to build an Afghan nation. It would involve a very long-term policy of containment and management, and it may never lead to a clear victory or exit. But unlike abandoning Afghanistan entirely, as we did in 1990, it would not leave a vacuum filled by dangerous neighbors. And unlike a policy of troop increases, this strategy would be less costly, more popular with voters, more sustainable in the long term, less of a distraction from other global priorities and less likely to alienate Afghan nationalists and undermine the Afghan state.
Transforming a nation of 32 million people is a task not for the West but for Afghans. Creating a narrative of national identity is not a technical engineering problem but more a question of mythmaking. Afghanistan's future must combine elders like Nabi with the aspirations of 5 million refugees, recently returned from Pakistan and Iran. And it will be influenced by even larger forces: the eddies of local ideologies, charisma, the fundamentals of population growth and natural resources, global commodity prices and the nation's relations with its neighbors, from Iran and Pakistan to China. It will draw on government bureaucracies and opaque tribal structures, on old constitutions and new cultures, on religion and luck. Afghans have the energy, the pride and the competence to lead that process. The West, however, does not. It should not waste its money, its lives and its reputation trying to do the impossible. It should invest in what it does well. We do not have a moral obligation to do what we cannot do.
Stewart lives in Kabul and is the author of The Places in Between and Prince of the Marshes. He was recently appointed the Ryan Professor and the director of the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard University
Back to Top
Back to Top
No Japanese SDF mission to Afghanistan
July 18, 2008
TOKYO, July 18 (UPI) -- Japan, reacting to rising violence in Afghanistan, has decided against sending its Self-Defense Forces to help in that country's reconstruction.
Kyodo news service, quoting government officials and lawmakers Friday, reported a government team during its trip to Afghanistan found the security situation there is worsening.
The finding led many lawmakers in Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda's Liberal Democratic Party-led coalition to note that it would be difficult to get parliament to authorize an SDF mission, the report said.
The use of Japanese forces outside the country is strictly limited under the country's war-renouncing Constitution, Kyodo said.
The Fukuda regime had considered expanding the current law to allow the SDF mission, in addition to the existing refueling mission by the Maritime Self-Defense Force in the Indian Ocean, to support U.S.-led anti-terrorism operations in and near Afghanistan, the report said.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Americans' Faith in Afghan War Fades
War Fatigue, Frustration Play Into Americans' Decreasing Interest in War
By EMILY FRIEDMAN July 18, 2008 — ABC News
The Pentagon and presidential rivals Barack Obama and John McCain all seem to agree on the need to send more troops to Afghanistan, but they are at odds with much of the country these days on the need to send more Americans into the lawless Afghan mountains.
The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll found that a startling 45 percent of Americans said they do not think the war in Afghanistan is worth fighting, despite the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which provoked the war in the first place.
The growing disenchantment with the Afghan deployment hasn't reached the level of national frustration with the Iraq war, but after more than six years with U.S. troops stationed in Afghanistan and violence on the rise, Americans are becoming increasingly wary about the country's involvement.
Fifty-one percent of Americans now say that the U.S. military effort in Afghanistan has been unsuccessful, up from 24 percent in fall 2002.
Only 44 percent of Americans consider the war in Afghanistan a success, down from 70 percent in 2002.
The national poll of 1,119 randomly selected adults was conducted by telephone July 10-13, 2008, with a margin of error of three percentage points.
For Sholom Keller, a veteran who served in both Afghanistan and Iraq, it comes as no surprise that support for the war in Afghanistan is fading.
"I'm not shocked at all that American support is waning," Keller told ABCNews.com. "If we are in Afghanistan because the U.S. was attacked on Sept. 11, then I want to see the perpetrators captured and brought to justice.
"If we're not finding them in Afghanistan, then I don't know why we're there," he added. "And if they are there I want to know why we haven't found them in the last seven years if they've been giving troops the right intelligence and missions."
Experts on the Middle East told ABCNews.com that many Americans share Keller's frustration, blaming several factors, including the fatigue from hearing about not one but two wars, as well as pressing issues at home, such as the failing economy.
With Economy Suffering, Iraq Making Headlines, Some Americans Say 'Enough'
Judith Kipper, the director of Middle East programs at the Institute of World Affairs in Washington, D.C., said that the gap in the numbers this year compared with those from 2002 is "tremendous" but still understandable.
"It's battle fatigue," Kipper said.
"American don't want war; they know it's costing a lot and the worse the economy gets at home, the more people feel a lack of confidence in their daily lives," Kipper said. "The less confident they feel, the less likely they are to support foreign wars and adventures."
And while Kipper says Americans haven't forgotten the 9/11 attacks, the fear and shock that pervaded the country in the days and months following have since faded, just as American's interest in Afghanistan has.
"This is many years later and life goes on," Kipper said. "It's hard for Americans to relate to what happened years ago to their battle fatigue and war weariness now.
"[They care] about the problems that they're facing on a daily basis," she added.
The confusing nature of the war in Afghanistan and the failure to locate Osama bin Laden has contributed to American's already disillusioned vision of the war, Kipper said.
"Americans know Iraq is near the oil and they know a lot about Saddam Hussein, but Afghanistan is the end of the earth for most people," she said. "It's a very confusing issue; why we're still there and NATO's involvement."
But others the presumptive presidential nominees included believe that it would be worse to leave Afghanistan than stay, despite what the American public thinks.
"With Afghanistan, the reality is that McCain thinks this is in our national security interest," said Brian Rogers, a McCain campaign spokesman.
"People are frustrated with the lack of success and it's [the job of] the leader to make the case to American people as to why the fight in Afghanistan is a compelling national security interest."
The Obama campaign said, "Sen. Obama supports this mission, as he does not make decisions based on polls."
Charles Dunbar, the former head of the U.S. embassy in Kabul, told ABCNews.com that while violence had risen in Afghanistan as of late, there is some good news coming out of the region, too.
Removing troops from Afghanistan now would only cause a larger terror threat in the future, he said.
"The Afghanistan story is not all being told; there is much more success in other parts of the country," said Dunbar, who now teaches international relations at Boston University. "I do recognize that the occasional suicide bombings are going to happen, and that's the news that is understandably going to influence the American public.
"This administration and the one that follows will need to make the case strongly that Afghanistan is a terrorist threat.
"They need to restore [Americans'] faith in the war in Afghanistan, particularly because Pakistan is a place where al Qaeda and others who are absolutely irreconcilable in our efforts to come to terms with the Muslim world are surviving under present conditions," he added.
Dunbar says he understands why Americans are losing faith in the U.S. military efforts in Afghanistan, but still warns against allowing the problem to get even worse.
"It can be argued that we can't control [what's going on in Afghanistan] and we have to get out, but then we just have a bigger problem area," he said.
"Then we have just widened our problem."
Back to Top
Back to Top
Pakistani police arrest 55 Afghan immigrants
Written by www.quqnoos.com foreign desk Thursday, 17 July 2008
Raids signal start of clamp down on illegal immigrants
PAKISTANI police have arrested 55 Afghans in Baluchistan in a crack down on illegal immigrants.
Police raided homes in the town of Mastung, close to Quetta city near the border with Afghanistan, and detained 55 Afghans accused of living in Pakistan illegally.
"They did not have legal documents allowing them to live here as refugee," police said, adding that the Afghans were arrested under the Foreigner Act.
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).