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Official: 31 killed in Taliban bus attack in Afghanistan
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) -- Afghan officials say Taliban militants have killed about 30 Afghans after stopping a bus on a highway and taking the passengers hostage.
Afghanistan stability 'not mission impossible': Miliband
Sun Oct 19, 1:15 am ET
LONDON (AFP) – British Foreign Secretary David Miliband denied on Sunday that the international community was failing in its mission in Afghanistan.
Anti-war protesters target Canadian military mission in Afghanistan
Sat Oct 18, 5:04 pm ET
MONTREAL (AFP) – Anti-war demonstrations in a dozen Canadian cities on Saturday protested the military mission in Afghanistan, beginning a weekend of action organizers hope will raise awareness
TAPI gas pipeline project doubtful, say energy experts
Experts are not sure if gas reserves will be sufficient
Conditions in Afghanistan a major cause for concern
Sandeep Dikshit The Hindu (India) October 18, 2008
ASTANA: Even as India gears up to resume talks on the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline, energy experts here feel that realisation of the competing Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) project appears doubtful.
Official: Afghanistan on the verge of polio free
KABUL, Oct. 18 (Xinhua) -- Afghan Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) launched a three-day National Immuization Days (NIDs) campaign on Saturday to benefit 7.5 million children under five years
Showcasing 'Hidden Treasures' from Afghanistan
Jonathan Curiel San Francisco Chronicle Sunday, October 19, 2008
In a sweltering room in Kabul, Afghanistan, Afghans and an invited guest from America stood in rapt attention as the lock to an old safe was undone. Afghanistan's past was in that safe
First railway after fall of Taliban regime to be completed in Afghanistan
www.chinaview.cn 2008-10-19 16:04:48
KABUL, Oct. 19 (Xinhua) -- Afghanistan's first railway network after the fall of Taliban regime, which will connect the war-torn nation to Iran, is expected to be completed before the end of 2008
Canada-Afghanistan Business Council Recognizes Ehsan Bayat
Canada-Afghanistan Business Council Recognizes Ehsan Bayat, Entrepreneur and Humanitarian, for Corporate Social Contributions in Afghanistan
TORONTO, Oct 17, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Today Mr. Ehsan Bayat, Chairman of Afghan Wireless Communication Company, Ariana Television and Radio Network and the Bayat Foundation
Why Iran is Cooling Off
By Mark Hosenball | NEWSWEEK Oct 18, 2008 From the magazine issue dated Oct 27, 2008
For reasons that remain unclear to the Bush administration and its allies, the level of violence attributable to Iranian-backed insurgents in both Iraq and Afghanistan is falling. Pentagon press secretary
End Zone: Soccer star leaves Taliban behind
Drew University soccer star Shamila Kohestani leaves Taliban behind
BY WAYNE COFFEY New York Daily News - Sat Oct 18, 4:19 pm EDT
MADISON, N.J. - Five times a day, on the third floor of a boxy brick dormitory, a reserve forward on the Drew University women’s soccer team spreads out a special rug, sits down and tries to figure out which direction Mecca is.
TV’s Koran Idol keeps Afghan clerics at bay
The Sunday Times Christina Lamb in Kabul October 19, 2008
It is just before dusk at the Marco Polo wedding hall on the outskirts of Kabul and an excited crowd is gathering for the final of Afghanistan’s latest reality television show.
Ariana airline's income rises, company says
www.quqnoos.com Written by Zabiullah Jhanmal Sunday, 19 October 2008
State-owned airline believes its profits will improve dramatically this year
Pakistan does some US dirty work
By Syed Saleem Shahzad Asia Times Online October 18, 2008
KARACHI - Pakistan's seven-year association with the United States' "war on terror" has moved to a new and dangerous level: the US has given it a contract to build 1,000 Humvees for use by troops
Pakistani army 'kills 60 Taleban'
Saturday, 18 October 2008 BBC News
At least 60 militants have been killed after the Pakistani army launched air strikes on two Taleban training camps in north-west Pakistan, the army says.
Seven killed as Taliban ‘shoot down’ US chopper
The News International, Pakistan Sunday, October 19, 2008
PESHAWAR- Afghan Taliban claimed to have shot down a US military helicopter in Birmal area of Afghanistan’s Paktika province early on Saturday morning, killing seven soldiers.
In Afghanistan in vain
The Sunday Times October 19, 2008
YOU published an excellent report by Christina Lamb in Afghanistan under the headline What a bloody hopeless war. Two years on another report by her (News Review, last week) illustrates the total failure to make military progress. However, we will maintain headquarters in Lashkar Gah, which will employ 140 staff to administer a population of 2m
Herat MPs threaten to resign over soaring violence
www.quqnoos.com Written by Parwiz Shamal Saturday, 18 October 2008
Government has failed to stem violence in their province, Herati MPs say
MEMBERS of Parliament from Herat have said they will resign from their posts unless the government heeds their call for greater powers to cut back "soaring levels of violence" in the western province.
Cholera outbreak spreads to south-east
Written by www.quqnoos.com Saturday, 18 October 2008
Fatal disease infects 200 people in Khost province after killing 22 in north
CHOLERA has spread to the south-eastern province of Khost after killing at least 22 people in other parts of the country last week.
From Great Game to Grand Bargain.
Foreign Affairs. November/December 2008.
Ending Chaos in Afghanistan and Pakistan Barnett R. Rubin and Ahmed Rashid
The Great Game is no fun anymore. The term “Great Game” was used by nineteenth-century British imperialists to describe the British- Russian struggle for position on the chessboard of Afghanistan and Central Asia
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Official: 31 killed in Taliban bus attack in Afghanistan
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) -- Afghan officials say Taliban militants have killed about 30 Afghans after stopping a bus on a highway and taking the passengers hostage.
Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi says 31 people were killed in the attack in the Maiwand district of Kandahar province, a dangerous region just west of Kandahar city.
Azimi says six of the dead were beheaded.
Provincial police Chief Matiullah Khan says the militants captured about 50 people during the attack Thursday. He says several of those captured were released.
A Taliban spokesman says the militants killed 27 Afghan soldiers on the bus and released everyone else. Azimi says there were no soldiers on the bus because they travel by air.
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Afghanistan stability 'not mission impossible': Miliband
Sun Oct 19, 1:15 am ET
LONDON (AFP) – British Foreign Secretary David Miliband denied on Sunday that the international community was failing in its mission in Afghanistan.
"Our true mission... has been to use military power to create the space within which Afghan institutions can become strong enough to resist the Taliban. That mission is certainly not impossible," Miliband wrote in the Sunday Times.
Responding to criticism in the newspaper of Britain's role in Afghanistan, Miliband denied that Taliban insurgents were getting the upper hand over President Hamid Karzai's administration.
He said the majority of Taliban activity was concentrated in 10 percent of Afghanistan's districts, home to only six percent of the population, and he rejected suggestions that the capital, Kabul, was encircled.
"The Taliban lack the capacity to hold ground," Miliband wrote.
Some of the insecurity stemmed from "growing criminality", including the trade in heroin, Miliband said.
He hailed the decision by NATO defence ministers to allow their forces to do more to support the Afghan security forces in targeting drug facilities.
The fact that 18 provinces in Afghanistan were drug-free this year, up from 13 last year, was "progress. Not enough, but progress all the same."
On the vexed issue of the tribal areas of Pakistan which he said were used to launch insurgent attacks in Afghanistan, Miliband said new Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari had promised to make cooperation with Afghanistan a priority "and he has been true to his word".
"The role of the international community is not to wring its hands and go home, but to help the Pakistan government get a grip on its tribal areas," Miliband said.
This involved "doing better" in preventing attacks from suicide bombers and roadside bombs but also required "a massive economic effort with the help of the international community."
There are currently 7,800 British troops serving in Afghanistan as part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and US-led operations.
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Anti-war protesters target Canadian military mission in Afghanistan
Sat Oct 18, 5:04 pm ET
MONTREAL (AFP) – Anti-war demonstrations in a dozen Canadian cities on Saturday protested the military mission in Afghanistan, beginning a weekend of action organizers hope will raise awareness of Canada's involvement in the US-led "War on Terror."
The rallies, the largest being held in Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto, will continue until Sunday, organizer Dylan Penner told AFP.
In Montreal, hundreds of protesters descended on a military base to express disagreement with the presence of Canadian forces in Afghanistan, Radio-Canada reported.
"It is against the will (of Canadians) that the government has decided to extend the military presence (in Afghanistan) until 2011," said Raymond Legault, a spokesman for the anti-war group Collectif Echec a la Guerre.
In March Canadian lawmakers agreed to extend the military mission, retaining the deployment of 2,500 troops based in southern Afghanistan until at least 2011.
The cost of Canada's presence in Afghanistan, from the start of the US-led invasion in 2001 to the projected withdrawal in 2011, could reach 18.1 billion Canadian dollars (15.8 billion US dollars), according to an official report.
Protest organizers told AFP they were not motivated by the general election on Tuesday, which saw the reelection of Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, but rather the seven year anniversary of the 2001 invasion.
Ninety-seven Canadian soldiers have died in Afghanistan since 2001. A diplomat and two Canadian aid workers have also lost their lives in the conflict.
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TAPI gas pipeline project doubtful, say energy experts
Experts are not sure if gas reserves will be sufficient
Conditions in Afghanistan a major cause for concern
Sandeep Dikshit The Hindu (India) October 18, 2008
ASTANA: Even as India gears up to resume talks on the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline, energy experts here feel that realisation of the competing Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) project appears doubtful.
Not only would the TAPI pipeline travel through a troubled Afghanistan, experts express lack of confidence in sufficient gas reserves with Turkmenistan to meet all its assurances to China, Russia as well as Pakistan and India. The pipeline is estimated to cost $8 billion and according to original projections, work should start in 2010 and end after five years. Experts suggest that the problem of guaranteeing an adequate quantity of gas for TAPI could be overcome if Turkmenistan agreed to connect the pipeline from its Daulatabad reserve to the IPI gas pipeline.
Taliban factor
On surface, the conditions in Afghanistan are the major cause for concern for the TAPI project. Taliban is active in south west part of the country which is near the proposed route for the pipeline. Experts do not expect the security threat to minimise in the near future. But more than unsettled conditions in Afghanistan, experts doubt whether there are enough gas reserves to fill all the pipelines being proposed by Turkmenistan without substantially increasing production.
At present the trend of increase in output did not seem to correspond with the number of projects that were on the drawing board, they said on condition of anonymity. In 2007, Ashkhabad produced 70 billion cubic metres of gas which was short of the previous year’s target by 10 billion cubic metres. This makes it highly unlikely that Turkmenistan would be able to achieve its projected target of 250 billion cubic metres of gas and 110 million tonnes of oil by 2030.
Turkmenistan has concluded side projects of the Caspian Sea gas pipeline, modernisation of the Central Asian pipeline and also the gas pipeline with China which is under construction. It is expected that these commitments alone will account for all of Turkmenistan’s gas production targets of 2030, provided it is able to achieve them.
“Taking into account these considerations, the resource base of TAPI appears to be at a level that is too low to initiate this project. The volumes may be enough to cover other commitments. There is simply no gas for other markets,” said the experts. As a result, it may be necessary to undertake development of new gas fields, a task which takes not less than 10 years. Experts said the issue of shortages came to the fore during the beginning of this year after the disruption of gas exports from Turkmenistan to Iran which also led to reduced supplies to Turkey and Greece.
Shortage
The main reason, apart from differences between Iran and Turkmenistan on prices, was the shortage of gas to meet Askhabad’s internal demands during severe winter. Experts appreciate Turkmenistan’s strategy of creating competition for its gas to get better prices, especially between China and India. It regards the Daulatabad gas field as a potential reserve for TAPI but this field is also planned to be used for exporting gas to China. Economically speaking, Iranian gas appears to be a better option for India — the lower project cost would lead to cheaper gas to Indian consumers.
In addition, Iran plans to take aboard an experienced gas operator who could be a firm assurance to practical implementation. Another problem is that during a meeting on May 29, Turkmenistan indicated that it could sell gas on its border without getting involved in the construction of the pipeline across the three nations who are not at the best of terms with each other.
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Official: Afghanistan on the verge of polio free
KABUL, Oct. 18 (Xinhua) -- Afghan Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) launched a three-day National Immuization Days (NIDs) campaign on Saturday to benefit 7.5 million children under five years-old all over the war-torn country in order to obtain the status of a polio free country.
Dr. S. Moh. Amin Fatimie, Minister of Publice Health said in a statement released here that "52,357 staffs of MoPH and volunteers will drop polio vaccines to the mouth of 7.5 million under five year old children and vitamin A capsules to 6.8 million children between the age of 6 months and five years all over the country."
The NIDs campaign is expected to achieve "high level of immunity among less than five years age children" and rule out "circulation of wild polio virus inside Afghanistan."
"With the achievement and sustaining of two targets above, Afghanistan will soon obtain the status of a polio free country," the MoPh official said.
"This is a huge operation which covers all villages of Afghanistan and provides a unique opportunity for all Afghan families to get their children vaccinated against Polio and be in contact with the health workers," Dr. S. Moh. Amin Fatimie added.
He also asked for all Afghans, health workers and health partners to provide any kind of help and support to this process so that all Afghan children could get vaccinated in the coming 3 days.
The NIDs campaign is under the technical and financial assistance of the World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and other donor communities.
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Showcasing 'Hidden Treasures' from Afghanistan
Jonathan Curiel San Francisco Chronicle Sunday, October 19, 2008
In a sweltering room in Kabul, Afghanistan, Afghans and an invited guest from America stood in rapt attention as the lock to an old safe was undone. Afghanistan's past was in that safe - a past that extended beyond the time of Alexander the Great, when the country was an epicenter of commerce and conquest. Miraculously, the safe had survived Afghanistan's bloodiest wars. Archaeologist Fredrik Hiebert knew the safe contained a remarkable treasure of Afghanistan's history, but he didn't know how remarkable. No one in the room did that day in 2004.
"It was full of gold," Hiebert recalled as he sat in the Asian Art Museum, which is exhibiting the safe's contents and other Afghan treasures in a major show that begins Friday. "It was unbelievable."
The San Francisco exhibition, "Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures From the National Museum, Kabul," is a tribute to a country whose culture has withstood a 30-year onslaught. The succession of conflicts in Afghanistan - starting with the Soviet invasion in 1979 and continuing through the post-9/11 toppling of the Taliban - decimated the country's infrastructure for arts and archaeology. Museums were bombed and plundered. Historic sites were raided for artifacts that were sold on the black market. The Taliban's reign was especially cruel: Government leaders deliberately sought out and destroyed sculpture, paintings and other artwork they considered blasphemous. Afghan curators and ordinary workers risked their lives to save what they could. The stories of these selfless acts - like that of Omara Khan Massoudi, who hid ancient jewels in an underground vault that required seven keys - are what's behind the glittering gold that will be on display at the Asian Art Museum.
By themselves, these priceless objects, some of which go back more than four millennia, are worthy of viewing. The fact they're from war-torn Afghanistan - and were rescued by people who wanted to preserve the country's ancient past - gives this exhibition a significance that Afghans say is nothing short of miraculous. The treasures, which were previously shown in Washington, D.C, and Europe, have brought visitors - especially those of Afghan descent - to awe and tears.
"It brings back a sense of what we've lost - people have lost their homes (in Afghanistan) and friends - and yet these objects have been saved from the wars," says Nadia Tarzi, founder of the San Rafael Association for the Protection of Afghan Archaeology, who saw the exhibition in Washington. "And some people were completely astonished and, all of a sudden, they were very proud. They were like, 'Wow. Look at those pieces of jewelry and craftsmanship.' "
Because Afghanistan has been plunged into pitched violence for almost three decades - decades of destruction that have been assiduously covered by the media - it's easy to lose sight of the country's place as an important crossroads of cultures. In the fourth century B.C., its land was traipsed by traders who established early routes of the Silk Road. Around 400 B.C., Buddhism found a home in what is now northern Afghanistan. When Alexander the Great conquered the region decades later, he introduced Greek influences. Before the advent of Islam in the seventh century, Persian and Indian culture reverberated in Afghanistan. The jewels, coins, ingots, medallions, glassware, statuettes, pottery, pillars, plaques, daggers and other objects on display at the Asian Art Museum reflect all these cultures - and also the unique way that Afghans melded these cultures into something they could call their own.
One of the collection's most arresting items is a "Dragon Master" pendant - made of gold, turquoise, pearls, garnet, carnelian and lapis lazuli - that depicts a crowned man holding two dragons in check. The man, who wears a caftan and appears to be a nomad, has a dot on his forehead that is common to India, but he also has an Asian face. The pendant dates from the first century, when the Silk Road that connected Europe to China was beginning to flourish. Like the collapsible gold crown that is another highlight of the exhibition, the pendant was found at the archaeological site called Tillya Tepe, or "Hill of Gold," a settlement that dates from 4000 B.C. In 1978, when Russian archaeologist Viktor Sarianidi discovered the gold treasures under huge mounds of dirt, the fantastical find was likened to the unearthing of King Tutankhamun's tomb - except that Egypt's excavation heralded an uninterrupted series of archaeological digs south of Cairo, whereas Sarianidi had to abandon his Afghan work when Soviet troops invaded in 1979.
Sarianidi hastily dropped off the treasures in Kabul, left the country and never knew what happened to them - until 2004, when he and Hiebert were asked to attend the opening of the safe at Kabul's Central Bank. Afghans murmured that the safe might contain Sarianidi's "Bactrian Golden Hoard" (named after the ancient region of Bactria that stretched across northern Afghanistan), but Sarianidi and Hiebert also heard the gold had been shepherded out of Afghanistan or, worse, melted down by absconders. In a country where the average yearly income is $300 a year, a single object from the Bactrian hoard could fetch enough money to last a lifetime.
"This exhibition tells the story of the character of Afghans who wanted to preserve the past," says Hiebert, a fellow with National Geographic, which is a major sponsor of the show. "We want the audience to walk into the exhibition and feel like they're looking at treasures that shouldn't exist. They should have been stolen. They should have been destroyed during (Afghanistan's) bombings. They should have been destroyed by the Taliban. Every object they look at was tendered in the darkest days of Afghanistan and saved."
Walking down a hallway of the Asian Art Museum, Hiebert sees - for the first time - a calendar-quality poster that the museum has made in Dari, one of Afghanistan's main languages. Hiebert, who knows Dari from his many visits to Afghanistan, marvels at the right-to-left cursive script that is an art in itself. To reach the Bay Area's large number of Afghan Americans, the museum is distributing the posters in Fremont (known as "Little Kabul" for its procession of Afghan stores and restaurants), Hayward and other select cities. The museum is also circulating promotional cards in Dari and Pashto, another prominent Afghan language, and hosting a panel discussion in Dari on Nov. 13. This multilingual approach to the exhibition mirrors the approach taken in Kabul, where the remodeled National Museum has a prominent outdoor sign, including English, that says: "A Nation Stays Alive When Its Culture Stays Alive."
During the worst period of war in Afghanistan, the National Museum was a bombed-out shell of its former self. Visitors there found bullet-ridden walls and caved-in floors, not the contained rooms that once held sublime objects of interest. Before 9/11, it was only in war that the world paid close attention to Afghanistan's artistic heritage. In March 2001, for example, there was outrage when the Taliban used dynamite to obliterate the cliff-carved Buddha statues in Bamyan. Seven years later, the exhibition at the Asian Art Museum is a chance to see - in a quiet environment made for reflection - Afghanistan's stunning history. Preservationists have restored these once-hidden treasures.
The objects' new beauty belies their complicated past. Hiebert wants visitors to understand this rough history. Before museum visitors can make their way to the precious gems, they're offered a film - narrated by "Kite Runner" author Khaled Hosseini - that explains Afghanistan's bloody conflicts and the discovery of the gold objects. The treasures survived to tell a different story of Afghanistan - a story of resilience and melding cultures that Hiebert believes is as timeless as any story he's ever encountered. It's no wonder, he says, that Afghanistan pushed for the traveling exhibition, which goes to Houston's Museum of Fine Arts and New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art after its three-month stay in San Francisco. At a time when the Taliban has made a resurgence, and U.S. troops are being called to Kabul in greater numbers, "Hidden Treasures From the National Museum, Kabul" is a joyous reprieve, a chance to revel in a culture, thousands of years old, that survives not just in museums but also in the faces of Afghans around the world.
Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures From the National Museum, Kabul: Fri.-Jan. 5. Events related to the exhibition include a curator lecture (2:30 p.m. Sat.); Afghan poetry and music (7 p.m. Oct. 30); Afghan music, dance and food (5-9 p.m. Nov. 6); a conference at UC Berkeley (Nov. 14-15); and a reading of "The Kite Runner" (7 p.m. Nov. 20). Museum admission: $12 (free first Sunday of the month). Timed-entry system for the exhibition. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tues.-Wed. and Fri.-Sun., 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Thurs. Asian Art Museum, 200 Larkin St., San Francisco. , museumtix.com, www.asianart.org/afghanistan.htm.
E-mail Jonathan Curiel at jcuriel@sfchronicle.com
This article appeared on page N - 18 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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First railway after fall of Taliban regime to be completed in Afghanistan
www.chinaview.cn 2008-10-19 16:04:48
KABUL, Oct. 19 (Xinhua) -- Afghanistan's first railway network after the fall of Taliban regime, which will connect the war-torn nation to Iran, is expected to be completed before the end of 2008, Afghan website Quqnoos reported on Sunday.
"The Khawaf-Herat railway linking Iran with the western Afghan city of Herat is 60 percent completed," the website quoted Afghan Ministry of Public Work (MoPW) as saying.
The 176-km-long railway, according to the MoPW, was launched in 2006 at a cost of 75 million U.S. dollars and would be completed possibly by the end of 2008.
Quoting Ahmad Wali Rasouli, the deputy to the Ministry for Public Work, the website Quqnoos added that the Afghan government has planed to connect the post-Taliban nation to all its neighboring states via rail roads.
"Construction of railways between Afghanistan and its neighbors would speed up the flow of goods across the country's borders," Rasouli said.
Iran, as a close neighbor of Afghanistan, has contributed 560 million U.S. dollars over the past nearly seven years for the rebuilding of the war-torn central Asian state.
Editor: Jiang Yuxia
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Canada-Afghanistan Business Council Recognizes Ehsan Bayat
Canada-Afghanistan Business Council Recognizes Ehsan Bayat, Entrepreneur and Humanitarian, for Corporate Social Contributions in Afghanistan
TORONTO, Oct 17, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Today Mr. Ehsan Bayat, Chairman of Afghan Wireless Communication Company, Ariana Television and Radio Network and the Bayat Foundation was presented with the Corporate Social Responsibility Award by H.E. Ambassador Omar Samad during an award ceremony hosted by the Canada-Afghanistan Business Council in recognition of his ongoing commitment to providing hope and opportunities for his homeland, Afghanistan, through his business and humanitarian endeavors.
Afghan Wireless Communications Company (AWCC) is the first GSM mobile service provider in Afghanistan now with over 2.4 million subscribers in 15,000 villages and offers business education and other course offerings to its 3,500 employees. Ariana Television and Radio Network with its worldwide television signal reaches over 20 million Afghans in 32 provinces and countless others with educational and news programs to connect Afghans with one another and the rest of the world. Chairman Ehsan Bayat said, "The Afghan people living in the remote regions now have visibility on the progress in Kabul and other rebuilding efforts throughout the country because of the information provided by Ariana Radio."
The Bayat Foundation is the largest private donor in Afghanistan focused on building hospitals and maternity clinics, educational training centers, orphanages and sports facilities where needed, and is also committed to cultural preservation, the provision of food and clothing especially during the harsh winter months and encouraging women, children and youth through a variety of sports and education programs.
About Bayat Foundation
The non-governmental Bayat Foundation headquartered in Kabul, Afghanistan partners with other NGOs to support in-country humanitarian activities. Since 2005 the Bayat Foundation led by Ehsan & Fatema Bayat has contributed to over 140 projects to improve the quality of life in Afghanistan by providing for basic human needs, constructing new facilities and infrastructure, organizing sporting events, promoting health, education and economic programs and preserving Afghanistan's cultural heritage. The independent New Jersey based 501( c )3 Bayat Foundation partners with the organization in Afghanistan to provide advocacy, outreach, education and engagement to promote the well-being of the Afghan people through the support of its donors. Email info@bayatfoundation.org for information or to sponsor a program. http://www.bayatfoundation.org.
Media Contact: Rosalie Wyatt
1-703-399-6929
r.wyatt@tsiglobe.com
SOURCE Bayat Foundation
http://www.bayatfoundation.org
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Why Iran is Cooling Off
By Mark Hosenball | NEWSWEEK Oct 18, 2008 From the magazine issue dated Oct 27, 2008
For reasons that remain unclear to the Bush administration and its allies, the level of violence attributable to Iranian-backed insurgents in both Iraq and Afghanistan is falling. Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell says the trend dates back to an Iraqi-government assault last spring on militants in the Basra region of southern Iraq. After the crackdown, Iranian-supported insurgents (known to U.S. officials as "special groups") fled into Iran, where they have since been cooling their heels. Still, according to one U.S. counterterrorism official, who asked for anonymity when discussing sensitive information, some reports suggest that Iraqi militants are still actively being trained inside Iran for attacks on U.S. forces.
Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, intelligence reports last year indicated that Iran was also supplying terrorist-style arms to anti-American militants there. But the latest intelligence indicates that the level of bombing technology used by the Taliban in recent IED attacks is far less sophisticated than the devices used by Shia militants in Iraq—evidence that Iran is exercising restraint in its dealings with Afghan insurgents.
The question is, why? Another U.S. official, who also requested anonymity, said that Iran may be turning down the heat on American forces in the region in anticipation of a Barack Obama victory in the presidential election. According to this theory, Iran's theocrats fear an Obama presidency would greatly improve American esteem among European governments; the Iranians believe these leaders indulge Tehran now chiefly because of their disdain for President Bush.
A drop in Iranian-instigated paramilitary attacks does not mean that Tehran has ceased making mischief in the region. Recently, Morrell says, Iranian operatives have been actively pressing Iraqi politicians to oppose U.S. efforts to reach a new "Status of Forces Agreement" with the Iraqi government regarding the continued presence there of American troops. He said Iranian efforts have included trying to orchestrate anti-U.S. demonstrations in Shia neighborhoods and funding attempts to bribe Iraqi politicians.
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End Zone: Soccer star leaves Taliban behind
Drew University soccer star Shamila Kohestani leaves Taliban behind
BY WAYNE COFFEY New York Daily News - Sat Oct 18, 4:19 pm EDT
MADISON, N.J. - Five times a day, on the third floor of a boxy brick dormitory, a reserve forward on the Drew University women’s soccer team spreads out a special rug, sits down and tries to figure out which direction Mecca is.
For 10 or 15 minutes, Shamila Kohestani, of Kabul, Afghanistan, quiets her mind and says her prayers. Then she hustles back to her new western life, complete with fingernails painted pink, her name taped to the dorm-room door and a laptop that is rarely far from her side.
Shamila Kohestani never used a laptop until last year. She never did a lot of things. Life under the Taliban included periodic beatings and regular degradation, but not much in the way of amenities, and nothing at all in the way of education.
Sitting on her bed, alongside the patch of floor where she lays her prayer rug, Kohestani takes a short break from another five-hour night of studying. She looks toward a display of photos of her parents, six sisters and one brother, all of whom remain in Kabul - in a country where the life expectancy is 44 years, according to a study by the World Health Organization.
“When I first came here, people would ask, ‘What did you do for fun in Afghanistan?’” Kohestani says. She pauses and smiles. It is a smile worthy of a toothpaste commercial. ‘I’d say, ‘What do you mean fun? What is fun? I spent all my life in war.’
“I tell American kids, ‘You need to appreciate everything you have, because everywhere there are people who are starving, people who have nothing. Here there is so much.”
Shamila Kohestani isn’t so much a 20-year-old freshman as she is a social groundbreaker in shinguards, a cross-cultural wunderkind, a woman who captained Afghanistan’s first national women’s soccer team and who scarcely spoke English a year ago, and who, as recently as last month, had massive doubts if she could make it as a college student.
“The first days, I was sure I was going back home,” Kohestani says. “I told myself, I can’t do this.’” And then she did it, relying on the same indefatigable will that helped her through Ramadan last month, Kohestani fasting from sunup to sundown, going through grueling soccer practices without a sip of water.
“I’d get thirsty sometimes, and I’d just tell my mind, ‘Shut up,’” she says.
Christa Racine has been the soccer coach at Drew for 14 years, and a fixture in Jersey soccer since her record-setting days at Rutgers, a school she led to three straight ECAC titles, from 1990-92. That Kohestani has only gotten into one game this season takes nothing from what she has accomplished, in her coach’s opinion.
“(Shamila) is not only an amazing story. She’s an amazing person,” Racine says.
***
It was a three-part mix of soccer, strong-mindedness and serendipity that brought Shamila Kohestani to the U.S., a passage that began about six years ago, when she would go out and kick the soccer ball with her brother. It was virtually unheard of for an Afghan girl to play soccer, or most any sport, for that matter.
She didn’t care. She liked it.
“I wasn’t a girlie girl,” Kohestani says, walking along a leafy campus path after one of her daily sessions with Prof. Katherine Brown, director of English for Speakers of Other Languages at Drew. “I didn’t want to stay in the house and play with dolls.”
So she kicked and trapped and juggled the ball, defying the mores of a fiercely male-dominated society, trying to find her way amid the chaos and violence that have long been as much a part of her nation as its austere and forbidding landscape.
Kohestani was born eight years into the war with Russia, then lived through years of fighting among tribal warlords, before the Taliban seized control in 1996, bringing their ultra-fundamentalist, ultra-patriarchal world view with them. Suddenly, Shamila, her sisters and every other Afghan girl were forbidden to go to school. They were not even allowed to read or study on their own. If they went out in public, they needed to be completely covered up, head wrapped in a burqa, and be in the company of a man in their household.
“We had no life. You just took orders from the government,” Kohestani says.
Women who defied Taliban wishes were routinely beaten, and sometimes executed. Kohestani was nine when the a platoon of Taliban soldiers burst into her family home, machine guns in tow, and smashed the TV, the radio, the chess set and set fire to family keepsakes.
Not long after, as she was walking down the street in Kabul, she was beaten by a soldier who didn’t appreciate the loose way she was wearing her burqa.
“I was just crying and running, fast,” says Kohestani. It was hard to outrun the Taliban.
“You can’t even begin to calculate the level of extremism that the Taliban brought in their treatment of women,” says Dr. Febe Armanios, a professor at Middlebury College, who is an expert on the role of women in Muslim societies.
The Taliban remained in power until 2001, when U.S. troops drove them from power following the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Life for women in Kabul has gradually begun to open up in recent years. Four years ago, Kohestani found a smattering of other young women who wanted to play soccer. They began to train informally together. The group grew to eight, and gathered whenever they could, no matter that the spectacle of girls kicking soccer balls was abhorrent to many, if not most, men. The girls wore long pants and jackets, and most wore head scarves, too, none of which appeased their detractors.
“We had a lot of trouble,” says Yasamin Rasoul, one of the pioneers along with Kohestani, speaking on her cell phone from Kabul. “The men made fun of us, called us bad, bad names. They were throwing rocks at us sometimes. It was hard, but when you want something, you have to fight for it.”
Neither Kohestani nor Rasoul knew it, but they would soon be rewarded for their perseverance. Their fledgling club came to the attention of Awista Ayub, an Afghan-American woman whose family fled the violence and moved to Connecticut when she was a young child. Having seen the positive impact of sports on American girls, Ayub — a founder of the women’s ice hockey club at the University of Rochester - wanted to spread the empowerment to girls in Afghanistan, and started an organization called Afghan Youth Sports Exchange (AYSE).
Ayub’s organization brought the eight girls to the States in 2004 for a clinic, and sponsored a vastly bigger clinic, for 250 girls, in the spring of 2006, in Kabul. That same year, Kohestani and teammate Roia Noor Ahmad accepted the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at the ESPYs, on behalf of all of the young Afghan soccer players trying to spread the game to their countrywomen, and soon Kohestani found herself being bestowed with more good fortune than a lottery winner.
While she was in the states, Kohestani attended the Julie Foudy Sports Leadership Academy in Hightstown, N.J., where she learned more about being a leader in soccer, and in life, the gospel preached by Foudy, the two-time Olympic gold medalist and former captain of the U.S. women’s soccer team. While she was at Foudy’s academy she met a counselor who was on the faculty of Blair Academy in Blairstown, N.J., winding up with a scholarship to a prestigious prep school and with Foudy agreeing to pay for her expenses to get to the U.S. again.
After a successful year at Blair, Kohestani’s cause was picked up once more, this time by Bill Knox, a member of Drew’s board of trustees, who sent an e-mail on Aug. 2 to Drew president Robert Weisbuch and dean of admissions Mary Beth Carey, asking to consider Kohestani for admission. Within days a $200,000 scholarship was in place, and following three frenzied weeks of bureaucratic maneuverings, Kohestani, who was back in Afghanistan, had a student visa that would allow her to return to the U.S. as a college student.
“It’s just so many opportunities I’ve been given,” Kohestani says. Foudy, for her part, doesn’t see the opportunities as an accident so much as a reward for having a healthy, spirited attitude.
“Here’s a woman who grew up under the Taliban, but still had this confidence about her, this willingness to try new things, this hunger for knowledge,” Foudy says.
***
Nearly two months into her time as a college freshman, Shamila Kohestani seems to be fitting in seamlessly. With her jeans, running shoes and backpack, she is almost indistinguishable from her fellow co-eds, at least until you hear her thickly accented English. Boxes of Wheat Thins and Special K are next to her desk, ready to quell a bout of late-night hunger. Kohestani’s candy of choice is M & M’s, and here she has an admission to make:
She’s becoming a little addicted to them.
“I have a bag almost every day,” she says.
Kohestani’s courseload includes Freshman Seminar (“How Democracy Works), History of Islam and Mediterrean Thought and English. She is constantly working with Katherine Brown, improving English both spoken and written, and everything else. “She works incredibly hard,” Brown says. “She’s the kind of student a professor wants to work with, because of how diligent she is.”
Kohestani is no less earnest on the soccer field, her teammates say. Ann Mularz, a senior goalkeeper, recalls how quickly Kohestani morphed from isolated new kid to vocal, fully-engaged team member. After a few mostly silent weeks, she beat Mularz with a shot in the corner, pumped her fist, and shouted, “Goal!”
“I loved it: trash talk!” Mularz says. “She doesn’t give up, or put her head down. If she messes something up, she just comes back and says, ‘Next time.’”
Though living in Madison means that she can no longer captain the Afghan national team, Kohestani’s thoughts are never far from home. She misses her family, and wonders about the state of the sport she pioneered. Her teammate from the start, Yasamin Rasoul, says that while more than 1,000 girls are playing soccer in Kabul, the playing is done almost entirely in schools, where it is safer, insulated from the name-calling and derision. Rasoul used to coach an outside team consisting of 12 girls and 12 boys; all the girls have left, chased off by the boys and men who would mock them.
“Some people think I’m the baddest girl ever because I played soccer. They are still saying very nasty things,” Kohestani says.
Shamila Kohestani plans to return home to Kabul after her schooling is complete, and to continue to be a force for women’s rights. She would love for traditional attitudes to shift in the time it takes to head a corner kick, but she knows that is utterly unrealistic. She knows, too, that the Taliban remain a powerful presence not far from Kabul, determined as ever to keep women as mummified servants, just a notch above house pets on the social strata.
Progress has been made in recent years, Kohestani says. Women can hold jobs, and go outside, but are still “not free to do what they want to do.” Where will it go from here? Kohestani doesn’t know. She just knows she’d love to share the feeling she has, the feeling she gets from finding her way, and going for it.
With a marathon study session beckoning her, Shamila Kohestani pulls out a stack of books and papers, and prepares for a night of hard academic labor, viewing it not as a burden, but a joy, and a privilege. When she pulls out her prayer rug and looks eastward, toward Mecca, she still finds it hard to fathom where she is praying from, a third-floor dorm room at Drew University. It is a place she graces because of a stunning run of good fortune, and an unflagging will, and because though she may have grown up with war, she has never been afraid to imagine life without it.
“I have an opportunity that nobody else has, and I am going to take advantage of it,” Shamila Kohestani says. “I think I am the luckiest girl in Afghanistan.”
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TV’s Koran Idol keeps Afghan clerics at bay
The Sunday Times Christina Lamb in Kabul October 19, 2008
It is just before dusk at the Marco Polo wedding hall on the outskirts of Kabul and an excited crowd is gathering for the final of Afghanistan’s latest reality television show.
Over the past two months the contestants have been whittled down from 250 to just two men and a schoolgirl, each hoping to receive the most votes from viewers.
One of the finalists is Ahmad Hasib Kazemi, 31, who sells shoes in the bazaar. He had to go without food to buy his suit and has spent the day fixing the generator so his wife, three children and assorted cousins can watch the show. “I really hope I win,” he says. “I’ve told all my friends and family to vote.”
Up against him is Ahmad Bahir, a 19-year-old student, who says he has been practising for hours every day. “It’s amazing, the power of TV,” he says with wide eyes. “People recognise me in the street now.”
Brought up by another family after his own parents were killed in the war, he dreams of studying in Mecca. “I don’t have money and am hoping this will help,” he says.
The only female finalist is Uzra Mohamedi, a 16-year-old schoolgirl who is closely flanked by her mother and sister, all shrouded in black. “I’ve been practising with my mother and I’m ready,” she says shyly.
As the three finalists walk before the cameras and packed audience there is no clapping or cheering. Instead, a Saudi cleric intones a long passage from the Koran. For this is Koran-Star and, rather than sing, the contestants must recite long passages from the Islamic holy book. It may not look like gripping viewing but the programme secured an impressive 80% audience share.
The programme was created to appease the council of clerics, which was threatening to close down Afghan Star, the country’s most popular programme, an Afghan version of Pop Idol. Television is one of the few areas to show signs of progress since the 2001 fall of the Taliban, which banned the medium along with music.
Although only 15% of the population have access to electricity, Afghanistan has 13 private TV channels. The most popular, with more than 50% of viewers, is Tolo TV, started by the Mohseni brothers, four Afghans who grew up in Australia.
Initially they created the country’s first private radio station, causing a sensation by putting out a weekly Top 40 show. From there it was a natural move into television, and Moby Media, their company, has two channels.
Tolo’s mix of news and entertainment has drawn huge audiences, particularly since it hit on adapting western reality TV shows. Afghan Star gripped the nation. The final of its third season earlier this year is estimated to have drawn 11m viewers, almost half the population. “TV in Afghanistan is a massive opportunity,” said Jahid Mohseni, the boss of Moby Media, who sits in an office with six screens showing different programmes. The building is protected by gunmen after threats. “It’s a very young population, with 47% under 14, and there is no alternative entertainment.
“People can’t go out because of security and have nothing to do. Whole families or villages will be watching one set, so shows have to appeal to the entire spectrum.”
Afghan Star was followed with Dream and Achieve, a copy of Dragons’ Den, in which would-be entrepreneurs try to sell their ideas to a panel of businessmen. The investment on offer was only £12,000, but that did not stop one contestant asking for £290m, almost the entire budget of the Afghan government. His project was to build a canal to his farm. Another, a former commander who arrived with 10 armed guards, asked for £1,700 but had no project. When asked why not, he said: “I thought you were just giving away money.” The winner was a father of nine who wanted to set up a plastic recycling plant.
While viewers may love reality shows, the government does not. Television stations face an increasing number of restrictions, including bans on dancing, fashion shows and Indian soap operas. Mohseni fears that, like so much else in Afghanistan, media freedom is going backwards. “In terms of content we’re getting much better at making programmes,” he said. “But we’re facing more and more restrictions from the government. A fair bit that we were broadcasting three years ago we can’t show now.”
In April the information and culture ministry banned five Indian soap operas, describing them as “immoral”. Two were Tolo TV’s most popular shows. Mohseni insisted they were not offensive. He said the channel edited out anything unsavoury and even changed storylines: “Once there was one with an adulterous relationship, so we changed that. How can you run a business when halfway through a series you’re suddenly told, ‘We don’t like that; you have to stop’?”
His nemesis is Abdul Karim Khurram, the portly minister for information and culture, who said: “Indian soap operas are a catastrophe for Afghanistan. People running TV stations are dealing with people’s thoughts and minds so must be careful.” Khurram blames channels such as Tolo for the revival of the Taliban. “People are against such vulgarity,” he said. “That’s why the Taliban are coming back.”
The minister said he was horrified when, in the final of the last Afghan Star, a contestant called Sitara, who had been voted out, whipped off her veil for her last song and danced. “It’s as if a German said Nazism is good,” he said.
The show was denounced by the Afghan Ulema Council as “immoral and unIslamic”, and in March parliament banned dancing on television. Sitara had to go into hiding because of death threats but is now recording an album in Kabul. However, the woman who came third, 20-year-old Lina from Kandahar, is having to live under armed protection even though she did not dance, as many in the conservative south disapprove of her having appeared on television at all.
Fearful that its hit programme would be banned, Tolo executives agreed to increase the channel’s Islamic content. Apart from a literacy series helping people to read the Koran, they came up with the idea of Koran-Star, which aims to educate viewers on good recitation. The series has won the warm approval of the information minister. “That’s a model programme,” he said.
This month Tolo TV will start auditions for the fourth series of Afghan Star. The deteriorating security situation, however, means filming around the country will be far harder.
A nation more used to competing with Kalashnikovs than texts, Afghans are not always good losers. Noor Rahman, a contestant, was furious when he was voted off Koran-Star in the penultimate round and had to watch Uzra, the schoolgirl, collect the winning prize of £2,300, a vinyl sofa and a trip to Dubai. “I don’t agree with this process,” he said. “I’m the winner!”
Habib Amin, the young producer, tried to calm him, pointing out that he could enter another show. The channel has just bought the rights to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
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Ariana airline's income rises, company says
www.quqnoos.com Written by Zabiullah Jhanmal Sunday, 19 October 2008
State-owned airline believes its profits will improve dramatically this year
THE NATIONAL airline, Ariana, has notched up $23 million in revenue over the past three months, the carrier announced on Saturday.
The state-owned airline puts the large increase in income so far this year down to expanded services and a new plane hired for flights to Europe.
It believes its profits will see a significant improvement this financial year.
Earlier this year, a decision taken by Ariana and other carriers operating in Afghanistan to increase the price of airfares by as much as 75% was met with widespread anger among many air passengers.
The Aviation Ministry forced the airlines to decrease ticket prices but airfares still remain about 50% higher than before the changes first came into effect this summer.
Moeen Khan Wardak, the President of Ariana, said: "We hope the Ministry of Transportation and Aviation bestows a piece of land to the company and we will try to bring improvements to our company so we can make more improvements."
Ariana officials say the company was on the verge of failure before the management cut some of the 1,800 workers employed by the airline, streamlining the 50-year-old company.
The company has seven airplanes for domestic and international flights.
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Pakistan does some US dirty work
By Syed Saleem Shahzad Asia Times Online October 18, 2008
KARACHI - Pakistan's seven-year association with the United States' "war on terror" has moved to a new and dangerous level: the US has given it a contract to build 1,000 Humvees for use by troops in Afghanistan against the Taliban-led insurgency.
The fact that Pakistan is now providing the hardware for the "war on terror" is a highly sensitive issue, given the already inflammatory situation that exists in the country over Islamabad siding with Washington in this fight against terrorism.
Asia Times Online has learned that Pakistan's Heavy Industries Taxila (HIT) has been given the order for an undisclosed sum for the Humvees - high mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicles. HIT, located 35 kilometers to the west of the capital Islamabad, is the leading engineering and manufacturing center for the armed forces in Pakistan, with a workforce of over 6,000.
Work on the Humvees has already begun, although the task is being undertaken in secret. HIT has the capabilities to build main battle tanks, armored recovery vehicles, armored personnel carriers and other military equipment. Humvees are currently produced by AM General, an American heavy vehicle manufacturer based in South Bend, Indiana.
According to contacts at the plant who spoke to ATol, the Humvees are just the first of many orders to come for the manufacture of armaments for use in Afghanistan.
ATol contacted the Ministry of Defense Production, under which HIT operates, and was directed by a Major Raza Hasan to the director general of Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), Major General Athar Abbas, as the minister was not available. Abbas said he had no knowledge of the matter of the Humvees and would call back after speaking with HIT. At time of publication, he had not done so.
A widening war
The winter season has begun, but the heat of fighting is not getting any cooler in the South Asian war theater, indeed, it is becoming cauldron-hot.
The Taliban have shown unprecedented resilience and the scope of the battlefield has broadened from the border provinces with Pakistan to the main urban centers of Afghanistan. Whether it is newly formed American bases in Nuristan and Khost provinces, or the British base in Lashkar Gah, they have either been overrun or placed under constant siege by the Taliban.
Now, the strategic backyard of the "war on terror", Pakistan, is feeling the heat. Just as Kabul is under siege by the Taliban and communication links leading to Kabul have been disrupted by the Taliban, Islamabad is under siege by the Taliban and militants in the tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan.
Increasingly frequent raids by US special forces into Pakistan from Afghanistan and the use of Predator drones to target militants has angered many in Pakistan, and even caused dissent within the ranks of the armed forces.
That Pakistan is now producing hardware that could conceivably be used inside Pakistan against its people will rankle even more.
Further, as reported by ATol, the US is establishing a large base inside Pakistan at Tarbella, 20 km from Islamabad, officially said to be used to train Pakistani troops and to take part in operations in the tribal areas. (See Pakistan, US await militant showdown Asia Times Online, October 7, 2008.)
However, it is suspected the base will be used for US operations inside Pakistan and Afghanistan. American trainers are working out an arrangement for joint ventures with a selective group of Pakistani Frontier Corps.
The US already plans a military surge in Afghanistan with an additional brigade (4,000 to 5,000 troops) in January and possibly two or three more brigades later in the year. These will be reinforcements, not replacements. This will further "Americanize" the North Atlantic Treaty Organization mission in Afghanistan. Already, 26,000 of the 63,000 total international forces in the country are American. At the same time, the Afghan National Army is being expanded to 122,000 personnel and a rudimentary air force is being created.
It is against this backdrop that the US has turned to Pakistan for the manufacture of armaments to supply these new demands both within Pakistan and in Afghanistan.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief.
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Pakistani army 'kills 60 Taleban'
Saturday, 18 October 2008 BBC News
At least 60 militants have been killed after the Pakistani army launched air strikes on two Taleban training camps in north-west Pakistan, the army says.
The operation in the Swat Valley occurred late on Friday shortly after troops found a Chinese engineer alive who had been kidnapped by the Taleban.
The military said efforts were under way to rescue a second Chinese hostage.
There was no confirmation of the attack. Militants have been fighting to impose Sharia law in Swat.
"According to our information, at least 60 Taleban died and many others were wounded during yesterday's operation around Matta town. This is the same area where one Chinese engineer was recovered," the army statement said.
Tourist destination
Jet fighters pounded positions of the militants, destroying two of their training camps, military spokesman Major Nasir Ali told the Reuters news agency.
The two Chinese telecommunications engineers and their Pakistani driver were abducted by the Taleban on 29 August in the Dir region, near the border of Afghanistan, where they had been checking an installation.
A Taleban spokesman told the BBC that one of the hostages had escaped. He said the second man also tried to escape but had fallen, hurt his leg, and been recaptured.
Correspondents say the security situation in Swat has been steadily deteriorating since the breakdown in the summer of a peace agreement between the government and the leading militant there, Maulana Fazlullah.
The Swat valley, once Pakistan's most famous tourist destination, has been the scene of an insurgency by his followers since 2007.
Reports said fighting between Taleban fighters and the army was also under way in the region of Bajaur, a militant stronghold which borders Afghanistan.
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Seven killed as Taliban ‘shoot down’ US chopper
The News International, Pakistan Sunday, October 19, 2008
PESHAWAR- Afghan Taliban claimed to have shot down a US military helicopter in Birmal area of Afghanistan’s Paktika province early on Saturday morning, killing seven soldiers.
The military sources based in Angoor Adda, a border town between Pakistan’s South Waziristan tribal region and Afghanistan’s Paktika province, also said they had also heard similar reports of shooting down of the US chopper by Taliban just across the border.
“Yes we received reports of shooting down of a US military helicopter by Taliban militants in Birmal, Afghanistan, in which the pilot and gunner had lost their lives,” a Pakistani military official told The News by telephone from Angoor Adda.
Taliban claimed they had attacked the US military Machadaat camp in Birmal area late on Friday night and when their helicopters flew to target their positions, Taliban militants fired from RPG-7 and shot a Chinook helicopter down.
Quoting local villagers in Afghanistan, a senior Taliban commander claimed that the villagers had seen bodies of seven US soldiers being recovered and shifted to the adjacent US military base after the helicopter was shot down around 7:00 am. There was no independent confirmation of Taliban’s claim.
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In Afghanistan in vain
The Sunday Times October 19, 2008
YOU published an excellent report by Christina Lamb in Afghanistan under the headline What a bloody hopeless war. Two years on another report by her (News Review, last week) illustrates the total failure to make military progress. However, we will maintain headquarters in Lashkar Gah, which will employ 140 staff to administer a population of 2m, in a fortified compound that people leave only in heavily protected armoured convoys.
In Vietnam, the US army claimed for several years that the next offensive would be a total victory: eventually, it fled in panic. The fact that Afghanistan is a Nato campaign does not minimise the current folly; it merely multiplies the factor by nine. What is Nato doing fighting a war 5,000 miles away in Asia?
It is vanity to believe that we are uniquely equipped to correct the world’s perceived injustices. Our government must negotiate some sort of deal and leave quickly.
Michael Richards Wellington, Somerset
Time for talks: The only campaign in which the British defeated counter-insurgency was in the then Malaya, and that was by isolating the communist terrorists from their supporters. In Cyprus, Eoka (the National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters) was cornered into a position where it had no alternative but to negotiate. In 1975, the Provisional IRA was forced into a ceasefire and the situation was ripe for negotiation, but it took 17 years and hundreds of casualties before politicians acted.
Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith is correct to suggest that there must be negotiation with the Taliban, which is a political decision, not a military one. The problem is that Nato supports an inept government that appears not to acknowledge that talks are inevitable. The Afghan government should be given the ultimatum: “Open negotiations or we quit.”
Nick van der Bijl Author of Confrontation: The War with Indonesia Mark, Somerset
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Herat MPs threaten to resign over soaring violence
www.quqnoos.com Written by Parwiz Shamal Saturday, 18 October 2008
Government has failed to stem violence in their province, Herati MPs say
MEMBERS of Parliament from Herat have said they will resign from their posts unless the government heeds their call for greater powers to cut back "soaring levels of violence" in the western province.
The Herati MPs said in Parliament on Saturday that increasing insecurity in the province was causing deep instability in the province, with street demonstrations a regular occurrence.
Last month, MPs spoke of a large-scale withdrawal of investors in the province and the number of kidnappings continues to rise.
Herat’s MPs said that, if the government failed to meet their demands for improved security in their region, they would step down from their posts in Parliament.
Earlier this week, hundreds of people took to the streets to protest against rising violence in Herat after gunmen attacked a money exchanger’s car and killed his bodyguard.
Earlier in the year, thousands of Herat’s doctors and nurses went on strike to protest the government’s failure to clamp down on the rising number of kidnappings in the province.
The governor of Herat, Said Hussain Anwari, accused some of Herat’s MPs of having close links to the criminals, but the MPs deny the allegation and say they are ready to face trial because they have done nothing wrong.
MPs say the government promised to help them to stem rising crime in Herat, but has so far failed to live up to its word.
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Cholera outbreak spreads to south-east
Written by www.quqnoos.com Saturday, 18 October 2008
Fatal disease infects 200 people in Khost province after killing 22 in north
CHOLERA has spread to the south-eastern province of Khost after killing at least 22 people in other parts of the country last week.
An outbreak of the potentially fatal disease in the province was first noticed two days ago and has already infected more than 200 people, health officials in the area said.
The head of Khost’s public health department, Amir Badshah Rahmatzai, said serious measures have been taken to prevent further spread of the disease.
Rahmatzai said health teams had delivered suffiocient medical supplies to fend off the disease.
No one has died from the disease in the province so far, but Rahmatzai warned locals not to drink unclean water.
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From Great Game to Grand Bargain.
Foreign Affairs. November/December 2008.
Ending Chaos in Afghanistan and Pakistan Barnett R. Rubin and Ahmed Rashid
The Great Game is no fun anymore. The term “Great Game” was used by nineteenth-century British imperialists to describe the British- Russian struggle for position on the chessboard of Afghanistan and Central Asia —a contest with a few players, mostly limited to intelligence forays and short wars fought on horseback with rifles, and with those living on the chessboard largely bystanders or victims.More than a century later, the game continues. But now, the number of players has exploded, those living on the chessboard have become involved, and the intensity of the violence and the threats it produces aªect the entire globe. The Great Game can no longer be treated as a sporting event for distant spectators. It is time to agree on some new rules. Seven years after the U.S.-led coalition and the Afghan commanders it supported pushed the leaderships of the Taliban and al Qaeda out of Afghanistan and into Pakistan , an insurgency that includes these and other groups is gaining ground on both the Afghan and the Pakistani sides of the border. Four years after Afghanistan 's first-ever presidential election, the increasingly besieged government of Hamid Karzai is losing credibility at home and abroad. Al Qaeda has established a new safe haven in the tribal agencies of Pakistan , where it is defended by a new organization, the Taliban Movement of Pakistan.The government of Pakistan , beset by one political crisis after another and split between a traditionally autonomous military and assertive but fractious elected leaders, has been unable to retain control of its own territory and population. Its intelligence agency stands accused of supporting terrorism in Afghanistan , which in many ways has replaced Kashmir as the main arena of the still-unresolved struggle between Pakistan and India . For years, critics of U.S. and nato strategies have been warning that the region was headed in this direction. Many of the policies such critics have long proposed are now being widely embraced. The Bush administration and both presidential campaigns are proposing to send more troops to Afghanistan and to undertake other policies to sustain the military gains made there.These include accelerating training of the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police; disbursing more money, more effectively for reconstruction and development and to support better governance; increasing pressure on and cooperation with Pakistan , and launching cross-border attacks without Pakistani agreement to eliminate cross-border safe havens for insurgents and to uproot al Qaeda; supporting democracy in Pakistan and bringing its Inter-Services Intelligence ( isi ) under civilian political control; and implementing more effective policies to curb Afghanistan 's drug industry, which produces opiates equal in export value to half of the rest of the Afghan economy.
Cross-border attacks into Pakistan may produce an “October surprise” or provide material for apologists hoping to salvage George W. Bush's legacy, but they will not provide security. Advancing reconstruction, development, good governance, and counternarcotics efforts and building effective police and justice systems in Afghanistan will require many years of relative peace and security. Neither neglecting these tasks, as the Bush administration did initially, nor rushing them on a timetable determined by political objectives, can succeed. Afghanistan requires far larger and more effective security forces, international or national, but support for U.S. and nato deployments is plummeting in troop- contributing countries, in the wider region, and in Afghanistan itself. Afghanistan , the poorest country in the world but for a handful in Africa and with the weakest government in the world (except Somalia , which has no government), will never be able to sustain national security forces sufficient to confront current—let alone escalating —threats, yet permanent foreign subsidies for Afghanistan 's security forces cannot be guaranteed and will have destabilizing consequences. Moreover, measures aimed at Afghanistan will not address the deteriorating situation in Pakistan or the escalation of international conflicts connected to the Afghan-Pakistani war. More aid to Pakistan —military or civilian—will not diminish the perception among Pakistan 's national security elite that the country is surrounded by enemies determined to dismember it, especially as cross-border raids into areas long claimed by Afghanistan intensify that perception, and until that sense of siege is gone, it will be di⁄cult to strengthen civilian institutions in Pakistan .
U.S. diplomacy has been paralyzed by the rhetoric of “the war on terror”—a struggle against “evil,” in which other actors are “with us or with the terrorists.” Such rhetoric thwarts sound strategic thinking by assimilating opponents into a homogenous “terrorist” enemy. Only a political and diplomatic initiative that distinguishes political opponents of the United States —including violent ones—from global terrorists such as al Qaeda can reduce the threat faced by the Afghan and Pakistani states and secure the rest of the international community from the international terrorist groups based there.Such an initiative would have two elements. It would seek a political solution with as much of the Afghan and Pakistani insurgencies as possible, offering political inclusion, the integration of Pakistan 's indirectly ruled Federally Administered Tribal Areas ( fata ) into the mainstream political and administrative institutions of Pakistan , and an end to hostile action by international troops in return for cooperation against al Qaeda. And it would include a major diplomatic and development initiative addressing the vast array of regional and global issues that have become intertwined with the crisis—and that serve to stimulate, intensify, and prolong conflict in both Afghanistan and Pakistan .
Afghanistan has been at war for three decades—a period longer than the one that started with World War I and ended with the Normandy landings on D-day in World War II—and now that war is spreading to Pakistan and beyond. This war and the attendant terrorism could well continue and spread, even to other continents—as on 9/11—or lead to the collapse of a nuclear-armed state. The regional crisis is of that magnitude, and yet so far there is no international framework to address it other than the underresourced and poorly coordinated operations in Afghanistan and some attacks in the fata . The next U.S. administration should launch an effort, initially based on a contact group authorized by the un Security Council, to put an end to the increasingly destructive dynamics of the Great Game in the region.The game has become too deadly and has attracted too many players; it now resembles less a chess match than the Afghan game of buzkashi , with Afghanistan playing the role of the goat carcass fought over by innumerable teams.Washington must seize the opportunity now to replace this Great Game with a new grand bargain for the region.
The security gap
The Afghan and Pakistani security forces lack the numbers, skills, equipment, and motivation to confront the growing insurgencies in the two countries or to uproot al Qaeda from its new base in the fata , along the Afghan-Pakistani border. Proposals for improving the security situation focus on sending additional international forces, building larger national security forces in Afghanistan , and training and equipping Pakistan 's security forces, which are organized for conflict with India , for domestic counterinsurgency. But none of these proposals is su⁄cient to meet the current, let alone future, threats.
Some additional troops in Afghanistan could protect local populations while the police and the administration develop.They also might enable U.S. and nato forces to reduce or eliminate their reliance on the use of air strikes, which cause civilian casualties that recruit fighters and supporters to the insurgency. U.S. General Barry McCaffrey, among others, has therefore supported a “generational commitment” to Afghanistan , such as the United States made to Germany and South Korea . Unfortunately, no government in the region around Afghanistan supports a long-term U.S. or nato presence there. Pakistan sees even the current deployment as strengthening an India-allied regime in Kabul ; Iran is concerned that the United States will use Afghanistan as a base for launching “regime change” in Tehran ; and China , India , and Russia all have reservations about a nato base within their spheres of influence and believe they must balance the threats from al Qaeda and the Taliban against those posed by the United States and nato .
Securing Afghanistan and its region will require an international presence for many years, but only a regional diplomatic initiative that creates a consensus to place stabilizing Afghanistan ahead of other objectives could make a long-term international deployment possible. Afghanistan needs larger and more effective security forces, but it also needs to be able to sustain those security forces. A decree signed by President Karzai in December 2002 would have capped the Afghan National Army at 70,000 troops (it had reached 66,000 by mid-2008). U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has since announced a plan to increase that number to 122,000, as well as add 82,000 police, for a total of 204,000 in the Afghan National Security Forces ( ansf ). Such increases, however, would require additional international trainers and mentors—which are, quite simply, not available in the foreseeable future—and maintaining such a force would far exceed the means of such a destitute country. Current estimates of the annual cost are around $2.5 billion for the army and $1 billion for the police. Last year, the Afghan government collected about 7 percent of a licit gdp estimated at $9.6 billion in revenue—about $670 million.
Thus, even if Afghanistan 's economy experienced uninterrupted real growth of 9 percent per year, and if revenue extraction nearly doubled, to 12 percent (both unrealistic forecasts), in ten years the total domestic revenue of the Afghan government would be about $2.5 billion a year. Projected pipelines and mines might add $500 million toward the end of this period. In short, the army and the police alone would cost significantly more than Afghanistan 's total revenue. Many have therefore proposed long-term international financing of the ansf ; after all, even $5 billion a year is much less than the cost of an international force deployment. But sustaining, as opposed to training or equipping, security forces through foreign grants would pose political problems. It would be impossible to build Afghan institutions on the basis of U.S. supplemental appropriations, which is how the training and equipping of the ansf are mostly funded. Sustaining a national army or national police force requires multiyear planning, impossible without a recurrent appropriation—which would mean integrating ansf planning into that of the United States ' and other nato members' budgets, even if the funds were disbursed through a single trust fund. And an ansf funded from those budgets would have to meet international or other national, rather than Afghan, legal requirements.
Decisions on funding would be taken by the U.S. Congress and other foreign bodies, not the Afghan National Assembly. The ansf would take actions that foreign taxpayers might be reluctant to fund. Such long-term international involvement is simply not tenable. If Afghanistan cannot support its security forces at the currently proposed levels on its own, even under the most optimistic economic scenario, and long-term international support or a long-term international presence is not viable, there is only one way that the ansf can approach sustainability: the conditions in the region must be changed so that Afghanistan no longer needs such large and expensive security forces. Changing those conditions, however, will require changing the behavior of actors not only inside but also outside of the country— and that has led many observers to embrace putting pressure on, and even launching attacks into, Pakistan as another deus ex machina for the increasingly dire situation within Afghanistan .
Borderline insecurity disorder
After the first phase of the war in Afghanistan ended with the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001 (and as the United States prepared to invade Iraq ), Washington 's limited agenda in the region was to press the Pakistani military to go after al Qaeda; meanwhile, Washington largely ignored the broader insurgency, which remained marginal until 2005. This suited the Pakistani military's strategy, which was to assist the United States against al Qaeda but to retain the Afghan Taliban as a potential source of pressure on Afghanistan . But the summer of 2006 saw a major escalation of the insurgency, as Pakistan and the Taliban interpreted the United States ' decision to transfer command of coalition forces to nato (plus U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's announcement of a troop drawdown, which in fact never took place) as a sign of its intention to withdraw. They also saw non-U.S. troop contributors as more vulnerable to political pressure generated by casualties.
The Pakistani military does not control the insurgency, but it can affect its intensity. Putting pressure on Pakistan to curb the militants will likely remain inffective, however, without a strategic realignment by the United States . The region is rife with conspiracy theories trying to find a rational explanation for the United States ' apparently irrational strategic posture of supporting a “major non- nato ally” that is doing more to undermine the U.S. position in Afghanistan than any other state. Many Afghans believe that Washington secretly supports the Taliban as a way to keep a war going to justify a troop presence that is actually aimed at securing the energy resources of Central Asia and countering China . Many in Pakistan believe that the United States has deceived Pakistan into conniving with Washington to bring about its own destruction: India and U.S.-supported Afghanistan will form a pincer around Pakistan to dismember the world's only Muslim nuclear power. And some Iranians speculate that in preparation for the coming of the Mahdi, God has blinded the Great Satan to its own interests so that it would eliminate both of Iran 's Sunni-ruled regional rivals, Afghanistan and Iraq , thus unwittingly paving the way for the long-awaited Shiite restoration.
The true answer is much simpler: the Bush administration never reevaluated its strategic priorities in the region after September 11. Institutional inertia and ideology jointly assured that Pakistan would be treated as an ally, Iran as an enemy, and Iraq as the main threat, thereby granting Pakistan a monopoly on U.S. logistics and, to a significant extent, on the intelligence the United States has on Afghanistan . Eighty-four percent of the materiel for U.S. forces in Afghanistan goes through Pakistan , and the isi remains nearly the sole source of intelligence about international terrorist acts prepared by al Qaeda and its a⁄liates in Pakistan .
More fundamentally, the concept of “pressuring” Pakistan is flawed. No state can be successfully pressured into acts it considers suicidal. The Pakistani security establishment believes that it faces both a U.S.- Indian-Afghan alliance and a separate Iranian-Russian alliance, each aimed at undermining Pakistani influence in Afghanistan and even dismembering the Pakistani state.Some (but not all) in the establishment see armed militants within Pakistan as a threat—but they largely consider it one that is ultimately controllable, and in any case secondary to the threat posed by their nuclear-armed enemies. Pakistan 's military command, which makes and implements the country's national security policies, shares a commitment to a vision of Pakistan as the homeland for South Asian Muslims and therefore to the incorporation of Kashmir into Pakistan . It considers Afghanistan as within Pakistan 's security perimeter.Add to this that Pakistan does not have border agreements with either India , into which Islamabad contests the incorporation of Kashmir, or Afghanistan , which has never explicitly recognized the Durand Line, which separates the two countries, as an interstate border.
That border is more than a line.The frontier between Pakistan and Afghanistan was structured as part of the defenses of British India.On the Pakistani side of the Durand Line, the British and their Pakistani successors turned the di⁄culty of governing the tribes to their advantage by establishing what are now the fata .Within the fata , these tribes, not the government, are responsible for security. The area is kept underdeveloped and overarmed as a barrier against invaders. (That is also why any ground intervention there by the United States or nato will fail.) Now, the Pakistani military has turned the fata into a staging area for militants who can be used to conduct asymmetric warfare in both Afghanistan and Kashmir , since the region's special status provides for (decreasingly) plausible deniability. This use of the fata has eroded state control, especially in Pakistan 's Northwest Frontier Province, which abuts the fata . The Swat Valley , where Pakistani Taliban fighters have been battling the government for several years, links Afghanistan and the fata to Kashmir . Pakistan 's strategy for external security has thus undermined its internal security. On September 19, 2001, when then Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf announced to the nation his decision to support the U.S.- led intervention against the Taliban in Afghanistan , he stated that the overriding reason was to save Pakistan by preventing the United States from allying with India . In return, he wanted concessions to Pakistan on its security interests.
Subsequent events, however, have only exacerbated Pakistan 's sense of insecurity. Musharraf asked for time to form a “moderate Taliban” government in Afghanistan but failed to produce one. When that failed, he asked that the United States prevent the Northern Alliance (part of the anti-Taliban resistance in Afghanistan ), which had been supported by India , Iran , and Russia , from occupying Kabul ; that appeal failed. Now, Pakistan claims that the Northern Alliance is working with India from inside Afghanistan 's security services. Meanwhile, India has reestablished its consulates in Afghan cities, including some near the Pakistani border. India has genuine consular interests there (Hindu and Sikh populations, commercial travel, aid programs), but it may also in fact be using the consulates against Pakistan , as Islamabad claims. India has also, in cooperation with Iran , completed a highway linking Afghanistan 's ring road (which connects its major cities) to Iranian ports on the Persian Gulf , potentially eliminating Afghanistan 's dependence on Pakistan for access to the sea and marginalizing Pakistan 's new Arabian Sea port of Gwadar , which was built with hundreds of millions of dollars of Chinese aid. And the new U.S.-Indian nuclear deal effectively recognizes New Delhi 's legitimacy as a nuclear power while continuing to treat Islamabad , with its record of proliferation, as a pariah. In this context, pressuring or giving aid to Pakistan , without any effort to address the sources of its insecurity, cannot yield a sustainable positive outcome.
Big hat, no cattle
Rethinking U . S . and global objectives in the region will require acknowledging two distinctions: first, between ultimate goals and reasons to fight a war; and, second, among the time frames for different objectives. Preventing al Qaeda from regrouping so that it can organize terrorist attacks is an immediate goal that can justify war, to the extent that such war is proportionate and effective. Strengthening the state and the economy of Afghanistan is a medium- to long-term objective that cannot justify war except insofar as Afghanistan 's weakness provides a haven for security threats.
This medium- to long-term objective would require reducing the level of armed conflict, including by seeking a political settlement with current insurgents. In discussions about the terms of such a settlement, leaders linked to both the Taliban and other parts of the insurgency have asked,What are the goals for which the United States and the international community are waging war in Afghanistan ? Do they want to guarantee that Afghanistan 's territory will not be used to attack them, impose a particular government in Kabul , or use the conflict to establish permanent military bases? These interlocutors oppose many U.S. policies toward the Muslim world, but they acknowledge that the United States and others have a legitimate interest in preventing Afghan territory from being used to launch attacks against them. They claim to be willing to support an Afghan government that would guarantee that its territory would not be used to launch terrorist attacks in the future—in return, they say, for the withdrawal of foreign troops.
The guarantees these interlocutors now envisage are far from those required, and Afghanistan will need international forces for security assistance even if the current war subsides. But such questions can provide a framework for discussion.To make such discussions credible, the United States must redefine its counterterrorist goals. It should seek to separate those Islamist movements with local or national objectives from those that, like al Qaeda, seek to attack the United States or its allies directly—instead of lumping them all together. Two Taliban spokespeople separately told The New York Times that their movement had broken with al Qaeda since 9/11. (Others linked to the insurgency have told us the same thing.) Such statements cannot simply be taken at face value, but that does not mean that they should not be explored further. An agreement in principle to prohibit the use of Afghan (or Pakistani) territory for international terrorism, plus an agreement from the United States and nato that such a guarantee could be su⁄cient to end their hostile military action, could constitute a framework for negotiation. Any agreement in which the Taliban or other insurgents disavowed al Qaeda would constitute a strategic defeat for al Qaeda. Political negotiations are the responsibility of the Afghan government, but to make such negotiations possible, the United States would have to alter its detention policy. Senior officials of the Afghan government say that at least through 2004 they repeatedly received overtures from senior Taliban leaders but that they could never guarantee that these leaders would not be captured by U.S. forces and detained at Guantánamo Bay or the U.S. air base at Bagram, in Afghanistan . Talking with Taliban fighters or other insurgents does not mean replacing Afghanistan 's constitution with the Taliban's Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan , closing girls' schools, or accepting other retrograde social policies. Whatever weaknesses the Afghan government and security forces may have, Afghan society—which has gone through two Loya Jirgas and two elections, possesses over five million cell phones, and has access to an explosion of new media—is incomparably stronger than it was seven years ago, and the Taliban know it. These potential interlocutors are most concerned with the presence of foreign troops, and some have advocated strengthening the current ansf as a way to facilitate those troops'departure.In November 2006,one of the Taliban's leading supporters in Pakistan , Maulana Fazlur Rahman,publicly stated in Peshawar that the Taliban could participate as a party in elections in Afghanistan , just as his party did in Pakistan (where it recently lost overwhelmingly), so long as they were not labeled as terrorists.
The end of the game
There is no more a political solution in Afghanistan alone than there is a military solution in Afghanistan alone. Unless the decisionmakers in Pakistan decide to make stabilizing the Afghan government a higher priority than countering the Indian threat, the insurgency conducted from bases in Pakistan will continue. Pakistan 's strategic goals in Afghanistan place Pakistan at odds not just with Afghanistan and India , and with U.S. objectives in the region, but with the entire international community. Yet there is no multilateral framework for confronting this challenge, and the U.S.-Afghan bilateral framework has relied excessively on the military-supply relationship. Nato , whose troops in Afghanistan are daily losing their lives to Pakistan-based insurgents, has no Pakistan policy. The UN Security Council has hardly discussed Pakistan 's role in Afghanistan , even though three of the permanent members (France, the United Kingdom, and the United States ) have troops in Afghanistan , the other two are threatened by movements (in the North Caucasus and in Xinjiang) with links to the fata , and China , Pakistan 's largest investor, is poised to become the largest investor in Afghanistan as well, with a $3.5 billion stake in the Aynak copper mine, south of Kabul .
The alternative is not to place Pakistan in a revised “axis of evil.” It is to pursue a high-level diplomatic initiative designed to build a genuine consensus on the goal of achieving Afghan stability by addressing the legitimate sources of Pakistan 's insecurity while increasing the pressure against its disruptive actions. China , both an ally of Pakistan and potentially the largest investor in both Afghanistan and Pakistan , could play a particularly significant role, as could Saudi Arabia , a serious investor in and ally of Pakistan , former supporter of the Taliban, and custodian of the two holiest Islamic shrines. A first step could be the establishment of a contact group on the region authorized by the un Security Council. This contact group, including the five permanent members and perhaps others ( nato , Saudi Arabia ), could promote dialogue between India and Pakistan about their respective interests in Afghanistan and about finding a solution to the Kashmir dispute; seek a long-term political vision for the future of the fata from the Pakistani government, perhaps one involving integrating the fata into Pakistan's provinces, as proposed by several Pakistani political parties; move Afghanistan and Pakistan toward discussions on the Durand Line and other frontier issues; involve Moscow in the region's stabilization so that Afghanistan does not become a test of wills between the United States and Russia , as Georgia has become; provide guarantees to Tehran that the U.S.- nato commitment to Afghanistan is not a threat to Iran ; and ensure that China 's interests and role are brought to bear in international discussions on Afghanistan . Such a dialogue would have to be backed by the pledge of a multiyear international development aid package for regional economic integration, including aid to the most affected regions in Afghanistan , Pakistan , and Central Asia , particularly the border regions. (At present, the United States is proposing to provide $750 million in aid to the fata but without having any political framework to deliver the aid.)
A central purpose of the contact group would be to assure Pakistan that the international community is committed to its territorial integrity— and to help resolve the Afghan and Kashmir border issues so as to better define Pakistan 's territory. The international community would have to provide transparent reassurances and aid to Pakistan , pledge that no state is interested in its dismemberment, and guarantee open borders between Pakistan and both Afghanistan and India . The United States and the European Union would have to open up their markets to Pakistan 's critical exports, especially textiles, and to Afghan products. And the United States would need to offer a road map to Pakistan to achieving the same kind of nuclear deal that was reached with India , once Pakistan has transparent and internationally monitored guarantees about the nonproliferation of its nuclear weapons technology.
Reassurances by the contact group that addressed Pakistan 's security concerns might encourage Pakistan to promote, rather than hinder, an internationally and nationally acceptable political settlement in Afghanistan . Backing up the contact group's influence and clout must be the threat that any breaking of agreements or support for terrorism originating in the fata would be taken to the un Security Council. Pakistan , the largest troop contributor to un peacekeeping operations, sees itself as a legitimate international power, rather than a spoiler; confronted with the potential loss of that status, it would compromise.
India would also need to become more transparent about its activities in Afghanistan , especially regarding the role of its intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing. Perhaps the isi and the raw could be persuaded to enter a dialogue to explore whether the covert war they have waged against each other for the past 60 years could spare the territory of Afghanistan . The contact group could help establish a permanent Indian-Pakistani body at the intelligence and military levels, where complaints could be lodged and discussed. The World Bank and the Asian Development Bank could also help set up joint reconstruction programs in Afghanistan . A series of regional conferences on economic cooperation for the reconstruction of Afghanistan have already created a partial framework for such programs.
Then there is Iran . The Bush administration responded to Iranian cooperation in Afghanistan in 2001 by placing Tehran in the “axis of evil” and by promising to keep “all options on the table,” which is understood as a code for not ruling out a military attack. Iran has reacted in part by aiding insurgents in Afghanistan to signal how much damage it could do in response. Some Iranian officials, however, continue to seek cooperation with the United States against al Qaeda and the Taliban. The next U.S. administration can and should open direct dialogue with Tehran around the two countries' common concerns in Afghanistan . An opening to Iran would show that the United States need not depend solely on Pakistan for access to Afghanistan . And in fact, Washington and Tehran had such a dialogue until around 2004. In May 2005, when the United States and Afghanistan signed a “declaration of strategic partnership,” Iran signaled that it would not object as long as the partnership was not directed against Iran . Iran would have to be reassured by the contact group that Afghan territory would not be used as a staging area for activities meant to undermine Iran and that all U.S. covert activities taking place from there would be stopped.
Russia 's main concern—that the United States and nato are seeking a permanent U.S.- nato military presence in Afghanistan and Central Asia —will also need to be assuaged. Russia should be assured that U.S. and nato forces can help defend, rather than threaten, legitimate Russian interests in Central Asia , including through cooperation with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.Russia and the Central Asian states should be informed of the results of legitimate interrogations of militants who came from the former Soviet space and were captured in Afghanistan or Pakistan .
To overcome the zero-sum competition taking place between states, ethnic groups, and factions, the region needs to discover a source of mutual benefit derived from cooperation. China —with its development of mineral resources and access roads in Afghanistan and Pakistan , the financial support it gave to build the port of Gwadar , and its expansion of the Karakoram Highway , which links China to northern Pakistan —may be that source. China is also a major supplier of arms and nuclear equipment to Pakistan . China has a major interest in peace and development in the region because it desires a north-south energy and trade corridor so that its goods can travel from Xinjiang to the Arabian Sea ports of Pakistan and so that oil and gas pipelines can carry energy from the Persian Gulf and Iran to western China . In return for such a corridor, China could help deliver much-needed electricity and even water to both countries.Such a corridor would also help revive the economies of both Afghanistan and Pakistan .
More than troops
Both U . S . presidential candidates are committed to sending more troops to Afghanistan , but this would be insufficient to reverse the collapse of security there. A major diplomatic initiative involving all the regional stakeholders in problem-solving talks and setting out road maps for local stabilization efforts is more important. Such an initiative would serve to reaffirm that the West is indeed committed to the long-term rehabilitation of Afghanistan and the region. A contact group, meanwhile, would reassure Afghanistan 's neighbors that the West is determined to address not just extremism in the region but also economic development, job creation, the drug trade, and border disputes.
Lowering the level of violence in the region and moving the global community toward genuine agreement on the long-term goals there would provide the space for Afghan leaders to create jobs and markets, provide better governance, do more to curb corruption and drug trafficking, and overcome their countries' widening ethnic divisions. Lowering regional tensions would allow the Afghan government to have a more meaningful dialogue with those insurgents who are willing to disavow al Qaeda and take part in the political process. The key to this would be the series of security measures the contact group should offer Pakistan , thereby encouraging the Pakistani army to press—or at least allow—Taliban and other insurgent leaders on their soil to talk to Kabul .
The goal of the next U.S. president must be to put aside the past, Washington 's keenness for “victory” as the solution to all problems, and the United States ' reluctance to involve competitors, opponents, or enemies in diplomacy. A successful initiative will require exploratory talks and an evolving road map. Today, such suggestions may seem audacious, naive, or impossible, but without such audacity there is little hope for Afghanistan , for Pakistan , or for the region as a whole.∂
Barnett R. Rubin is Director of Studies and a Senior Fellow at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University and the author of The Fragmentation of Afghanistan and Blood on the Doorstep . Ahmed Rashid is a Pakistani journalist and writer, a Fellow at the Pacific Council on International Policy, and the author of Jihad , Taliban , and, most recently, Descent Into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan , Afghanistan , and Central Asia . [ 44 ] foreign affairs . Volume 87 No. 6 07_RubinRashid_pp30_44.qxd 9/22/08 12:55 PM Page 44
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