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Pakistani, Afghan elders to meet to ponder violence
By Zeeshan Haider – Sun Oct 26, 2:04 am ET
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Pakistani and Afghan political and ethnic Pashtun tribal leaders meet in Islamabad on Monday to try to agree on ways to tackle rising militant violence including the possibility of opening talks with the Taliban.
Tea With the Taliban?
Washington Post, United States By David Ignatius Sunday, October 26, 2008
As U.S. and European officials ponder what to do about the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, they are coming to a perhaps surprising conclusion: The simplest way to stabilize the country may be to negotiate
Security guard blamed for Kabul shootings
KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) -- A Briton and a South African, killed in Kabul Saturday, were shot by a security guard who then took his own life, an Afghan Interior Ministry official said Sunday.
Killings increase Westerners' fears in Afghan capital
Sun Oct 26, 3:48 am ET
KABUL (AFP) – The gunning down of three Westerners in the Afghan capital in less than a week is a sharp reminder that Kabul is no longer a safe haven in a country gripped by violence, expatriates say.
Pakistan troops kill nine Taliban militants: official
Sun Oct 26, 4:15 am ET
KHAR, Pakistan (AFP) – Pakistan troops Sunday killed nine Taliban militants in separate clashes in a troubled tribal region bordering Afghanistan, security officials said.
Afghan charged in NY with Taliban terrorist support
Fri Oct 24, 2:42 pm ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. authorities accused an Afghan man on Friday of running a global drug trafficking group and using the money to fund Taliban terrorist activities.
Former governor of Kandahar province lands Afghan cabinet post
The Canadian Press October 24, 2008
Activists and political experts urged Ottawa to register its disappointment with the Afghan government Friday after learning of the decision to give a cabinet post to the controversial former governor of Kandahar province.
Angelina Jolie appeals for greater support to Afghan refugees
New York, Oct 25 (PTI) Leading Hollywood actress and Goodwill Ambassador for the UN refugee agency, Angelina Jolie, has appealed for greater support to Afghan refugees returning home to enable
U.S. considers sending special ops to Afghanistan
Despite recent setbacks, a large-scale influx of conventional forces is unlikely because of troop commitments in Iraq. But special operations forces could narrowly target the most violent insurgent bands.
Al-Qaida influence apparent in groups in Pakistan
AP By KATHY GANNON 26 October 2008
PESHAWAR - Pakistan Almost three years ago, Sajjad Khan used to buy supplies for the Pakistani Taliban with U.S. dollars that he says came from al-Qaida.
‘A Complicated Picture’
Talking to the Taliban is not as simple as it sounds.
Ron Moreau NEWSWEEK From the magazine issue dated Oct 25, 2008
Few Westerners know Afghanistan and the tough business of negotiating with Afghans as well as Spanish-born diplomat Francesc Vendrell. A veteran United Nations negotiator who brokered peace talks
Turkish govt says 3 Turks kidnapped in Afghanistan
Associated Press October 25, 2008
KABUL, Afghanistan – Three Turkish citizens working on a communications project in Afghanistan have been kidnapped, Afghan and Turkish foreign ministry officials announced Saturday.
No negotiations until Nato troops are in Afghanistan: Taliban
Dawn (Pakistan)
KABUL, Oct 25: Taliban militants on Saturday vowed to continue fighting in Afghanistan and ruled out peace talks with President Hamid Karzai’s government as long as foreign troops remained in the country.
Analysis: Afghanistan's untapped energy riches
By JOHN C.K. DALY UPI International Correspondent October 24, 2008
While Afghanistan now intermittently crops up during the presidential debates, it is largely the forgotten war, which next month will be seven years old with little resolution in sight. Inside the Beltway
Strong quake shakes Afghanistan
Sun Oct 26, 2:25 am ET
KABUL (Reuters) – A strong earthquake of magnitude 5.6 struck northeastern Afghanistan on Sunday, but caused no casualties or damage, a government official said.
Nick Meo hits back at Afghanistan battle report slurs
Telegraph.co.uk, United Kingdom
Last week the Taliban tried to kill me. This week it was the turn of American bloggers. After being blown up by a bomb in Kandahar province, a stream of hostile emails and some vicious blogging posts have been fired my way, writes Nick Meo.
U.S. Animosity Towards Iran Thwarts Policy in Afghanistan
via AlterNet.org MIT Center for International Studies By Barnett R. Rubin and Sara Batmanglich October 25, 2008
Afghanistan is one of several contexts in which the long-term common interests of the U.S. and Iran have been overshadowed by the animus originating in the 1953 CIA-led coup in Iran and the Iranian revolution of 1979
ICC rewards Afghanistan's winning run with funding
Sunday October 26, 5:41 PM
KABUL (Reuters) - The International Cricket Council has pledged vital funds for Afghanistan's fledgling team after it won a tournament that could pave the way for a 2011 World Cup berth, an official said Sunday.
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Pakistani, Afghan elders to meet to ponder violence
By Zeeshan Haider – Sun Oct 26, 2:04 am ET
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Pakistani and Afghan political and ethnic Pashtun tribal leaders meet in Islamabad on Monday to try to agree on ways to tackle rising militant violence including the possibility of opening talks with the Taliban.
The meeting, dubbed a Pakistan-Afghanistan "Jirgagai," or mini-jirga, is a follow-up to a grand assembly in Kabul last year in which delegates called for talks with Taliban militants to end bloodshed in both countries.
A jirga is a consultative system the proudly independent Pashtuns have used for more than 1,000 years to settle affairs of the nation or rally behind a cause.
Around 50 political leaders, Pashtun elders and Muslim clerics from both countries will meet on Monday and Tuesday to ponder growing violence by al Qaeda and the Taliban militants on both sides of their disputed border.
"The two main objectives of the jirgagai are to expedite the ongoing dialogue process with the opposition and monitor implementation of decisions of the (Kabul) jirga," said Pakistani foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Sadiq.
But critics say the mini-jirga will be little more than a talking shop without the participation of representatives of the Taliban.
Violence in Afghanistan has surged over the past two years, raising doubts about prospects for the country and its Western-backed government seven years after the Taliban were forced from power.
At the same time, violence has increased in Pakistan.
The security forces have launched offensives in the northwest and the militants have responded with suicide bombs. The violence has unnerved investors and exacerbated an economic crisis.
Ties between the important U.S. allies have been severely strained over Afghan complaints Pakistan has not done enough to stop Taliban from infiltrating from sanctuaries in Pakistan's northwestern Pashtun lands along the border.
The two sides pledged at their grand assembly in Kabul that their governments and people "would not allow sanctuaries or training centers for terrorists in their respective countries."
"WHAT'S THE POINT IN TALKING?"
The Afghan government has taken a first step toward opening talks with the Taliban with a meeting in Saudi Arabia last month between a group of pro-government Afghan officials and former Taliban officials.
Afghan Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta said last week his government was at the start of a dialogue process, but it would only negotiate with those who lay down arms.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said this month the United States would be prepared to reconcile with the Taliban, but not with al Qaeda, if the Afghan government pursued talks.
Pakistan has said it was also ready to hold talks with the militants if they shunned violence.
Some analysts say the revival of jirga would help cement ties between the uneasy neighbors but the governments should open dialogue with the militants without conditions.
"When you are talking about peace then you have to talk to those responsible for the peace being shattered," said Ayaz Wazir a former Pakistani ambassador to Afghanistan.
"If you say you will talk only if they lay down arms then what's the point in talking? The trouble is, they are not laying down their arms and you have to talk to them to convince them to lay down arms."
Pashtuns live on both sides of the border and many of them sympathize with the Taliban, most of whom are also Pashtun.
Analysts say winning over the Pashtun tribes is essential for ending violence in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
(Editing by Robert Birsel and David Fox)
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Tea With the Taliban?
Washington Post, United States By David Ignatius Sunday, October 26, 2008
As U.S. and European officials ponder what to do about the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, they are coming to a perhaps surprising conclusion: The simplest way to stabilize the country may be to negotiate a truce with the Taliban fundamentalists who were driven from power by the United States in 2001.
The question policymakers are pondering, in fact, isn't whether to negotiate with the Taliban but when. There's a widespread view among Bush administration officials and U.S. military commanders that it's too soon for serious talks, because any negotiation now would be from a position of weakness. Some argue for a U.S. troop buildup and an aggressive military campaign next year to secure Afghan population centers, followed by negotiations.
How the worm turns: A few years ago, it would have been unthinkable that the United States would consider any rapprochement with the Taliban militants who gave sanctuary to Osama bin Laden as he planned the devastating attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But the painful experience of Iraq and Afghanistan has convinced many U.S. commanders that if you can take an enemy off the battlefield through negotiations, that's better than getting pinned down in protracted combat.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates made the argument for negotiations with the Taliban bluntly on Oct. 9, during a meeting in Budapest with NATO allies who are wearying of the conflict. "There has to be ultimately -- and I'll underscore ultimately -- reconciliation as part of a political outcome to this," Gates told reporters. "That's ultimately the exit strategy for all of us."
Gen. David Petraeus, the new Centcom commander who has overall responsibility for the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, has made similar arguments. He believes that the United States must work to separate the "reconcilables" among the Taliban from those who are allied with al-Qaeda, and draw the moderates into the government. Petraeus successfully pursued that strategy with Sunni Muslim insurgents in Iraq -- encouraging them to break with al-Qaeda and then forming alliances with them.
Petraeus believes that an effort to co-opt the Afghan insurgency should probably be accompanied by a stronger U.S. troop presence, just as it was in Iraq. But he argues that it's a mistake to think that there's a purely military solution in either country. "You can't kill or capture your way out of this," he explains.
A move to negotiate with the Taliban is already underway, perhaps prematurely, thanks to a quiet diplomatic push by Saudi Arabia. Late last month, at the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Saudi King Abdullah met in Mecca with representatives of the Taliban and other Afghan insurgent groups headed by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani.
Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, who was represented in Mecca by his brother Qayoum Karzai, supported the Saudi mediation. "We're at the very early stages now, but we do have hope for the future," Qayoum Karzai told Agence France-Presse after the talks ended.
President Karzai is said to have demanded that the Taliban's leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, publicly renounce bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, as a condition for further talks. A Taliban representative took this demand to Mullah Omar in his hideout in Afghanistan and returned to Mecca with a positive answer, according to a source familiar with the talks.
Mullah Omar has sent the Saudis a list of seven demands of his own, according to this source. Among the items on the Taliban agenda are a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan; a role for Taliban representatives in provincial and national government; assimilation of Taliban fighters into the Afghan army; and amnesty for guerrillas who fought against the United States.
The Saudis have proposed a second round of discussions in Mecca in early December, when the hajj pilgrimage season begins. U.S. officials are said to be skeptical that anything useful will come from the exercise, but France and Britain -- increasingly worried about the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan -- appear to be encouraging the Saudi effort. Some Pakistani government and army leaders are also supportive.
It would be political suicide for Barack Obama or John McCain to suggest that America reach an accommodation with Taliban fighters who once aided al-Qaeda. But Gates notes that we reached just such an accord in Iraq with Sunni insurgents who had the blood of Americans on their hands. "At the end of the day, that's how most wars end," he said.
The writer is co-host of PostGlobal, an online discussion of international issues. His e-mail address isdavidignatius@washpost.com.
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Security guard blamed for Kabul shootings
KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) -- A Briton and a South African, killed in Kabul Saturday, were shot by a security guard who then took his own life, an Afghan Interior Ministry official said Sunday.
The men were both employees of the Afghan branch of DHL, an international courier service. One served as director; the other as deputy director.
Both were killed when the guard opened fire as their vehicle approached the DHL office, located near the presidential palace in the capital, Interior Ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary said.
The gunfire wounded two other guards before the attacker fatally shot himself in the neck, Bashary added.
"We can't say if he was recruited to do the job or there were some other issues," he said, adding that the investigation into the incident continues.
The guard had been working for about four years with a British-based security company that provides personnel to banks, international organizations and private companies operating in Afghanistan, Bashary said.
Officials arrested 13 people, including employees of DHL, after the shooting. But police released them after determining they were not involved.
Meanwhile, security companies in Afghanistan have been asked to provide a list of their employees to the government, said Alishah Ahmadzai, Kabul's deputy police chief.
The Afghan government says it is trying to regulate private security companies and has shut down several for operating illegally.
Bashary said 60 security firms were authorized to conduct business in Afghanistan , but hundreds of others continue to provide security without a license.
Earlier, the British Foreign Office said DHL had spoken to the men's relatives. But neither the British nor the South African government identified the victims.
DHL released a statement saying only that the 8:30 a.m. shooting killed two of its employees. The company said it is cooperating with police and will not be releasing further details at this time, the statement said.
"At this difficult time our thoughts are with the families, friends and colleagues of those who have lost their lives under such tragic circumstances," it said.
Journalist Farhad Peikar contributed to this report.
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Killings increase Westerners' fears in Afghan capital
Sun Oct 26, 3:48 am ET
KABUL (AFP) – The gunning down of three Westerners in the Afghan capital in less than a week is a sharp reminder that Kabul is no longer a safe haven in a country gripped by violence, expatriates say.
Saturday's shooting of a Briton and a South African, along with an Afghan, outside the offices of the international shipping company DHL appears to have been the result of a dispute unrelated to a growing Taliban insurgency.
Nevertheless, it feeds a sense of insecurity with international residents already concerned by Monday's killing of a British-South African aid worker and a series of attacks against expatriates this year.
"It is the unpredictability of security incidents which is making it difficult," said Anu John, who has been in Kabul for 15 months employed by an international non-government organisation.
"The security seems to have deteriorated significantly in the last three to four months... the changes are pretty visible," she said.
Kabul has long been a city of checkpoints, armed guards and razor wire, despite its attempts to find normality after decades of war and the harsh 1996-2001 Taliban regime.
But for all that, it was seen as relatively safe when compared to the rest of the country.
However this year opened with January's brazen assault on a five-star hotel and saw an April attempt to kill President Hamid Karzai, as well as July's Indian embassy bombing which left more than 60 people dead.
Since then security has been boosted noticeably. Embassies and offices are hidden behind enormous concrete barricades; more roads have been closed to the public; and areas have been sectioned off with new checkpoints.
Similarly, buildings have been sandbagged and Western restaurants -- one of the few entertainment options for expats -- have new bullet-proof doors and strict entrance procedures.
"The Taliban are getting closer and closer and there is proof they have infiltrated the city and there are cells in the city," a Western security expert said on condition of anonymity.
Three or four "big attacks" had been foiled in the past few months and threats against international restaurants had been in the air for a long time, he said.
International civilians are an easy target because many move about with little security but offer maximum publicity for attackers with a cause, he said, adding: "The way forward is to pull up the drawbridge."
"Two-and-a-half years ago it was sporadic bombs... now it is a range of incidents that are more spectacular -- abductions and murders," another Western security officer said of the dangers.
Kidnappings for ransom have in particular surged in the city this year, although Afghans are most often the victims amid suggestions of the involvement of government officials.
But expatriates are also feeling the pressure: those who have resisted hiring armed guards are wondering if it is time to reconsider; some are scaling back their movements within the city; many have done security reviews.
"Even restaurants do not feel safe any longer," said John. "Travelling the streets in a car also feels risky even in broad daylight."
She has guards accompany her on the short walk to her office, "which I would have found extremely unnatural three months back," she said, adding her friends and family back home are pressuring her to leave.
Another international resident of Kabul, Valerie Robert, said she wanted to avoid the alarm that security companies sometimes generated but had to admit the risks have changed.
"Last year it was mostly suicide attacks -- it seems that now we can be targetted and shot for just being a foreigner," she said.
Robert wears a headscarf when outside to avoid being spotted as a foreigner and does not walk even short distances.
"My house has been protected with barbed wire and my bedroom has been transformed into a panic room," she said.
She believes corruption, lack of trust in the administration, massive waste of funds and bad management are turning people away from the government, leading to deteriorating security.
But she is not ready to quit. "I still think we can make a difference here," she said.
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Pakistan troops kill nine Taliban militants: official
Sun Oct 26, 4:15 am ET
KHAR, Pakistan (AFP) – Pakistan troops Sunday killed nine Taliban militants in separate clashes in a troubled tribal region bordering Afghanistan, security officials said.
The clashes in Bajaur region came a day after the military announced it had recaptured an Al-Qaeda and Taliban stronghold in the area after two months of fighting which left 1,500 rebels and 73 soldiers dead.
In one incident, insurgents attacked a security post on the outskirts of Bajaur's main town of Khar. Troops retaliated, killing six Taliban.
Three more fighters were killed when troops attacked a suspected militant base in Charmang district, another security official said.
Requesting anonymity, he said two militant vehicles were also destroyed in shelling by military helicopters.
Major General Tariq Khan, head of the paramilitary Frontier Corps force, told reporters in Khar on Saturday that security forces backed by helicopter gunships had driven insurgents out of Loisam, a strategic town in Bajaur which is at a crossroads of extremist supply routes.
Islamabad has previously hailed its operation in Bajaur as proof that it is responding to US and Afghan demands to take action against extremists in Pakistan's seven semi-autonomous tribal areas.
The extremists are accused of launching attacks on US and other foreign troops operating across the border in Afghanistan.
The army took journalists to Loisam and showed fortified trenches, a tunnel network, caves and houses allegedly used by the militants to fight pitched battles with Pakistani forces.
Security forces have captured more than 300 foreign militants, mainly from Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, in the operation, Khan said.
Pakistan's tribal belt became a safe haven for hundreds of Al-Qaeda and Taliban extremists who fled the US-led toppling of Afghanistan's hardline Taliban regime in late 2001.
Khan said the operation in Bajaur "could go for several months before the area is completely cleared of militants."
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Afghan charged in NY with Taliban terrorist support
Fri Oct 24, 2:42 pm ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. authorities accused an Afghan man on Friday of running a global drug trafficking group and using the money to fund Taliban terrorist activities.
Haji Juma Khan, 54, was handed over to U.S. officials by Indonesia after he arrived in Jakarta from Dubai. The United States had posted an Interpol notice for his arrest. As a result Indonesia denied him entry and alerted U.S. officials.
Khan is charged with conspiracy to distribute narcotics with intent to support a terrorist organization. U.S. authorities say he is among the first defendants to be prosecuted under a 2006 federal narco-terrorism statute.
He arrived in the United States on Friday.
"Proceeds from Haji Juma Khan's global drug trafficking organization funded the terrorist activities of the Taliban," Michele Leonhart, acting administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration said in a statement.
"His arrest disrupts a significant line of credit to the Taliban and will shake the foundation of his drug network that has moved massive quantities of heroin to worldwide drug markets," she said.
U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia said that since 1999 Khan has led an international opium, morphine and heroin trafficking group that arranged to sell morphine base, an opium derivative that is processed into heroin, in quantities as large as 40 tons -- enough to supply the U.S. heroin market for two years.
The organization is also accused of operating labs in Afghanistan that produced refined heroin, which was sold in quantities as large as 220 pounds (100 kg).
U.S. officials said Khan is closely aligned with the Taliban, designated by U.S. President George W. Bush as a global terrorist group since 2002.
"The arrest of Haji Juma Khan is another significant step in the continuing effort to combat terrorism by stopping the flow of narcotics proceeds that help fund the Taliban and other terrorist organizations," Garcia said in a statement.
If convicted, Khan faces a maximum sentence of life in prison and a minimum of 20 years.
(Reporting by Michelle Nichols, editing by Alan Elsner)
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Former governor of Kandahar province lands Afghan cabinet post
The Canadian Press October 24, 2008
Activists and political experts urged Ottawa to register its disappointment with the Afghan government Friday after learning of the decision to give a cabinet post to the controversial former governor of Kandahar province.
The end of Asadullah Khalid's tenure as governor in the province where Canadian forces are concentrated was put off in April when former foreign affairs minister Maxime Bernier publicly called for his ouster - a diplomatic faux pas.
Now, just two months after Khalid was quietly replaced by Rahmatullah Raufi, a former Afghan army general, President Hamid Karzai has named him minister of state for parliamentary affairs.
The charismatic former governor landed the position despite having led a provincial government that was dogged by whispers of corruption and accusations that he himself took part in the abuse of prisoners - a charge he has vehemently denied.
"Regardless of what position he holds within government, there are very serious allegations that have been made against him, including the possibility that he might have been quite directly involved in human rights violations," Amnesty International's Alex Neve said Friday.
"It is vitally important that there be an independent, credible investigation of those allegations and that he be held accountable, that he be brought to justice, if those allegations prove well founded."
During a visit to Afghanistan this past April, Bernier said publicly that the time had come for Khalid to be replaced. Sources close to the Afghan government said it forced Karzai to delay the move for fear of being seen as the puppet of a foreign power.
Hours after Bernier's gaffe, Foreign Affairs issued a statement saying Canada does not meddle in the affairs of sovereign nations, and supports and respects the decisions of the Afghan government.
A similar statement was issued Friday.
"The government of Afghanistan is responsible for the appointment of ministers and the government of Canada fully respects its internal decision-making process," said spokesman Joffre LeBlanc.
But Neve maintains sovereignty is "no excuse" and "no defence" when it comes to human rights and that Canada should make its concerns known to the Afghan government.
Michael Byers, an international relations professor at the University of British Columbia, said the Karzai government owes its existence to the military and financial support it receives from western governments.
As such, he said, Canada has the "capacity to exercise considerable influence," and should urge Canada's ambassador in Kabul to relay the message that Canada isn't pleased.
With Afghan elections expected next year, withdrawing support for Karzai might be another way to "get traction on the democratic issue" and ensure such "mistakes" don't happen again, Byers added.
Omar Samad, Afghanistan's ambassador to Canada, said Khalid's new post is essentially a junior position that involves co-ordinating the activities between the upper and lower houses of parliament.
Such appointments are made at the discretion of the president, he said, adding the allegations against Khalid are just that - allegations.
Khalid was responsible for a very difficult and troubled province and that he "did his best" under the circumstances, Samad said.
"There are allegations floating around rightly and wrongly about all kinds of people. Until and unless there are some kind of legal proceedings, they remain as allegations," he said.
It's not clear whether there are even any grounds for an investigation in this case, he added.
"If there are any concerns by the government about his tenure as governor, I'm certain that it will emerge or it will be looked into, but so far there are no signs of such a move."
Byers called the appointment "disturbing development" that will do little to "win the hearts and minds" of the Afghan people and improve the security situation.
"People are essentially seeing a choice between a corrupt administration in Kabul and the tribal leaders in the regions and the Taliban and it's becoming less clear to many Afghans which is the better choice," he said.
"The fact that we haven't been able to maintain a clearly better choice in the form of the government in Kabul is a very great failing on the part of all the countries involved."
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Angelina Jolie appeals for greater support to Afghan refugees
New York, Oct 25 (PTI) Leading Hollywood actress and Goodwill Ambassador for the UN refugee agency, Angelina Jolie, has appealed for greater support to Afghan refugees returning home to enable to withstand the approaching harsh winter.
She pleaded the cause of returning refugees after a three-day visit to the war-torn country which was aimed at raising awareness on the issue ahead of an international conference on reintegration of refugees. The meet will be held in Kabul.
During her trip, Jolie visited recent returnees in the eastern province of Nangarhar, where almost 20 per cent of all Afghans who returned to the homeland have settled since 2002.
The returnees, who are living on desolate, desert land in tattered tents and makeshift shelters, told her they could not return to their places of origin due to a lack of land and poor security.
"The courage, resilience and quiet dignity of returnee families rebuilding their lives against the kind of adversity few of us can imagine shows the human spirit at its best," said the actress, and mother of six.
Jolie also visited families in Kabul who had returned from Pakistan in 2003 but have still been unable to go back to their home villages. The families have been squatting in public buildings in Kabul for several years due to the lack of available land in Parwan, their province of origin, according to UNHCR.
The returnees explained that landlessness and insecurity were not the only obstacles to return. Economic problems in rural areas such as a lack of employment opportunities also influenced their decision to remain in Kabul despite the difficulties they face there.
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U.S. considers sending special ops to Afghanistan
Despite recent setbacks, a large-scale influx of conventional forces is unlikely because of troop commitments in Iraq. But special operations forces could narrowly target the most violent insurgent bands.
By Peter Spiegel Los Angeles Times October 26, 2008
Reporting from Washington -- In a sign that the U.S. military is scaling back its goals in Afghanistan, senior Pentagon officials are weighing controversial proposals to send additional teams of highly trained special operations forces to narrowly target the most violent insurgent bands in the country.
The proposals are part of an acknowledgment among senior brass that a large-scale influx of conventional forces is unlikely in the near future because of troop commitments in Iraq. It also reflects the urgency to take some action to reverse recent setbacks in Afghanistan.
The idea of sending more special forces has intensified the debate over the best way to fight the war in Afghanistan. As security worsens in the country, many military leaders are increasingly arguing that an Iraq-style troop "surge" and counterinsurgency plan would not work because of the country's rugged geography and a history of resistance to rule from Kabul.
Unlike Iraq, where large portions of the population are urbanized in the wide, flat plains of the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys, much of Afghanistan is mountainous and dotted with remote villages that are hard to reach with large bodies of conventional forces, several Pentagon officials involved in the Afghanistan strategy review said.
"It's a much different place, and to surge forces doesn't necessarily fit," said a senior military official involved in the discussions.
"This is one of Gen. [David H.] Petraeus' greatest challenges," he added, referring to the incoming commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East and Central Asia.
Three separate high-level reviews are underway on U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, where American forces have seen their highest death rate since the war began in 2001. According to military officials, the proposal for more special operations teams is being discussed in both the White House's review and one led by Navy Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Advocates of a plan focused on special operations argue that the top U.S. priority in Afghanistan should be preventing the country from again becoming a terrorist haven, an objective that could best be met by targeted attacks on militants in regions near the border with Pakistan.
In addition, the Army's Green Berets are the U.S. military's premier unit for training foreign security forces, making them ideally suited for linking up with the small but increasingly competent Afghan army to improve its ability to secure the country.
But critics in the Pentagon say the special operations approach would repeat many of the mistakes of Iraq; although the units could attack insurgents in trouble spots, they would not be able to hold ground to keep extremists from coming back.
Other military officials note that only 12 of the 36 special operations units already in Afghanistan are being fully used. Many lack the supporting infrastructure -- surveillance drones, helicopter transport and intelligence networks -- in part because it is still needed in Iraq.
"To add more forces on top of existing forces that haven't been fully engaged makes no sense," the senior military official said. "If you don't know how you're operating the current force, why do you think adding more forces is going to work?"
According to a senior Pentagon official, among those advocating a special operations influx is Army Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, the White House's Iraq and Afghanistan "war czar." A spokesperson for Lute did not respond to requests for comment.
Both presidential candidates, Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, have advocated an increase in conventional forces for Afghanistan. The issue of special operations force levels has not been widely discussed in the campaign.
A move to a strategy focusing heavily on special operations would be a significant shift for the U.S. military. The current strategy, which is supported by 32,000 U.S. forces and 30,000 North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops from other nations, aims to stabilize and secure the country and foster a viable central government.
But some military planners doubt that Afghanistan is capable of the progress that Iraq has achieved. "Are we really going to take a Karzai government and prop it up?" asked another senior military official, referring to Afghan President Hamid Karzai. "If you're talking about doing that, I can't see this ever ending."
Although the Iraqi government has frequently proved corrupt and ineffectual, the population is well-educated and skilled, providing abundant human capital once security can be achieved. In addition, Iraq's oil industry and fertile agricultural sector have quickly ramped up since violence declined after nearly 30,000 additional U.S. troops arrived in 2007, a buildup strategy that some have advocated for Afghanistan.
Afghanistan has high illiteracy rates and little economic activity, making an Iraq-style "clear, hold and build" strategy more difficult to execute. The Soviet Union failed to control the country in the 1980s with more than 100,000 soldiers, and some U.S. military officials fear Afghans could see large-scale troop increases as a repeat of that occupation.
Although President Bush has decided to redirect an Army brigade and Marine battalion from Iraq to Afghanistan by January, any further troop reductions in Iraq could be slowed by commanders' concerns over the need to maintain security during Iraqi elections scheduled next year.
Army Gen. David D. McKiernan, the overall commander in Afghanistan, has requested an additional three brigades and a division headquarters unit. Although there is widespread support for the increase within the Pentagon, it remains unclear when those troops will be made available.
"I don't think anybody thought it was an unreasonable request, especially when you take into consideration the environment has changed," the military official said. "I don't think anybody is saying no more forces. I think people are saying ODA, or special forces, versus conventional forces," the official said, using the initials of the Army's Operational Detachment Alpha teams.
Spiegel is a Times staff writer.
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Al-Qaida influence apparent in groups in Pakistan
AP By KATHY GANNON 26 October 2008
PESHAWAR - Pakistan Almost three years ago, Sajjad Khan used to buy supplies for the Pakistani Taliban with U.S. dollars that he says came from al-Qaida.
Now he realizes what al-Qaida is getting in exchange. Khan's 13-year-old nephew has been pulled from a madrassa to train as a suicide bomber, and Khan fears he himself might be killed for begging the boy not to go.
"The Taliban come in secret and take them for training from the madrassa," said Khan, a burly, black-bearded Pashtun, holding a picture of his young nephew. "They go to the Taliban but they get their training from the Arabs. It all comes from al-Qaida."
Al-Qaida's influence runs like a thread through the myriad of militant groups on the Pakistani border — it ties the groups together, yet is often hard to discern. The hidden nature of al-Qaida's presence makes it harder for the U.S. and Pakistan to fight, especially when the two countries disagree on which groups pose the greatest threat.
"Al-Qaida is strictly behind the scenes — as a force multiplier, providing training, expertise both in combat arms and propaganda," says Bruce Hoffman, terrorism expert at Georgetown University in Washington.
The groups are wildly disparate and their relationships increasingly complex. They range from the tribal homegrown Taliban to an Afghan father-and-son team where the father, Jalaluddin Haqqani, once visited the White House and met U.S. President Ronald Reagan. Experts say some groups are virtually fronts for al-Qaida, but others have a tenuous relationship that might be limited to ideology.
"The problem is that these groups are overlapping more and more, the layers of allegiances are hard to peel away, and the greater interconnectivity makes it quite hard to know what is really happening in any given conflict," says Daniel Markey, a regional expert at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations.
For example, in closed-door sessions over the past two weeks, Pakistani lawmakers have discussed whether they should make a distinction between the local Taliban and al-Qaida and enter talks with the Taliban. However, the two groups appear to be increasingly connected.
Deep within the warren of rickety book stalls in the old city of Peshawar, book sellers are hawking a version of al-Qaida's military training manual translated into Pashto, a local language. A copy obtained by the AP featured instructions on suicide bombings and on what chemical compounds cause the greatest damage in explosives.
"The distribution of the manual attests to the Taliban's growing strength and organizational capabilities," states the U.S. Military's Counter Terrorism Center (CTC) at West Point, N.Y. "Already into its fourth edition, there is clearly a demand among Taliban cadres for the lessons outlined in the manual."
The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, as it is known, is led by the ailing Baitullah Mehsud, who is accused of masterminding last year's assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. It brings together some of Pakistan's most violent militants, including Faqir Mohammed, a close ally of al-Qaida's No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahari, and Maulvi Fazlullah, whose long-haired, gun-toting followers have terrorized Pakistan's Swat Valley.
Al-Qaida's training is showing up in increasingly audacious suicide bombings and more sophisticated attacks within Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the Taliban-led insurgency is claiming more U.S. lives almost by the day.
In the past, militants usually targeted troops and convoys in the volatile northwest, where some 100,000 Pakistani forces are deployed. But in the last year they have taken their battle nationwide, striking hundreds of miles from the lawless border regions.
Last November a suicide bomber blew up an Air Force bus in Sargodha, about 125 miles south of the nation's capital of Islamabad. In early March a powerful suicide truck bomb nearly toppled a seven-story police headquarters in Pakistan's eastern Punjab city of Lahore, barely 24 miles from the Indian border. And a September truck bombing devastated a five-star hotel in the heart of Islamabad and killed 53 people.
Former Taliban members told the AP that al-Qaida is now financing local movements even in regions beyond the tribal belt and training recruits from the thousands of madrassas or religious schools that flourish in northwest Pakistan.
"Now the sort of sophistication al-Qaida had in terms of terrorism, they have started passing it on to the Taliban," said Mehmood Shah, former security chief for the border regions. "The Taliban that ruled Afghanistan were village mullahs, not very smart, but they have changed, they have evolved and today they are stronger and smarter because of al-Qaida's training."
The difficulty of knowing who is linked to al-Qaida is clear in the case of Maulvi Naseer, a leader of a branch Taliban group. Pakistan hailed Naseer for killing or driving out hundreds of al-Qaida-linked Uzbeks from the tribal regions close to the Afghan border last year. More than 200 were killed, and many others found shelter with the Tehrik-e-Taliban.
But despite Naseer's seeming distance from al-Qaida affiliates, the U.S. says he sends his fellow tribesmen across the border to fight U.S. troops there. Naseer has said he will not attack Pakistan but considers Afghanistan the site of a holy war because foreigners are killing Muslims there.
The U.S. badgered Pakistan to take action against Naseer without success. In July, the U.S. took the law into its own hands and launched a missile strike into Naseer's village, killing six people but missing him, according to media reports.
Al-Qaida's influence is also complicating Pakistan's relationship with the militant groups on its border.
Some jihadi groups, such as Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, have long been seen as creations of Pakistan's intelligence service to help wage its clandestine war against India in disputed Kashmir. Pakistan's intelligence also has a three-decades-long history with the Haqqanis, the father and son blamed by the U.S. for the deadly bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul in July and the assassination attempt earlier this year on Afghan president Hamid Karzai.
"Pakistan doesn't view it in its interest to strike all or even most of these groups. Several have been useful proxy organizations for Pakistan in Afghanistan, Pakistan itself and India," says Seth Jones, an analyst with the U.S. based RAND Corporation.
However, others say Pakistan's control over the militants slipped away after last year's military assault on an extremist mosque in the heart of the Pakistani capital of Islamabad. The July army offensive against militants who had taken over the Red Mosque drew Pakistan into a deadly spiral of increasingly violent and vicious attacks by groups within Tehrik-e-Taliban.
Some say it was al-Qaida that launched the militants on the warpath against Pakistan.
"Al-Qaida, which had been targeted by the Pakistani (security officials), convinced Baitullah Mehsud to turn against Pakistan," said Brian Glyn Williams, associate professor of Islamic history at the University of Massachusetts. "Pakistan's Frankenstein had turned on it with a vengeance. Its hands-off policy had boomeranged back to hit them."
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‘A Complicated Picture’
Talking to the Taliban is not as simple as it sounds.
Ron Moreau NEWSWEEK From the magazine issue dated Oct 25, 2008
Few Westerners know Afghanistan and the tough business of negotiating with Afghans as well as Spanish-born diplomat Francesc Vendrell. A veteran United Nations negotiator who brokered peace talks in Central America and East Timor, he worked as the U.N.'s mediator on Afghanistan in 2000, and as the U.N.'s Special Representative in Kabul after the Taliban's collapse in late 2001. From 2002 until this summer he served in Kabul as the European Union's Special Representative. As some form of peace talks with the Afghan insurgency seems increasingly likely in the future, Vendrell, 68, who is now teaching at Princeton University, talked by phone to NEWSWEEK's Ron Moreau about the prospective negotiations. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: Should the United States and its coalition allies be talking to the Taliban?
Francesc Vendrell: Let me make two preliminary points. It's not only whom to talk to in the Taliban, but also who should be talking to the Taliban. In my view, the responsibility for talking to the Taliban rests with the Afghan government, which has to decide on a strategy and framework to talk to the Taliban. We internationals can help, assuming we agree with the [government's] approach. Next, one must distinguish between approaches, talks and negotiations. I think the first thing one ought to do is to have some approaches to the Taliban, starting with those [militia] commanders who are in the field in order to sound out whether or not they are closely linked to the Quetta shura [the Taliban's main command council which is headed by Mullah Mohammad Omar and is believed to be based in or near that Pakistani city] and to what degree they are pursuing an ideological battle, or whether they are fighting because of a series of local grievances that could and should be addressed by the government with the help of the international community.
Are there many of these non-ideological commanders?
We believe, though no one knows for sure, that many of the fighters are fighting for more localized reasons: anger at the government, lack of services, tribal alienation, lack of employment, land disputes, etc. One needs to look to that first. After that, one should decide whether one should talk [more formally] to these Taliban before [talking to] the top leadership. This is something that one needs to explore.
Can this process begin soon?
I worry a little bit that we are all talking too much. First we are talking about talking without, as far as I can see, doing very much. In my view it would be better if we were doing something and talking much less. Also going beyond the approaches to local Taliban commanders, the government and its international supporters should be talking from a position of strength, not from one of weakness. And I'm not sure at this point in time the Taliban thinks anything but that things are going their way. If so, and that's the way it appears, then we have to try to change this situation [of apparent weakness]. We certainly should not appear to be desperate in talking to them.
What's the next step?
We should think out clearly how far this should go, and what kind of concessions we may be able to make to the Taliban. And we should not be discussing this in public. If it's simply a matter of improving governance or addressing local grievances then concessions are quite feasible. More likely [the insurgents] will be demanding more.
Would they want to have positions in local government or strong influence in the south and the east of the country, for example?
That's something we would have to consider very carefully. We also have to consider how a lot of Afghans who want to see a modern and reformed Afghanistan would react. Finally the big question is how can we ensure that the Taliban will completely cut their links with Al Qaeda? At some point this is essential if the talks include the Quetta shura. It's not a sine qua non that in order to approach and meet them [they have to sever links with Al Qaeda] but it is something at some point we would need to ensure.
Do the Taliban see all this talking about talks as a sign of weakness?
First, I think we should not be saying we think we are going to lose in Afghanistan. We are now going through a very difficult patch because a lot of things that ought to be happening inside Afghanistan [such a good governance and controlling corruption] are not happening and of course because of the situation in Pakistan. But by talking as if we want to cut a deal with the Taliban because we are looking for the exit is not in my opinion the right approach.
What about Taliban demands to restore Sharia [Islamic law] and some form of Mullah Omar's defunct Islamic Emirate?
I think these are all issues that can be discussed eventually when and if formal talks ever take place. I would be personally opposed to some of these issues. But there should be no preconditions for talks, and those issues could be discussed if there were talks.
What about talking directly to the most powerful Taliban commanders such as Jalaluddin Haqqani?
It's unclear if the Haqqanis are working under the Taliban leadership or whether they are a separate group. The same applies to [Afghan warlord] Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. It's a very complicated picture. It is much more complicated than when the Taliban were in power. Then you knew whom you were talking to.
Now it's a hydra-headed organization?
So it appears.
Hekmatyar seems to be the one insurgent leader who has called for talks with Kabul and the United States on several occasions, most recently last month. Shouldn't we be approaching him?
This is something the Afghan government has to decide. But he has a very bad record of not abiding by agreements. He has been one of the most bloody commanders in Afghanistan. He has committed a hell of a lot of war crimes, and one wonders whether one wants to bring a new warlord into the picture. I would have thought it would be better and more sensible to talk to the people [insurgent commanders] in the eastern and southern parts of the country and leave the Hekmatyar issue for a later stage. I can see how some people may want to talk to him. He blows hot and cold all the time. I don't believe he would abide by any agreement. I think his human-rights record is deplorable.
Can Pakistan be pressured into bringing the Taliban into talks?
I would imagine that is what the U.S., the U.K. and the Europeans are trying to do. There are three issues here. First, pressure [on Pakistan] is being applied and definitely will increase. Second is the question of whether the [Pakistan] Army fully controls the ISI [the Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency]. And third is whether the Army is in a position today to carry out the promises it might give. As you saw from the recent discussions [on national-security policy] in the Pakistani Parliament, many M.P.s are wary of fighting the Taliban frontally. Plus the Army may not have the resources, capacity or the political will to carry out its commitments. One of the problems is that Pakistan appears to have lost control of the tribal areas and even other parts of NWFP [North West Frontier Province that borders on Afghanistan]. So this is not going to be easy to achieve, and certainly not in a short time.
Will another season of fighting make a difference in perhaps weakening the Taliban?
When I say talking from a position of strength I'm not talking only about bringing in more [military] forces. Unless that's accompanied by a series of major reforms in Afghanistan, that [U.S. surge] will not achieve much. But if between now and next year at this time a lot of things begin to change in Afghanistan in terms of less corruption, better rule of law and developing a professional police, then there are some grounds for hope. I think [Afghan President Hamid Karzai's] appointment of [Mohammad Hanif] Atmar as the new interior minister is a very positive step.
Do you favor Bush's, McCain's and Obama's plan to introduce some 23,000 more troops next year?
I don't think it's simply a matter of having more forces to fight the Taliban. I doubt that this will make much difference. Inevitably and unfortunately it will also mean the killing of more civilians, which will upset whatever military gains one makes. I think if one looks at some of the internal causes that have led to the Taliban becoming more successful than we anticipated, then military force alone is clearly not the answer.
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Turkish govt says 3 Turks kidnapped in Afghanistan
Associated Press October 25, 2008
KABUL, Afghanistan – Three Turkish citizens working on a communications project in Afghanistan have been kidnapped, Afghan and Turkish foreign ministry officials announced Saturday.
The Turkish nationals were kidnapped in the eastern province of Khost on Thursday, Afghan Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta told a joint news conference Saturday with visiting Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan.
Afghan intelligence officials and the provincial governor were working to resolve the issue, Spanta said, adding that the three were believed to have been abducted by a criminal gang.
Turkish foreign ministry officials in Ankara did not reveal the identities of the kidnap victims or more details about the incident.
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No negotiations until Nato troops are in Afghanistan: Taliban
Dawn (Pakistan)
KABUL, Oct 25: Taliban militants on Saturday vowed to continue fighting in Afghanistan and ruled out peace talks with President Hamid Karzai’s government as long as foreign troops remained in the country.
With no end in sight to the conflict which has now entered its eighth year, western leaders now admit the war cannot be won militarily and that ultimately peace talks will have to be held to bring an end to fighting that has killed 4,000 people this year.
Saudi Arabia hosted a meeting of pro-government Afghan figures and former Taliban officials last month which analysts say could be a small step towards more substantial dialogue. But the Taliban have denied any involvement in the talks.
“It will be impossible for the invader armies to delay the progress of jihad and to stop Muslim ummah (nation) in Afghanistan,” the Taliban said in a statement on their website.“The Islamic emirate wants to make it clear that the only solution and the most successful path for resolving the Afghan problem is for foreign forces to leave Afghanistan unconditionally,” it said.
Afghanistan this year has suffered from the worst violence since US-led and Afghan forces toppled the Taliban regime in late 2001.
Washington has ordered a major review of military strategy in Afghanistan and both US presidential candidates have vowed to refocus efforts on the war which has long been over-shadowed by the conflict in Iraq.
—Reuters
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Analysis: Afghanistan's untapped energy riches
By JOHN C.K. DALY UPI International Correspondent October 24, 2008
While Afghanistan now intermittently crops up during the presidential debates, it is largely the forgotten war, which next month will be seven years old with little resolution in sight. Inside the Beltway chickenhawks never proposed that Afghanistan's energy resources could somehow pay for the war, but the fact remains that since 2001 little money has been directed to Afghanistan's energy sector to help the country become self-sufficient, much less an exporter. Nearly eight years after coalition forces overthrew the Taliban, Afghanistan remains one of the world's poorest and least developed countries, where two-thirds of the population live on less than $2 a day.
For those with a sense of irony, the Soviets during their occupation went much further in attempting to develop Afghanistan's energy infrastructure. As Afghanistan continues to unravel, it is worthwhile to cast a backward glance at the country's energy potential since 1979, when the Soviets began their ill-fated intervention. While the Soviet Union completed its withdrawal in 1988, the Afghans next year will pass the dolorous anniversary of 30 years of nearly uninterrupted war, ironically broken only by the brief tenure of the Taliban, who pacified the country with a brutal hand.
According to the U.S. government's Energy Information Administration, while Afghanistan's estimated oil reserves are relatively modest, "with perhaps up to 100 million barrels," the country's natural gas reserves are far more substantial. As northern Afghanistan is a "southward extension of Central Asia's highly prolific, natural gas-prone Amu Darya Basin," Afghanistan "has proven, probable and possible natural gas reserves of about 5 trillion cubic feet."
Nearly eight years after the overthrow of the Taliban, the CIA estimates that Afghanistan's oil consumption, all imported, is slightly more than 5,000 barrels per day, while indigenous natural gas production, which is all domestically consumed, is approximately 20 million cubic meters per year. It is not that Afghanistan lacks energy and mineralogical resources; far from it, but what has been signally lacking since the overthrow of the Taliban is the political will and economic assistance needed to develop them.
Ironically, during the 1979-1988 Soviet occupation of the country, extensive Soviet exploration produced superb geological maps and reports that listed more than 1,400 mineral outcroppings, along with about 70 commercially viable deposits even under the grotesquely inefficient Soviet economic system. The Soviet Union subsequently committed more than $650 million for resource exploration and development in Afghanistan, with proposed projects including an oil refinery capable of producing a half-million tons per annum, as well as a smelting complex for the Ainak deposit that was to have produced 1.5 million tons of copper per year. In the wake of the Soviet withdrawal a subsequent World Bank analysis projected that the Ainak copper production alone could eventually capture as much as 2 percent of the annual world market. The country is also blessed with massive coal deposits, one of which, the Hajigak iron deposit, in the Hindu Kush mountain range west of Kabul, is assessed as one of the largest high-grade deposits in the world.
We will never know what a Soviet-dominated development of Afghanistan would have looked like, because they were never able to quell the insurgency there. Three years after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, the Soviet Union collapsed, bringing the possibility of the West developing the oil and natural gas deposits of the former Soviet republics ringing the Caspian Sea, even as Afghanistan slid into a brutal civil war.
The Western interest in Caspian energy would prove fateful for Afghanistan, as any consideration of developing its indigenous assets evaporated after September 1996, when the Taliban captured Kabul.
Afghanistan was now to be turned into a transit corridor, with the proposed $3.5 billion, 1,050-mile Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline (initially "TAP," now "TAPI" with the inclusion of Pakistan and India). TAPI was under development even before the Taliban captured Kabul, as in 1995 Turkmenistan and Pakistan initialed a memorandum of understanding. TAPI, with a carrying capacity of 33 billion cubic meters of Turkmen natural gas a year, would run from Turkmenistan's Dauletabad gas field across Afghanistan and Pakistan and terminate at the northwestern Indian town of Fazilka.
Of course, TAPI would require the assent of the Taliban, and in 1997 the Central Asia Gas Pipeline Ltd. consortium, led by U.S. company Unocal, flew a Taliban delegation to Unocal headquarters in Houston, where the Taliban signed off on the project.
But then the Taliban made the fatal mistake of offering sanctuary to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida, and in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, the country was invaded and the Taliban were driven from power.
With the overthrow of the Taliban, new possibilities seemed to open up, but these were quickly dashed, as the Bush administration continued to pursue a military option largely to the exclusion of everything else. In a grotesque demonstration of the administration's post-Taliban priorities for Afghanistan, in 2002 the U.S. Geological Survey requested $70 million from the U.S. Department of State to reassess Afghanistan's water and mineral resources, oil, gas, coal, earthquake hazards, infrastructure development and training. The State Department offered less than 10 percent of the requested funding, and what was given was solely for oil and gas.
Thirteen years after it was first proposed, TAPI is still under discussion. As for the USGS, its personnel have been diverted to the search for Taliban and al-Qaida guerrillas in Afghanistan's more than 10,000 caves.
In the meantime, the administration's rhetoric continues. On Oct. 18 in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher said, "We're very engaged, and we're going to stay engaged to help build a stable Afghanistan that can be an asset to the people in the region and not a threat." Engagement does not seem to include help in developing the country's energy or mineralogical wealth in order to bankroll a much needed infrastructure for the Afghan people.
And what of Abdullah Sixpack? On Oct. 9 Afghanistan's Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock reported that because of drought the country faces a food deficit of 2 million tons, primarily wheat flour and rice, and appealed for assistance for the millions of vulnerable Afghans in the coming six months. Last winter was the coldest in Central Asia in 50 years, and hundreds died across the region.
Those looking for the underlying causes of the Taliban resurgence need look no further.
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Strong quake shakes Afghanistan
Sun Oct 26, 2:25 am ET
KABUL (Reuters) – A strong earthquake of magnitude 5.6 struck northeastern Afghanistan on Sunday, but caused no casualties or damage, a government official said.
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said on its website the quake's epicenter was at a depth of 208 km (130 miles).
The quake occurred at about 6 am local time and was also felt in the capital, Kabul, some 260 km (160 miles) from the epicenter lying to the south of the city of Faizabad of northeastern Badakhshan province.
Mountainous Afghanistan is an earthquake prone country.
Thousands of people were killed by earthquakes in northern Badakhshan province in the late 1990s.
In 2002 at least 1,500 people were killed when a series of quakes of between magnitude 5 and 6 struck northern Baghlan province in the Hindu Kush mountains, destroying the district capital of Nahrin.
(Writing by Jonathon Burch; Editing by David Fox)
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Nick Meo hits back at Afghanistan battle report slurs
Telegraph.co.uk, United Kingdom
Last week the Taliban tried to kill me. This week it was the turn of American bloggers. After being blown up by a bomb in Kandahar province, a stream of hostile emails and some vicious blogging posts have been fired my way, writes Nick Meo.
I had described what happened after Easyrider company ran over a massive bomb on a road convoy to Helmand Province. The vehicle I was in was hurled into the air and landed on its roof, killing the top gunner and injuring two soldiers. The small unit then fired thousands of rounds blindly into the night – from automatic rifles, grenade launchers and heavy
machine guns — in an area where there are many villages, as well as Taliban guerrillas.
For writing about this, the bloggers have called me a coward, a liar, a fantasist, anti-American, and a cheap Brit journalist. One urged the Telegraph to demote me to covering dog shows, not wars. Another blog described what the Taliban would have done to me if I had been taken captive. He was clearly disappointed that it hadn’t happened.
There was also reaction from family members of soldiers involved in the attack – they knew, for instance, that I had been told to stop filming and were angry that I hadn’t, although as an embedded journalist I was entitled to do so and was not hampering operations.
One message purported to come from a soldier who was there. He wrote: 'You Coward piece of S---’. He advises me never to step inside a US base again, or on US soil, for my own good.
The US military has not challenged my reporting and the bloggers’ criticism is vague. Perhaps they were disappointed that I didn’t produce a straightforward tale of stirring heroism on a bad night in Kandahar.
Things got nasty even during the incident because the soldiers, clearly badly shaken, didn’t want to be filmed and demanded my camera. I didn’t hand it over because such footage of what happens in the aftermath of a bomb attack is rare.
Following an ambush it is standard US military procedure to switch weapons to fully automatic and pour out rounds. This is called suppressive fire and does not involve careful aiming. It kills attackers, saves soldiers’ lives and keeps the heads of ambushers down.
But such devastating gunfire also kills and wounds civilians. Hundreds of Afghans have been hit in the past two years in such incidents.
When civilians are killed Nato spokesmen usually blame the Taliban for attacks that force soldiers to defend themselves, killing non-military personnel in the process. The Taliban, knowing that US or British forces will be held responsible for the carnage, often explode bombs in markets and towns.
I don’t know whether Easyrider killed any civilians that night but I suspect the bloggers were angry because I pointed out that there may have been peace-loving Afghans out there in the dark.
Not unnaturally, the US military prefers to highlight the courage of their soldiers — men such as Scott Dimond, the father of four who died because, like all Easyrider volunteers, he wanted to stop terrorism. I certainly did not want my story to dishonour his death.
What happened that night on the Kandahar road was not part of a struggle between square-jawed good guys and bad guys wearing black turbans, as the bloggers perhaps imagine the war
to be. It was a horribly everyday incident in a deadly conflict in which men kill each other in terrifying and sometimes chaotic conditions.
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U.S. Animosity Towards Iran Thwarts Policy in Afghanistan
via AlterNet.org MIT Center for International Studies By Barnett R. Rubin and Sara Batmanglich October 25, 2008
Afghanistan is one of several contexts in which the long-term common interests of the U.S. and Iran have been overshadowed by the animus originating in the 1953 CIA-led coup in Iran and the Iranian revolution of 1979, to the detriment of the interests of the U.S., Iran, and Afghanistan. This confrontation has served the interests of the Pakistan military, Taliban, and al-Qaida. Re-establishing the basis for U.S.-Iranian cooperation in Afghanistan would provide significant additional leverage over Pakistan, on whose territory the leadership of both the Taliban and al-Qaida are now found.
During the first half of the Cold War (until the 1978 coup in Afghanistan and the 1979 revolution in Iran), Afghanistan was a non-aligned country with a Soviet-trained army wedged between the USSR and U.S. allies. In the 1970s, under the Nixon Doctrine, the U.S. supported efforts by the Shah of Iran to use his post-1973 oil wealth to support efforts by Afghan President Muhammad Daoud to lessen Kabul's dependence on the USSR. This ended with the successive overthrow of both Daoud and the Shah in 1978 and 1979. A U.S. close partnership with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan emerged as the primary means of maintaining U.S. influence in the Persian Gulf and its eastern flank. Support for Sunni Islamists in Afghanistan and an Islamist-oriented military regime in Pakistan formed parts of this strategy to repulse the USSR from its occupation of Afghanistan, begun in late 1979, and to isolate Iran.
The U.S. led support for the mujahidin based in Pakistan and a greatly enlarged Pakistani security establishment, with co-funding from Saudi Arabia and implementation largely in the hands of Pakistan's Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence. The ISI also nurtured the Sunni right wing in Pakistan to counter-balance the Pakistan People's Party and ethnic sub-nationalists. Revolutionary Iran, distracted by its war with Iraq, provided aid to Afghan Shi'a groups that supported the revolutionary line of Khomeini, but did not engage fully.
Post Soviet: Oil and Taliban
The dissolution of the USSR and independence of the Central Asian and Caucasus states in 1991-92 led to the disengagement of the U.S. from the region, reducing external support to the Pakistan-Saudi alliance and providing Iran with more opportunities for maneuver in Afghanistan. Iran broadened its contacts in Afghanistan from Shi'a groups to non-Pashtun groups more generally (including Sunnis and former government militias), helping to broker the formation of the so-called "Northern Alliance" during the 1992 collapse of the Najibullah government.
The opening of Central Asia and the Caspian region to the international oil and gas market created a new strategic stake. Russia aimed to maintain its monopoly on export of these resources through the former Soviet pipeline network. The U.S. sought to promote the autonomy of the Newly Independent States (as they were called) by supporting alternative pipeline routes and hydrocarbon development schemes. But the shortest and most secure routes from the former USSR's energy resources to the sea lay through Iran, which the U.S. had kept under sanctions since the Tehran embassy takeover.
Iran proposed to become the transport hub for both oil and gas, linking the Central Asian-Caspian region to the Persian Gulf. The main focus of U.S. hydrocarbon strategy was the route north and west of Iran, which ultimately led to the construction of the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline. Afghanistan played a role in the secondary theater of the southern and eastern outlet, as the U.S. mildly supported Pakistan's attempts to use the Taliban to provide a secure transport corridor from Pakistan to Turkmenistan via western Afghanistan. Iran saw this as part of the U.S. strategy of encircling and containing Iran.
When Lakhdar Brahimi became the UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Afghanistan in 1997, he found that the Government of Iran believed that the U.S., Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia were jointly supporting the Taliban in continuation of their previous policies. Iran consequently saw the Taliban as the spear-point of its strategic opponent and joined with Russia, India, and the Central Asian states in an effort to support and supply the Northern Alliance. Iran moved beyond its ideological support for Shi'a parties to a strategic policy of supporting all anti-Taliban forces. It settled its differences over Tajikistan with Russia, and the two states brokered the 1997 peace agreement in order to assure a consolidated rear for the Northern Alliance.
Events in August 1998 turned both the U.S. and Iran further against the Taliban. With Pakistan's assistance, the Taliban captured control of most of northern Afghanistan; Pakistani extremists under Taliban command massacred nine Iranian diplomats in Mazar-i Sharif, leading Iran to mobilize troops on the border. Diplomacy by Brahimi averted open warfare. The same week, al-Qaida, then operating out of the Taliban's Kandahar headquarters, attacked the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Consequently the U.S. began intelligence cooperation with the Northern Alliance. The State Department conducted a dialogue with Iran within the framework of the UN-convened "Six plus Two" group, which included Afghanistan's neighbors, the U.S., and Russia. Pakistan became increasingly isolated in the group. The U.S. and Russia jointly approved Security Council sanctions against the Taliban and al-Qaida, with the support of Iran and against the wishes of Pakistan, which flouted the sanctions.
Since 9/11
After 9/11, despite some jockeying for relative advantage, Russia, Iran, India and the United States ultimately cooperated to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan, and to establish the new Afghan government. Not only did Iran cooperate with the United States, Russia actively helped it establish support bases in Central Asia. Pakistan was politically marginalized in the process.
U.S.-Iranian cooperation occurred both in the field, in Tajikistan and Afghanistan, and in diplomacy, where I personally witnessed it. According to Iranian diplomatic sources, members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC, Sipah-i Pasdaran) cooperated with the CIA and U.S. Special Operations Forces in supplying and funding the commanders of the Northern Alliance. During the war in the fall of 2001, both Russia and Iran wavered between supporting the reconquest of power by President Burhanuddin Rabbani and the plan for a broader political settlement supported by the followers of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the UN, and the U.S.
At the UN Talks on Afghanistan in Bonn, Germany, which negotiated the agreements governing the political transition in Afghanistan, U.S. and Iranian envoys James Dobbins and Javad Zarif cooperated closely on all major issues. Zarif supported efforts to frustrate Rabbani's goal of preventing the meeting from reaching agreement in the hope of consolidating his own power and forestalling formation of a broader government. Zarif's last-minute intervention with the Northern Alliance delegation chair, Yunus Qanuni, convinced the latter to reduce the number of cabinet posts he demanded in the interim administration.
The U.S. and Iran jointly insisted that the Bonn agreement contain a timetable for national elections and require the Afghan administration to cooperate in the fight against terrorism and drugs. Dobbins had to overcome resistance from hard-liners in the Department of Defense in order to cooperate with Iran, but his brief from Secretary of State Colin Powell enabled him to do so. Zarif, affiliated with the reformist trend of President Muhammad Khatami, may similarly have had to overcome resistance. In informal conversation, where I was present as a member of the UN delegation, U.S. diplomats told the Iranians that other issues prevented broader cooperation; the Iranians replied by asking to discuss all issues between the two countries.
The Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs regarded these events as an opportunity to increase cooperation with the U.S. from Afghanistan to a wider set of issues. Dobbins reports that Iranian officials later offered to work under U.S. command to assist in building the Afghan National Army. U.S.-Iranian cooperation in building the Afghan security forces would have constituted a major investment in realignment to the detriment of Pakistan, whose military counted on monopolizing the role as the U.S.'s intermediaries with Afghanistan as leverage to assure the U.S.-Pakistan military supply relationship.
The Bush administration, however, rejected the initiative. Instead, it charged Iran with "harboring" an Afghan opposition figure and Islamist leader, Gulbiddin Hekmatyar, who was supported by U.S. aid to the mujahidin in the 1980s, and who had sought refuge in Tehran after having been abandoned by Pakistan for the Taliban in 1995. Iran expelled him. U.S. officials also charged that Iran was establishing influence in Herat, which would be somewhat akin to accusing the U.S. of exercising influence over northern Mexico. Additionally, the U.S. alleged that members of al-Qaida had taken refuge in Iran. Some may have done so with the collaboration of local IRGC commanders, but the overwhelming fact was that the surviving core leadership of al-Qaida all made its way to Pakistan, where their logistics and networks had been based and where they remained.
Afghan in the Middle
President Bush signaled decisively that cooperation in Afghanistan would not lead to a broader rapprochement with Iran when he included Iran in the "Axis of Evil" in his January 2002 State of the Union speech. Subsequently he also named Pakistan as the U.S.'s closest non-NATO ally. In this, the Bush administration showed that the events of 9/11 had not at all dissuaded it from perpetuating the historic mistake of considering Afghanistan a sideshow and subordinating policy toward that country to broader strategic interests in the Persian Gulf and Middle East, above all, the conflict with Iran.
Even the revelation that Pakistan had been the main source of nuclear weapons proliferation to Iran, North Korea, and Libya, did not change the U.S. orientation. Pakistan's actual nuclear weapons and proliferation activity were considered less threatening than Iran's potential ones. The Bush administration also failed even to monitor Pakistan's activities in support of a revived Taliban and the development of a new safe haven for al-Qaida in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
The Afghan government responded to the growing threat, which it saw as mainly coming from Pakistan, by asking the U.S. to sign a Declaration for Strategic Partnership, which Presidents Karzai and Bush did in Washington in May 2005. Tehran responded by asking President Karzai to sign a declaration of strategic partnership with Iran that, among its provisions, committed Afghanistan not to permit its territory to be used for military or intelligence operations against Iran. The message was clear: Iran would accept Afghanistan's strategic partnership with the United States, but only if it is not directed against Iran.
President Karzai responded that he would like to sign such a declaration, but that his government was not in a position to prevent the United States from using its territory against Iran. The Iranians said that they knew that, but would like such a statement anyway, and that without such a declaration, President Karzai would not be welcome in Tehran for the August 2005 inauguration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. A phone call to President Karzai from a cabinet officer in Washington forbade the Afghan President from signing any such declaration or attending the inauguration. A few months later, in January 2006, another phone call forbade Karzai to travel to Tehran to sign economic agreements.
In early 2007, Washington reported that Iran had started to supply sophisticated arms to the Taliban in western Afghanistan. Iran had also increased political and military support to the former Northern Alliance, which had formed the core of the opposition National Front in parliament.
In the summer of 2007, as calls for "regime change" and a pre-emptive attack on Iran's nuclear program escalated in Washington, Tehran formally changed its policy toward the U.S. in Afghanistan. Previously, according to Iranian diplomats, Tehran's position was that even if the U.S. attacked Iran, Iran would not respond in Afghanistan. Iran's bilateral interest in stability in Afghanistan and in supporting the Karzai government as a bulwark against the Taliban and al-Qaida outweighed any advantage that would result from attacking the U.S. presence. If, however, Iran were attacked by the U.S. from Afghanistan, it might indeed respond there. Iran had opposed the mention of NATO in the January 2006 Afghanistan Compact and had called for a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops, but it had agreed to the Compact despite these objections. At an ambassadors' conference in Tehran in August 2007, however, Iranian diplomats were told that if Iran were attacked by the United States, it would respond fully against
U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, regardless of its bilateral interests in those two countries. "Afghanistan is our friend," one participant was quoted as saying, "But when your life is at stake you may have to sacrifice even your friends."
The U.S. continued to charge Iran with providing support to the Taliban, while remaining publicly silent over Pakistan's far larger support to the Taliban. Iran continued to deny such support, but even Afghan officials with no particular grudge against Iran claim that intelligence data support the contention that the Quds Force of the IRGC was supplying some IEDs and other supplies to groups fighting in Western Afghanistan. The amount supplied was sufficient to act as a warning or signal, not to change the military balance significantly. Iran clearly did not want the Taliban to win, but it did not want the U.S. to feel secure in Afghanistan either.
Iran (along with Russia and India) has also looked with skepticism on proposals to include the Taliban in any kind of a political settlement. According to Iranian diplomats, Tehran sees such ideas not as a broadening of the peace process but rather the U.S. returning to its policy of subcontracting Afghan policy to Pakistan. Such a move would be consistent with the U.S. realignment in Iraq, where the U.S. forces have armed and paid former groups of the Sunni resistance, while publicly charging Iran with destabilizing a government over which Tehran has enormous influence.
The Iranian suspicions have a basis in fact: Pakistani interlocutors often invoke the Iranian threat with Americans to convince them to eliminate the Northern Alliance from the Afghan government and strike a deal with the insurgents. There are also charges that the U.S. is using Afghanistan and Pakistan as bases for covert support to Baluch or Sunni Islamist insurgents in Iran, such as Jundullah. U.S. political leaders often issue statements naming Iran as the main state sponsor of terrorism, at the same time that U.S. intelligence agencies have unambiguously identified Pakistan, especially al-Qaida controlled parts of the FATA, as the major source of international terrorist threats.
Alternative Approaches
The U.S. government should first of all recognize privately and publicly that it has many common interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan with Iran, whatever differences it may have on other issues. During the first few years of the Afghanistan operation (through the ambassadorship of Zalmay Khalilzad, who left in 2005), the U.S. and Iran carried on regular discussions on subjects of mutual interest in Kabul. The U.S. should offer to renew such discussions with no further conditions. Several officials of the government of Iran, who may not represent the current policy, have asked to renew such talks, especially to exchange information on the threat from al-Qaida in the FATA.
There is also room for discussion on many specific issues, including counter-narcotics, economic cooperation, and border security. One issue that may require U.S.-Iranian cooperation is the need to hold a presidential election in September 2009, according to the Afghan Constitution. The security conditions are hardly conducive to such an election; even if it were held, the results are much more likely to be contested in the streets than were the results in 2004. Iran is in a position of influence with many of the leaders who might challenge President Karzai and can either aggravate or mitigate the aftermath. If the security situation worsens to the point that it may not be possible to organize a contested election, Iran's cooperation would be indispensable for convincing key leaders to accept any alternative, such as a Loya Jirga.
It is not clear what the reaction of the Iranian government would be to such offers at this point. Those in the foreign policy establishment who had cooperated with the U.S. in Afghanistan have been sidelined in the past year in favor of more hard-line figures. It may be that, while President Ahmadinejad is ideologically committed to an apocalyptic style of politics, conservative members of the Iranian establishment are more concerned with the issue of "regime change." As long as the U.S. maintains a significant level of ambiguity about its support for forcibly overthrowing or subverting the Islamic Republic, Tehran is not likely to make its common interests with the U.S. in Afghanistan (or Iraq) a higher priority than strategic opposition. The obstacle is not the willingness of the U.S. to use force (as in repeated statements by the administration and presidential candidates that "all options remain on the table"), but the objective for which force might be used: regime change.
It might well be possible to take incremental actions as confidence building measures, such as those mentioned above (open dialogue, exchange of information, operational collaboration on technical issues, including counter-narcotics interdiction). But the U.S. will not be able to determine how far it can progress on these tracks until it tries. Even small attempts will reassure the Afghan government and increase the pressure on Pakistan by threatening to remove the monopoly it holds over U.S. logistical access to Afghanistan.
There is, however, a major strategic judgment to be revisited. The military and intelligence agencies of both Pakistan and Iran have systematically used asymmetrical warfare, including terrorism, as a tool of their security policy. Which of them poses a greater threat to U.S. national interest and international peace and security? How should responses to these two threats be balanced? Since the Iranian revolution, the U.S. has overreacted to the Iranian threat and engaged in systematic appeasement of Pakistan, which is now home to the leadership of both al-Qaida and the Taliban (both Afghan and Pakistani). These countries are rivals for influence in Afghanistan and are sponsoring competing infrastructure projects for road transport and energy trade. Iran and India are building a combined rail and road link from the Iranian port of Chah Bahar to Afghanistan's major highway. Pakistan, with Chinese aid, is building the port of Gwadar in Baluchistan, aiming at a north-south route to Central Asia. "Taliban" regula
rly attack Indian road building crews in southwest Afghanistan, and Pakistan charges that India is supporting Baluch insurgents from its consulates in Afghanistan.
A reevaluation of the threats originating in Iran and Pakistan should lead to a recalibration of U.S. policy in Afghanistan to tilt away from Pakistan and more toward Iran. Yet it would be wrong and destructive to treat Pakistan with the type of enmity now reserved for Iran. Like Iran, Pakistan's policy is motivated by a combination of genuine security threats, ideological aspirations, and institutional interest. In Pakistan's more open political system, it is far easier for the U.S. to engage with allies inside the country against the security services whose covert policies the U.S. finds threatening.
Ultimately, U.S. interests would be best served by supporting efforts to extend and improve governance and security in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, thereby depriving al-Qaida and its epigones of refuge on either side of the border. Using Afghanistan as a base for anti-Iran policies handicaps the U.S. in pressing for Pakistani cooperation, thus undermining one of the country's most important strategic objectives. Of course, such recalibration will also require shifts in Iranian policy away from the path it has taken. Clearly abandoning any U.S. agenda of forcible regime change in Iran will make such a shift much more likely.
Barnett R. Rubin is Director of Studies at the Center for International Cooperation (CIC), New York University. He has written widely on Afghanistan and the region, was an advisor to Ambassador Brahimi during the Bonn conference, and consulted on the writing of Afghanistan's constitution. Sara Batmanglich is a program officer at CIC.
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ICC rewards Afghanistan's winning run with funding
Sunday October 26, 5:41 PM
KABUL (Reuters) - The International Cricket Council has pledged vital funds for Afghanistan's fledgling team after it won a tournament that could pave the way for a 2011 World Cup berth, an official said Sunday.
The international governing body made the decision last week as part of its incentive program designed to reward nations new to the sport that have shone in regional tournaments, the head of Afghanistan's Cricket Federation told Reuters.
"Based on the pledge, Afghanistan's cricket federation will receive between five to six hundred thousand dollars for the coming five years from the International Cricket Council," Allah Daad Noori said.
Afghanistan went unbeaten in two World Cup qualifying tournaments this year, the second of which was the ICC World Cricket League Division 4 in Tanzania, where they clinched a place in next January's Division 3 competition in Argentina.
The top two sides from the six nations competing there will progress to the 12-team ICC Cricket World Cup Qualifier, from which the four semi-finalists will advance to the 2011 finals.
The help from the ICC is a major boost for the Afghan team which is plagued by a shortage of funds and facilities in a country devastated by three decades of war.
Cricket is still relatively new in Afghanistan, a country which unlike neighbouring imperial India was never colonised by the British.
The growth of cricket in Afghanistan is instead an unexpected by-product of the 1980s Soviet occupation as millions of Afghans fled to Pakistan and picked up the sport in refugee camps there.
The Afghan Cricket Federation hoped to use the extra funds to develop new facilities, Noori said.
Currently, most games in Afghanistan are played in a whirl of dust on patches of waste ground, but cricket authorities have brought in soil and laid grass in an effort to create a showpiece national ground.
The success of the Afghan cricket team this year comes after the country won its first ever medal at the Beijing Olympic Games, a bronze in taekwondo.
The 2011 World Cup is being co-hosted by India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
(Editing by John O'Brien)
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