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Pakistan, Afghanistan agree on contacts with militants: official
ISLAMABAD (AFP) — Pakistan and Afghanistan have agreed to make contact with militant groups through a tribal council, an Afghan official said Tuesday, after two days of talks on tackling a Taliban-led insurgency.
Pakistan-Afghanistan meeting mulls Taliban talks
ISLAMABAD (AFP) – Pakistani and Afghan officials and tribal elders Tuesday discussed the possibility of holding talks with Taliban militants to try to end deadly violence on their porous border, officials said.
US considering talks with Taliban: report
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The United States is considering taking part in talks with elements of the Taliban in a sharp change in tactics in Afghanistan, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday citing unnamed officials.
More Afghans gloomy over country's future - survey
KABUL, Oct 28 (Reuters) - More Afghans are negative about their country's future compared with two years ago, with poor security the main factor behind the growing pessimism, a survey by U.S.-based think-tank said on Tuesday.
US: 12 Taliban Killed After Black Hawk Downed In Afghanistan
KABUL (AFP)--U.S. troops killed a dozen militants to secure a Black Hawk helicopter forced to land after coming under attack in central Afghanistan, the military said Tuesday.
Smoke from car in Afghan capital spreads blast fear
KABUL (Reuters) – Smoke from a car engine spread fears of an explosion on a road often targeted by suicide bombers in the Afghan capital on Tuesday with police saying there had been a blast.
NATO's Afghan mission needs more troops: general
The Associated Press Tuesday, October 28, 2008
LONDON: The NATO mission in Afghanistan does not have enough troops to fight the Taliban and is being hampered by high civilian casualties, a retired British army general said in an article published Tuesday.
French troops treat 1,000 Afghan men -- and one woman
by Herve Asquin – Tue Oct 28, 2:31 am ET
FORWARD BASE NIJRAB, Afghanistan (AFP) – Afghan villager Dawalat still has his leg thanks to a team of French military medics who have treated more than 1,000 local residents in the space of a few months.
In Afghanistan, the Loudest Sound Is the Clock Ticking
By GINIA BELLAFANTE The New York Times October 28, 2008
In early September Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before the House Armed Services Committee on the difficulties American forces face in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan jails SAfrican for 16 years over drugs
Tue 28 Oct 2008, 12:52 GMT
KABUL, Oct 28 (Reuters) - An Afghan court sentenced a South African man to 16 years in prison for trying to board a plane at Kabul's international airport with a bag full of heroin, the government's anti-narcotics department said on Tuesday.
More than 1,000 soldiers killed in Afghanistan since 2001
by Staff Writers
Kabul (AFP) Oct 27, 2008 - The number of foreign soldiers killed in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban regime in late 2001 has passed 1,000, according to the icasualties.org website Monday.
Economy and Unemployment Big Issues
Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce Press Release 10/27/2008
Economy and Unemployment Big Issues at Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce's Fourth Annual Business Matchmaking Conference in Washington D.C.
Making America safe for the world
By Yu Bin Asia Times Online, Hong Kong Oct 29, 2008
A specter is haunting the world, a specter of a dangerously growing gap between the United States presidential candidates' promises to make America safer on one hand, and an increasingly poorer, more unstable and more dangerous world on the other.
US, Pakistan mission on target
By Syed Saleem Shahzad Asia Times Online, Hong Kong Oct 29, 2008
KARACHI - Ahead of their groundbreaking meeting in Washington this week, the director of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Michael Hayden, and the head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)
Local aid workers in the firing line
KANDAHAR, 27 October 2008 (IRIN) - Homayun (not his real name) has grown a beard, changed the way he dresses, deleted all foreign names from his mobile, and conceals his ties to aid agencies:
Turkey willing to do more to build up Afghan forces
By Jon Hemming Mon Oct 27, 2008 2:20pm IST
KABUL (Reuters) - Turkey is willing to do more to train Afghanistan's security forces, the Turkish foreign minister said, after calls from Afghan and U.S. leaders for help to build up the army and police in their fight with Taliban insurgents.
Afghans sent home to die
Cynthia Banham Diplomatic Editor The Sidney Morning Herald / October 27, 2008
THE Immigration Minister, Chris Evans, has demanded answers to allegations up to 20 Afghan asylum seekers rejected by Australia under the Howard government's so-called Pacific solution were killed after returning
Learning English in Afghan badlands
By Bilal Sarwary BBC News, Sherzad district, eastern Afghanistan Monday, 27 October 2008
"I am a boy and you are a girl - please repeat after me," says the English language teacher.
Dostum and Akbarbai make up
Written by www.quqnoos.com Monday, 27 October 2008
Despite allegations of beatings and abduction Dostum is forgiven
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Pakistan, Afghanistan agree on contacts with militants: official
ISLAMABAD (AFP) — Pakistan and Afghanistan have agreed to make contact with militant groups through a tribal council, an Afghan official said Tuesday, after two days of talks on tackling a Taliban-led insurgency.
"We agreed that contacts should be established with the opposition in both countries, joint contacts through the jirgagai (mini-tribal council)," said Abdullah Abdullah, the leader of the Afghan side at the talks in Islamabad.
Asked to clarify whether that included the Taliban and other militant groups, Owais Ghani, the leader of the Pakistani side, said: "Yes, it includes all those who are involved in this conflict situation."
He added: "We will sit, we will talk to them, they will listen to us and we will come to some sort of solution. Without dialogue we cannot have any sort of conclusion."
The meeting of 50 officials and tribal elders from both sides of the porous Afghan-Pakistan border was a follow-up to a larger "peace jirga" held in Kabul in August 2007.
Violence has soared on both sides of the rugged frontier in recent months, with Washington and Kabul urging Islamabad to tackle militant "safe havens" in Pakistan's tribal belt from which attacks in Afghanistan are launched.
In the run-up to the meeting there was a flurry of reports that the US-backed Afghan government was in secret negotiations with top Taliban commanders in a bid to end the bloodshed.
Abdullah, a former Afghan minister, said that the mini-jirga had recommended to both governments "to deny sanctuary for the terrorists and militant elements which are a threat to all of us for both countries."
"At the same time one new recommendation of the peace jirga was to expedite the process of peace and reconciliation," he said.
The next meeting would be in Kabul in two or three months, the officials said.
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Pakistan-Afghanistan meeting mulls Taliban talks
ISLAMABAD (AFP) – Pakistani and Afghan officials and tribal elders Tuesday discussed the possibility of holding talks with Taliban militants to try to end deadly violence on their porous border, officials said.
Fifty delegates were meeting on the second day of a "mini-jirga" in Islamabad, following up from a major tribal council held in August 2007 between the two key allies in the US-led "war on terror".
In the run-up to the meeting there was a flurry of reports that the US-backed Afghan government was in secret negotiations with top Taliban commanders in a bid to end the bloodshed.
The Pakistani foreign office would not confirm details of the discussions between the delegates, who are drawn from political parties as well as from the ethnic Pashtun tribes that straddle the border.
"They are meeting in two committees which will then report to the overall meeting," foreign office spokesman Mohammad Sadiq told AFP.
But a senior Pakistani official said that they brought up the subject of talks with the Taliban, a hardline Islamist movement that ruled Afghanistan from 1996-2001 and now has roots on both sides of the border.
"There is an effort to come up with suggestions and modalities for opening talks with the Taliban," said the official, who was involved in organising the meeting but spoke under condition of anonymity.
"They are discussing what is the best way forward, whether there has been a change in the atmosphere in Pakistan and Afghanistan (that would allow talks). It is not an isolated meeting," added the official.
Violence has soared on both sides of the border in recent months, with Washington and Kabul urging Islamabad to tackle militant "safe havens" in Pakistan's tribal belt.
Pakistan has also suffered a wave of suicide attacks.
The jirga was expected to appoint five delegates from each country to establish contact and hold peace talks with "armed opposition groups," The News daily reported.
Sources within the council did not confirm the numbers involved, but told AFP they would form a group that would be sanctioned by the Afghan and Pakistani militaries and governments to "engage the Taliban in serious negotiations for finding a peaceful solution."
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US considering talks with Taliban: report
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The United States is considering taking part in talks with elements of the Taliban in a sharp change in tactics in Afghanistan, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday citing unnamed officials.
"Senior White House and military officials believe that engaging some levels of the Taliban -- while excluding top leaders -- could help reverse a pronounced downward spiral in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan," the paper said on its website.
The report said the new approach was contained in a draft recommendation in a classified White House assessment of US strategy in Afghanistan. Talks would be led by the Afghan government, "but with the active participation of the US," it said.
The final White House recommendation is expected next month after the US presidential elections, the report said.
Earlier this month, Afghan officials met with former members of the Taliban government in talks in Saudi Arabia.
The Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan has grown steadily despite the presence of tens of thousands of international troops helping the Afghan security forces. There is consensus that the violence will not be ended solely through military means.
The Taliban ruled from 1996-2001 using a restrictive and extremist interpretation of Islam before being overthrown by US-led forces.
On October 8, General David Petraeus, incoming head of the US Central Command, said that attempts were being made to open talks with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Petraeus used a similar approach in Iraq, where a US drive to enlist Sunni tribes in the fight against Al-Qaeda in Iraq helped sharply reduce the country's violence.
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More Afghans gloomy over country's future - survey
KABUL, Oct 28 (Reuters) - More Afghans are negative about their country's future compared with two years ago, with poor security the main factor behind the growing pessimism, a survey by U.S.-based think-tank said on Tuesday.
Violence in Afghanistan has spiralled since 2005 as Afghan and international forces are locked in daily battles with Taliban insurgents trying to overthrow the Western-backed government and to expel the 65,000 foreign soldiers from the country.
Around 4,000 people, a third of them civilians, have been killed as a result of the conflict this year alone.
A survey conducted by the Asia Foundation (AF) this summer, found that while more people see their country heading in the right direction than the wrong one, the number of Afghans who are positive about their future has decreased steadily since 2006.
"Though the overall mood of the country continues to be optimistic, there has been a clear trend towards greater pessimism over the last two years," the AF said in its report.
"The proportion of respondents saying that the country is moving in the right direction has declined steadily," it said.
The survey is the fourth one conducted by the AF in Afghanistan and was aimed at gauging public opinion on government and development-related issues. More than 6,500 Afghans were interviewed from all 34 of the country's provinces.
POLARISED
Insecurity, particularly threats of violence as opposed to actual experiences of hostility, was the main cause influencing negative opinions, the AF said.
While people in some areas reported improvements in security, others living in the south of the country and in the capital Kabul said security had steadily deteriorated.
"The survey finds that in 2008 the security situation in Afghanistan is becoming more polarised, with respondents in some places feeling secure most of the time and others experiencing relatively constant levels of insecurity," the AF said.
While violence has spread to previously relatively peaceful areas in the last year, most of the fighting occurs in the largely Pashtun southern and eastern areas of the country.
Kabul has also seen its share of violence with insurgents launching several large-scale attacks, including a suicide bombing on the Indian embassy in July in the heart of the city which killed some 58 people, nearly all of them civilians.
Other factors influencing people's opinions participating in the survey surrounded the slow pace of development. Unemployment, poor access to electricity and water, lack of roads and public services were listed as the main problems.
Afghanistan is one of the very poorest countries in the world and average life expectancy at birth is only 44 years.
Unemployment is around 40 percent. Many people in the capital have less than an hour of electricity a day while most rural areas have no access to electricity at all.
(Editing by Valerie Lee)
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US: 12 Taliban Killed After Black Hawk Downed In Afghanistan
KABUL (AFP)--U.S. troops killed a dozen militants to secure a Black Hawk helicopter forced to land after coming under attack in central Afghanistan, the military said Tuesday.
The chopper had to land on Monday in Wardak province, adjoining Kabul, after a rocket-propelled grenade struck the tail, the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan said in a statement.
The 10 crew were extracted safely, but troops responding to the incident also came under attack.
"Coalition forces responded, initially killing five militants," it said.
They were engaged by more militants.
"Coalition forces again responded, killing seven more militants and detaining one."
The aircraft was recovered and taken to a nearby base of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.
Afghanistan's fight against insurgents from the Taliban - a conservative Islamic group that was in government between 1996 and 2001 - has grown more intense in recent years with attacks increasing.
There are roughly 60,000-70,000 international soldiers in the country helping Afghan forces fight the rebels.
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Smoke from car in Afghan capital spreads blast fear
KABUL (Reuters) – Smoke from a car engine spread fears of an explosion on a road often targeted by suicide bombers in the Afghan capital on Tuesday with police saying there had been a blast.
But police officials and Reuters witnesses at the scene said the thick cloud of smoke had been caused by a car with engine problems. Crowds gathered round the vehicle thinking there had been a suicide bomb.
The incident occurred on a road leading east from the city and close to several bases used by foreign troops. Troops often travel up and down the road and have been targeted by Taliban suicide bombers there several times in the past.
(Reporting by Sayed Salahuddin; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)
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NATO's Afghan mission needs more troops: general
The Associated Press Tuesday, October 28, 2008
LONDON: The NATO mission in Afghanistan does not have enough troops to fight the Taliban and is being hampered by high civilian casualties, a retired British army general said in an article published Tuesday.
General Sir Michael Rose, once one of Britain's most senior officers, said the war against the Taliban was slowly being won but difficulties securing remote areas and high civilian casualties could undo the mission.
"There are simply not enough combat troops to carry out all the necessary tasks if momentum against the Taliban is to be maintained," he wrote in the journal of the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based defense and security think tank.
He said British troops in Afghanistan had increased from 1,000 in 2003 to 8,000 in 2008 but was still not enough to secure the restive Helmand province in the southwest of the country. The province, a Taliban stronghold, is one of the most dangerous regions of Afghanistan.
Rose, who commanded the U.N. protection force in Bosnia in 1994, said Afghanistan's new government was still struggling with corruption.
"During a visit to Kabul, I was constantly assured that the President himself is not corrupt; nevertheless, he presides over a government that is undoubtedly riddled with corruption," he wrote.
"Money that is destined for civil projects is frequently diverted into bank accounts abroad and where money is spent on civil reconstruction, projects often benefit the warlords rather than the population in general."
His words echo comments made earlier this month by Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith departing commander of British forces in Helmand province, who said more forces were needed to contain the insurgency in Afghanistan.
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French troops treat 1,000 Afghan men -- and one woman
by Herve Asquin – Tue Oct 28, 2:31 am ET
FORWARD BASE NIJRAB, Afghanistan (AFP) – Afghan villager Dawalat still has his leg thanks to a team of French military medics who have treated more than 1,000 local residents in the space of a few months.
But only one of the patients at the field clinic, located at the Nijrab base northeast of Kabul, was a woman.
The rigours of religion and culture in Afghanistan mean that it is unthinkable for a woman to be examined by a man, creating unique challenges for the French team.
"The only one was so terrified that I had to hold her hand," recalls a female second lieutenant who was called in to help out the all-male squad.
"She even wanted me to do the treatment myself," says Aurelie, who cannot reveal her full name under French military regulations.
"It is true that we do not see women, but one cannot change the mentality of a country overnight," adds the chief doctor, a lieutenant colonel who can only give his name as Bruno.
The patients at the Nijrab base -- located about 60 kilometres (37 miles) northeast of Kabul at the confluence of the secluded Afghania, Nijrab and Tagabare valleys -- are therefore men and children.
There are two medical stations here, staffed by three doctors, three nurses and about a dozen first aid workers.
Their primary mission is to provide medical care to 500 French soldiers deployed as reinforcements to NATO-led contingents in Kapisa province, which is seeing growing levels of insurgent activity.
But at one of the stations, under a khaki tent marked with red crosses on a white background, the French medics treat Afghan soldiers and civilians from the area -- including insurgents.
"In early August, some wounded struck by shrapnel or bullets arrived a few hours after a clash in the valley," says Bruno.
"Identified as insurgents, they were treated and then taken in by coalition security forces -- everyone has to do their job."
But Bruno emphasises that such a situation -- international troops treating the very insurgents they are here to fight -- is rare.
"Normally the insurgents treat their wounded themselves and take them to neighbouring Pakistan," he says.
Medic Jean-Paul is on duty when Dawalat comes in for a check-up on a double fracture to his lower leg.
The first plaster -- applied by a local clinic -- was too tight and the bones were not properly set, causing Dawalat such discomfort that he had come to the French medical team.
"The scar is beautiful but we have to clean the whole thing up and redo the plaster," Jean-Paul says.
The 23-year-old could have lost his leg had the doctors not stabilised him and evacuated him to Kabul for a vital operation. Now he is recovering nicely.
The next patient is Hafiza, a four-year-old girl in a red dress with big black eyes who has an abscess on her cheek. To distract her during her treatment, one nurse makes soap bubbles, while another offers her sweets.
"Yesterday there was a small baby from a very modest family who was dehydrated and suffering from diarrhoea. The father brought us a bag of nuts," says Jean-Paul.
In a country which has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world, this kind of basic care takes on vital importance.
Since the beginning of the year, French medical teams in Afghanistan have given 5,800 consultations.
Besides the humanitarian aspect, says the chief doctor Bruno, the consultations "also allow the international force to be better accepted, which contributes to the process of securing the region."
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In Afghanistan, the Loudest Sound Is the Clock Ticking
By GINIA BELLAFANTE The New York Times October 28, 2008
In early September Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before the House Armed Services Committee on the difficulties American forces face in Afghanistan. “It is my professional opinion that no amount of troops, in no amount of time, can ever achieve all the objectives we seek in Afghanistan,” he said. “Frankly, we’re running out of time.”
To watch “The War Briefing,” a “Frontline” documentary to be shown on Tuesday on most PBS stations, is to feel vividly the ticking of the clock.
Rigorously reported and somberly produced, “The War Briefing” is both a diagrammatic explanation of everything that has gone wrong over the past few years and a grim visual tour of a landscape that nature itself seems to have made impervious to the ambitions of outside occupiers. Factually the film reprises recent news reports (and includes commentary by journalists like Dexter Filkins of The New York Times) but at the same time it palpably delivers a sense of our narrowing options.
The film begins with “Frontline” reporters embedded with the Bravo Company, an Army unit battling assaults nearly every day in the Korengal River valley in northeastern Afghanistan. The territory is so vast, rugged and labyrinthine that Churchill, traveling with the British Army as a reporter in 1897, wrote it off as unconquerable. Soldiers live the horror and frustration of the maze, often unable to see the enemy.
“You can’t really pinpoint them,” one soldier says. “You just got to keep on scanning, keep your head on a swivel.”
The chilling effect of “The War Briefing” is to make American efforts in Afghanistan seem at once essential and futile, at least within the next few years. Military resources have been diverted from the war in Iraq — a country smaller than Afghanistan with four times the number of troops — but while both presidential candidates have committed to sending more forces to Afghanistan, commanders and analysts tell “Frontline” that extra support alone won’t sufficiently reduce violence or curtail the growth of terrorist strongholds in the region.
The government of President Hamid Karzai has been weak and largely ineffectual in expanding infrastructure and economic opportunity, the documentary points out. The border with Pakistan is porous and unmanageable, and it is in the tribal regions of Pakistan where Al Qaeda sanctuaries are thriving. Footage of the tribal violence in the border territory is gruesome (the results of a beheading are in full view) and more harrowing still, given the absence of bloody images of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as regular features of the evening news.
Moreover, the film makes it clear that seemingly sound tactical strategies in Afghanistan have only had the effect of belying larger goals. The terrain has made a heavy ground war next to impossible. But the air strikes mean heightened civilian casualties that, in turn, breed distrust, which makes necessary humanitarian efforts harder to achieve. “I don’t think that even the little kids like us,” one American soldier says in the film. “We try to help them out.”
The past year has been the deadliest yet for coalition forces in Afghanistan since the American-led invasion in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Emboldened by a flourishing opium trade, Taliban fighters have regrouped with the aid of Arab, Chechen and Uzbek militants traveling to the Afghan-Pakistani border and guiding the Taliban in advanced command strategies. And suicide bombings and roadside killings have increased, making once reasonably safe parts of the country outside Kabul now unviable.
As Michael Scheuer, a news analyst formerly with the C.I.A., puts it in the film: “We now have a country that’s infested with everything from the Taliban and Al Qaeda on the insurgency side, to bandits and warlords and narcotics traffickers. So you’re really fighting a beast with 100 heads.” And apparently we are fighting it with fewer than a handful of swords.
FRONTLINE
The War Briefing
On most PBS stations on Tuesday night (check local listings).
Produced by Frontline with RainMedia Inc. Written by Marcela Gaviria and Martin Smith; Ms. Gaviria, producer; Will Cohen, co-producer. For Frontline: WBGH Boston, producer; David Fanning, executive producer.
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Afghanistan jails SAfrican for 16 years over drugs
Tue 28 Oct 2008, 12:52 GMT
KABUL, Oct 28 (Reuters) - An Afghan court sentenced a South African man to 16 years in prison for trying to board a plane at Kabul's international airport with a bag full of heroin, the government's anti-narcotics department said on Tuesday.
Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of opium, the raw ingredient of heroin, with more land under drug cultivation than Colombia, Bolivia and Peru combined, the United Nations says.
Taliban militants partly fund their insurgency against Western troops and the Afghan government by taxing opium farmers and traffickers.
While many low-level traffickers have been convicted on drug smuggling charges, many more are able to slip drugs across Afghanistan's porous borders to reach Western markets. Smuggling drugs through the airport is far less common.
"A South African man was arrested when he tried to board a plane with nearly 6 kg (13 lb) of heroin inside two bottles of bodybuilding powder," Sareer Barmak, communications director for the government's Criminal Justice Task Force (CJTF), told Reuters.
"He has now been sentenced to 16 years in prison," he said.
The man was arrested last year but was only sentenced this week. He denied the charges, saying he had not known what was inside the bottles and was carrying them for a friend in South Africa who has since been arrested there, said Barmak.
"This kind of conviction will have a definite effect on other foreigners who are working in Afghanistan ... that there is no way for them to transport drugs outside Afghanistan," he said.
Western nations with troops fighting the Taliban have criticised the Afghan government and judiciary for failing to arrest and prosecute the drug barons who control the trade.
But some higher level drug traffickers have also been arrested in the past few weeks, said Barmak, including a police commander for the main highway north of the capital and an intelligence official.
"These are examples that we are serious in stopping drug trafficking in Afghanistan," said Barmak.
But arresting people was not the only solution, he said. More needed to be done to stop drug cultivation. (Writing by Jonathon Burch; Editing by Paul Tait)
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More than 1,000 soldiers killed in Afghanistan since 2001
by Staff Writers
Kabul (AFP) Oct 27, 2008 - The number of foreign soldiers killed in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban regime in late 2001 has passed 1,000, according to the icasualties.org website Monday.
International soldiers arrived in Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban and have remained to track down Taliban and other insurgents and help to rebuild the war-ravaged country.
The independent site, which tracks casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq in the absence of an official collation, said Monday 1,002 soldiers involved in the campaign in Afghanistan have lost their lives.
This includes two coalition troops killed in a suicide bombing in the northern province of Baghlan Monday. A third international soldier died after a bombing in the west the same day.
There are about 33,000 US soldiers in the campaign in Afghanistan, making up about half of the international forces here. Since 2001, the force has lost 624 troops in combat or accidents, according to icasualties.
About 121 British troops have been killed, as well as 97 Canadians, according to the defence ministries of both nations.
Others included in the death toll are: 30 German soldiers, 23 French, 16 Dutch, 16 Danes, 13 Italians and eight Poles.
The majority of troops killed in Afghanistan died in bomb blasts, mostly "improvised explosive devices".
The number of soldiers killed in the first 10 months of this year, at 253 according to icasualties, is well beyond the total of 237 for the whole of 2007.
With the rise in fatalities, Afghanistan is rapidly surpassing Iraq as the most dangerous battlefield in the US-led "war on terror".
In May more foreign soldiers were killed in Afghanistan than Iraq, even though the number of international troops here is about half.
But overall, Iraq is by far the deadliest battleground with more than 4,500 international soldiers killed since the March 2003 invasion, 4,180 of them Americans.
There are close to 70,000 foreign soldiers in Afghanistan, more than 50,000 of them in a NATO-led force drawn from 40 countries and the remainder in the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom campaign.
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Economy and Unemployment Big Issues
Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce Press Release 10/27/2008
Economy and Unemployment Big Issues at Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce's Fourth Annual Business Matchmaking Conference in Washington D.C.
WASHINGTON - The Afghan economy, employment and their relationship to successfully ending the conflict in Afghanistan was the major issue discussed at the U.S.-Afghan Business Matchmaking Conference presented by the Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce (AACC) on October 20, 21 and 22 in Washington, D.C.
The Conference was opened by Ambassador Sayed Tayeb Jawad of Afghanistan, who spoke of great progress amidst the difficulties of insurgency and poppy cultivation that his country has made in the past seven years. He presented the many opportunities for investment in key sectors of the Afghan economy while recognizing the need for continued reform in the rules and regulations required by a growing market economy.
Mr. Sayed "Aziz" Azimi, presented data showing enormous economic growth yet "the primary reason for many Afghans losing confidence in the future can be summed up in one word, unemployment and that only the private sector and not government can produce the necessary jobs to compete with employment in terrorism and narcotics."
"Over 99% of our work force is Afghan and we have encouraged other Afghans to form their own companies to meet Ti's subcontracting needs," Azimi said. "Under this model, the maximum percentage of aid money remains in Afghanistan and this money works to develop the desperately needed skilled Afghan workforce," he continued.
Azimi is the founder and CEO of a successful engineering and construction firm, Technologists, Inc. (Ti), and was selected by AACC's Board of Directors as its Businessperson of the Year. He was presented with the award during the conference dinner and ceremony at the Willard Intercontinental Hotel.
Dr. Ashraf Ghani, co-author of the book, "Fixing Failed States," addressing over 250 conference attendees at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, said that Afghanistan has an abundance of money and natural resources but they are not being sufficiently harnessed in the form of capital investment. He stated that "harnessing these latent assets would require agreed upon rules of the game for both the public and private sectors, separating the roles of the market and the state."
Sherkahn Farnood, Chairman of the Kabul Bank and also Chairman of the newly merged Afghan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) stated that "seventeen banks are now operating in Afghanistan, while during Taliban times there were only two State-owned banks with very limited services." He spoke of the delivery of modern banking and lending services offered by his and other banks in a critical sector which has markedly boosted private business in Afghanistan.
President of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), Robert Mosbacher, spoke of OPIC's substantial financial commitment to Afghanistan and the multitude of business projects they have financed. Recognizing the country's need for vastly expanded electric power, he spoke of the potential for independent power producers playing a key role in the country's energy supply. He focused on a creating the business and regulatory environment to bring those investors and producers to Afghanistan.
U.N. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad speaking at the conference's award ceremony and dinner said, "Development of the private sector is of paramount importance in order to provide the younger generation with hope and economic freedom. Americans are united in their commitment to Afghanistan. But to sustain international support, Afghans need to take ownership of issues and help the international community help Afghanistan."
"AACC prides itself on facilitating U.S. and Afghan companies' engagement with each other to do business in a manner that will help build the market economy and sustainable jobs for the people of Afghanistan. As a direct result of this year's matchmaking conference, at least 25 new business relationships are under development," said AACC President Atiq Panjshiri.
This annual event convenes U.S. and Afghan leaders from the private and public sectors to promote the role of business development in Afghanistan's reconstruction and emerging economy. It is the largest yearly gathering that brings together American and Afghan business representatives to discuss business and investment opportunities and joint ventures. More than 250 leading representatives of U.S. and Afghan corporations, educational and development organizations, and government agencies participated. Officials of the Afghanistan Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Afghan Business Council of Dubai accompanied a delegation of companies from Afghanistan and Dubai that are active in sectors such as banking, import-export, construction, mining and energy and agribusiness.
Sessions on the "private sector role in Afghan economic development;" "the roles of business and government in stabilization;" "financing and insuring investment;" "development of Afghanistan's mineral, energy and power assets;" "construction & infrastructure opportunities;" and "agriculture and food processing" were conducted. The conference was complemented by an informational trade fair, showcasing companies and organizations based in the U.S. and Afghanistan as well as resources available from U.S. Government agencies.
A major highlight of the conference, held on the second day, was the "Presidential Dialogue on Afghanistan" featuring expert campaign advisors of the two U.S. presidential candidates, Senator John McCain and Senator Barak Obama. Lorne Craner, President of the International Republican Institute (IRI) and former McCain Senate staffer, spoke for McCain and Jonah Blank, the top Senate Committee Staffer represented Foreign Relations Committee Chairman and VP Candidate, Joe Biden. The representatives answered questions from conference attendees and members of the community at large on their candidates' positions on development, security, the economy, governance, Pakistan and more.
AACC Board Chairman Ajmal Ghani A., Master of Ceremonies for the two-plus day event, noted that "the conference strives to provide a platform for open and balanced discussion about doing business in Afghanistan and how to continue the substantial progress in the development of Afghanistan's institutions and economy. We see the expansion of employment through the private sector as the key to sustaining Afghanistan's recovery."
The Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce (AACC) is the leading organization facilitating U.S.-Afghan business, investment, and trade ties. AACC serves the interests of its members through its programs, advocates for a free and open market economy in Afghanistan, and endeavors to strengthen U.S.-Afghan business and economic relations. AACC is a growing organization, bringing together companies, organizations, and individuals with a stake in helping Afghanistan succeed by developing opportunities in the emerging Afghan economy. For more information, visit www.a-acc.org.
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Making America safe for the world
By Yu Bin Asia Times Online, Hong Kong Oct 29, 2008
A specter is haunting the world, a specter of a dangerously growing gap between the United States presidential candidates' promises to make America safer on one hand, and an increasingly poorer, more unstable and more dangerous world on the other.
Six years after the Bush Doctrine of pre-emption made its debut, America's "war on terror" remains open-ended (now in three separate theaters of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan). As the financial tsunami - made in the US - is leaving no nation behind, both America and the world are far less secure than before.
Meanwhile, America is losing influence both among its friends and foes.
In a globalized world, it is almost impossible, certainly inconceivable, and perhaps even dangerous for the United States to achieve its own security while much of the rest of the world is in chaos. The next president of the United States, therefore, will have to narrow, if not close, this security-insecurity gap, not just for the sake of others, but for the US's own interests.
9/11 and American protracted war
Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, French president Jacques Chirac declared, "Today, we are all Americans." Russian president Vladimir Putin was the first to call President George W Bush to promise his support. This was followed by the call from Chinese president Jiang Zemin.
For a while, America had a great chance to turn the world’s sympathy and cooperation into real political and strategic assets. This, however, quickly evaporated in early 2003 when the Bush administration rushed to war with Iraq, even if Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. A few months after the Iraq invasion, even Bush reluctantly admitted that there was no evidence showing Saddam’s "connection" with al-Qaeda. In retrospect, a combination of missionary zeal, intelligence manipulation and solipsism - the inability to even conceive of another way of looking at the world - produced the fateful combination of preemptive and missionary impulses that propelled the US into Iraq in 2003.
While American politicians are competing to support troops, there has been a remarkable absence of any discussion of the Iraqi casualties. Outside the US, the Iraqi government counted 100,000-150,000 Iraqi deaths by November 2006. Their finding was supported by the New England Journal of Medicine in January 2008. A 2006 survey of Iraqi households in the British medical journal Lancet, however, suggested the war had led to 655,000 Iraqis deaths by July 2006. In September 2007, a survey published by United Kingdom-based polling agency Opinion Research Business suggested up to 1.2 million people might have died because of the conflict. [1] Iraq, as a result, has become the bloodiest democratizing enterprise ever in world history.
While Iraq is in ruins, Afghanistan is devastated beyond recognition. By the time the American military was shock-and-awing the Iraqis, Afghanistan had already suffered 1.8 million casualties, 2.6 million refugees, and 10 million unexploded land mines. [2] Seven years after the Taliban were removed from power, the nation produces only two products: heroin and terrorists. Now the Taliban are making a comeback and are able to stage complex and effective offensive operations, even near the capital city of Kabul. In August, 10 French paratroopers were killed by a 100-strong Taliban force near Kabul. Two months later, 300 French paratroopers hastily retreated from the same place where 10 of their comrades died for fear of being trapped by a much bigger Taliban force. In early October, Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, the senior British commander in Afghanistan, declared that the war in Afghanistan is unwinnable. Meanwhile, the British government is looking for a political settlement. [3]
Both Afghanistan and Iraq are now devastated by years of warfare. The mighty American military, too, is dangerously overstretched. Financially, the price tag for the Iraqi and Afghan wars is fast approaching US$1 trillion, while victory is still out of sight. Without a comprehensive approach, including political reconciliation, diplomatic compromise and economic reconstruction, military means alone are of limited utility. At a minimum, the continuous presence of foreign troops in those nations is likely to breed more grievances and anti-Western and anti-American sentiments, which are the best recruiting tools for terrorist groups.
A war still to be won ...
This grim and deteriorating prospect of the Bush "war on terror", however, does not seem to factor into the current presidential race in America. While the Bush administration is bargaining hard with the Iraqi government to perpetuate the US military presence in Iraq, Republican Senator John McCain is still talking about an elusive and ill-defined "victory". Democratic Senator Obama, though showing sounder judgment and preferring a faster drawdown of American forces in Iraq, has yet to offer a blueprint for the Iraqis. His preoccupation is to divert American forces from Iraq to Afghanistan, where the Taliban and al-Qaeda are making a real surge.
Despite the obvious differences between McCain and Obama regarding the tactics for the "war on terror", both prefer to expand the war in the Afghanistan-Pakistani border area, a place even the British stayed away from during colonial times. The difference between them is whether to take unilateralist military actions into the tribal areas (Obama's position) or to work with the Pakistani government for joint military action (McCain). For better or worse, the Bush administration is taking the Obama approach by dispatching special units and unmanned Predator drones to this area. The mounting civilian casualties are now dangerously destabilizing Pakistan.
On his campaign trail, Obama has repeatedly claimed credit for Bush’s new strategy in Pakistan. He insists that his strategy aims to kill Osama bin Laden, who is believed to be hiding in this mountainous area. In so doing, Obama is paradoxically getting very close to Bush’s "one-bullet" solution in the early days of the Afghan war, when Bush wanted to get the super terrorist, "live or dead".
There is no question that Bin Laden is both the symbol and mastermind of the anti-American terrorism. His capture remains a worthy goal for Washington. The sources of terrorism, however, are far more complicated and extensive than the one-bullet solution can cope with. Eliminating this super terrorist may even unleash those various and widely scattered terror "cells" that are still loosely and spiritually connected with him.
For both candidates, the "war on terror" will have to be won or significant gains must be achieved. Neither for the moment seems willing to accept that the US may have to live with a certain level of terrorism, as the rest of the world does. That option is tantamount to defeat, which is simply unacceptable.
Forty-four years ago, the same fateful "all-or-nothing" approach took America to Vietnam where 60,000 Americans and about 2 million Vietnamese perished. Obama’s unilateralist recipe for Pakistan, therefore, is naive, if not dangerous, for a volatile region of South and Central Asia where all of the world's civilizations - Islam, Christianity, Hinduism and Confucianism - converge and became nuclearized by the end of the past century. America's "war on terror", with all of its good intentions, allows very little margin for error in the age of weapons of mass destruction.
'Good old days' ahead?
If the current race and voting run their own course, the Democrats will get the next four years. Their approaching victory will have at least been contributed to by the huge mistakes made by the Bush administration, whose approval rate is now down to the 20s. The rest of the world has already cast its vote to the more liberal, intellectual, multilateral and cosmopolitan Obama, according to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof in his October 23 piece.
Such an expectation may be premature.
A few years ago, a long-time realist in American policy and academia lamented that American foreign policy is always "in quest of the magic, all-purpose formula" at the expense of "ideological subtlety and long-range strategy ... That drives American foreign policy toward unilateral and occasionally bullying conduct" with "a take-it-or-leave-it prescription, the operational equivalent of an ultimatum."
It would certainly not be surprising to hear such words about the Bush administration after 9/11 outside America, particularly from Europe. Even McCain is now desperately distancing himself from Bush. Yet, strange though it might seem to some, this assessment of American foreign policy is about president Bill Clinton's time. The author is Henry Kissinger, whose book, Does America Need a Foreign Policy? was published 95 days before 9/11. The book targets the liberal internationalist/interventionist policies of Clinton, many of whose foreign and defense team are now advising Obama.
Kissinger argues that both the left and right of the American foreign policy spectrum are heavily influenced by the Jacksonist black-white and "all-or-nothing" approach to foreign policy (pp 245-8). While the liberalist left treats foreign policy as a "social policy" with America as the ultimate arbitrator of domestic evolutions all over the world; the conservative right believes that the solution to the world's ills is American hegemony. Result: both the attitude of missionary rectitude of the left and the overplay of power of the right lead to a strange outcome. That is, the world's most powerful state does not have a working foreign policy (pp 19-20, 30).
Kissinger traced the sources of such a phenomenon to America's prevailing moralistic worldview, ubiquitous American exceptionalism (p 27), an educational system that puts little emphasis on history (p 30), the almost religious belief of the "manifest destiny" (p 240), and average Americans' indifference to foreign policy and international affairs (p 18). Kissinger is particularly critical about the poor quality of the American media, which are transforming foreign policy into a subdivision of public entertainment:
The intense competition for ratings produces an obsession with the crisis of the moment, generally presented as a morality play between good and evil having a specific outcome and rarely in terms of the long-range challenges of history. As soon as the flurry of excitement has subsided, the media move on to new sensations. (p 27)
Kissinger's call for a genuine foreign policy was not out of nowhere. A 2002 study by the US Congressional Research Service shows that the average US overt use of military force under the Clinton administration increased more than five times to eight instances per year, as compared to 1.15 per year during the Cold War (1945-91), [4] or the "long peace" according to John Gaddis (1989). This longest stability of the century was not only relative to the first half of the 20th century, but also to the post-Cold War decades when US power is unchallenged, unbalanced and without self-restraint.
The disturbingly ignorant, arrogant and reckless foreign policy under Clinton was perhaps not the first instance in US history. In this regard, George Kennan, America’s prominent scholar-diplomat, had this to say in 1950 about America:
… I sometimes wonder whether in this respect a democracy is not uncomfortably similar to one of those prehistoric monsters with a body as long as this room and a brain the size of a pin: he lies there in his comfortable primeval mud and pays little attention to his environment; he is slow to wrath - in fact, you practically have to whack his tail off to make him aware that his interests are being disturbed; but, once he grasps this, he lays about him with such blind determination that he not only destroys his adversary but largely wrecks his native habitat. You wonder whether it would not have been wiser for him to have taken a little more interest in what was going on at an earlier date and to have seen whether he could not have prevented some of these situations from arising instead of proceeding from an undiscriminating indifference to a holy wrath equally undiscriminating. [5]
Kennan's pessimism about the possibility of America's mismanaging world affairs came at a time when the US emerged from World War II as the world's most powerful nation and when he was increasingly dismayed by the more ideologically driven policies of the United States.
Back to the "good old" Clinton times, "A nation reaps what it sows," stated Chalmers Johnson in his remarkable book, Blowback, published a year before 9/11. 2600 years ago, Confucius told his disciples not to do things to others if they did
not want others to do the same thing to them. Indeed, "long before George W Bush became president ... America has been turning in on itself to a point which is self-destructive," wrote British journalist Jonathan Power three days after 9/11. Clintonism of the yester-years, therefore, may not be as harmless as it appears.
From multilateralism, bilateralism to unilateralist and back to what?
When Americans cast their votes next week, the man to live in the White House for the next four years will find the world outside the United States may be less hospitable toward, less respecting for, and even less dependent on the world's strongest power. For the new guard in the White House, such a prospect will be discouraging, though not wholly unanticipated. It is a beginning, however, to search for a different path for the security of America and the world, away from not only the Bush administration, but also from the legacies of the past 100 years when the US first took the world stage.
In the past century, America has experimented with at least three different approaches for its own security: Wilsonian multilateralism, Cold War bilateralism and Bush's unilateralism. Of the three, only Wilson's collective security was designed to offer equal security to both America and other powers. Wilson's idealism, however, was short-lived. On the eve of the US entrance into World War I, president Woodrow Wilson vowed to make the world safe for democracy. The "war to end all wars", ironically, was the beginning of a four-year carnage. Worse, it unleashed all the "evils" of the 20th century for Western liberalism: Russian Bolshevikism, German Nazism, Japanese militarism and Chinese communism. The rest was history.
Washington reluctantly accepted the Cold War bilateral security largely because Moscow reached military parity with the US. America's own security, therefore, required the recognition of the security of its strategic and ideological opponent. The US, however, was never comfortable with the principle of balance of "terror", which was the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). As soon as the Cold War was over, Washington lost no time in expanding the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and dismantling the foundations of arms control treaties with Russia.
Meanwhile, without the balance of Western communism, both liberalism and neo-conservatism in the US are working to project American power, value and influence around the world as if there is no tomorrow. The hallmark of the Clinton Doctrine was to democratize others according to the "Democracy-peace" theory perfected by American political science.
Those who see the full picture of the democracy-peace discourse understand the pitfalls of overplaying principles of self-determination. Scholars and historians have repeatedly shown that young democracies are perhaps the most aggressive political systems. This includes the Weimar Republic and the Japanese Taisho democracy before Nazism and militarism consumed them. One should add the newly democratized Georgia that initiated the recent conflict with Russia. Fareed Zakaria, former managing editor of Foreign Affairs, warned as early as 1997 that the challenge for the 21st century was "to make democracy safe for the world". [6] (Emphasis added.)
There is perhaps nothing wrong with democracy as a political system that evolved from Western history and culture. It deserves both respect and serious consideration by others. Indiscriminantly imposing democracy anywhere and anytime, however, amounts to a doctor prescribing Viagra to all patients, regardless of their age, gender and symptoms. Ultimately, it may blowback against one's own interests.
Meanwhile, the search for security by the United States has largely become one-way traffic, in which the US frequently resorts to the unilateral use of force without adequate consideration of the other side.
Make America safe for the world
In retrospect, only the bilateral security of the Cold War seems to be the "lesser evil". Such a prospect, however, almost does not exist as neither Europe nor China is willing to balance the US. The task for the new US president for a sound and effective foreign policy lies squarely in the hands of the new White House resident, who must lead a power of global reach like the United States with global vision and responsibility, not just those of America.
When Kissinger deplored the lack of a foreign policy during the Clinton administration, he asked if the US was to lead the world instead of turning it into an empire. Kissinger asked a right question, but not enough. The real question is not whether the US should lead the world or not, but how the US will lead. Indeed, a fair, legitimate and effective leadership should emerge, or be earned. Alternatively, it may be imposed, self-claimed, but cannot be requested.
For a genuine world leader, the question is how to work with others, particularly those nations and peoples with different cultural, historical, political and economic backgrounds. Such a task may be particularly challenging for America whose foreign policy toolbox contains only two pieces: isolationism and interventionism. When America is weak, it reverts to its own world; when America is strong, it sets out to shape the world. There is simply no such a thing that the US would live and work with the existing world, which is full of gray areas. The next American president may have to step beyond this self-imposed, black-white and almost religiously rigid ideological confine.
In his speech to the US Democratic Party convention in late August, Clinton stated that the US should lead by "the power of example, not example of power". A sound foreign policy should start from the home front, which badly needs a "regime change" to reverse the current trends toward over-spending consumers, over-drugged population, over-armed society, over-crowded jails and over-lobbied politics. A society that consumes 25% of the world's energy and has a quarter of the world's prisoners with less than 5% of the world's population, according to the New York Times on April 23, 2008, is not a model for others.
America will certainly be more attractive to the rest of the world if Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's millions of hockey and soccer moms are matched by millions of SAT/ACT moms. Paradoxically, Samuel Huntington of Harvard University, the most prominent American political scientist, condemned America's intellectual elite, in his 2004 book Who Are We? as "dead souls" and being not patriotic (p 264). Such a permeating anti-intellectualism is perhaps the main reason for America's deteriorating school system compared to many nations, rich or poor. Already, a much poorer China has had 30 million piano moms; teenagers do homework till midnight; its colleges turn out 10 times more engineers every year than their US counterparts; and 300 million Chinese are learning foreign languages.
For such a soft power as China, merely increasing US military spending is not only self-defeating, but also dangerous. America's next president needs to understand that nobody can bring down the mighty powerful United States, except Americans themselves. The ongoing financial crisis is a case in point. Moreover, in a globalized world, it is in nobody's interests to see the US declining rapidly. America's new leaders, therefore, must come out of the besieged mentality to engage and embrace the world.
Diplomacy, however, is time-consuming, difficult and sometimes frustrating. In the age of globalization and weapons of mass destruction, diplomacy is perhaps the only way to handle some of the difficult bilateral, regional and global issues, particularly those with high stakes, such as the two six-party talks on Korean and Iranian nuclear issues, the Israeli-Palestine conflict, and more recently, the conflict between Georgia and Russia over South Ossetia.
Toward a world beyond extremes
Almost 20 years ago when Western communism started to crumble, Francis Fukuyama declared that history was over. [7] He later retracted that. [8] With the worldwide and still growing financial crisis, history is perhaps really ending. This time, it is the end, or bankruptcy, or demise, of the extreme types of Western ideologies: be it the centralized communism or its counterpart of Western market fundamentalism.
Despite their vastly different ideological underpinnings, each tries to change the rest of the world according to its own ideological pure type; neither wants to live with an imperfect world full of gray areas; both see the world in black-and-white terms; together, they drag the rest of the world into the last phase of the "Western Civil War", which is the Cold War.
Indeed, the 20th century, which is widely claimed to be the American century, turned out to be the bloodiest century in world history, during which all forms of Western ideologies - be they liberalism, nationalism, Nazism, militarism, communism, statism - pursued their pure types. It is fair to argue that there is no such a thing as clashes of civilizations, but the clashes of extremists, as their extreme agenda reinforce and justify each other's existence.
In the midst of the current unprecedented crisis of Western market extremism, it is time for the world to pause, think and search for a different model of political economy. It should be beyond and away from excessive greed, excessive consumerism, excessive laissez-faire, to mention just a few. A major task of a world leader is to search for a proper balance between the market and the state, between individual need and societal interests, between equality and efficiency, between materialistic growth and cultural/spiritual harmony, and between nurturing the innovative business class and protecting other vulnerable social groups.
Such an approach is also common sense, as was the choice made by the little girl Goldilocks, who prefers things not too hot, not too cold, not too hard, not too soft, but just right. In this regard, Europe is taking the lead. Compared with Americans who have dismal government assistance and relatively little saving, average Europeans in the current economic crisis are far better protected by free health care and largely free education. China, too, is returning to its traditional Confucian "middle approach" (zhong yong) by pursuing a "kinder-and-gentler" public policy for a more "harmonious" society.
It is time for the new leaders in America to shift its focus away from Bush's obsession with terrorism and to refocus on the broader well-being of the world and Americans. And the world is waiting and watching.
Notes
1. BBC, Iraq violence, In Figures August 6, 2008.
2. Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (Henry Holt and Company, LLC, 2004), p xiv.
3. Atimes.com, October 11, 2008.
4. Steven Hook, US Foreign Policy: The Paradox of World Power (CQ Press, 2005), p 296.
5. George Kennan, American Diplomacy, expanded edition (The University of Chicago Press, 1951), p 66.
6. Fareed Zakaria, "The Rise of Illiberal Democracy," Foreign Affairs, 76 (6) (Nov./Dec. 1997), pp 22-43.
7. Francis Fukuyama, "The End of History?" The National Interest, no 16 (Summer 1989).
8. Francis Fukuyama, America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy (Yale University Press, March 20, 2007).
Dr Yu Bin is Senior Fellow of the Shanghai Association of American Studies. He can be reached at yu1999@hotmail.com.
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US, Pakistan mission on target
By Syed Saleem Shahzad Asia Times Online, Hong Kong Oct 29, 2008
KARACHI - Ahead of their groundbreaking meeting in Washington this week, the director of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Michael Hayden, and the head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, will be buoyed by the killing of an al-Qaeda leader in Pakistan.
Militant sources have confirmed to Asia Times Online that Moroccan Khalid Habib, the head of al-Qaeda in Pakistan, was killed last week in a missile attack by an unmanned US Predator drone in the South Waziristan tribal area. His death has not been officially confirmed by either Islamabad or Washington.
The meeting between Hayden and Pasha is significant in that under the rule of president General Pervez Musharraf up until the end of last year, the ISI - which was frequently accused of having pro-militant tendencies - was kept away from US intelligence at the top level, with Musharraf personally handling all tactical matters.
The two top spymasters are expected to discuss a policy under which Pakistan and the US will continue to aggressively go after top Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders in an attempt to weed out hardliners from the Afghan national resistance and pave the way for communication with the remaining "moderates". The killing of Khalid is a notable success under this plan.
To date this year, the US has launched 25 cross-border attacks from Afghanistan into Pakistan, compared with 10 strikes in 2006 and 2007 combined. Eighteen of these attacks - most of them by drones - have occurred since August 31.
Soon after the meeting between Hayden and Pasha, General David Petraeus, the new US strategic commander for both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, will visit Pakistan to finalize military plans in light of the intelligence sharing that took place in Washington.
Khalid was installed as the chief of al-Qaeda in Pakistan by Osama bin Laden after the death in January of Abu Ubaida al-Misri (Abdul Hameed) through hepatitis. Abu Ubaida had been declared Ameer-i-Khuruj (commander for a mass rebellion) after the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) operation in Islamabad last July, in which a mosque with strong ties to militants was stormed by the security forces.
Khalid's task was to continue the coordination between various militant groups for a war against US interests as well as the pro-US government in Pakistan. The initiative was behind the assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto last December.
Khalid, who was listed by the CIA as the fourth-ranking person in al-Qaeda's hierarchy, was successful in consolidating ties at a regional level between al-Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban and Pakistani militants, a grouping that has emerged as the neo-Taliban. These militants have absorbed al-Qaeda's ideology of global struggle, while at the same time defending al-Qaeda's and the Taliban's bases against military operations, apart from the insurgency in Afghanistan.
There is no inkling yet of who will replace Khalid, who had staunchly resisted any notion of dialogue between the Taliban and the Western coalition.
With Khalid dead, the next likely target is veteran Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani, whose suspected bases in North Waziristan have been targeted on several occasions. Jalaluddin is the spiritual leader of the Haqqani network and a legendary figure of the Afghan mujahideen's struggle against the Soviets during the 1980s. Several of his family and aides have been killed in the attacks, but both Jalaluddin and his son Sirajuddin remain at large, possibly even in urban areas in Pakistan.
Former Afghan premier Gulbuddin Hekmatyar could also be on the hit list. He is a former friend of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and had been contacted by Kabul through intermediaries over the possibility of initiating dialogue with the Taliban.
However, he refuses to become involved in any back-channel discussions for peace until all foreign troops leave Afghanistan, although he did assure Karzai that once the foreigners left, he would work with his administration in the political mainstream.
Hekmatyar, given his past links with the Pakistani establishment, was also approached by Pakistan, but he refused point-blank to talk with President Asif Ali Zardari's administration, branding him and the Pakistani military establishment as American agents.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
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Local aid workers in the firing line
KANDAHAR, 27 October 2008 (IRIN) - Homayun (not his real name) has grown a beard, changed the way he dresses, deleted all foreign names from his mobile, and conceals his ties to aid agencies: He is trying to stay safe in the face of increasing threats to aid workers by the Taliban and other insurgent or criminal groups.
He has been working for an international aid agency in Kandahar Province, southern Afghanistan, for five years but has never been as concerned as he is now.
"If the Taliban know that I work for an international organisation, it will not take them long to either kill or kidnap me," he told IRIN at his office in Kandahar city, preferring anonymity for himself and his organisation.
"I am also worried about my family," Homayun said, adding that abductions for ransom were rampant in the volatile province.
The worsening security situation and frequent attacks on aid workers have prompted aid agencies to be extra cautious. Some UN and international aid agencies have resorted to heavily guarded offices protected by huge blast-resistant walls and armoured vehicles. Others have restricted their movements and/or scaled down their activities.
Far more Afghans than international staff work for NGOs, and it is the Afghans that are more likely to be sent to, or willing to work in, volatile areas.
ANSO report
According to figures from the Afghanistan NGOs Safety Office (ANSO), 23 of the 28 aid workers killed from January to September were Afghans.
Afghans working for aid agencies are considered vulnerable to abduction by criminal gangs, too. Of the 72 abducted aid workers in the first nine months of the year, 68 were Afghans; three of them were killed in captivity, ANSO reported [http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=80935].
"Abduction has remained largely targeted towards Afghan nationals who account for 90 percent of the total," ANSO reported in October.
"Abduction has been very lucrative with those involved gaining political, economic and military advantage," it said.
ANSO suggests insurgents have "outsourced" abductions to smaller criminal groups who have easier access to urban areas.
Afghan aid workers have increasingly also suffered beatings, threats and armed robberies. Female aid workers face even greater security risks and social restrictions and some have already quit their jobs.
"Afghans are more vulnerable to security risks than internationals. They are more in number and work in remote areas with the communities," said Anja de Beer, director of ACBAR - a network of 100 NGOs.
Almost half of Afghanistan's estimated 26.6 million people live on less than US$2 a day, and NGOs are an important source of employment, with local aid workers earning more than government employees who get $100-250 a month.
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Turkey willing to do more to build up Afghan forces
By Jon Hemming Mon Oct 27, 2008 2:20pm IST
KABUL (Reuters) - Turkey is willing to do more to train Afghanistan's security forces, the Turkish foreign minister said, after calls from Afghan and U.S. leaders for help to build up the army and police in their fight with Taliban insurgents.
As violence reaches its worst level in Afghanistan since the Taliban were toppled in 2001, NATO leaders recognise that strengthening the Afghan army, and particularly the notoriously corrupt police, is key to suppressing the insurgency.
But while the United States has pumped $7.4 billion into the Afghan army and police in the past 18 months, the U.S. military says it is still short of 2,300 instructors for the Afghan police and is having to use army trainers to try to cover the shortfall.
"We need to do more to help Afghans to own their future and how to do it is by helping them with building their own military and police forces," Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan told Reuters in an interview late on Sunday.
"We are willing to do more in the area of training," he said.
Turkey currently has some 800 troops serving with NATO forces in Afghanistan, most of them based in the capital, Kabul. With the second biggest army in NATO and as the only Muslim country in the alliance, Turkey is uniquely placed to help.
"MORE HELP"
Afghanistan was the first country to recognise the Turkish Republic, established in 1923, and Turkey has trained Afghan officers as far back as the 1930s.
Afghans still train at Turkey's military staff colleges and Turkish troops help train the Afghan army in Afghanistan and the police at a training centre Ankara set up near Kabul.
But in meetings with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and other senior ministers, Babacan said they had all asked for more.
"All I am hearing from them is 'you have very good military capabilities, you have good expertise in this area and we would like to get more help from you' ... that is what the Afghan authorities have been requesting from us again and again," he said.
Washington is sending 8,000 more troops to Afghanistan next year after repeated appeals to its NATO allies for reinforcements met only a limited response.
But Babacan, like U.S. commanders, stressed there was no purely military solution to end the conflict with the hardline Islamist Taliban which has now entered its eighth year.
"Maybe more soldiers are necessary, that's another technical issue the military experts should look into, but on the other hand by only having more troops, we don't think the problems in Afghanistan will be solved," he said.
Turkish companies are Afghanistan's biggest private investors and Turkish organisations operate a number of private Turkish schools, mainly in the more peaceful north. Turkey has also now begun a $12-million project to build a military high school.
"It is ultimately going to be very important to win the people of Afghanistan, to win their hearts and to win their minds. If the people of Afghanistan are not satisfied, if they are not convinced then we all have a very difficult job here," Babacan said.
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Afghans sent home to die
Cynthia Banham Diplomatic Editor The Sidney Morning Herald / October 27, 2008
THE Immigration Minister, Chris Evans, has demanded answers to allegations up to 20 Afghan asylum seekers rejected by Australia under the Howard government's so-called Pacific solution were killed after returning to Afghanistan, and others remain in hiding from the Taliban.
The claims are contained in a documentary to be aired on SBS on November 19. The film, A Well-Founded Fear, produced by Anne Delaney, is based on the efforts of Phil Glendenning, the director of social justice agency the Edmund Rice Centre, who has spent the past six years tracing many of these rejected asylum seekers.
About 400 Afghans detained on Nauru were returned to Afghanistan after having their asylum claims rejected. They were told by Immigration officials it was safe to go home, and that if they refused, they would remain in detention forever, according to accounts given to Mr Glendenning.
Another 400 who refused to go voluntarily were eventually found to be refugees and were resettled in Australia or other countries including New Zealand.
Mr Glendenning says he has documented the deaths of nine of the rejected Afghans at the hands of the Taliban, but he believes the figure is actually 20.
Of the other Afghans who returned home, many are hiding in Pakistan, or are forced to move between Pakistan and Afghanistan to evade the Taliban. They include a man whose two daughters were killed in a Taliban attack on his family's home near Kabul, after his asylum claim was rejected by Australia in 2002.
Senator Evans told the Herald he had asked his department to give him a "full briefing" on the matters raised by the Edmund Rice Centre.
He said the department's initial response, "and I am conscious this is the department's response - is that they don't agree with a lot of the claims made".
But he said he was "taking the claims very seriously" and had "asked for further information about the processes that occurred on Nauru and the robustness and integrity of those processes".
Much of the information Mr Glendenning used to locate the rejected asylum seekers was provided to him by sympathetic Immigration officials, concerned at what had occurred under the Howard government.
He believes the Afghans who left Nauru were "lied to" by Australian officials, and he wants the Government to reopen their cases.
"We now have the opportunity with the new Government to put the mistakes of the past to rest," Mr Glendenning said.
Senator Evans said he had an open mind about reopening some of the cases. It would be a big step, he said. "You would want to be convinced there was something very wrong that occurred.
"What some advocates are saying is you ought put them [the rejected Afghans] as a priority in the humanitarian intake over the claims of others. The reason for that priority is that they once came to Australia, were rejected as refugees, and returned to their country of origin," he said.
This would "fundamentally overturn" the basis on which such decisions were normally made, which was on priority of need.
Philip Ruddock was immigration minister until October 2003. Asked for his comments on the rejected Afghans, he said, "I would never say mistakes are impossible." But he added that Australia's asylum system was "robust and credible". He also said the Afghans left Nauru "voluntarily".
"It is the case that Afghanistan is a dangerous place but the [United Nations] Refugee Convention does not say you cannot be returned to a dangerous place," Mr Ruddock said. "The fact that somebody might tragically die [in Afghanistan] may well be as tragic as a road accident in Sydney."
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Learning English in Afghan badlands
By Bilal Sarwary BBC News, Sherzad district, eastern Afghanistan Monday, 27 October 2008
"I am a boy and you are a girl - please repeat after me," says the English language teacher.
The unlikely setting for the class is the remote eastern Afghan village of Kodi Khel, against a backdrop of the White Mountains of the Hindu Kush.
In 2001 the White Mountains saw violent clashes between Afghan-American forces and Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda fighters.
In the past, the area has also provided fertile ground for unrestricted poppy cultivation.
However, much has changed since 2001.
There are no American B-52s bombing the caves of Tora Bora, and poppy fields have been replaced by maize and wheat in this remote district of Nangarhar province.
But one thing I didn't anticipate is that students here would be taking English and computer classes.
Long walk
A year ago, Mohammad Shafiq worked in the poppy fields assisting his father.
He attended school in the morning but in the afternoon he didn't have anything else to do in his village.
"We went to school and when we got back, we ate and worked in the fields," he says.
But now life has changed for Mohammad Shafiq - he is attending his first-ever English language and computer class.
These classes were brought to this isolated village by a local doctor who runs his own non-government organisation (NGO).
Across Afghanistan many boys and girls attend schools like this one, but many more have been deprived of this opportunity as Taleban attacks have made it too dangerous for NGOs to set up even the most basic schools in their areas.
Inside a small room there are a group of 40 students, mostly between the ages of 16 and 20.
The students walk many miles each day so that they can have the chance to learn.
I watch Shafiq as he loudly and confidently repeats names of animals in English.
"I love the English language and computers - if I can learn them both I can find a decent job," he says.
The students face an obstacle course of treacherous mountain passes, valleys and rivers to get to study.
Take the example of 17-year-old Khalid. His village is a 40-minute walk from school and he treks both ways twice a day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon for extra English and computer classes.
He tells me that at first he thought "computer" was the name of a person from the West.
In his own words he couldn't believe a machine could do so much.
"All we have seen is war. Afghanistan was behind the world. I quite like what a computer can do. We will some day rebuild our country with things like this computer," says Khalid as he busily types away.
Teaching 'good things'
English language and computer classes are part of the citizenship and democracy programmes offered for hundreds of part-time students in several villages in Sherzad district.
According to Dr Shaeen, the founder of Youth Educational Services Organisation (Yeso), the aim of his programme is to make sure these young Afghans don't fall into the wrong hands and they grow up to be responsible members of society.
"They are learning English, computer skills, women's rights and general lessons about being good individuals. If they don't come here, they will fall prey to destructive elements or they will become drug addicts," the doctor says with a smile.
Dr Shaeen gives me a guided tour of his projects.
At another Yeso centre in the village of Toto, dozens of students are carefully listening to a class about women's rights, violence against women and human rights.
The teacher is trying to convince students to respect women and is trying hard to discourage violence against them.
"Women are mothers, women are wives and women are your sisters. If there were no women, there would be no men today. Please respect them. Don't beat them. Let your sisters attend school. Am I right?" he asks.
"Yes sir, you are right," the class replies.
Yeso get its funding from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in Washington.
Yeso Afghanistan consultant, Mohammad Nasib, is convinced that organisations such as his can help bring peace to countries like Afghanistan that have seen war by educating young people.
''We educate them. We keep them away from destructive activities. They would otherwise fall into the hands of extremists, or work in brick factories.
"We teach them about democracy, good citizenship and many other good things," he says.
The NED currently funds about 20 national organisations in Afghanistan. Its main aim is to promote democracy.
Through his education at the Yeso facility, Mohammad Shafiq has found that his ambitions extend far beyond the borders of Afghanistan.
He wants to go to America to study some day: "I am going to learn English and computers first and than I plan to study there, because I like America a lot," he says with a determined look in his eyes.
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Dostum and Akbarbai make up
Written by www.quqnoos.com Monday, 27 October 2008
Despite allegations of beatings and abduction Dostum is forgiven
GENERAL Rashid Dostum, the former Uzbek militia commander, has apparently been forgiven by his former campaign manager despite allegedly abducting him from his home, beating up his cook and attempting to murder his son.
On Sunday, a ceremony in which the two publicly forgave each other for last February's antics was held in front of 50 MPs, provincial councillors and a large number of residents from the north of the country.
The war of words that flared up after Dostum, the chief of the army staff, allegedly stormed the Kabul home of Akbrabai with 70 militia men came to an apparent end with the public ceremony of forgiveness.
This despite Akberbai calling Dostum a "psycho" and a "criminal" at a press conference held shortly after the alleged raid. At a press conference in March, Akbarbai, the head of the Turkmen Tribal Council, threatened to leave the country unless the attorney-general held true to his promise and arrested Dostum.
"Some people have approached President Karzai to make peace between us, but I am not going to forgive him: he is a criminal and a psycho," Akbarbai said.
Akbarbai, once Dostum’s campaign manager, accused the general of storming his Kabul home with 70 armed militiamen, abducting him in the middle of the night, beating up his cook and son, and shooting another son and a bodyguard.
Weeks after the incident, the attorney-general issued Dostum with an ultimatum: help the police with their investigation by February 20 or face arrest.
The deadline passed and no arrests were made, although the attorney-general did suspend Dostum from his post as chief of staff to the commander in chief of the Afghan National Army.
Three other Members of Parliament, who are also alleged to have played a role in the raid and abduction, were also threatened with arrest if they failed to obey the attorney-general’s summons, but the government failed to follow up on its promise.
The day after the alleged kidnapping, Akbarbai’s son Massoud told journalists that his father had been captured because he had refused to meet the general house at his house in Kabul.
Both men command large militias based in the northern provinces of Afghanistan, especially in and around the city of Sheberghan in the province of Jowzjan.
The pair were once allies, switching sides between the communists and mujahideen during the Soviet invasion and later joining forces to fight the Taliban with the Northern Alliance.
Akbarbai went on to become the general’s campaign manager when he ran for president in 2001 against Hamed Karzai.
Akbarbai’s formation of the Turkmen Tribal Council is thought to have angered General Dostum, who fears the group could undermine his authority in the north.
The general’s role (currently suspended) as chief of staff to the commander in chief of the Afghan National Army, is seen by many as a way of bringing the general’s militia, Jumbesh-e-Milli, under government control.
The dispute between the two men was settled with the mediation of the head of the Peace and Reconciliation Commission, Sebghatullah Mojadidi, who said that disunity and mutual conflicts would only cause more suffering.
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