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Japan to pay 80,000 Afghanistan police salaries
By Jay Alabaster, Associated Press Writer – Tue Feb 24, 3:17 am ET
TOKYO – Japan will pay the salaries of Afghanistan's 80,000 police officers for six months as part of its ongoing financial support for the country, a government official said Tuesday.
EU to boost civil effort in Afghanistan
Mon Feb 23, 2:30 pm ET
BRUSSELS (AFP) – EU foreign ministers pledged Monday to boost police and civil operations in Afghanistan, but showed little enthusiasm for answering a US call to increase troop numbers.
Pelosi Orders Classified Afghanistan Briefings for Members
By Edward Epstein, CQ Staff – Mon Feb 23, 1:38 pm ET
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, just back from a visit to Afghanistan, said Monday she is ordering up a series of closed-door briefings for all members on the situation in that country and its neighbors.
Afghanistan: Children's bodies used in macabre protest
(CNN) -- Villagers in southern Afghanistan stacked the bodies of two dead children in front of a provincial council Monday to protest their deaths in a rocket attack.
Afghan kids likely died while scavenging metal bits
Tue. Feb. 24 2009 8:13 AM ET CTV.ca News Staff
An Afghan provincial police official has confirmed that the two children who were killed on Monday likely died after they picked up an unexploded shell while scavenging for bits of metal.
Afghan bomb kills 4 coalition troops in south
By Heidi Vogt, Associated Press Writer
KABUL – A roadside bomb killed four troops from the U.S.-backed coalition in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, while 16 militants were killed in a separate clash, the U.S. military said.
Afghanistan key issue for Cannon, Clinton meeting
Tuesday, February 24, 2009 | 5:59 AM ET CBC News
Afghanistan and trade in the Americas will top the agenda Tuesday when Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon holds his first face-to-face meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Washington.
EU to take urgent look at boosting Afghan aid
23 Feb 2009 18:31:04 GMT By David Brunnstrom
BRUSSELS, Feb 23 (Reuters) - EU states agreed on Monday to look urgently at ways to boost support for an Afghan government threatened by a growing Taliban insurgency, in close coordination with the United States.
In the north, Afghans fight hunger, not the Taliban
By Jonathon Burch – Mon Feb 23, 7:21 pm ET
SANG-I-KHEL, Afghanistan (Reuters) – The United States' decision to send thousands more troops to Afghanistan will mean little to the people of northern Sang-i-Khel village whose fight is not against Taliban insurgents but against hunger.
New Zealand Rolls Over Military Presence In Afghanistan
WELLINGTON (AFP)--New Zealand's military deployment to Afghanistan has been rolled over for another year to September 2010, Prime Minister John Key said Tuesday.
Afghanistan victory unlikely, says DND manual
Craig Offman, National Post Tuesday, February 24, 2009
The Department of National Defence has released a counter-insurgency manual that manages expectations for victory, urges troops to understand their adversaries' grievances and pushes for political and social solutions in concert with military force.
Germany to send additional 600 troops to Afghanistan
February 24, 2009 People's Daily
Germany is going to send additional 600 troops to Afghanistan to help stabilize security ahead of presidential elections set for August 20 this year, the commander of German troops in northern Afghanistan said Tuesday.
US, Pakistan to join trilateral Afghan talks
Mon Feb 23, 4:20 pm ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will Thursday meet with both her Pakistani and Afghan counterparts to discuss the situation in Afghanistan, officials said Monday.
Afghan army kills 1 Taliban insurgent, arrests six others
February 23, 2009
Afghan National Army (ANA) backed by international troops killed one Taliban insurgent and captured six others in two separate incidents in south Afghanistan, a statement of Defense Ministry released Monday said.
Applying Iraq's broader lessons in Afghanistan
Matthew B. Stannard, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer Tuesday, February 24, 2009
(02-23) 18:31 PST -- As the United States and NATO craft a new strategy for Afghanistan, they are likely to apply counterinsurgency lessons learned at great cost during the war in Iraq.
Pakistani Taliban announce indefinite truce in Swat
By Junaid Khan
MINGORA, Pakistan (Reuters) – Pakistani Taliban militants announced on Tuesday an indefinite ceasefire in the Swat valley in the northwest of the country, a day after the army said it was ceasing operations in the region.
Can Pakistan Regain Control of Swat from the Taliban?
By Omar Waraich Mingora, Swat Valley Time Magazine - Tue Feb 24, 4:14 am ET
"Smile, you're in Swat," reads a billboard on the main road into the lush green honeymooners' valley once dubbed the "Switzerland of Asia". But over the past two years, Swat has been turned into a playground for the Taliban.
In Afghanistan, it's deadly at the top
Rather than perpetuating a love-hate-kill relationship with their leaders, Afghans need to develop respect for the laws and institutions of their new democracy.
Los Angeles Times, CA By Cheryl Benard February 23, 2009
In 2003, I met Afghan President Hamid Karzai under somewhat unusual circumstances. The Rand Corp., my employer, and Sesame Workshop had teamed up to create an Afghan version of "Sesame Street."
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Japan to pay 80,000 Afghanistan police salaries
By Jay Alabaster, Associated Press Writer – Tue Feb 24, 3:17 am ET
TOKYO – Japan will pay the salaries of Afghanistan's 80,000 police officers for six months as part of its ongoing financial support for the country, a government official said Tuesday.
Tokyo will also fund the building of 200 schools and 100 hospitals, and train thousands of teachers in Afghanistan, said Foreign Ministry official Miyako Watanabe.
The projects will be funded out of the $520 million remaining in the funds pledged by Tokyo to help rebuild the country's infrastructure, Watanabe said. Japan has already spent $1.48 billion of the $2 billion it has pledged since 2002.
News of Japan's latest assistance in the region comes as Tokyo and Washington continue to strengthen their long-standing alliance.
Prime Minister Taro Aso, who has said building better ties with the U.S. is one of his administration's goals, is in Washington, where he will become the first foreign leader to meet President Barack Obama in the White House. Last week, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made Tokyo the first stop on her Asian tour.
Obama has made stabilizing Afghanistan a priority, approving a troop surge of 17,000 troops in the conflict-ridden country.
Japan's pacifist constitution, along with the public's strong aversion to sending troops into combat, prohibits it from taking direct military action.
But the country has a large military, and despite political gridlock and a deepening recession, remains the world's second-largest economy, often using its wealth to influence affairs on the world stage.
Last year, the country approved legislation to extend through January 2010 a refueling mission in support of U.S.-led operations in the Indian Ocean. The mission, which began in 2001 and has been briefly suspended due to political opposition, partially supports U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
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EU to boost civil effort in Afghanistan
Mon Feb 23, 2:30 pm ET
BRUSSELS (AFP) – EU foreign ministers pledged Monday to boost police and civil operations in Afghanistan, but showed little enthusiasm for answering a US call to increase troop numbers.
The European Union could "perhaps make a stronger contribution," the bloc's foreign policy chief Javier Solana admitted after the ministers met in Brussels.
The 27-nation bloc contributes to a German-led policing mission to enhance the rule of law in Afghanistan -- that force should number 400 officers by June -- as well as to an Italian justice mission.
"Above all on the rule of law, we could perhaps enlarge the conditions and the manner of our engagement," Solana said. "There are ways of cooperating on Afghan's stability apart from just by the military."
US President Barack Obama has launched a comprehensive policy review of US strategy in Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan due before an April 3-4 NATO summit in Strasbourg, France and Khel, Germany.
The US president has said that more troops are needed to combat a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, which he regards as the frontline in the battle against Al-Qaeda.
NATO officials have warned that security in Afghanistan is likely to be a bigger problem in the coming months in the run-up to presidential elections scheduled for August.
After the talks in Brussels Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency, stressed the need to boost civil operations.
"I personally think we should work more in the civilian sector," he said.
EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said a European exploratory mission would be sent to Afghanistan soon to assess the possibility of sending an observer mission for the August presidential poll.
At a meeting of NATO defence ministers in Poland last week US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said up to 20 nations had offered to boost their civilian or military commitments to Afghanistan.
During the talks in Krakow, Gates urged the bloc to provide more forces to fight the Taliban, but also to help train police and fight corruption within the Afghan government.
Germany made the biggest pledge, with plans to send 600 more soldiers to Afghanistan.
The troops, who will join around 3,500 German personnel already in Afghanistan, will arrive six weeks before the polls and remain until after any possible second round of voting is held in September.
Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb confirmed in Brussels that his country was ready to double its troop numbers in Afghanistan from 100 to 200.
More concrete decisions on troop numbers are expected before or at the NATO summit on the French-German border in early April.
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Pelosi Orders Classified Afghanistan Briefings for Members
By Edward Epstein, CQ Staff – Mon Feb 23, 1:38 pm ET
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, just back from a visit to Afghanistan, said Monday she is ordering up a series of closed-door briefings for all members on the situation in that country and its neighbors.
Pelosi, D-Calif., said she had asked Rep. John B. Larson, Democratic caucus chairman, to arrange the meetings in consultation with Rep. Mike Pence, House GOP conference chair. She said she had already consulted with Minority Leader John A. Boehner, R-Ohio.
"He agreed we want to do this in a bipartisan way and in a timely fashion," Pelosi said.
Larson, who was part of the House delegation that went with Pelosi to Afghanistan over the President's Day recess, said the briefings in the House chamber would be closed to everyone but members so classified information could be shared.
He said he wants to invite Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, and Richard C. Holbrooke, special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The sessions come while the Obama administration is conducting a review of Afghan policy. The administration recently announced a 17,000 troop increase in force levels in Afghanistan.
Pelosi said her delegation spoke with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and others in his government about the need to fight official corruption, improve training of police and involve more Afghans in running local development projects. They also stressed the need for involving all of Afghanistan's neighbors, especially Pakistan, and the need for NATO members to share more of the burden.
She said she was confident that the Obama administration review would result in sound policy in Afghanistan.
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Afghanistan: Children's bodies used in macabre protest
(CNN) -- Villagers in southern Afghanistan stacked the bodies of two dead children in front of a provincial council Monday to protest their deaths in a rocket attack.
The villagers blamed Canadian rockets for killing the children and injuring five men, but their claims could not immediately be verified.
Canadian authorities are investigating, said Maj. Wance White, spokesman for the Canadian Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction Team, which assists the Afghan government and its citizens.
Haji Baaz Mohd, a resident of the Salihan Panjwahi village, led the protest against international troops and the Afghan government.
Mohd went in front of the Kandahar Provincial Council and the governor's office, shouting in protest against NATO and the Afghan government.
"We want Mullah Omar, we want a Taliban government," he shouted.
Omar is the Taliban's reclusive leader.
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Afghan kids likely died while scavenging metal bits
Tue. Feb. 24 2009 8:13 AM ET CTV.ca News Staff
An Afghan provincial police official has confirmed that the two children who were killed on Monday likely died after they picked up an unexploded shell while scavenging for bits of metal.
Afghan elders in the village of Salehan, about 15 kilometres west of Kandahar City, reacted with anger on Monday, blaming Canadians for leaving the explosives behind and chanting "death to Canada."
However, the Canadian Forces has revealed few details about what may have happened.
"Now today we have a little more clarity," The Globe and Mail's Graeme Smith told CTV's Canada AM on Tuesday.
"A police official has told my staff here in Kandahar today that the theory we heard yesterday is actually correct -- that these little kids were running around trying to scavenge little bits of metal left over after the Canadians had been doing some practice firing in that area."
The Canadian military has confirmed troops were carrying out artillery testing in the region, in an area close to a camp for children with disabilities.
Some of the children from the camp were apparently trying to earn some money by collecting scrap metal left behind after the soldiers left the area. In addition to the two boys who were killed, three others were reportedly injured in the explosion.
"Unfortunately it seems they grabbed a large bit of ordinance and that bit of ordinance exploded," Smith said.
The families were so upset that they collected the children's bodies, put them in a motorcycle sidecar, and drove into downtown Kandahar to show the mutilated remains to reporters.
"That's something they normally wouldn't do," Smith said. "They're busy washing the bodies and trying to get them a proper burial as soon as possible. But these villagers wanted to make a point, they wanted to say 'Look you're hurting us.'"
The Canadians have strict protocols about performing sweeps after such operations to ensure no explosives are left behind. An inquiry is now being conducted by the National Investigation Service into what may have gone wrong.
Afghan Ambassador to Canada Omar Samad told Canada AM the incident is tragic, but lessons can be learned from it. He suggested military firing ranges should be located far from residential areas.
"Whatever we do, we need to make sure we don't lose the faith and the goodwill of the people," Samad said.
Military Spokesman Maj. Mario Couture said the military makes every effort to ensure the "safety of Afghan civilians" and Canadian soldiers.
"Small arms qualified personnel conducted detailed examination of the range sites prior to departing and to make sure the range area was completely safe for Canadians and local village members and infrastructure," he said.
Couture suggested the explosive device may not have been of Canadian origin.
"This area is known -- at least by us and I assume it's probably the case for the residents -- it's littered with all kinds of unexploded ordinance and mines," Couture said.
Afghan National Police Gen. Matiullah Qati blamed the Taliban for the incident on Monday.
"We have seen the area and the wreckage of the mortar. It is actually a land mortar which is shot by the Taliban not (NATO) or Afghan officials," Matiullah said.
"It is a tragedy for these Afghan people who have lost their loved ones, but I blame the Taliban for shooting these kind of rockets which bring civilian casualties."
Some villagers in the Panjwaii district, which is known for a strong Taliban presence, accused the Canadians of actually launching a rocket that killed the children.
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Afghan bomb kills 4 coalition troops in south
By Heidi Vogt, Associated Press Writer
KABUL – A roadside bomb killed four troops from the U.S.-backed coalition in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, while 16 militants were killed in a separate clash, the U.S. military said.
The troops died when their vehicle struck a bomb while on an overnight patrol in southern Helmand province, the military said in a statement. An Afghan civilian working with coalition forces was also killed. U.S. military spokeswoman Capt. Elizabeth Mathias declined to give the troops' nationalities until relatives were informed.
In a separate incident in the province Monday, coalition and Afghan forces killed 16 militants when responding to fire from insurgents on their convoy, the U.S. said in another statement. There were no other reports of casualties, the statement said.
Helmand officials could not immediately be reached for further details.
Afghanistan's southern provinces continue to be Taliban strongholds wracked by violence, even years after the overthrow of the hard-line Islamist regime in 2001. President Barack Obama has agreed to dispatch another 17,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan, adding to about 38,000 American troops already fighting the country's strengthening insurgency.
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Afghanistan key issue for Cannon, Clinton meeting
Tuesday, February 24, 2009 | 5:59 AM ET CBC News
Afghanistan and trade in the Americas will top the agenda Tuesday when Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon holds his first face-to-face meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Washington.
Cannon said part of his job will be informing Clinton what role Canada and the more than 2,500 soldiers serving in the southern Kandahar province play in Afghanistan.
U.S. President Barack Obama has signalled his administration will shift its overseas military emphasis from Iraq to Afghanistan. Washington, which is carrying out a strategic overview of its military operation in Afghanistan, recently announced it would send an extra 30,000 troops to the country.
Canada has said its combat role in Afghanistan will end in 2011, but Obama has suggested Canada could continue to play a humanitarian and development role in the country.
Cannon said he also plans to address economic relationships between countries that make up the Americas.
Canada has signed free trade agreements with a number of Latin American countries and is pursuing others, he said, adding it is a region where Washington and Ottawa can work together.
"As hemispheric partners, we should be more involved with trade and ... more involved with the Americas than we were years gone by," he said.
Visit follows PM's media blitz
However, Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae said Canada has little influence on American foreign policy, pointing to China as an example where Canada hasn't done enough to build diplomatic ties.
"Traditionally, Canada would have been telling the United States what our good relationships have allowed us to tell them. And now we're in a position where we're followers," said Rae.
China has suggested recent Canadian criticism of its human rights policy, including the case of jailed Canadian Uighur activist Huseyin Celil, could be straining relations between the two countries.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said his government will stand up for the rights of all Canadians.
Cannon's trip comes a day after Harper met with United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and American business leader in New York. The two discussed climate change, the stabilization of Haiti, the situation in Afghanistan and global security.
The prime minister's spokesperson, Kory Teneycke, said Harper's primary goal in Manhattan Monday was to emphasize to Americans the importance of the Canada-U.S. relationship.
Harper, who hosted a brief visit from Obama to Ottawa last week, also met with leading media organizations, including Reuters and the Wall Street Journal.
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EU to take urgent look at boosting Afghan aid
23 Feb 2009 18:31:04 GMT By David Brunnstrom
BRUSSELS, Feb 23 (Reuters) - EU states agreed on Monday to look urgently at ways to boost support for an Afghan government threatened by a growing Taliban insurgency, in close coordination with the United States.
EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels stressed the importance of the success of a presidential election due in Afghanistan on Aug. 20 and reiterated a commitment made last year to double the size of a police training mission.
"Ministers agreed now was the right time to examine urgently options for increasing European support to the people and government of Afghanistan," said Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency.
"The ministers reiterated their strong will to find, together with the United States, ways of ensuring a common approach and effectively implementing solutions."
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana called on EU states to make good their pledge to double the size of the EU police training mission, currently half its target strength of 400 international staff, as soon as possible.
The United States is conducting a review of Afghanistan strategy ahead of an April NATO summit and says it will coordinate this with the EU and other international players.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier charged that the Czech presidency was being too hesitant and did not need to wait for the U.S. strategy review before doing more.
"We should do our job, and part of this job and the commitments we took is the training of police," he said of the programme, first launched by Germany.
Steinmeier said getting police trainers and consultants to Afghanistan depended on countries offering incentives to those willing to serve in conflict zones.
EU states have faced criticism for failing to answer calls from Washington and fellow EU countries to send more troops to fight militants and to follow through on training and aid pledges.
After a meeting of NATO defence ministers on Friday, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said President Barack Obama expected "significant new commitments" from allies on troops or civilian help before the NATO summit. (Editing by Andrew Roche)
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In the north, Afghans fight hunger, not the Taliban
By Jonathon Burch – Mon Feb 23, 7:21 pm ET
SANG-I-KHEL, Afghanistan (Reuters) – The United States' decision to send thousands more troops to Afghanistan will mean little to the people of northern Sang-i-Khel village whose fight is not against Taliban insurgents but against hunger.
Last week, U.S. President Barack Obama ordered 17,000 additional U.S. soldiers to Afghanistan to tackle an intensifying insurgency across the south and east of the country.
Yet in the relatively peaceful north, Afghans face a different struggle. Severe drought and soaring food prices have left hundreds of thousands of people facing a daily battle to survive the winter.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says some 280,000 Afghans in the north of the country are suffering from the drought, the worst in a decade, and are unable to meet their basic food needs.
Although not normally part of its mandate, the ICRC has distributed food with the Afghan Red Crescent to some of the worst affected areas, reflecting not only the scale of the crisis but also the lack of aid in this part of the country.
"The ICRC got involved because the need was so great. This is affecting thousands and thousands of people," said Azim Noorani, an ICRC delegate in northern Afghanistan.
THE "RICH" GET RICHER
While Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world, dependent on billions of dollars in foreign aid every year, poverty varies by region. Some areas are much better off than others.
Southern Helmand province, where more than two-thirds of the country's illicit opium is produced and where the insurgency is strongest, is among the top three richest provinces by most indicators, according to a 2008 report by the United Nations.
Helmand has the highest rate of car ownership in the entire country.
Yet southern provinces such as Helmand get most of the aid despite their relative affluence and their role as the center of Afghanistan's estimated $3 billion illicit drugs trade industry.
The U.S. international development agency (USAID) is by far the biggest aid donor in Afghanistan and has pumped millions of dollars into Helmand. If Helmand were a country it would be the fifth largest recipient of USAID funding.
Helmand was pledged $403 per person in aid between 2007-2008 compared to $153 in Balkh, aid agencies said. Neighboring Sari-i-Pol and Kunduz provinces fared much worse with $53 and $55 per person.
For the people in Sang-i-Khel and surrounding Chemtal district in Balkh province, hundreds of kilometres north of Helmand, life has remained virtually unchanged for hundreds of years. Contact with the outside world is rare and help even rarer.
"We haven't had any government assistance. They promised us they were going to give us food but they didn't," said Mohammad Rafi, 25, at an ICRC food distribution site in Sang-i-Khel.
Although the NATO-led military force has a presence in Balkh, international soldiers are rarely seen in Chemtal, said Rafi, and then only to inquire about security.
Rafi, along with hundreds of other Afghans from the surrounding area, came to Sang-i-Khel last week, some traveling for hours on foot, to collect emergency food rations of rice, beans, oil and tea, donated by the ICRC.
VICIOUS CIRCLE
The ICRC is distributing food to some 30,000 people across three northern provinces where last year's harvest failed.
"Life is not good. There was nothing last year. No water. No wheat. If there is no water this year, I will have to leave and go to the city. I will become a migrant," said Habibullah, 45, a farmer in Sang-i-Khel and father of 10.
His face weathered by a lifetime of hardship, Habibullah tells his story while waiting patiently to receive food handouts. Behind him lie fields where the furrows from last year's plowing are still visible as nothing grew there.
Afghans have survived drought and famines for centuries. But without long-term development, millions of Afghans are unlikely to break the cycle of poverty and could be susceptible to militant groups that exploit the discontent of poor Afghanis.
The people of Chemtal are locked in a vicious circle. No water means no harvest which means no seeds for planting the following year. Many have left to find work in the city or have either killed or sold what little livestock they had left.
"If we didn't have this food (handout), I would die," said Chari, 35, making a cutting gesture across his neck with his finger.
(Editing by Megan Goldin)
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New Zealand Rolls Over Military Presence In Afghanistan
WELLINGTON (AFP)--New Zealand's military deployment to Afghanistan has been rolled over for another year to September 2010, Prime Minister John Key said Tuesday.
New Zealand has more than 140 soldiers in Afghanistan, primarily involved in reconstruction work in Bamiyan province.
"Cabinet has decided to extend that commitment by a year to the end of September 2010," Key said.
"The situation in Afghanistan requires an ongoing international program of security and development assistance to the government of Afghanistan."
The announcement came a day after Key said New Zealand hadn't been asked to increase its commitment.
U.S. President Barack Obama last week authorized 17,000 more troops for Afghanistan, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he would ask NATO allies for a short-term troop increase to provide security for elections in August.
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Afghanistan victory unlikely, says DND manual
Craig Offman, National Post Tuesday, February 24, 2009
The Department of National Defence has released a counter-insurgency manual that manages expectations for victory, urges troops to understand their adversaries' grievances and pushes for political and social solutions in concert with military force.
The guide, obtained by the National Post, was signed by Chief of the Land Staff, Lieutenant General Andrew Leslie, and formally went out yesterday by e-mail and hard copy.
The 241-page document arrives as the Islamist Taliban forces are making further gains against NATO and Canadian troops in Afghanistan, the latter of whom are scheduled to withdraw in 2011.
"It is unlikely that the conflict will be suddenly ended with a major military victory against the insurgents, who will rarely offer the opportunity for decisive military engagement and are typically organized into small clandestine cells," the document says.
This should not be construed as the language of defeat, cautioned Bruce Hoffman, a leading expert in counterinsurgency who teaches at Georgetown University. He said it is a way of mitigating expectations, which is typical of these manuals.
"This is not pre-emptive, but it is timely," he said. "You have to commend the department for their foresight."
Western nations have, in recent months, expressed growing concerns that the Afghan war is one that cannot be won, although Peter Mac-Kay, the Minister of National Defence, rejected such suggestions before a Commons committee this month.
"[If ] we're there to protect people and promote peace and freedom and security, and the promotion of quality of life for these people, then we are succeeding," Mr. MacKay said, while noting that success has not come as quickly as hoped.
Officials at Land Force Command, the group that produced the document, Counterinsurgency Operations, were not available for comment yesterday.
Insiders say the book has been in the works for two years.
A compendium of modern military thinking informed by colonial misadventures and successes, the manual calls for a co-ordinated attack by both political and military forces. "Insurgency is a political problem," reads the introduction. "The mere attrition of insurgents is highly unlikely to result in [their] defeat."
Though the manual urges troops to reject Western absolute values, uses postmodern words such as "meme" and "heuristic," and likens insurgencies to communicable diseases, such approaches are commonly advocated in defence circles, said Prof. Hoffman, a former advisor to U. S. Army Chief of Staff George Casey when he was commanding general in Iraq.
The book also features citations that range from Greek historian Herodotus to Mao Zedong to Black Hawk Down author Mark Bowden.
Prof. Hoffman, whom the book references, said that several allies have already produced similar manuals with much of the same philosophies, most recently the United States.
"The situation in Iraq was going to hell in a handbasket, and there was a recognition that the United States forces were too conventionally oriented," he recalled. "Again, [the manual] was not pre-emptive, but it was timely. It arrived just around the time of the surge," he recalled, referring to the buildup of troops in Iraq advocated by General David Petraeus -- who also co-authored his army's new official manual on counterinsurgency warfare. "It had an important role overall in improving U. S. operations in Iraq."
Like its U. S. counterpart, Counter-insurgency Operations takes issue with the conventional notions of the victors and the vanquished. "Military forces do not defeat insurgencies; instead they create the security conditions necessary for the political resolution of the conflict," it says.
Prof. Hoffman noted the manual's insistence on understanding the enemy's "narrative" might be its biggest accomplishment. Defined as a plausible story that illustrates real or perceived injustices and grievances, the narrative could also be described as an uprising's founding cause.
"Similar to propaganda, most narratives will possess, at the very least, a kernel of truth but may also include substantial amounts of mythology," the book says. Regardless of their origins and their ideology, the manual continues, the grievances can be legitimate, and a "certain amount of empathy may be justified in dealing with insurgents."
Understanding the root of the grievance, Prof. Hoffman says, helps the military separate the enemy combatants who are fighting for ideology, or those who signed up for money. "You identify and isolate the extremists, and bolster the moderates."
A common pitfall, it explains, imposing one's own values on others. "Such an assumption and situation risks creating or exacerbating the perception that foreigners are trying to impose values and beliefs at odds with those of the indigenous population."
It also cautions against demonizing or delegitimizing one's foes as thugs, a time-honoured mistake made by former U. S. secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld and others. "The classification or dismissal of a nascent insurgency as a criminal or some other movement will only fuel the insurgency through inappropriate responses," it warns.
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Germany to send additional 600 troops to Afghanistan
February 24, 2009 People's Daily
Germany is going to send additional 600 troops to Afghanistan to help stabilize security ahead of presidential elections set for August 20 this year, the commander of German troops in northern Afghanistan said Tuesday.
Commander Jory Vollmer made this comment at a meeting held with Afghan officials in Afghanistan's northern Mazar-e-Sharif city to review the security situation.
"In coordination with Afghanistan National Security Forces, we would do our best to ensure security for the coming elections and in this regard Germany is expected to send 600 more troops in the north of Afghanistan," the commander told the audience at the meeting.
Some 3,500 German troops within the framework of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) have been serving in Afghanistan to help stabilize security in the post-Taliban country.
Source:Xinhua
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US, Pakistan to join trilateral Afghan talks
Mon Feb 23, 4:20 pm ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will Thursday meet with both her Pakistani and Afghan counterparts to discuss the situation in Afghanistan, officials said Monday.
She will first hold separate talks on Tuesday with Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi at the State Department, said spokesman Robert Wood.
On Thursday, Clinton will meet with Afghan Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta before the three-way talks, which will help inform an ongoing review on US policy in Afghanistan.
"I believe there is a trilateral meeting that is supposed to take place on Thursday, and then a trilateral dinner on Wednesday," Wood told reporters.
"We obviously want to hear from a wide variety of voices about the situation ... with regard to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
"And the secretary looks forward to meeting with both ministers, hearing their views, and of course sharing our views on what we believe is going on, on the ground. And as I said, that will all feed into our overall review."
The Pakistani and Afghan delegations will meet during the week with the working group charged by President Barack Obama with handling the review, which is co-chaired by special US envoy to the region Richard Holbrooke.
Former CIA chief Bruce Riedel and assistant secretary of defense Michele Flournoy also co-chair the review panel which met for the first time on Wednesday.
Their report is due to be presented to Obama before the NATO summit on April 3 and 4 in Strasbourg, France and Kehl, Germany.
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Afghan army kills 1 Taliban insurgent, arrests six others
February 23, 2009
Afghan National Army (ANA) backed by international troops killed one Taliban insurgent and captured six others in two separate incidents in south Afghanistan, a statement of Defense Ministry released Monday said.
"One Taliban insurgent was killed and three others made captive by ANA soldiers during an operation in Muqar district of Ghazni province on Sunday," the statements said.
The statement also added that three more insurgents were detained in Deh Rawod district of Uruzgan province on the same day Sunday.
Southern provinces known as the hotbed of Taliban militants have been the scene of spiraling militancy and conflicts with security forces over the past couple of years.
Skirmishes and Taliban-linked violent incidents have left over 5,000 people with more than 2,000 civilians dead in 2008 while security incidents is expected to go up this year in Afghanistan.
Source:Xinhua
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Applying Iraq's broader lessons in Afghanistan
Matthew B. Stannard, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer Tuesday, February 24, 2009
(02-23) 18:31 PST -- As the United States and NATO craft a new strategy for Afghanistan, they are likely to apply counterinsurgency lessons learned at great cost during the war in Iraq.
Last week, President Obama ordered 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan, prompting comparisons to the "surge" strategy in Iraq.
But there was more to the surge than just additional troops, and it is those elements - changing the troops' mission from offense to defense, increasing support for indigenous forces, and stepping up diplomacy within the nation and among its neighbors - that analysts say could be most relevant for Afghanistan.
"As Obama suggested, it's going to take much more than more troops to solve the problem," said Thomas Johnson, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey. "Without a change of strategy, more troops will not make a difference."
Differences
At the same time, said John Nagl, co-author of the Army and Marine Corps' "Counterinsurgency Field Manual" and president of the Center for a New American Security, any attempt to apply Iraq lessons to Afghanistan must reflect the differences between the wars.
"The biggest difference is Afghanistan is a rural rather than an urban counterinsurgency campaign," Nagl said. "The challenge of an urban insurgency is difficult. The challenge of a rural insurgency is, I think, even harder."
In Iraq, all roads lead to Baghdad, a city with a large population and a battered yet broad infrastructure of communication and economic links to the rest of the nation. It has been the political heart of the region for centuries.
Afghanistan is larger in both size and population than Iraq. But its capital, Kabul, is a fraction of Baghdad's size, with limited infrastructure and connectivity to the rest of the country. It has never had strong control over the region.
"Iraq is a mostly urban place - highly literate, it has an infrastructure, there are real highways there," said Boston University Professor Thomas Barfield, an expert on Afghan society. "In Afghanistan, the highway everybody talks about is two-lane asphalt - that's it."
The geographic difference means front-line troops in Afghanistan are widely dispersed, and often far from support.
"The only thing they can call on when they get in trouble is air strikes," he said. "Air strikes are inherently an imprecise weapon."
Civilian casualties
The attendant rising rate of civilian casualties have infuriated Afghans, from President Hamid Karzai on down.
The diffusion of military forces has also hampered U.S. political goals.
"We cannot secure the local populace by visiting villages every three or four weeks," Johnson said. "We have to operate as the Taliban do, at a local level."
Doing so requires adopting several of the lessons of the Iraq surge. First, many analysts say, the mission of U.S. and NATO troops should shift from hunting down insurgents to protecting civilians.
"The biggest lesson from Iraq - and it holds true in Afghanistan - is the center of gravity is the population, and the security of the population, in a counterinsurgency," Johnson said.
In Iraq, that meant pouring troops into Baghdad and protecting the urban populace. That strategy helped provide stability for political and economic development - a progressive approach called "clear, hold and build."
3 jobs at once
But rural Afghanistan is so infrastructure-poor that analysts say troops will need to do all three - clearing, holding and building - at the same time, while protecting a rural population spread across a vast and rugged territory.
"You fly over Afghanistan in a helicopter, and you cannot believe that human beings can eke a living out of that terrain," Nagl said. "There are not enough troops - American or Afghan - to spread across the country to provide security."
The Afghan component - army and police - is especially critical, analysts said, because there will never be enough foreign troops to secure Afghanistan - a lesson learned from the Soviet occupation. But a new report by the United States Institute of Peace found that the supply of trainers for those forces is critically low.
A more fundamental problem, Nagl said, is that the size of the Afghan force has been defined by what Afghanistan can afford, a problem he suggested the international community should address with money, not military.
"You can get 70 Afghan soldiers for the price of one American soldier deployed to Afghanistan. Just on a pure pocketbook issue, this is the way to win this war," he said.
Reaching out to other nations - friendly and otherwise - is another component many analysts hope to see in a new Afghanistan strategy.
Afghanistan is within the spheres of influence of Iran, China, Russia, India and Pakistan, home of the restive tribal areas where Afghanistan's insurgents find safe haven.
"Without a stronger commitment from Pakistan, it is simply impossible to defeat the insurgency in Afghanistan," Nagl said.
Diplomatic hands must also be extended to the Afghans themselves - another lesson from the surge in Iraq, during which local militias and leaders were given financial and political incentive to cooperate.
Keep it local
"The biggest thing we're learning from Iraq is the Tip O'Neill thing, which is 'All politics are local,'" Barfield said. "The biggest thing we did was in Iraq was we sat down ... with people and said, 'What are our common interests?' "
The same thing is needed in Afghanistan, Johnson said, but using methods that reflect the diffused village culture of the rural insurgency.
So far, he said, the United States has focused on supporting the central government. Instead, Johnson envisions the deployment of perhaps 200 teams combining U.S. and Afghan troops and civilian specialists in subjects such as agriculture and hydrology.
"What we have to work on is trust and confidence. And we will not win trust and confidence from the top down," he said. "We tried to build a pyramid putting the capstone on first. We need to build from the bottom up."
Political reforms
Empowering local leaders may require some political reforms - such as allowing governors to be elected locally instead of appointed by Kabul - and risks reawakening warlordism if it is not handled with care, analysts warn.
It also could mean abandoning the quest for a Western-style centralized democratic government in Afghanistan, and instead focusing on simpler ambitions, Nagl said: preventing the country from becoming a terrorist sanctuary or triggering a regional crisis, and helping the Afghan people build a sustainable government of their own design.
But given time, Johnson and other analysts say, Afghanistan can regain the peace it enjoyed for half of the last century.
"It's a generational project," Johnson said. "If the Obama administration thinks they can do this in the first four years or even eight years, I think they're delusional."
E-mail Matthew B. Stannard at mstannard@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page A - 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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Pakistani Taliban announce indefinite truce in Swat
By Junaid Khan
MINGORA, Pakistan (Reuters) – Pakistani Taliban militants announced on Tuesday an indefinite ceasefire in the Swat valley in the northwest of the country, a day after the army said it was ceasing operations in the region.
In the neighboring Bajaur region on the Afghan border, the government announced a four-day ceasefire in response to a unilateral truce called by militants there on Monday.
The ceasefires are likely to compound concerns among Western countries which fear truces allow militants to create sanctuaries in Pakistan where they can regroup and intensify their insurgency against Western forces in neighbouring Afghanistan.
The indefinite ceasefire in Swat follows an agreement by authorities to enforce Islamic sharia law in the valley, which until 2007 was one of Pakistan's prime tourist destinations.
A 10-day truce announced in response to the agreement on sharia law had been made permanent, said a Taliban spokesman in the valley, 120 km (75 miles) northwest of Islamabad.
"We have agreed on an indefinite ceasefire," said the spokesman, Muslim Khan.
Khan said the Taliban in the valley, led by militant cleric Fazlullah, also decided to release three people, including two politicians, as a goodwill gesture.
The militants had virtually taken over control of the valley in recent months, residents said, killing enemies and blowing up schools which they said the security forces were using as posts.
The army said on Monday it had ceased operations against militants in Swat and said there would be no sanctuary for militants there if the writ of the state was re-established.
While militants negotiated from a position of strength in Swat, in the Bajaur region they had been hard pressed by security forces in recent months and declared their ceasefire after they appeared to have been cornered.
FOUR DAYS
Bajaur has long been a major infiltration route for militants into eastern Afghanistan. Major-General Tariq Khan, the head of the paramilitary Frontier Corps, told Reuters on Monday his forces were expected to clear the region by March.
The military has said more than 1,500 militants and nearly 90 soldiers have been killed in Bajaur since last August. There was no independent verification of the militant casualty estimate.
Responding to the militants' ceasefire declaration, civilian and military officials said security forces would hold their fire for four days to allow Pashtun tribal elders to persuade the militants to lay down their arms.
A security analyst said the forces had to be vigilant because militants from Swat could slip over mountains into Bajaur to help their comrades.
"They have to watch Bajaur very critically and their normal operations should continue," said Mahmood Shah, a former security chief in the Pashtun tribal areas.
"They shouldn't have even given them four days and should have asked them straight away to lay down arms."
Authorities have struck peace deals with militants in several parts of the northwest over recent years, including one in Swat last May, but none has succeeded in eliminating militant sanctuaries.
Fighting flared in Swat, which is not on the Afghan border, in 2007 after hundreds of militants turned up from border enclaves to support Fazlullah and his drive to introduce hardline Islamist rule.
The government said this month 1,200 civilians and 180 members of the security forces had been killed in the valley since 2007.
The human rights group Amnesty International said between 200,000 and 500,000 people had been displaced from their homes in Swat by the violence.
(Writing by Zeeshan Haider; Editing by Robert Birsel and Paul Tait)
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Can Pakistan Regain Control of Swat from the Taliban?
By Omar Waraich Mingora, Swat Valley Time Magazine - Tue Feb 24, 4:14 am ET
"Smile, you're in Swat," reads a billboard on the main road into the lush green honeymooners' valley once dubbed the "Switzerland of Asia". But over the past two years, Swat has been turned into a playground for the Taliban. And it may be the Taliban, and their fellow Islamists, who have most reason to smile as a result of the government's decision, last week, to end its floundering military campaign and instead accept the Taliban's key demand — for the imposition of Islamic shari'a law in the area.
Critics are alarmed at an agreement they fear will attack the rights of women, create a parallel legal system, encourages Islamist insurgencies elsewhere in Pakistan, and even create a safe haven for a wider spectrum of militants. Still, many locals have welcomed the deal for the stability it promises. "We are happy that there is a chance for peace now," said Mohammed Tariq, 36, a thickly bearded cafeteria worker, who blamed the Taliban for spreading fear and the army for alienating the population by inflicting a heavy toll in civilian casualties. "We hope that it doesn't fail." Like many locals, he was antagonized by the Taliban's violent methods, but supports the call for Shar'ia law. "The real issue was the courts," he says. "It took too long to get justice. People are fed up with this system. It's also corrupt." (See images of Pakistan's militant challenge)
The lynchpin of the government's effort to defuse the Taliban insurgency is Sufi Mohammed, a septuagenarian Islamist cleric whose Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law has returned to Swat with the backing of the authorities. "We will ask them to lay down their weapons," Sufi Mohammed says of the local Taliban who have terrorized Swat over the last two years. "We are hopeful that they won't turn us down." Sufi Mohammed's credibility with the militants is based on the fact that he waged his own violent campaign for Shar'ia law in the area in the mid-1990s, and that he fought alongside the Taliban when U.S. forces invaded in 2001. Even though he has renounced violence, Sufi Mohammed still denounces democracy as a "heresy." Now, he must convince the man who has stolen his thunder — Maulana Fazlullah, whose forces control 80% of the area after a fierce two-year conflict with the Pakistani army that has cost over 1,500 lives — to lay down arms. Fazlullah is an erstwhile disciple of Sufi Mohammed, and is also his estranged son-in-law.
With the military effort failing to stem the Taliban's advance in an area just over three hours from the capital, the government may have seen Sufi Mohammed as a lesser evil, and accepted his demand for Shar'ia law in order to help him win back control of Swat from the Taliban.
The local Taliban, of course, have already effectively imposed their own version of Shar'ia on the area. Until a few months ago, the Cheena market in Mingora thronged with women buying dresses and jewellery; now, it is closed. Stores selling music and films have been attacked, and although barbers still offer haircuts, they'll no longer shave a customer after the Taliban forbade it.
Sufi Mohammed's return to the area has already brought visible changes. "It's the first time in nearly two years I'm seeing police in uniform out on the streets and in their cars," says laborer Tahir Ali. "They used to be without uniform, sometimes too busy protecting themselves to protect the rest of us."
The Taliban had also destroyed over 180 schools across the valley, most girls' but a number of boys schools, too. Now, government schools are expected to reopen in March, after the winter break. Government officials insist that under Sufi Mohammed's Shari'a regulations, the Taliban's prohibition on female education will be lifted. But many of the teachers who were threatened have fled the area, and are too fearful to return any time soon. "The Taliban have threatened us not to come back," says Zunaiba Hayat, a 35-year-old middle school teacher who moved to Islamabad after her school was ransacked by the militants.
Sufi Mohammed's success, however, will hinge on his ability to persuade his former acolyte to end his insurgency. Fazlullah learned at the feet of Sufi Mohammed in the 1990s, fought alongside him in Swat and then later Afghanistan, and married his teacher's daughter. Both men were imprisoned upon their return from Afghanistan, and it was after he was freed that Fazlullah returned to the Swat valley village of Imam Dheri, operating the yellow painted chair lift that ferries people across the Swat river. According to local lore, it was after his brother was killed in a U.S. missile strike on the village of Damadola in Bajaur in 2006 that Fazlullah seized control of a pirate radio transmitter and began delivering sulphurous sermons. "Mullah Radio," as he became known, quickly developed a following through his twice-daily radio addresses preaching jihad, and exhorting listeners to donate money and jewellery to his cause. He became particularly popular with daytime women listeners, whom he urged to not sleep with their husbands if they refused to fight alongside him.
Lengthy queues soon formed by the chair lift, with thousands of worshippers keen to cross the river and attend the militant leader's Friday sermons. Swat's established elite looked on with mounting anxiety. "The followers multiplied inexorably," says a member of the family of the Wali of Swat, the traditional tribal leader, declining to be identified by name. "We were feeling Fazlullah was a political threat. What we built over 150 years could just go in one fatwa. [The militants] played on the deep religious sentiment of the people, their economic deprivation and sense of neglect."
The locals grandees had reason to be worried. The Taliban won support from a section of the poor, residents say, by targeting the wealthy and the powerful, attacking families and driving them out, and looting their abandoned homes. As Swat's notables and lawmakers fled, young, unemployed men suddenly found status as local commanders with large salaries from Fazlullah's mysteriously deep pockets. (Conspiracy theories abound as to the source of his largesse.) But the key to his success, say local observers, was Fazlullah's ability to exploit local resentment at the failings of Pakistan's venal judicial system, in which complainants routinely found justice deferred or denied.
The new shari'a system agreed with Sufi Mohammed, says Shoukat Ali Yousafzai, will resolve criminal cases within four months, and settle civil matters within six months. Judges will be advised by religious scholars, he ways, "but there will be no beheadings, hand choppings, or ban on women working or studying."
Less clear is whether the Taliban will accept those terms. On Saturday night, after two days of talks with his father-in-law, Fazlullah, in a speech carried live by Pakistan's main news channels, said that his cohorts were still discussing Sufi Mohammed's proposals. "We will consult again after the 10-day cease-fire... We will also observe a permanent cease-fire if the government takes practical steps," he said, without elaborating.
Nor is the fate of the Swat deal clear in Islamabad, where it has yet to be ratified by President Asif Ali Zardari, whose government is under pressure from Western allies to take a tougher line against the Taliban. Many in his own party privately express misgivings. "What will stop them from going further?" says one member of parliament who asked not to be named. "I don't want my wife or daughter to wear a burqa. What if they don't lay down their weapons? They could be in Peshawar next, or even Islamabad."
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In Afghanistan, it's deadly at the top
Rather than perpetuating a love-hate-kill relationship with their leaders, Afghans need to develop respect for the laws and institutions of their new democracy.
Los Angeles Times, CA By Cheryl Benard February 23, 2009
In 2003, I met Afghan President Hamid Karzai under somewhat unusual circumstances. The Rand Corp., my employer, and Sesame Workshop had teamed up to create an Afghan version of "Sesame Street."
We were designing short video episodes to be shown to the new generation of post-Taliban Afghan schoolchildren. Karzai had agreed to appear in one of the episodes.
The plan was to film a group of Afghan American children, decked out in Afghan folklore clothing, with Karzai during one of his visits to Washington. The undertaking, which had been difficult enough to arrange, seemed jinxed.
There was a blizzard the day of the filming, and volunteers with four-wheel-drive vehicles had to be dispatched to drive the children to Blair House, the official guesthouse for heads of state. Karzai was hours late, held up by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and when he finally arrived, he was furious. He had been insulted, he felt, by Congress, grilled about Afghanistan's growing drug trade and corruption. He had just fired his ambassador, whom he blamed for the debacle, and as he stomped through Blair House in a rage, I thought it was curtains for my little project.
Then he saw the children, and his mood brightened. He summoned them over, and as they settled down to chat, the relieved film crew began to roll the tape. Karzai told the children about his favorite bedtime stories as a child, what he remembered of his elementary school days, what games he had most enjoyed and how many countries he had visited.
The children were adorable, and Karzai seemed to be relaxing -- until a young girl asked him what he liked best about being president. A lengthy silence fell. He seemed to forget where he was. His face grew dark, and the adults in the room began to exchange worried glances. At last he spoke. "Nothing," he said.
As I think about the upcoming elections in Afghanistan, scheduled for August, I often remember that moment. In retrospect, 2003 was a happy, positive time for Karzai. The world, and his own citizens, still loved him. Even the tough questions from U.S. lawmakers had been intended to understand the scope of the problem and find a way to help Afghanistan, not to embarrass him.
Today, Karzai stands accused of tolerating the involvement of his brothers in massive corruption and in the drug trade, of vacillation and of incompetence. Former friends and trusted ministers have turned against him, denouncing him in public and positioning themselves as rivals for his job. Once venerated at home and abroad, he is now widely seen as a failure. History will judge. But something about this fall from favor made me curious, so I spent a little time reviewing the biographies of Afghanistan's former leaders.
Many countries have stormy histories. But Afghanistan is exceptional in its track record of first venerating, then ferociously turning on, its leaders. On that snowy day in Washington, Karzai was still the world's darling; at home, he held the status of a potentate.
Not counting Karzai, 29 individuals have ruled Afghanistan since 1700. Of these, only four served out their terms and died a natural death. The others were dethroned, assassinated, imprisoned, deposed and killed, deposed and exiled, deposed and hanged, beaten to death and so forth.
Portraits and photographs show these kings and presidents in their glory days -- handsome, proud, with intelligent eyes and uplifted chins. Some were traditional. Others spent time abroad and came back with what they thought were compelling new ideas for reform and progress. Regardless, they were first feted, then hated and finally destroyed.
In more recent times, the picture gallery begins with a confident portrait and concludes with grisly photographs of hideously abused mortal remains. The five who were "only" assassinated can count themselves lucky. Among the others was Najibullah, the former Soviet-backed president who in 1996 was dragged out of a United Nations compound, beaten, castrated, killed -- slowly -- and displayed from a lamppost.
Sometimes the animosity toward the fallen leader is apparently so great that death alone cannot satisfy it. Former President Babrak Karmal died of cancer a decade after being deposed, but his body was dug up by the Taliban, who intended to dump it in a river before being persuaded by local villagers to put it back in the ground.
Today, the Afghan people need a lot of things -- security, electricity, hospitals, alternatives to growing poppies. Looking at their history, I submit that what they also need is something we in the United States refer to as "respect for the office."
To venerate new leaders as demigods, only to demote them to villains within the space of a few years, is not a recipe for successful nation-building. Afghans need to honor the laws and the institutions of their new democracy and to stop focusing so excessively on the individuals who govern them. They need standards of conduct, rules obeyed both by the leader and his kin and cronies, pragmatic expectations -- and, when they sour on their leaders, an established process of political succession that does not include murder.
Yet the international community, instead of encouraging a transition to pragmatic governance, appears to have been drawn into Afghanistan's dysfunctional personality cult. Far too much attention is being paid to whether Karzai should run again, whether he is still a superstar and, if not, which superhuman individual should be put in his place to pull off the miracle and save Afghanistan.
This kind of thinking has entrapped the country for three blood-soaked centuries, preventing the emergence of a functioning state. Instead, the world's democracies should try to help the Afghans escape from the vortex of their history and build a state that serves them, resting on institutions and processes instead of personalities and emotions.
Cheryl Benard co-directs the Alternative Strategies Initiative at the Rand Corp. and has worked extensively in Afghanistan.
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