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US plan to arm militias scares some in Afghanistan
By Kathy Gannon, Associated Press Writer – Wed Feb 4, 6:03 am ET
MAIDAN SHAHR, Afghanistan – A U.S.-backed plan to create militias and give them guns to fight the Taliban is drawing criticism from local authorities in areas where the first units are being rolled out
Afghanistan a UN priority: chief
by Sardar Ahmad
KABUL (AFP) – UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday declared Afghanistan a priority for the United Nations and pledged to do the utmost to support key presidential elections this year.
Afghanistan says foreign fighters coming from Iraq
By Sayed Salahuddin
KABUL (Reuters) – With the reduction of violence in Iraq, foreign militants were now flooding into Afghanistan to join Taliban insurgents battling Afghan and international troops, the Afghan defense minister said Wednesday.
Pentagon study: US should pare Afghanistan goals
By ROBERT BURNS and PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press Writers – Wed Feb 4, 12:56 am ET
WASHINGTON – A classified Pentagon report urges President Barack Obama to shift U.S. military strategy in Afghanistan, de-emphasizing democracy-building and concentrating more on targeting Taliban
U.S. to emphasize security goals in Afghanistan
By David Morgan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration is likely to emphasize security goals in Afghanistan by approving extra troop deployments even before the White House completes its review of Afghan strategy, U.S. officials said on Tuesday.
Pentagon may lose base key to Afghanistan efforts
BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan (AP) — Kyrgyzstan's government submitted a draft bill to parliament Wednesday that would close a U.S. base that is key to the American military campaign in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan Reshuffles Police Command, Sacks 4 Senior Officers
KABUL (AFP)--Afghanistan's interior ministry on Wednesday announced a major reshuffle of top ranking police commanders, sacking four senior officers in the capital and three provincial chiefs.
British soldier arrested in Afghanistan in secrets probe
Wed Feb 4, 6:20 am ET
LONDON (AFP) – A British soldier has been arrested in Afghanistan over an alleged breach of the country's Official Secrets Act, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in London said Wednesday.
Russia says it wants to help US in Afghanistan
AP via Yahoo! News
MOSCOW – President Dmitry Medvedev says that Russia and its ex-Soviet allies want to cooperate with the United States in stabilizing Afghanistan.
Convoy of Indian workers in Afghanistan attacked, no one hurt
New Delhi, Feb 4 (PTI) A convoy of Indian construction workers on Wednesday came under attack from suspected Taliban in an eastern Afghanistan but no one was injured.
AFGHANISTAN: Child servitude, marriage resemble modern-day slavery
SHARANA, PAKTIKA PROVINCE, 4 February 2009 (IRIN) - Haleem, aged nine, is a full-time servant for US$60 a month at Abdul Malik Khan's house in Zherok District, Paktika Province,
Afghan Parliament Speaker Rejects Election Delay
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty February 3, 2009
KABUL -- The speaker of Afghan's lower house of parliament, Yunos Qanuni, says the decision to postpone the country's presidential election is unconstitutional, RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan reports.
Controversy Over Afghan Election Delay Puts Constitution To Test
By Abubakar Siddique Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty February 3, 2009
Just days after announcing the postponement of Afghanistan's presidential elections, the country's Independent Election Commission is facing a storm of controversy.
Plans Emerge for New Troop Deployments to Afghanistan
Wall Street Journal By CHIP CUMMINS in Dubai, ROSHANAK TAGHAVI in Tehran and JAY SOLOMON in Washington 4 February 2009
WASHINGTON - Senior U.S.
Chaos Central
Le Monde diplomatique By Chris Sands 02/04/2009
A correspondent looks back at the deterioration across the country over the past three years: the resurgence of both the Taliban and the old corrupt elites, the failure of the occupation forces, and the worsening conditions of life for everybody else
Upset with West, is Karzai turning east?
By Sayed Salahuddin February 3, 2009
KABUL (Reuters) - Frustrated with some of his Western allies, in particular the United States, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has begun to reach out to Afghanistan's giant northern neighbour Russia.
Dinner with Secretary Clinton: Afghanistan on the menu
Tue, 02/03/2009 - 5:56pm The New ForeignPolicy.com
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will host selected South Asia hands at a dinner tonight (Tuesday) on the topic of Afghanistan at the Secretary's official dining room on the eighth floor of Foggy Bottom,
Is the West losing the Pashtuns?
Al Jazeera By Hekmat Karzai 02/03/2009
Kabul - In the middle of the night on December 17, Amir Hassan, his wife, and their 14-year-old nephew were killed during a Coalition Forces operation in the eastern Afghan province of Khost.
Taliban kidnap 30 Pakistani policemen
by Saad Khan – Wed Feb 4, 3:59 am ET
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) – Taliban militants kidnapped 30 Pakistani policemen after a punishing day-long siege, in an embarrassing blow Wednesday for the army battling to win back control of the Swat valley.
The unlikely rise of Afghanistan
By Brian Homewood Reuters via International Herald Tribune - Wednesday, February 4, 2009
BUENOS AIRES: It took less than eight months for Afghanistan to jump from the fifth division of world cricket to one level below the major test-playing countries.
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US plan to arm militias scares some in Afghanistan
By Kathy Gannon, Associated Press Writer – Wed Feb 4, 6:03 am ET
MAIDAN SHAHR, Afghanistan – A U.S.-backed plan to create militias and give them guns to fight the Taliban is drawing criticism from local authorities in areas where the first units are being rolled out, raising questions as to whether the effort can succeed in Afghanistan.
The militias have been compared to the U.S.-fostered Awakening Councils in Iraq, which have often been credited with reducing violence there, and are similar to neighboring Pakistan's tribal armies which also have been touted as a success.
On Saturday, Afghanistan's interior minister announced the program had begun, and that the United States would be paying for all aspects, including buying Kalashnikov automatic rifles for members of the Afghan Public Protection Force.
One skeptical Afghan official said only criminals would join because most citizens wouldn't want to face the Taliban in combat. And critics question the wisdom of handing out weapons to Afghans when the government and U.N. have been trying to reduce the number of arms in the country. They fear the plan could stoke rivalries between ethnic groups with a bloody past.
"One of the causes of violence in Afghanistan is because most people do not give up their weapons. Now you want to again give weapons to the villages?" said Mohammed Hussain Fahimi, the deputy of the provincial council in Wardak, where officials say the units will be first deployed. "We never learn our lessons."
Wardak lies southwest of the capital of Kabul and is increasingly falling under Taliban control, illustrating the growing influence of the Islamic insurgents in the years since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.
Fahimi was one of several government officials and residents interviewed in Wardak by The Associated Press last week, all of whom expressed skepticism about the plan.
President Barack Obama has said stabilizing Afghanistan will be a U.S. priority and plans to nearly double the number of American troops from the roughly 34,000 in the country today.
He has not commented on the militia plan, but it has been endorsed by Gen. David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command and the former top commander in Iraq whose outreach to Sunni sheiks helped oust militants from key areas and sharply decreased attacks.
Officials say the force will be guarding highways, schools, clinics and other government institutions. It is still not clear how large and widespread the militias will be.
Col. Greg Julian, the U.S. military's spokesman in Afghanistan, said the United States will mentor, train and give back-up to the new village forces, but Afghanistan's interior ministry is in charge of the program.
While Iraq's Awakening Councils are made up along tribal lines, officials say the militias in Afghanistan are to be drawn up by the local councils who are being told to make their choices based on character, not tribal affiliations.
Yet few Afghans believed tribal loyalties can be avoided, with many fearful the new force would fall under the control of local warlords who could even join with the Taliban.
Another council member, Mohammed Mukhlis, predicted only thieves and criminals would join the force, mostly because no one would risk being killed by the Taliban to defend the discredited government.
"For the last seven years, the government didn't do anything for the nation, so people in the districts don't trust them," he said.
Mukhlis's home of Saydabad will be one of the first areas to get the militias he opposes. Overrun by Taliban, Mukhlis can no longer go to his home and has moved to a walled compound closer to Kabul.
"Right now I am safe here, but I don't know if in another few months I will have to move again, even closer to Kabul, to escape Taliban," he said.
Wrangling by Afghanistan's various non-Pashtun ethnic groups has also marred the establishment of the village militias, officials said.
The tribes in Afghanistan's east and south — where the militias will be needed the most — are almost exclusively Pashtun, the majority ethnic group in Afghanistan.
Non-Pashtuns balk at arming ethnic Pashtuns while disarming the rest of the country.
Saleh Mohammed Registani, an ethnic Tajik member of parliament, warned that a newly armed Pashtun militia would create deeper fissures between Afghanistan's Pashtun and non-Pashtun people, who are struggling to heal from decades of retaliatory attacks and discrimination.
"If this goes ahead, the south will become a no-go place for non-Pashtuns and it will encourage other people to find weapons to defend themselves," Registani said. "As a non-Pashtun, if I know someone has weapons, I won't go there. These militias will eventually come together with Taliban because they are all Pashtuns and they will not fight against each other."
History also suggests the militias may not work.
In the 1980s, the communist government of President Najibullah, besieged by U.S.-backed mujahedeen fighters, put the job of securing villages in the hands of village militias. That backfired because villagers, frustrated by the heavy-handedness of the militias, turned to the mujahedeen for security.
The United Nations has been struggling since the collapse of the Taliban to disarm Afghanistan's myriad militias, many of the gunmen loyal to warlords. The U.N. has spent millions of dollars on its Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration program, which was launched within months of the Taliban's ouster — although some say it really got going two years late.
The plan included collecting weapons and integrating warlords' private militias into army and police units. But while thousands of pieces of weaponry have been handed in, much of it is said to be antiquated. Many warlords, meanwhile, have retained their militias.
"When you give everyone weapons, everyone will think they are king," said Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, who was the Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "It's not just a mistake, it is stupid."
Joanna Nathan, an Afghan analyst with the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, called the militias a "quick fix" to a deteriorating security situation by both the international forces and the government of President Hamid Karzai.
A similar project in 2006 armed thousands of "auxiliary police." It was soon disbanded, Nathan said, with a third joining the police and the rest disappearing — along with their weapons.
"It's a constant cycle of quick fixes," she said.
Part the problem is the regular turnover of international officials who want to show some improvement during their watch and offer up new proposals.
"Every few years, another set of foreigners come in and they all need to demonstrate real change in their time."
Nathan said money and training should be invested in Afghanistan's police as the "absolute priority at the district level."
She also said there should be an effort at "really cleaning up the Interior Ministry."
"We are going to have to grit our teeth and focus on the long term," Nathan added. "There are no quick solutions."
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Afghanistan a UN priority: chief
by Sardar Ahmad
KABUL (AFP) – UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday declared Afghanistan a priority for the United Nations and pledged to do the utmost to support key presidential elections this year.
Ban made a surprise visit to Kabul as the embattled country prepares for its second-ever presidential vote in August while facing an insurgency at its highest point since a US-led invasion ousted the Taliban regime in 2001.
"For the United Nations, Afghanistan will be a priority in 2009," Ban told reporters at a news conference with President Hamid Karzai.
"I am here to demonstrate and to convey my strong commitment and support for peace and stability, and development of Afghanistan's people," he said.
The August 20 elections would be a challenge, Ban said.
"But we will do our utmost to ensure that the Afghan Independent Electoral Commission, with the technical assistance from the United Nations, is adequately supported by donors," he said.
The poll, expected to cost around 223 million dollars, has been delayed for three months to allow time for adequate security and logistics over fears that insurgent violence could compromise the ballot.
"The voter registration process has proceeded smoothly. We must ensure that the electoral process proceeds as smoothly as possible," Ban said.
The UN chief also called for international military and political efforts to be "balanced" in Afghanistan.
The presence of international troops was important but so was "an Afghan-led political solution based on the constitution," he said.
He was likely referring to Kabul's efforts to persuade Taliban rebels to drop their fight against Karzai's Western-backed government and accept the new system.
Ban, who was last in Afghanistan in 2007, also stressed the importance of improved coordination among the nation's many international donors and "tangible changes" to people's lives in the country.
The United Nations has boosted resources for Afghanistan -- announcing in December it would double its budget in the country for 2009, allowing for more staff to be employed and more offices opened.
Besides holding talks with Karzai, Ban was also due to meet Afghan lawmakers and a range of international officials, including commanders of the NATO-led force of 55,000 troops and representatives of UN agencies, the UN said.
The United Nations has said security reached its lowest point in Afghanistan last year since the Taliban was removed from government with a spike in attacks, including on aid workers.
"The situation in Afghanistan is serious and it's getting worse," the UN's top relief official, John Holmes, said in Geneva on Tuesday.
The reasons were "escalating conflict and also because of the serious drought which has been raging there for two years in some parts of the country," he said.
Violence has prevented UN and other aid workers from accessing large swathes of the country, and several World Food Programme aid convoys have been attacked and looted in recent years.
The United States, the main provider of international aid and troops to Afghanistan, is also planning to boost its assistance, including the deployment of additional soldiers, although no figure has yet been announced.
Military commanders have said they expect Washington might send 15,000-30,000 more soldiers for the south, a Taliban stronghold where several districts are out of government control.
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Afghanistan says foreign fighters coming from Iraq
By Sayed Salahuddin
KABUL (Reuters) – With the reduction of violence in Iraq, foreign militants were now flooding into Afghanistan to join Taliban insurgents battling Afghan and international troops, the Afghan defense minister said Wednesday.
There was a 33 percent rise in insurgent attacks in Afghanistan in 2008, according to NATO-led forces.
Violence is expected to rise further in 2009 as Washington prepares to send up to 25,000 more troops into new areas of the southern Pashtun heartlands.
Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak said there were about 15,000 Taliban fighters in Afghanistan but their numbers were being swelled by foreign insurgents moving in from Iraq, where violence has fallen after a U.S. troop "surge" and other measures.
"Since last year, as the result of the success of the surge in Iraq, there has been a flow of foreign terrorists into Afghanistan," Wardak told a news conference.
"There have been engagements ... in 2008, and in some of these engagements, actually 60 percent of the total force which we have encountered were foreign fighters," he said. Wardak was speaking after he and Afghan President Hamid Karzai held talks with NATO's supreme allied commander for Europe, U.S. General John Craddock.
The talks focused on training and equipping the Afghan army, which the U.S. military aims to increase from some 80,000 troops now to 134,000 in 2012, the planned deployment of the extra U.S. soldiers and ways to reduce civilians casualties, Wardak said.
U.S. President Barack Obama is expected to approve as early as this week plans to send up to 17,000 more combat troops to Afghanistan to add to the 36,000 American soldiers already battling Taliban insurgents in the country.
The additional U.S. forces will focus on hitting militant communication lines and their cross-border infiltration into Afghanistan from Pakistan. The extra troops will reduce reliance on air strikes, cutting civilian deaths, Wardak said.
Civilian casualties caused by international forces have eroded support for Karzai and the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan more than seven years since the Taliban's removal.
More than 2,100 civilians were killed in Afghanistan in 2008, the United Nations said Tuesday, more than a third of them by Afghan and international troops.
Wardak said the issue had been a source of tension with the foreign troops.
(Editing by Paul Tait)
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Pentagon study: US should pare Afghanistan goals
By ROBERT BURNS and PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press Writers – Wed Feb 4, 12:56 am ET
WASHINGTON – A classified Pentagon report urges President Barack Obama to shift U.S. military strategy in Afghanistan, de-emphasizing democracy-building and concentrating more on targeting Taliban and al-Qaida sanctuaries inside Pakistan with the aid of Pakistani military forces.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has seen the report prepared by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but it has not yet been presented to the White House, officials said Tuesday. The recommendations are one element of a broad policy reassessment under way along with recommendations to be considered by the White House from the commander of the U.S. Central Command, Gen. David Petraeus, and other military leaders.
A senior defense official said Tuesday that it will likely take several weeks before the Obama administration rolls out its long-term strategy for Afghanistan.
The Joint Chiefs' plan reflects growing worries that the U.S. military was taking on more than it could handle in Afghanistan by pursuing the Bush administration's broad goal of nurturing a thriving democratic government.
Instead, the plan calls for a more narrowly focused effort to root out militant strongholds along the Pakistani border and inside the neighboring country, according to officials who confirmed the essence of the report. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the plan publicly.
The recommendations are broadly cast and provide limited detail, meant to help develop the overarching strategy for the Afghanistan-Pakistan region rather than propose a detailed military action plan.
During a press conference Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs noted ongoing reviews of Afghan policy, but did not say when they would be made public. Obama intends, he said, to "evaluate the current direction of our policy and make some corrections as he goes forward."
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman would not comment Tuesday on the details of the Joint Chiefs' report, but acknowledged that the U.S. relationship with Pakistan is a critical component for success in Afghanistan.
"When you talk about Afghanistan, you can't help but also recognize the fact that the border region with Pakistan is obviously a contributing factor to the stability and security of Afghanistan, and the work that Pakistan is doing to try to reduce and eliminate those safe havens, and the ability for people to move across that border that are engaged in hostile intentions," Whitman said.
Part of the recommended approach is to search for ways to work more intensively and effectively with the Pakistanis to root out extremist elements in the border area, the senior defense official said.
The heightened emphasis on Pakistan reflects a realization that the root of the problem lies in the militant havens inside its border — a concern outlined last week to Congress in grim testimony by Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen.
But the report does not imply more incursions by U.S. combat forces inside Pakistan or accelerating other forms of U.S. military involvement, the senior defense official emphasized. Pakistani officials have repeatedly raised alarms after a surge of U.S. Hellfire missile strikes from drone predators in recent months, and renewed those complaints after a new strike killed 19 people inside Pakistan days after Obama took office.
"The bottom line is we have to look at what the art of the possible is there," said a U.S. military official who has operated in Afghanistan. The official, who has not seen the Joint Chiefs' report, said the challenge is to craft a strategy that achieves U.S. goals of stabilizing the region and constraining al-Qaida, but also takes into account the powerful tribes that resist a strong central government and the ties among ethnic Pashtuns on either side of the Afghan-Pakistan border.
The Joint Chiefs' report advises a greater emphasis on U.S. military training of Pakistani forces for counter-terror work.
Pakistan's government is well aware of growing U.S. interest in collaborating to improve its military's muscle against al-Qaida and Taliban elements in the border areas. The topic has been broached repeatedly by senior U.S. officials, including Mullen.
The training efforts also would expand and develop the Afghan army and police force, while at the same time work to improve Afghan governance.
The report also stresses that Afghan strategy must be driven by what the Afghans want, and that the U.S. cannot impose its own goals on the Afghanistan government.
During discussions about a new Afghanistan strategy, military leaders expressed worries that the U.S. ambitions in Afghanistan — to stabilize the country and begin to build a democracy there — were beyond its ability.
And as they tried to balance military demands in both Iraq and Afghanistan, some increasingly questioned why the U.S. continued to maintain a war-fighting force in Iraq, even though the mission there has shifted to a more support role. Those fighting forces, they argued, were needed more urgently in Afghanistan.
Military leaders have been signaling for weeks that the focus of U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan would change.
Gates told armed services committees in Congress last week that the U.S. should keep its sights on one thing: preventing Afghanistan from being used as a base for terrorists and extremists who would harm the U.S. or its allies. He bluntly added that the military could not root out terrorists while also propping up Afghanistan's fledgling democracy.
"Afghanistan is the fourth or fifth poorest country in the world, and if we set ourselves the objective of creating some sort of Central Asian Valhalla over there, we will lose," Gates said, a mythology reference to heaven.
Sen. John McCain, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Tuesday that he was briefed last week on the military's proposed new Afghan strategy, which he called evolving but headed in the right direction.
"There will be no Anbar awakening," McCain, R-Ariz., told The Associated Press, referring to the tribal uprising against al-Qaida in Iraq's Anbar province that triggered a turnaround in that conflict. "It will be long, hard and difficult."
The Join Chiefs report's overall conclusions were first reported Saturday by The Associated Press. Politico reported additional details of the report Tuesday.
The U.S. is considering doubling its troop presence in Afghanistan this year to roughly 60,000, in response to growing strength by the Islamic militant Taliban, fed by safe havens they and al-Qaida have developed in an increasingly unstable Pakistan.
Obama is expected to announce soon his decision on a request for additional forces from the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. David McKiernan. Several officials said they believe the president will approve sending three additional combat brigades to Afghanistan, totaling roughly 14,000 troops.
___
Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor, Anne Gearan, Pamela Hess, Lara Jakes and Anne Flaherty contributed to this report.
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U.S. to emphasize security goals in Afghanistan
By David Morgan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration is likely to emphasize security goals in Afghanistan by approving extra troop deployments even before the White House completes its review of Afghan strategy, U.S. officials said on Tuesday.
The emphasis on military operations reflects a shift in U.S. thinking that places greater priority on tangible short-term security goals and relegates more complex issues such as democracy and economic growth to longer-term planning, according to officials.
"There needs to be established a baseline of security," Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell told reporters.
"We need to reverse the trend that we are seeing in some parts of the country in terms of a deteriorating security situation. That is accepted as the foundation on whatever the president decides to develop in terms of a further strategy."
Pentagon officials recommend a higher priority for near-term military objectives in a newly completed report on Afghanistan by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, a senior defense official said.
The classified report, which has been forwarded to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, is part of a wide-ranging White House review of Afghan strategy more than seven years after U.S.-led forces first invaded Afghanistan.
President Barack Obama is expected to approve as early as this week plans to send up to 17,000 more combat troops to Afghanistan, where insurgent violence has reached its highest levels since the 2001 invasion that toppled the Taliban.
The expected deployment would represent the main segment of a planned build-up that could nearly double the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan to about 60,000 troops from 36,000.
"Whatever decision is made on additional forces for Afghanistan will likely take place in advance of the conclusion of the strategy review that this White House has undertaken on Afghanistan," Morrell said.
U.S. officials have long stressed that military force alone cannot stabilize Afghanistan and its future depends on so-called soft-power initiatives including economic and social development and good governance.
RISING INSURGENT ATTACKS
But rising violence has prevented even the most basic reconstruction and development work, especially in southern Afghanistan where most of the extra U.S. troops are expected to be deployed.
"You have to have an umbrella of security to achieve measurable progress in other areas like investment and farming," said a senior defense official familiar with the Joint Chiefs report.
Insurgent attacks in Afghanistan rose 33 percent in 2008, according to NATO statistics. Attacks on government targets soared 119 percent while kidnappings and assassinations climbed 50 percent, according to the NATO figures.
Foremost among U.S. military objectives is quelling violence by Taliban militants and other groups, including fighters based over the border in northwestern Pakistan.
"The number-one focus ... is ensuring that Afghanistan does not once again become a safe haven for terrorists, a place from which they can plot and launch attacks against us or our allies," Morrell said at a briefing.
"Additional forces are needed to ensure that (Afghanistan) does not revert to that status," he said.
But Pentagon officials denied that an emphasis on military operations meant soft-power objectives were less important.
"Nobody's suggesting that the long-term goals aren't good, appropriate goals to have," said Bryan Whitman, another Pentagon spokesman.
"Sometimes we tend to focus only on long-range goals and ... we need to ensure that we also have set for ourselves some short-range concrete goals for the near- and mid-term."
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Pentagon may lose base key to Afghanistan efforts
BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan (AP) — Kyrgyzstan's government submitted a draft bill to parliament Wednesday that would close a U.S. base that is key to the American military campaign in Afghanistan.
The move came a day after President Kurmanbek Bakiyev said the base would be shuttered and shortly after the Central Asian nation secured billions of dollars in loans and aid from Russia, which resents the American presence in a country that Moscow regards as part of its traditional sphere of influence.
The possibility poses a serious challenge to the new U.S. administration and President Barack Obama's plan to send up to 30,000 more American forces into Afghanistan this year.
Earlier Wednesday, the U.S. Embassy in Kyrgyzstan said the United States had received no formal notification of the closure.
Talks are due to continue on keeping the air base in the country, despite the Kyrgyz president's announcement, the embassy said in a statement.
The government said the decision to order the closure of the Manas base was made because the base has fulfilled its purpose of supporting military actions in Afghanistan.
In Afghanistan, "state institutions have been created, a Constitution adopted, a president was elected, and government was formed. All the necessary conditions are in place for the stable functioning of a government in Afghanistan," the statement said.
The Kyrgyz government also cited growing popular discontent with the U.S. military presence among its motivations for the closure. It also criticized U.S. obstruction of the investigation into the fatal shooting in December 2006 of a Kyrgyz truck driver by a U.S. serviceman during a security check at the entrance to the air base.
Officials have not specified when the closure might take place, but the agreement under which the base was established in 2001 specifies that the United States must be given 180 days notice.
The base, which is located with the Manas civilian airport near Kyrgyzstan's capital, is an important air-mobility facility, home to tanker planes that refuel warplanes flying over Afghanistan. It also supports airlifts and medical evacuation operations and houses troops heading into and out of Afghanistan. Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan do not share a border.
The threat of closure comes at a time when increasing attacks on transport depots and truck convoys in Pakistan have raised doubts about the country's ability to protect vital supply routes — and increased the necessity for alternative routes through Central Asia. Some 75% of U.S. supplies to Afghanistan currently travel through Pakistan.
A bomb attack on a bridge Tuesday severed the main supply route for U.S. troops through Pakistan, and assailants torched 10 stranded trucks on Wednesday.
Russia, although nominally supportive of the anti-terrorism campaign in Afghanistan, is wary of the U.S. presence in Kyrgyzstan. Moscow established an air base in Kyrgyzstan one year after the U.S. base went into operation.
In a visit to the base last month, Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, said that Manas would be key to plans to boost the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan. He also said the United States currently pumps a total of $150 million into Kyrgyzstan's economy annually, including $63 million in rent for Manas.
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Afghanistan Reshuffles Police Command, Sacks 4 Senior Officers
KABUL (AFP)--Afghanistan's interior ministry on Wednesday announced a major reshuffle of top ranking police commanders, sacking four senior officers in the capital and three provincial chiefs.
The dismissals are part of a focus on overhauling Afghanistan's police force, plagued by allegations of corruption, under an international drive to boost the country's security forces in the fight against rising insurgent violence.
The Kabul city police chief, his deputy and the police commander at the international airport were removed from their jobs, the interior ministry said in a statement. It gave no reasons for the sackings.
Police criminal department chief General Alishah Paktiawal also lost his job, it said.
Paktiawal enjoyed a high profile in Kabul, in part because he was often the first officer at the site of insurgent attacks.
The police chiefs of the provinces of Badghis, Ghor and Zabul had also been removed, the ministry said.
All the men would be appointed to other posts, an official said.
The reshuffle is the most significant since Mohammad Hanif Atmar, the widely respected former education minister, was appointed head of the interior ministry in October.
Atmar announced on Saturday that he was forming a paramilitary-style police force, which would be funded by the U.S. government, to improve local security in areas where the security forces are stretched.
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British soldier arrested in Afghanistan in secrets probe
Wed Feb 4, 6:20 am ET
LONDON (AFP) – A British soldier has been arrested in Afghanistan over an alleged breach of the country's Official Secrets Act, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in London said Wednesday.
The soldier, who was not identified, is being flown back to home for questioning and the investigation has been taken over by the Metropolitan Police.
"We can confirm that a British Army officer has been arrested in Afghanistan on suspicion of breaching the Official Secrets Act," a ministry spokesman said.
"He is being returned to the UK for questioning. The investigation has been referred from the MoD to the Metropolitan Police and is now under consideration. No further details will be released at this stage."
According to The Sun newspaper, which cited unidentified senior sources, the 48-year-old soldier befriended a woman working for a human rights group in Afghanistan and allegedly leaked sensitive casualty figures.
Britain has around 8,300 troops stationed in Afghanistan, most of whom are in the restive southern province of Helmand battling an insurgency mounted by the Islamist Taliban militia.
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Russia says it wants to help US in Afghanistan
AP via Yahoo! News
MOSCOW – President Dmitry Medvedev says that Russia and its ex-Soviet allies want to cooperate with the United States in stabilizing Afghanistan.
Medvedev's comments Wednesday came a day after the ex-Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan announced it would evict U.S. forces from an air base that is key to U.S. and NATO operations in Afghanistan.
Kyrgyzstan made the move after getting a promise for $2 billion in loans from Russia — which has long been concerned about the U.S. presence in Central Asia.
The possibility of base closure poses a serious challenge to the new U.S. administration and President Barack Obama's plan to send up to 30,000 more American forces into Afghanistan this year.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan (AP) — Kyrgyzstan's government submitted a draft bill to parliament Wednesday that would close a U.S. base that is key to the American military campaign in Afghanistan.
The move came a day after President Kurmanbek Bakiyev said the base would be shuttered and shortly after the Central Asian nation secured billions of dollars in loans and aid from Russia, which resents the American presence in a country that Moscow regards as part of its traditional sphere of influence.
The possibility poses a serious challenge to the new U.S. administration and President Barack Obama's plan to send up to 30,000 more American forces into Afghanistan this year.
Earlier Wednesday, the U.S. Embassy in Kyrgyzstan said the United States had received no formal notification of the closure.
Talks are due to continue on keeping the air base in the country, despite the Kyrgyz president's announcement, the embassy said in a statement.
The government said the decision to order the closure of the Manas base was made because the base has fulfilled its purpose of supporting military actions in Afghanistan.
In Afghanistan, "state institutions have been created, a Constitution adopted, a president was elected, and government was formed. All the necessary conditions are in place for the stable functioning of a government in Afghanistan," the statement said.
The Kyrgyz government also cited growing popular discontent with the U.S. military presence among its motivations for the closure. It also criticized U.S. obstruction of the investigation into the fatal shooting in December 2006 of a Kyrgyz truck driver by a U.S. serviceman during a security check at the entrance to the air base.
Officials have not specified when the closure might take place, but the agreement under which the base was established in 2001 specifies that the United States must be given 180 days notice.
The base, which is located with the Manas civilian airport near Kyrgyzstan's capital, is an important air-mobility facility, home to tanker planes that refuel warplanes flying over Afghanistan. It also supports airlifts and medical evacuation operations and houses troops heading into and out of Afghanistan. Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan do not share a border.
The threat of closure comes at a time when increasing attacks on transport depots and truck convoys in Pakistan have raised doubts about the country's ability to protect vital supply routes — and increased the necessity for alternative routes through Central Asia. Some 75 percent of U.S. supplies to Afghanistan currently travel through Pakistan.
A bomb attack on a bridge Tuesday severed the main supply route for U.S. troops through Pakistan, and assailants torched 10 stranded trucks on Wednesday.
Russia, although nominally supportive of the anti-terrorism campaign in Afghanistan, is wary of the U.S. presence in Kyrgyzstan. Moscow established an air base in Kyrgyzstan one year after the U.S. base went into operation.
In a visit to the base last month, Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, said that Manas would be key to plans to boost the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan. He also said the United States currently pumps a total of $150 million into Kyrgyzstan's economy annually, including $63 million in rent for Manas.
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Associated Press writers Peter Leonard in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and Jim Heintz in Moscow contributed to this report.
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Convoy of Indian workers in Afghanistan attacked, no one hurt
New Delhi, Feb 4 (PTI) A convoy of Indian construction workers on Wednesday came under attack from suspected Taliban in an eastern Afghanistan but no one was injured.
A vehicle, carrying three Indians, was badly damaged when an improvised explosive device went off around 7.45 a.m. when the convoy was on its way to construction site in Khost, sources told PTI. The attackers also fired at the convoy of the workers of Indian company which is constructing a road between Khost and Gardez, they said.
Security personnel accompanying the convoy retaliated, forcing the attackers to flee, they said, adding no one was injured in the attack. Earlier, a media report from Afghanistan had said that four Indian construction workers were injured in the incident. The Indian company is working under a sub-contract of an American firm, the sources said.
Indian construction workers have been facing attacks from Taliban, resulting in killing of at least six Indians and injuries to several others. India recently completed construction of a key 218-km highway between Delaram and Zaranj and formally handed it over to Afghan authorities last month.
The highway provides the shortest route between Kabul and Iranian ports.
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AFGHANISTAN: Child servitude, marriage resemble modern-day slavery
SHARANA, PAKTIKA PROVINCE, 4 February 2009 (IRIN) - Haleem, aged nine, is a full-time servant for US$60 a month at Abdul Malik Khan's house in Zherok District, Paktika Province, southeastern Afghanistan. His tasks range from cleaning, washing, serving tea and baby-sitting to night patrols and gate-keeping.
Both Haleem's father and his master say child servants are not at risk of sexual abuse, but the reality could be different.
"I offered my son for servitude for the survival of my whole family," said Haleem's father who declined to be identified. His destitute family lives in a mud hut 3km from Malik Khan's house.
On the phone, Khan declined to comment on his young servant's working and living conditions, saying journalists only turn "trivial and unimportant issues into a big problem".
In Afghanistan, particularly in poor rural communities, child slavery and debt bondage practices are growing, but are often disguised as marriage, labour or family affairs not requiring state intervention.
Extreme poverty, lack of awareness about child rights, weak law enforcement and strong conservative traditions are among the problems which have pushed many minors - boys and girls - into situations of peonage, child rights activists say.
"These practices - the selling of children and servitude - have the very characteristics of modern slavery which have been overlooked by the government and other actors," said Ajmal Samadi, an analyst of the Afghanistan Rights Monitor (ARM), a local rights watchdog.
"Loan brides"
Destitute parents sometimes also offer their young daughters as "loan brides" in order to pay off loans, settle family or tribal feuds and achieve other social and economic benefits.
Drug smugglers that pay poor farmers in advance for opium production, often demand young brides when farmers fail to produce opium and lack other means to repay their loans [http://www.newsweek.com/id/129577/output/print].
According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Afghanistan produces over 90 percent of the world's heroin, generating an illicit economy worth over US$4 billion a year.
In the western province of Herat, the department of women's affairs and a local rights watchdog said more than 150 cases of the selling of children, especially girls, were reported in 2008.
"There is no law to prevent child marriage and child sale," Sima Shir Mohammadi, director of a women's rights NGO in Herat Province, told IRIN, adding that the practice was "inhumane… and on the rise".
"The judicial system and courts are notoriously corrupt and biased. People do not dare to seek justice through them," said ARM's Samadi.
Domestic violence
Children who experience forced marriage and servitude often suffer physical, sexual and mental violence, experts say.
Research conducted by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission has also indicated widespread domestic violence against children and their inability to access protection services.
"They [child victims] are usually treated as slaves and re-sellable items," said Shir Mohammadi, adding that there was a lack of legal and social protection and support for victims.
Afghanistan has one of the highest infant and maternal mortality rates in the world and child marriage (early pregnancy), multiple and short-spaced pregnancies and lack of access to basic health care are the main contributing factors, according to the UN Children's Fund and other aid bodies.
Officials in the Ministry of Women's Affairs said every month they verify dozens of cases of serious domestic violence against young women.
Young girls who experience forced marriage, sale and similar predicaments often lead a difficult life and some of them seek release through self-immolation and suicide [http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=80236].
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Afghan Parliament Speaker Rejects Election Delay
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty February 3, 2009
KABUL -- The speaker of Afghan's lower house of parliament, Yunos Qanuni, says the decision to postpone the country's presidential election is unconstitutional, RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan reports.
Qanuni has asked President Hamid Karzai to summon the commission for the interpretation and supervision of the constitution to discuss the issue.
Qanuni -- who finished second to Karzai in the 2004 presidential election -- said during a parliament session that the Afghan Election Commission has no right to delay the presidential election.
Qanuni said that if the current situation continues, he does not expect the election to be held on the newly announced date of August 20, which is three months later than the original date.
The Afghan Constitution provides for the poll to be held in May, but election officals have said that technical, logistical, and security issues mean the election must be held at a later date.
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Controversy Over Afghan Election Delay Puts Constitution To Test
By Abubakar Siddique Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty February 3, 2009
Just days after announcing the postponement of Afghanistan's presidential elections, the country's Independent Election Commission is facing a storm of controversy.
Parliament accuses the commission of overstepping its legal authority in pushing the election date from May until August 20, while politicians are warning of an impending political crisis that could harm the country's fragile democracy.
Responding quickly, President Hamid Karzai found himself holding negotiations between parliamentarians and the election commission.
"This meeting was about the election commission's decision and to look into practical ways to tackle [the disagreements about] it," said presidential spokesman Humayun Hamidzada. "This is the first meeting, and such meeting will continue. We want to reach a national understanding that also suits our national interests."
The main sticking point was exposed on February 2 when Muhammad Yunis Qanuni, the speaker of Afghanistan's lower house of parliament, bluntly told the Wolesi Jirga that the election commission had no legal authority to delay the vote.
"Dear parliamentarians, I want to formally share my concerns about the holding of elections. If the situation continues as it is today, you will not see elections on August 20," Qanuni said.
"We all should ask the president of Afghanistan, as the guardian of the constitution, to make a decision about the delay of polls announced by the election commission. Secondly, he should also form a supervisory constitutional commission to prevent similar mistakes from being repeated in the future," Qanuni added.
Dismal Security Situation
Following extensive consultations, the Independent Election Commission cited the country's dismal security situation, lack of funding, and harsh weather conditions in remote areas as the reasons for pushing the presidential vote to August 20.
But the Afghan Constitution specifically tasks the election commission with holding presidential polls at least a month before the end of president's term in office on May 22, leading to expectations of an April vote.
And this has led lawmakers, opposition parties, and legal experts searching for the legal basis for moving the date.
In a an interview given to RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan just after the delay announcement, Kabul-based Afghan legal expert Nasrullah Stanekzai explained the legal shortcomings, and a possible solution.
"Basically, the election commission lacks the authority to change the election date for a day. It was a mistake by the special representative of the UN [secretary-general, Kai Eide], who advocated it on behalf of the international community in the Mishrano Jirga [Afghan Senate] a couple days back," Stanekzai said.
"I think the only way forward is for both houses of the Afghan parliament to now endorse the election commission's decision. Although it is a wrong decision, [they still need] to grant legitimacy to [the extension] of the president's term in office," he said.
No Easy Answers
Lawmakers, like parliamentarian Kabir Ranjbar, have expressed similar dissatisfaction, but don't envision such an easy answer. Rajbar feels that the failure to follow the constitution in letter and in spirit could have dire consequences.
The fact that Karzai's term constitutionally ends in May places him on shaky ground legally should he remain in office.
"This will create a wider political crisis. And this will be a constitutional crisis. And such a crisis is much worse than any other political or economic crisis," Ranjbar says. "It is a fundamental disaster. But we have a legal way to prevent it."
Ranjbar suggests that the Afghan parliament could avert a greater crisis by giving its endorsement to the electoral commission's decision. He adds that parliament could legally extend Karzai's term by allowing him to impose a four-month state of emergency, which would allow him to tackle the security problems and to facilitate a smooth transfer of power.
Presidential spokesman Hamidzada admits that the country's 5-year-old constitution didn't foresee such complications.
"Definitely, our constitution didn't anticipate certain problems. There are, unfortunately, contradictions in the constitution. These problems should be look upon in a larger framework -- in the framework of the national interests," Hamidzada says.
Observers expect intense politicking on the question of what to do after Karzai's terms in office ends in late May. But they widely predict that all sides will eventually agree to the August 20 date, considering that it would be practically impossible to hold elections before that.
That would fit with suggestions made by Kai Eide, the UN secretary-general's special representative for Afghanistan, in an interview given to RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan just before the decision to delay the vote was made.
"My recommendation would be to respect the decision that the election commission makes," Eide said. "I will respect that decision, and I hope that everybody will respect that decision."
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Plans Emerge for New Troop Deployments to Afghanistan
Wall Street Journal By CHIP CUMMINS in Dubai, ROSHANAK TAGHAVI in Tehran and JAY SOLOMON in Washington 4 February 2009
WASHINGTON - Senior U.S. commanders are finalizing plans to send tens of thousands of reinforcements to Afghanistan's main opium-producing region and its porous border with Pakistan, moves that will form the core of President Barack Obama's emerging Afghan war strategy.
Mr. Obama is likely to formally approve additional deployments this week, and Pentagon officials hope the full complement of 20,000 to 30,000 new troops will be on the ground by the end of the summer, pushing the U.S. military presence to its highest level since the start of the war in 2001.
U.S. commanders said the moves are part of a push to beat back the resurgent Taliban and secure regions of Afghanistan that are beyond the reach of the weak central government in Kabul. Unlike Iraq, where violence has typically been concentrated in cities, the war in Afghanistan is being increasingly waged in isolated villages and towns.
Virtually none of the new troops heading to Afghanistan will go to Kabul or other major Afghan cities. By contrast, when the Bush administration dispatched 30,000 new troops to Iraq as part of the so-called surge, the bulk of the new forces went to Baghdad.
Pentagon officials said troops will be deployed along the Helmand River Valley, which produces the bulk of the world's opium; along the two main highways of southern Afghanistan that have been hit by growing numbers of roadside bombs; in two provinces outside Kabul believed to serve as staging grounds for the insurgents planning attacks in the capital; and along the Afghan-Pakistani border.
"We'll array our troops to secure the population," Brig. Gen. John M. Nicholson, the top U.S. commander in southern Afghanistan, said in an interview. "We're going to go out to where the people are."
The deployments, part of a planned doubling of the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, are almost certain to spark heavier casualties and push the war squarely onto the public agenda. "I hate to say it, but yes, I think there will be [more U.S. casualties]," Vice President Joe Biden said on CBS Sunday. "There will be an uptick."
The planned deployments also highlight the changing nature of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. After years of focusing on bolstering the country's central government, the U.S. is ramping up efforts to crack down on drug eradication and border infiltration from Pakistan.
Afghanistan's security situation has continued to deteriorate. Militants are entering from bases in Pakistan and carrying out attacks that are destabilizing both countries. The Taliban have strongholds throughout southern Afghanistan and are using drug money to buy weapons and hire new fighters.
Last year was the bloodiest to date for American and North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces and 24 Western troops have been killed in Afghanistan in 2009.
Afghanistan's violence has historically tapered off in the winter, but this year is shaping up differently. On Tuesday, militants destroyed a bridge in northwest Pakistan that is part of the main supply route for U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, temporarily halting the shipments of food, gas and military equipment into the country. On Monday, a suicide bomber killed 21 Afghan police officers in one of Afghanistan's deadliest attacks in months.
NATO statistics show that 19 of the 20 areas with the highest numbers of attacks in Afghanistan are rural. The most dangerous city is the southern metropolis of Kandahar at No. 13; Kabul is No. 42.
The vast majority of the new troops will be deployed to southern Afghanistan, a Taliban stronghold that houses many of the shadow local governments run by the armed group. The Taliban are also profiting from the south's skyrocketing opium production, which allows the militants to continually replenish their supplies of weapons and fighters.
Some of the new forces are deploying to the border province of Kunar, a main transit route for the militants who cross into the country from Pakistan to carry out attacks on U.S., NATO and Afghan targets.
"We'll thicken our lines in Kunar," Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Schloesser, the top U.S. commander in eastern Afghanistan, said in a recent interview. "We'll be able to get out into some villages we haven't been in before."
In a potential complication to the U.S.-led war effort, the Kyrgyz government renewed its threat to close an American base that is a main transit point for troops deploying to Afghanistan. But U.S. officials dismissed the threat as political posturing designed to improve Kyrgyzstan's relationship with Russia.
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Chaos Central
Le Monde diplomatique By Chris Sands 02/04/2009
A correspondent looks back at the deterioration across the country over the past three years: the resurgence of both the Taliban and the old corrupt elites, the failure of the occupation forces, and the worsening conditions of life for everybody else
As the summer of 2005 faded, everyone in Kabul had forgotten there was a war on. American soldiers bought carpets in Chicken Street bazaar; mercenaries downed vodka in restaurants before wandering upstairs to sleep with Chinese prostitutes. The brothels were in the same neighbourhoods as the mansions that militia commanders were building themselves with CIA funds and drug money. Back then, this city was ideal for post-conflict profiteering. Hastily created NGOs continued to flood in, so did journalists eager to write about the local golf course and the suave president. Victory had been declared. But the Taliban knew their time was coming again. The warning signs were around for anyone who cared to look.
I'd been in Afghanistan under a week when aid groups revealed that deteriorating security threatened their projects. Soon after, the governor of Maidan Wardak, a province bordering Kabul, told me all was okay there. Then the PR finished and he said a new generation of militants had shown its face, young men disillusioned with the occupation, some trained in Pakistan. Trouble was evident near Jalalabad, where a villager complained that his cousin had vanished after being arrested by the Americans three years earlier. We talked in a dirt yard full of kids and they were the only ones who expected his return.
Kandahar is the spiritual heartland of the Taliban, and in late 2005, the movement was drawing strength from its birthplace. There I saw a reality our politicians had made us believe did not exist. A man working at the football stadium reminisced about the executions on the pitch. If capital punishment was still common, he said, the new government wouldn't be so crooked. (I heard this repeatedly until it was said across the country.) The police were the worst offenders, looking for bribes to supplement their low wages. Another Kandahari had joined the Taliban as a teenager in the 1990s. “At that time we were very happy,” he said. “It was like we were very poor and had suddenly found a lot of money.” Insurgent attacks and violent crime were already a problem in Kandahar, yet the Taliban were rarely the subject of people's fury; they blamed the government and its allies.
Taliban on the rise In the spring of 2006, Kabul's imams complained publicly that officials were corrupt and alcohol was easily available. They were also angry at house raids by foreign soldiers in rural areas and accused them of molesting women. Most said the time for jihad was approaching.
When rioters tore through Kabul on 29 May, it was no big surprise. The spark was a fatal traffic accident involving US troops, but the explosion had been primed long before. Protesters shouted “Death to America”. The situation was now ripe for the Taliban to harness national discontent. They were soon fighting pitched battles with British soldiers in Helmand, and in areas close to Kabul, people warned the government might collapse. I couldn't find anyone in Ghazni who admitted to taking the insurgents' side: they said poverty and a lack of reconstruction caused people to rebel. Looking at the broken roads and crumbling homes, I saw what they meant. Police had tried to stop the Taliban's favourite mode of transport by banning motorbikes in one district. The militants responded by imposing travel restrictions on everybody; in the mosques they would tell worshippers not to drive.
The more the Taliban turned to violence, the more they were seen as a force that could not be stopped. The bloodshed made people long for the stability of the old regime, if not its repressive laws. Villagers across the south and east had gained almost nothing from the US-led invasion, and many had lost good security. Among people in Logar, bordering Kabul, the anger was palpable. “Our biggest problem is with the foreigners – we just hate them. Our families, our children, our women – everyone hates them,” said an elder. “Let's pretend I'm a young man,” said another. “I have graduated from school, but I can't go to university and there is no factory to work in. So how can I feed myself? I can just join the insurgents – it's easy.”
The Taliban first rose up in 1994 when Afghanistan was controlled by warlords who previously had CIA support. Mullah Wakil Ahmad Mutawakil lost his father during the Soviet occupation and joined the Taliban “to give the country freedom”. He went on to become Mullah Omar's spokesman and later his foreign minister. We talked in January 2007 when Mutawakil was being kept under watch in Kabul. He knew his government had made mistakes, letting jihadis from across the world train and fight here. But he was adamant that the international community's decision to isolate the regime had only made it more extreme.
Kandahar was frightening in the spring of 2007. The police were accused of kidnappings and robberies, and the scars of suicide bombings pockmarked the streets. Residents admired the Taliban: the alternatives were dire. Democracy meant anarchy and, in the villages, a brutal occupation. “If I sit at a table with an American and he says he has brought us freedom, I will tell him he has fucked us,” said a father-of-two. He had fled Kandahar during the Taliban government because he was against its restrictions on education. “But I was never worried about my family,” he added. “Every single minute of the last three years I have been very worried.”
A religious leader from the district of Panjwayi described how 18 of his relatives had been killed in an air strike. Reports of civilians bombed from above were frequent. First villagers or local officials would say innocent people were dead and Nato or US-led coalition would deny it. Then all parties would agree civilian blood had been spilt, but argue over casualty figures. Hamid Karzai kept demanding that the carnage stop, but it never did.
Ceasefire called In Kabul, a senator from Helmand said it was killing the entire country. He was among members of parliament's upper chamber who had called for a ceasefire and negotiations with insurgent groups. They had also said a date should be set for the withdrawal of foreign forces. By then the parliament was a symbol of the Taliban's resurgence. Police in riot gear stood watch and the building was falling to pieces. Not only was there sympathy for the militants inside, there were also men whose viciousness had caused the discontent that helped create the movement. Most Afghans wanted the warlords brought to justice, but the international community had let them stand for election, and here they were showing off their power.
Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef used to serve as the Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan and, after a spell in Guantanamo, lived under constant surveillance in Kabul. He said men with blood on their hands were now the West's great hope. “At the time of the Taliban, if someone killed another person it was possible to capture him, send him to court, punish him and execute him. Today, if someone goes to a village and kills 100 people, tomorrow he is given more privileges by the government. The Americans and the world community brought the warlords to power.”
Poor forced out of areas By summer 2007, suicide bombings were the weapon of choice and they frightened Afghans, who had never seen them during the Soviet occupation. Men who hated the Taliban were starting to resemble them. A former Northern Alliance commander from the province of Badakhshan said: “Now when any foreigner is killed, every Afghan says ‘praise be to God'.” We were chatting at his home in an area of Kabul where the poor had been forced out so warlords and foreign contractors could move in.
Afghanistan's Sikh and Hindu community had been about 50,000 before 1992. Now it was down to 5,000. The exodus had been instigated by the Mujahideen, not the Taliban. With the same old faces back in power again, no one was happy. “The Taliban told us we had to do all our religious ceremonies in private, but they did not stop us from doing them. It was a government that was not recognised by the world, but it was better than now,” said a Sikh.
Female MPs said they felt ashamed for not being able to help their constituents. One said she was sure the time was approaching when she would be a prisoner in her own home again. “For all this I blame America. When the Russians were here, the people picked up guns to fight them. Now people are picking up guns to fight the Americans,” she said. “Soon my daughter will finish school and then she wants to start private education,” said another. “But I cannot let her because I cannot give her a bodyguard.”
Some are above the law A judge at the Supreme Court told me that some people here are above the law. He would not name names, but described the control that warlords have over his colleagues as “totally ordinary”. Immediately after, the Taliban attacked a luxury hotel. A friend of mine reassured me that, as a Pashtun, he would offer me protection. “Mullah Omar destroyed Afghanistan because of Osama bin Laden, but he didn't give him up,” he said. A day later a Taliban commander from Helmand described how the resistance had struggled to find support in the early years. But after innocent people had been detained or killed, the jihad had burst into life. Now even the Afghan army secretly gave them bullets and treated their wounded.
In April I drove from Kabul to Paghman and found a pile of burnt trash where the offices of Zafar Radio used to be. Masked men had torched the premises for being “un-Islamic”. In July, a car bomber attacked the Indian embassy, scattering corpses. People were angry with the government, saying it was unable to provide security. In an area of the capital where Hamid Karzai had narrowly escaped assassination, a doctor sold samosas from a roadside stall; it was the only job he could get.
Last year was the grimmest since the invasion. The US military's total of 113 killed up to September was two more than for the whole of 2007. As for civilians, 1,445 were killed from January to August 2008, according to the UN. Now in 2009, the Taliban's strength is growing on Kabul's doorstep, in Maidan Wardak and Logar. The main highway south is impossibly risky. In the east, the rebels have taken new ground as they move freely across the border. In the north, warlords are reasserting their dominance. Kabul is a claustrophobic, paranoid place. More foreign troops are due. But they risk the same backlash as the Soviets, and the long-term aim remains unclear.
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Upset with West, is Karzai turning east?
By Sayed Salahuddin February 3, 2009
KABUL (Reuters) - Frustrated with some of his Western allies, in particular the United States, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has begun to reach out to Afghanistan's giant northern neighbour Russia.
U.S. President Barack Obama has pledged to make Afghanistan his top foreign policy priority and will be unlikely to give Karzai an easy ride, having accused him in the past of failing to get "out of the bunker" and rule effectively.
Karzai, once the darling of the West, is no longer assured of the unwavering support he enjoyed from former President George W. Bush, and European leaders have joined the chorus continually calling for good governance -- more implied criticism of Karzai.
"When Karzai sees his former allies are not in power and the rest criticise him, instead of helping him, then he looks for new allies," said Shukriya Barakzai, a prominent parliamentarian.
The new allies, she said, were led by Russia, and included neighbours Iran and China who have economic interests in Afghanistan, but also reservations about the presence of foreign troops.
Russian diplomats have said the West was making the same mistakes the Soviet Union made during its ill-fated 10-year occupation of Afghanistan.
On the eve of President Barack Obama's inauguration, Karzai's office released a statement saying Moscow had accepted his request for providing defence aid to Afghanistan.
Karzai's chief spokesman played down the importance of the move, saying despite Karzai's call, Afghanistan was committed to its ties with NATO and the United States, which have nearly 70,000 troops fighting Taliban-led insurgents in the country.
The request by Karzai, facing elections in August, was made last November and the timing of the release of the news of Moscow's acceptance could be no more than just a coincidence.
However, the next day in parliament, just hours before Obama took office, Karzai, who has led Afghanistan with Western military and financial support since the Taliban's 2001 overthrow, spoke apparently for the first time of his desire for closer ties with Russia.
Days later, as the U.S. ambassador and U.S. commander of NATO troops looked on, Karzai told an army graduation ceremony Afghanistan needed to acquire planes and tanks from anywhere it could after failing to get them from NATO and the United States.
"We told America and the world to give us planes soon and if you do not, we will get them from another place," Karzai said. "We told them we have become impatient and we cannot live without planes."
RECRIMINATION
Seven years after swiftly dispatching the Taliban government, Western forces are struggling against insurgent attacks that rose by a third last year and a campaign of suicide bombing that has heightened the sense of insecurity and eroded public trust in the ability of both Karzai's government and NATO to bring security.
Mutual recrimination, though often muted and diplomatically coded, has risen accordingly.
Karzai has repeatedly hit back at Western criticism of his government, endemic official corruption and lack of rule of law, with stinging attacks on the U.S. and NATO record of accidentally killing hundreds of civilians in air strikes.
Last week Karzai warned he would call a national assembly of tribal chiefs and elders to discuss civilian casualties and house searches by foreign troops if NATO failed to reply positively within a month to a draft agreement with his government he sent to the alliance, state newspapers said.
The draft agreement largely wants control over where and how foreign troops are deployed, an end to house raids and coordination at the "highest level" on the use of air power.
In an election year, Karzai may well want to distance himself from foreign forces and Western allies and shift the blame for the failures and missed opportunities of the last seven years.
Seeking regional allies is just part of that shift.
"The Russians may have more supporters in Afghanistan than the Americans since they know Afghanistan much better and Iran is also its major ally," said Waheed Mozhdah, an analyst who served under the Taliban government.
(Editing by Jerry Norton)
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Dinner with Secretary Clinton: Afghanistan on the menu
Tue, 02/03/2009 - 5:56pm The New ForeignPolicy.com
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will host selected South Asia hands at a dinner tonight (Tuesday) on the topic of Afghanistan at the Secretary's official dining room on the eighth floor of Foggy Bottom, The Cable has learned. About 10 people were invited to the dinner, said one person informed about it (but not going), on condition of anonymity. "Some widely known experts, others less well-known but more likely to have jobs in the new team," the source said.
Clinton's Afghan dinner would appear to signal that the secretary of state intends to be a key player in setting the Obama administration's policy toward Afghanistan -- along with Defense Secretary Robert Gates, CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus, and national security advisor James L. Jones -- and it follows the appointment of former Amb. Richard Holbrooke as the State Department's South Asia envoy.
Sources told The Cable that among those invited are J. Alexander Thier, of the U.S. Institute of Peace, and Jonah Blank, a South Asia advisor with the Senate Foreign Relations committee. Neither would comment. Both advised the Obama campaign on South Asia issues. Blank recently accompanied Vice President Joseph Biden on a trip to the region (Biden, incidentally, had breakfast with Clinton this morning, according to his official schedule). Thier is the editor of a recent USIP report, "The Future of Afghanistan," and previously served as a member of an Afghanistan study group led by national security advisor Jones.
The dinner comes as Holbrooke has been working this week out of the transition's offices on the State Department's first floor, preparing for his mission and interviewing possible staff. The Cable has previously reported that Vali Nasr, the Fletcher professor and Mideast and South Asia expert, has agreed to serve as a senior advisor to Holbrooke. New York University professor Barnett Rubin declined to comment on what some sources indicate, that he may serve as an informal advisor to Holbrooke. Nor would he say if he's going to tonight's dinner.
It's still unclear who will serve as assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs, and who will take deputy roles. The outgoing deputy assistant secretary for India, Evan Feigenbaum, is slated to join the Council on Foreign Relations next month. Two career Foreign Service officers, Nancy Powell and Bob Blake, along with the current U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Ann Patterson, are discussed as possible assistant secretaries, along with some of those invited to tonight's dinner, as possible appointees for assistant secretary or DAS slots. Former Assistant Secretary of State Karl Inderfurth, who also advised the Obama campaign on South Asia, is also mentioned as being in the mix for a South Asia position, possibly as U.S. ambassador to India. He didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. The New York Times recently reported that ret. Army Ltn. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry, the former top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, has been tapped as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan.
At the NSC, the Afghanistan portfolio seems slated to remain for now under the direction of retired Gen. Douglas Lute, George W. Bush's holdover "war czar," whose staff of seconded CIA, DoD, and other federal agency employees are mostly staying in place for now. A senior director on South Asia may be appointed at a later point. Bruce Riedel, the veteran CIA and NSC official who served as the senior lead on the team advising the Obama campaign on South Asia, has previously told The Cable he expects to stay at the Brookings Institution. But it's possible he could play an advisory role, sources say.
Meantime, observers note similarities between the recommendations in a new Afghanistan report (pdf) by counterinsurgency and security experts at the Center for a New American Security, and Politico's description today of the Joint Chiefs of Staff's recommendation to President Obama to scale back U.S. ambitions in Afghanistan. Under the revised aims reportedly proposed by the classified JCS report, and by the unclassified CNAS briefing paper, the reduced objectives would be to prevent the country from being a safe haven for al Qaeda and the Taliban and to ensure regional stability, rather than try to build a centralized, democratic state.
One of the co-authors of the CNAS report, ret. Lt. Col. John Nagl, said he had no plans to go to dinner tonight with Secretary Clinton. Rather, he said, he would be teaching about Afghanistan at Georgetown.
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Is the West losing the Pashtuns?
Al Jazeera By Hekmat Karzai 02/03/2009
Kabul - In the middle of the night on December 17, Amir Hassan, his wife, and their 14-year-old nephew were killed during a Coalition Forces operation in the eastern Afghan province of Khost.
Qudratullah, Hassan's 10-year-old son, survived but was bitten by an attack dog shortly after the US-led raid.
The US military claimed that its forces had targeted "known individuals with al-Qaeda links" and had even been shot at.
Hassan's brother and neighbours said the raid had resulted in the deaths of three civilians with no ties to insurgents or armed groups.
Though Kabul called on US forces to launch an investigation into the attack, increasing civilian deaths from military operations have been stoking deep anger and resentment among Afghans - and in particular the Pashtuns of eastern and southern Afghanistan, where much of the fighting has occurred.
If the same pattern of behaviour continues and there is this utter lack of respect by the Coalition Forces for the Pashtuns, the West will ultimately lose in Afghanistan.
A better tomorrow?
After 9/11, Afghans welcomed the international community with open arms. Many were optimistic and hoped for a better tomorrow.
Yet seven years later, the promised 'Marshal Plan' has not yet been delivered and the relationship with the West is now at a turning point as innocent Afghans are killed by indiscriminate US-led air raids.
A recent report by the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission revealed that in the first 10 months of 2008, Coalition Forces were responsible for 700 of the total 1,798 civilians killed.
Tribal elders have also accused Coalition Forces of disrespecting local culture and centuries-old customs.
Ignoring realities
They say aggressive night searches of civilian houses are angering the Pashtun population. However, a majority of Pashtuns are still tolerant and have not completely given up on the current political process.
The sad fact is that the West has yet to comprehend two important realities: First, the Pashtuns are the foremost victims of terrorism and extremism and that they have extended their hand of friendship to the West to defeat this common enemy.
For the last three decades, the Pashtun population has suffered immensely.
They have lost generations to illiteracy and hundreds of thousands of young men served as foot soldiers in the battle against the former Soviet Union.
Billions of dollars were spent by the West through regional intelligence agencies on establishing madrassas to radicalise young Pashtuns in an effort to counter the growth of Marxism.
The Taliban also exploited the Pashtuns to their advantage: whenever they were winning, they were Muslim but when they were losing on the frontlines, they harnessed the traditional principles of Pashtunwali to mobilise the Pashtun population and to earn their support.
Poignantly today, nearly 50 per cent of the schools in the Pashtun areas in the south have been closed down creating yet another illiterate generation ready to serve as cannon fodder.
Conservative, collective society
Second, the Pashtuns are deeply conservative and live in a collective society.
Whenever one is killed, the good will of his family, his tribe and his larger community is lost.
Clearly, the insurgents have fully capitalised on this and are gaining the support of vengeful segments of the Pashtun population.
Random attacks which lead to the deaths of innocents are used by the insurgents as 'political oxygen' for their recruitment purposes.
A study by the Centre for Conflict and Peace Studies assessed that revenge against Coalition Forces has become a key motivation for joining the insurgency.
There is a growing perception among the Pashtuns that the West is here to avenge the attack on the Twin Towers and their targets are only the Pashtuns.
In addition, there is a belief that the West in only interested in Afghanistan for its long-term strategic influence in the region at the expense of the Afghan people.
Losing patience
Evidently, in the aftermath of 9/11, the objectives were the same: to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda and to deliver on the Afghan hope.
Unfortunately the opposite is happening with the Coalition guns turning against innocent Afghans.
In a recent gathering of elders, one tribal chief said "we are not terrorists but victims, and the West needs to realise this before we lose our patience".
The Pashtuns want protection, education and better delivery of services from both the Afghan government and the Coalition Forces.
Yet their challenges are viewed only through the narrow lens of the global war on terrorism.
Even on terrorism, most would argue that the centre of gravity of terrorism has been across the Durrand line in Pakistan and particularly in the various sanctuaries.
In Afghanistan, and especially in the Pashtun areas, the populace are enduring the symptoms of terrorism; since there is no comprehensive strategy for Pakistan, innocent Pashtuns are paying the price with their lives.
It is not too late, however.
Afghanistan may be spiralling down but significant numbers of Pashtuns still know that the West is needed. If Afghanistan is to succeed as a state, efforts must be re-focused and the killing of civilians halted.
Throughout history, strategies for Afghanistan formulated either in Moscow or London, failed because they misunderstood the Pashtun factor.
Today, Washington must not repeat that historic mistake and keep in mind that if they Pashtuns lose their patience, the West's efforts in Afghanistan will certainly fail.
Hekmant Karzai is the founder and director of the Centre for Conflict and Peace Studies in Kabul, Afghanistan.
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Taliban kidnap 30 Pakistani policemen
by Saad Khan – Wed Feb 4, 3:59 am ET
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) – Taliban militants kidnapped 30 Pakistani policemen after a punishing day-long siege, in an embarrassing blow Wednesday for the army battling to win back control of the Swat valley.
The abduction, carried out at night when police and army reinforcements had suspended efforts to break the siege, underscores the huge challenges facing the security services.
Despite a wave of government offensives, the military has failed to impose its authority on the valley, a scenic former holiday region near the border with Afghanistan.
Thousands of Taliban besieged a police station in the area of Shamozai on Tuesday. The army was mobilised to rescue the police and break the circle of rebels, security officials said.
Clashes continued throughout the day but as dusk fell, the operation was suspended. Then, overnight, the Taliban broke into the office, kidnapped the officers and blew up the building, said Swat police chief Dilawar Khan.
Khan said the rebels kidnapped 30 policemen.
A Pakistani intelligence official based in the northwest city of Peshawar said that four paramilitary and police officers had been wounded in clashes with Taliban militants at the station.
Until two years ago, Swat was a jewel in the crown of Pakistani tourism, frequented by foreign and local holiday-makers escaping to the mountains for skiing in winter or more refreshing climes in the punishing heat of summer.
But the area descended into chaos in mid-2007 after radical cleric Maulana Fazlullah embarked on a terrifying campaign to enforce a Taliban-style Sharia law, prompting thousands of people to flee.
Pakistan, under massive Western pressure to clamp down on extremists, has stepped up its attempts to wrest back control of the valley.
Thousands of civilians have fled the area, which locals say has fallen to the insurgents.
In a related development, security and intelligence officials said that 50 militants were killed in military operations across the area from late Monday to Tuesday.
The death tolls are impossible to verify independently with the sprawling region effectively sealed off from the outside world.
Analysts believe the military is inadequately equipped to wage a successful counter-insurgency operation against militants who often melt seamlessly into the populace, while civilians are frequent victims of offensives.
US officials say northwestern Pakistan has become a haven for Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants who fled there from neighbouring Afghanistan after the 2001 US-led invasion, regrouping and launching attacks on foreign troops across the border.
Meanwhile, northeast from Swat, Taliban rebels torched 10 trucks contracted to ferry goods for NATO troops in Afghanistan after closing a key route across the border by blowing up a bridge.
"Militants sprinkled oil and then fired rockets at a terminal in the border town of Landi Kotal" late Tuesday, said local government official Rahat Gul.
The attack sparked a blaze that gutted eight containers mounted on lorries and badly damaged two others, he said.
Militants blew up the bridge Tuesday, leaving scores of vehicles stranded and suspending traffic between Peshawar and the Torkham border crossing into Afghanistan across the famed Khyber Pass.
Gul said the road was open for light traffic and was expected to reopen for trucks and other heavy vehicles later in the day.
NATO and US-led forces in Afghanistan are hugely dependent on Pakistan for their supplies and equipment, with an estimated 80 percent of it trucked in by land from there.
In Peshawar city itself, police killed eight Taliban militants in a clash Wednesday that also wounded two policemen, security officials said.
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The unlikely rise of Afghanistan
By Brian Homewood Reuters via International Herald Tribune - Wednesday, February 4, 2009
BUENOS AIRES: It took less than eight months for Afghanistan to jump from the fifth division of world cricket to one level below the major test-playing countries.
The team returned to its war-torn nation Tuesday after continuing one of sport's unlikeliest success stories by winning the third division in Argentina last week, a six-team tournament that doubles as a qualifier for cricket's World Cup.
Only last May, Afghanistan was playing in the fifth division of the International Cricket Council's world league. Having finished at the top of a tournament played in Jersey, one of the Channel Islands, Afghanistan then captured the fourth-division tournament in Tanzania in October.
In April, it travels to South Africa with a chance of qualifying for the 2011 World Cup or gaining coveted one-day international status.
National television reports chart the team's progress and thousands of people turn out to welcome them home after their tournament victories.
Coach Kabir Khan called his team ambassadors for the country, offering a change from the stereotyped image of religious fanatics and endless violence.
"We might be the first Afghans to come to Argentina, so we were the ambassadors for Afghanistan," he said. "Most people might have got a view about us and the sort of nation we may be, because of all the war and stuff.
"They might think all kinds of things but they welcomed us with open arms and we have been treated very well here.
"Cricket is getting a huge following and the other thing it brings people together as well," he said, adding that the players never discussed politics among themselves.
"What I've seen is that people might be in different groups politically, but when it comes to cricket all of them are together."
Cricket has only recently been introduced to the country, by Afghans who were raised in neighboring Pakistan, in particular in the city of Peshawar.
"Before the war started and before people started migrating to Pakistan, there was no sense of cricket," said Khan, himself a Pakistani who played four tests and 10 one-day internationals for his country in the 1990s.
"Nobody even knew about cricket. But the boys who migrated," he said, "started to learn about cricket because there was nothing else in Pakistan. It's a game which you can play in the street, that's how they got into this sport."
At the moment, the players are occupied full-time with cricket although they are paid only nominal sums.
"We are playing for pride and to get to the World Cup," said fast bowler Hamid Hassan.
The team's strength lies in the bowling attack, led by spinner Mohammad Nabi and right-arm fast bowler Hassan, and disciplined fielding.
The batting can be erratic and Afghanistan enjoyed a huge let-off in Argentina in their final match against the Cayman Islands.
Having restricted Afghanistan to 68 run for five wickets, Cayman Islands were only 28 runs from victory with eight wickets standing when rain forced the match to be abandoned for the day.
Afghanistan would have been eliminated if it had lost. Instead, when the match started again the next day it made 230 from its 50 overs, the highest score of the tournament, before going on to win by 82 runs.
"We were more than a little bit lucky, and I think God was very kind to us," said Khan. "It was all those prayers back home. The rain came at the right time."
The final and highest hurdle on the road to the World Cup will be in South Africa, where 12 teams - including established sides such as Scotland, Ireland, Netherlands and Kenya - will be competing for World Cup places.
Four teams will qualify for the 2011 World Cup - to be held jointly in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka - and six will earn one-day international status.
Hassan said Afghanistan stood a reasonable chance.
"We have lots of talent, all of the boys in Peshawar and lots playing in the countryside in Afghanistan."
"It's going to be difficult but not beyond our capabilities. They boys have got potential, they've got the talent. "They're playing for pride and respect and we're getting pride and respect for our nation all over the world."
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