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Tajikistan ready to help US with Afghanistan supplies
by Akbar Borisov
DUSHANBE (AFP) – Tajikistan said Friday it was ready to allow US and NATO supplies for Afghanistan to transit across its territory, after neighbouring Kyrgyzstan ordered the closure of a vital US airbase.
Russia to help U.S. deliver cargo to Afghanistan
MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- Russia will assist the U.S. in the transit of non-military cargo to Afghanistan, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Friday.
From Russia, kind words and a punch in the nose
By Ellen Barry The New York Times Friday, February 6, 2009
MOSCOW: Talk about mixed messages. Russian leaders could not say enough good things about President Barack Obama this week. His statements on Afghanistan were "encouraging,"
Afghanistan can be 'quagmire' for Al Qaeda: Lieberman
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US-led "war on terror" will end when moderate Muslims stand up to extremism in Afghanistan, US Senator Joseph Lieberman wrote Friday in the Wall Street Journal.
Afghanistan Will Be a Quagmire for al Qaeda
The war on terror will end once we've empowered the Muslim majority to stand up against extremists.
The Wall Street Journal - World News By JOSEPH LIEBERMAN 6 February 2009
Although President Barack Obama and all of us in Congress are understandably focused on the economic crisis, we also face multiple crises in the rest of the world -- beginning with the war in Afghanistan.
Top US lawmakers to Iraq, Afghanistan
WASHINGTON (AFP) – Top US lawmakers visited Iraq on Friday as part of a week-long trip there and to Afghanistan to assess US efforts to stabilize and rebuild the two war-torn countries, congressional sources said.
Afghanistan, Iran, NATO focus of security meeting
By David Rising And George Jahn, Associated Press Writers – Fri Feb 6, 8:06 am ET
MUNICH, Germany – A key security conference focused on NATO's commitment to Afghanistan opens Friday amid U.S. pressure on Germany and other key allies to deploy more troops. Concerns over Iran's nuclear defiance are also on the agenda.
Nosedive in Afghan-US relations
Thursday, 5 February 2009 BBC News
Relations between President Karzai's Afghan government and Washington are at an all-time low. As Richard Holbrooke - President Obama's envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan - prepares to make his first visit
Afghans dispute men killed in U.S. raid were Taliban
Fri Feb 6, 4:26 am ET
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) – U.S.-led forces killed six men during a night raid in the southern Afghan province of Zabul, but Afghan officials disputed a U.S. military account that the victims were Taliban fighters.
Govt pledges election aid to Afghanistan
Thu Feb 5, 1:31 pm ET
LONDON (AFP) – Britain on Thursday pledged 10.6 million pounds in aid to help support Afghanistan's electoral process ahead of presidential elections in August.
Two Canadians injured in roadside blast in Afghanistan
Canwest News Service Friday, February 06, 2009
KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan - Two Canadian soldiers were injured in a roadside bomb blast while on patrol in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, the Canadian Forces reported.
Iran and the US: United over Afghanistan?
By Syed Saleem Shahzad Asia Times Feb 7, 2009
KARACHI - The annual Munich Security Conference, which brings together a dozen world leaders and about 50 top diplomats and defense officials, starts on Friday for the 45th time with one item paramount on its agenda:
Human rights worker denies receiving secrets
Associated Press Fri Feb 6, 4:22 am ET
LONDON – A human rights worker has denied that she received secret information from a senior British army officer arrested in Afghanistan on suspicion of leaking official secrets.
Canadian soldiers to target Afghan drug trade linked to Taliban
CBC News February 6, 2009
Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan will be ordered to attack opium traffickers and drug facilities when there is proof of direct links to the Taliban, CBC News has learned.
2 Afghans face death over translation of Quran
By HEIDI VOGT Associated Press February 6, 2009
KABUL – No one knows who brought the book to the mosque, or at least no one dares say. The pocket-size translation of the Quran has already landed six men in prison in Afghanistan and left two of them begging judges
Afghanistan Appeal May Temper European Allies' Ardor for Obama
By Craig Whitlock Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, February 6, 2009; A13
MUNICH, Feb. 5 -- European leaders cheered when Barack Obama was elected president in November. They cheered again when he proclaimed during his inaugural address that America was
Afghanistan is a burden for us: French Foreign Minister
February 6, 2009
Washington (PTI): Observing that Afghanistan is now a burden, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has favoured giving Afghans control of their own destiny.
With a nudge and a wink, MoD has dragged me through the mud
The Guardian Rachel Reid Friday 6 February 2009
Yesterday it emerged that a senior British army officer, Colonel Owen McNally, had been arrested under the Official Secrets Act for allegedly passing classified information to a human rights worker in Afghanistan.
The Empire v. The Graveyard
TomDispatch By Tom Engelhardt 02/06/2009
Whistling Past the Afghan Graveyard, Where Empires Go To Die
It is now a commonplace -- as a lead article in the New York Times's Week in Review pointed out recently -- that Afghanistan is "the graveyard of empires." Given Barack Obama's call for a greater focus
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Tajikistan ready to help US with Afghanistan supplies
by Akbar Borisov
DUSHANBE (AFP) – Tajikistan said Friday it was ready to allow US and NATO supplies for Afghanistan to transit across its territory, after neighbouring Kyrgyzstan ordered the closure of a vital US airbase.
The decision by the Kyrgyz government to shut down the Manas airbase has troubled Washington, which had used the facility as a vital route for flying in supplies for coalition forces in Afghanistan.
Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon said after meeting the US ambassador that his country was ready to allow supplies including construction materials, medicines, fuel and water to transit across its soil by road.
"Tajikistan is ready to offer the United States and NATO countries help with the transit of humanitarian and commercial supplies to Afghanistan," he said in a statement.
He said the supplies would be of a non-military nature and should be not just for the benefit of coalition forces.
"They should be destined not only for the military but it is also important they are used for the reconstruction of Afghanistan," he added.
US ambassador Tracey Ann Jacobson said the transit would take place by land and would employ a new bridge over the Panj river funded by the United States that opened in August 2007 and links the south of Tajikistan with neighbouring Afghanistan.
She said that a delegation from the United States would soon come to Tajikistan to discuss the issue.
Tajikistan, an impoverished former Soviet republic that is currently experiencing severe electricity shortages, has a 1,340-kilometre (830-mile) border with Afghanistan.
The United States has been seeking to increase the number of supply routes to Afghanistan, including in post-Soviet Central Asia, as extremist attacks have plagued the main transport corridor through Pakistan.
But its ambitions were dealt a severe blow when the Kyrgyz president announced on a visit to Moscow that he would order the closure of the base. His announcement came on same day that Russia announced a loan and aid package worth over two billion dollars for his country.
The Kyrgyz government said on Friday that its decision to close the base was final and it was now in talks with the American side about when exactly it will be shut down.
"The government of Kyrgyzstan has taken its final decision about the closure of the American airbase," government spokesman Aibek Sultangaziev told AFP.
"The issue is now with parliament which must cancel the agreement on the base with the United States."
The head of the Kyrgyz national security council, Adakhan Madumarov, also scotched US hopes of talks to change Bishkek's mind, saying there were "no negotiations with the American side over the bases."
"The fate of the air base has been decided. Such decisions are not taken spontaneously," he said.
The Manas base, operated by about 1,000 troops including small French and Spanish contingents, was set up to support coalition forces fighting to oust the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the decision "regrettable" on Thursday but said US operations in the region would continue to be effective, no matter what happened.
The closure of the base would strain US supply lines at a time when President Barack Obama is preparing to nearly double the 36,000-strong force in the country.
But Russia also said that it would allow the transit of non-military supplies as soon as the United States detailed what items needed to move across its soil for NATO forces in Afghanistan.
"As soon as that happens we will give the corresponding permission," said Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, according to Russian news agencies.
He said this permission would activate an agreement signed in April 2008 between Russia and NATO for the transit of non-military supplies across Russian territory for NATO forces in Afghanistan.
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Russia to help U.S. deliver cargo to Afghanistan
MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- Russia will assist the U.S. in the transit of non-military cargo to Afghanistan, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Friday.
Lavrov said on Russian television that his country intends to cooperate to help get vital cargo to NATO troops in Afghanistan.
The United States had asked to transport the cargo through Russian territory to Afghanistan, Lavrov said.
The U.S. military is planning to send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan to halt a resurgence of the Taliban.
In recent days, the United States has faced a possible setback in its ability to resupply its troops because Kyrgyzstan has decided to close a U.S. military base used as a route for troops and supplies to Afghanistan.
Russian leaders have recently expressed a willingness to cooperate in the fight against terrorists.
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From Russia, kind words and a punch in the nose
By Ellen Barry The New York Times Friday, February 6, 2009
MOSCOW: Talk about mixed messages. Russian leaders could not say enough good things about President Barack Obama this week. His statements on Afghanistan were "encouraging," his arms control proposals were "a fresh signal," and plans for talks with Iran were "encouraging signals."
But the compliments came with the geopolitical equivalent of a punch in the nose.
On Tuesday, visiting Moscow to accept $2.15 billion in aid, the president of Kyrgyzstan announced a decision to shut down the U.S. air base of Manas, creating a formidable obstacle to Obama's single biggest foreign policy aim, pursuing the war in Afghanistan.
Maybe this should not have come as a surprise. Beginning with the bristling speech that President Dmitri Medvedev gave hours after Obama was elected, the signals from Moscow to the new U.S. administration have veered from hostile to conciliatory and back again. Moscow is clearly exploring the idea of cooperation. But it is also demanding, in arm-twisting fashion, that Obama make Russian interests a priority.
"It's not clear to me who's calling the shots or what exactly the message is," said Strobe Talbott, who was deputy secretary of state under President Bill Clinton and is now president of the Brookings Institution. "It's an odd way to set the table for a serious, forward-looking dialogue. The Russians claim to want a discussion."
Afghanistan has been seen as an important area for cooperation between the two countries, since Russia is deeply worried about the spread of Islamic extremism in the region. That notion was thrown into doubt Tuesday when, at a news conference in Moscow, the Kyrgyz president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, announced plans to shut down the base.
Kyrgyz and Russian officials have said the move had nothing to do with the pledge of Russian aid, but Moscow has long sought to push the United States out of the bases it has leased in Central Asia. Russian comments since then have suggested that if Obama hopes to move forward with his plans to deploy as many as 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, he will have to secure Moscow's support. That means addressing Russian complaints, including plans for missile defense facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic and expanding NATO.
"In the Russian mind, there is a window of opportunity to bargain, and if we are sitting down to bargain, we better have good cards on our side of the table," said Oksana Antonenko, a senior fellow at the Institute for International Strategic Studies in London.
"What they see in the best case scenario is a deal. A bargain. It's not a partnership."
The move was startling because it came amid a string of signals that Moscow was actually willing to engage Obama.
U.S. policymakers were encouraged by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, which muted his typically caustic anti-U.S. tone. Medvedev organized a candid, hourlong meeting with the editor of Novaya Gazeta, a newspaper critical of the Kremlin which has lost a series of employees to contract killings, and he promised to rewrite an anti-treason law that had infuriated human rights activists.
In the last two weeks, Moscow announced that it was ready to open a NATO supply route to Afghanistan through Russia. And though official sources would not confirm it, an anonymous Defense Ministry official told the Interfax news service that Moscow had dropped a plan to station a battery of Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad.
Then came the announcement Tuesday about the Manas air base.
"This really did come out of the blue for me," said Andrew Kuchins, director of the Russia-Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "It is a particularly Russian tactic — it's sort of brutal, and rude, and makes it harder to achieve what you think their goal is."
It came as a reminder that Russians do not share Europeans' giddiness over Obama. Relations between Russia and the United States last year reached their lowest point since the fall of the Soviet Union, and dialogue between the two governments had basically halted. In that sense, Obama will have to deal with "the tail end of the Bush legacy," including bitter memories of the war in Georgia last summer, said Sergei Rogov, director of the Institute for USA and Canada Studies in Moscow.
"Can you imagine, after the Georgia war, that Russia would lobby Kyrgyzstan on behalf of the United States?" Rogov said, adding that the decision "was not something Russia did, it was something against which Russia didn't object."
Moreover, Russian leaders are getting impatient to see concrete plans from Washington. Obama seems willing to slow the timeline on missile defense and NATO expansion, but not to publicly shelve the projects. Russian leaders, eager to renegotiate the relationship, want to make sure they have Obama's attention.
"The real ball game has not started," Rogov said. "There will be tough bargaining on many issues. It's a legacy of the semi-Cold War."
It may be a mistake to look for a grand plan in statements coming out of Moscow, where major players still disagree about the benefits of a friendlier relationship and may be addressing themselves to domestic audiences.
A single, raw issue — U.S. influence in post-Soviet space — underlies the raft of policy disputes between the two capitals, said Angela Stent, who directs Russian studies at Georgetown University. Resolving it, she said, "may be impossible to do, but it has to be tried."
"How much does Russia really want the relationship to change?" she said. "That's still an open question."
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Afghanistan can be 'quagmire' for Al Qaeda: Lieberman
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US-led "war on terror" will end when moderate Muslims stand up to extremism in Afghanistan, US Senator Joseph Lieberman wrote Friday in the Wall Street Journal.
In an opinion article, the independent senator from Connecticut -- a supporter of Republican John McCain's failed 2008 presidential bid -- acknowledged militants in Afghanistan "have grown in strength, size and sophistication."
Foreign troops are waging an uphill battle against Taliban militants -- who controlled Kabul from 1996 to 2001 -- and Al Qaeda.
"Afghans are not eager to return to the tyranny and poverty of the Taliban," Lieberman wrote. "That is why the insurgents have not won their support and must resort to self-defeating tactics of cruelty and coercion."
The "war on terror will end" when coalition forces "have empowered and expanded the mainstream Muslim majority to stand up and defeat the extremist minority."
This is "the opportunity we have in Afghanistan today: to make that country into a quagmire, not for America but for Al Qaeda, the Taliban and their fellow Islamist extremists, and into a graveyard in which their dreams of an Islamist empire are finally buried," Lieberman wrote.
But Lieberman admitted that "even if we do everything right, conditions are likely to get worse before they get better, and the path ahead will still be long, costly and hard."
Lieberman supported President Barack Obama's pledge to sent additional forces to the country -- about 10-12,000 combat troops -- but argued "turning the tide will take more than additional troops."
Among measures Lieberman recommends is the expansion of the Afghan army to at least 200,000 troops and a broad "long-term American commitment to Afghanistan."
The United States should offer the Afghan government a "large-scale, 10-year package of governance and development aid in exchange for specific benchmarks on performance and progress," he wrote.
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Afghanistan Will Be a Quagmire for al Qaeda
The war on terror will end once we've empowered the Muslim majority to stand up against extremists.
The Wall Street Journal - World News By JOSEPH LIEBERMAN 6 February 2009
Although President Barack Obama and all of us in Congress are understandably focused on the economic crisis, we also face multiple crises in the rest of the world -- beginning with the war in Afghanistan. Security there has been deteriorating as the insurgents have grown in strength, size and sophistication, expanding their influence over an increasing swath of territory.
Reversing the downward spiral will not be easy. But as Gen. David Petraeus once said of another war, "Hard is not hopeless." And we possess considerable strengths in this fight.
The biggest strength is the American military, which through the crucible of Iraq has transformed itself into the most effective counterinsurgency force in history. Although Iraq and Afghanistan are very different, many of the guiding principles of counterinsurgency do apply to both theaters -- most importantly, the need to provide security for the population. Moreover, our troops will be redeploying from Iraq to Afghanistan with the momentum, experience and morale that comes with success.
We also have an ally in the Afghan people -- a proud people with a proud history. Although their frustration with our coalition is growing, Afghans are not eager to return to the tyranny and poverty of the Taliban. That is why the insurgents have not won their support and must resort to self-defeating tactics of cruelty and coercion.
The other critical strength, and reason for hope, is the broad support for success in Afghanistan in the new administration and Congress. Mr. Obama has made clear this is a war he intends to win. He has pledged to deploy more troops and appointed one of our most talented diplomats, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, as special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. The combination of Mr. Holbrooke and Gen. Petraeus led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is not a team to bet against.
That, then, is the good news. The bad news is that, even if we do everything right, conditions are likely to get worse before they get better, and the path ahead will still be long, costly and hard. The president's pledge to send more troops to Afghanistan is absolutely necessary and right -- but turning the tide will take more than additional troops. In fact, we must match the coming surge in troop strength with at least five other "surges" equally important to success.
- First and most importantly, we need a surge in the strategic coherence of the war effort. As we learned in Iraq, success in counterinsurgency requires integrating military and civilian operations into a seamless and unified strategy. In Afghanistan, we do not have in place a nationwide, civil-military campaign plan to defeat the insurgency.
This is an unacceptable failure. It is also the predictable product of a balkanized military command structure, in which different countries are left to pursue different strategies in different places. The international civilian effort in Afghanistan is even more disorganized, as well as unsynchronized with the military.
Unquestionably, it is a good thing so many countries are contributing to the fight in Afghanistan, and we owe a great debt of gratitude to our allies for their sacrifices. But we also owe them success, and that demands an integrated campaign plan and stronger American leadership.
- Second, we need a surge in civilian capacity. The U.S. Embassy in Kabul needs to be transformed and expanded, with the necessary resources and the explicit direction to work side by side with the military at every level. In particular, the civilian presence must be ramped up outside our embassy -- at the provincial, district and village levels, embedding nonmilitary experts with new military units as they move in.
- Third, we need to help surge the Afghan war effort. This means expanding the Afghan army to 200,000 or more, and ensuring they are properly equipped, paid and mentored.
The U.S. needs to take tough action to combat the pervasive corruption that is destroying the Afghan government and fueling the insurgency. This requires a systemic response, not just threatening specific leaders on an ad hoc basis. Specifically, we must invest comprehensively in Afghan institutions, both from top-down and bottom-up.
In doing so, the U.S. should embrace a policy of "more for more" -- specifically, by offering the Afghan government a large-scale, 10-year package of governance and development aid in exchange for specific benchmarks on performance and progress.
- Fourth, we need a surge in our regional strategy. As many have observed, almost all of Afghanistan's neighbors are active in some way inside that country. Some of this activity is positive -- for instance, aid and investment -- but much of it is malign, providing support to insurgent groups. We must help "harden" Afghanistan by strengthening its institutions at both the national and local levels, empowering Afghans to stop their neighbors from using their country as a geopolitical chessboard.
The U.S. can help by beginning to explore the possibility of a bilateral defense pact with Kabul, which would include explicit security guarantees.
Some neighbors are hedging their bets today because they fear what happens "the day after" America grows tired and disengages from the region, as we did once before, after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. Nothing will discourage this destabilizing behavior better than a long-term American commitment to Afghanistan.
- Fifth, success in Afghanistan requires a sustained surge of American political commitment to the mission. Fortunately, and unlike Iraq, the Afghan war still commands bipartisan support in Congress and among the American people. But as more troops are deployed to Afghanistan and casualties rise, this consensus will be tested.
Indeed, there are already whispers on both the left and the right that Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires, that we should abandon any hope of nation-building there, additional forces sent there will only get bogged down in a quagmire.
Why are these whisperings wrong? Why is this war necessary?
The most direct answer is that Afghanistan is where the attacks of 9/11 were plotted, where al Qaeda made its sanctuary under the Taliban, and where they will do so again if given the chance. We have a vital national interest in preventing that from happening.
It is also important to recognize that, although we face many problems in Afghanistan today, none are because we have made it possible for five million Afghan children -- girls and boys -- to go to school; or because child mortality has dropped 25% since we overthrew the Taliban in 2001; or because Afghan men and women have been able to vote in their first free and fair elections in history.
On the contrary, the reason we have not lost in Afghanistan -- despite our missteps -- is because America still inspires hope of a better life for millions of ordinary Afghans and has worked mightily to deliver it. And the reason we can defeat the extremists is because they do not.
This, ultimately, is how the war on terror will end: not when we capture or kill Osama bin Laden or Mullah Omar -- though we must do that too -- but when we have empowered and expanded the mainstream Muslim majority to stand up and defeat the extremist minority.
That is the opportunity we have in Afghanistan today: to make that country into a quagmire, not for America but for al Qaeda, the Taliban and their fellow Islamist extremists, and into a graveyard in which their dreams of an Islamist empire are finally buried.
Mr. Lieberman is an Independent Democratic senator from Connecticut. This op-ed is adapted from a speech he delivered last week at the Brookings Institution.
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Top US lawmakers to Iraq, Afghanistan
WASHINGTON (AFP) – Top US lawmakers visited Iraq on Friday as part of a week-long trip there and to Afghanistan to assess US efforts to stabilize and rebuild the two war-torn countries, congressional sources said.
The top Republicans in the House of Representatives, Minority Leader John Boehner and Minority Whip Eric Cantor, led the six-person delegation, which was also to visit Kuwait as part of the February 4-9 trip.
Lawmakers hoped the visit would yield first-hand assessments of how both wars are going, even as Washington has been working on a formal strategic review of the conflict in Afghanistan, the sources said.
The group also included Republican Representatives John McHugh, of the House Armed Services Committee, Pete Hoekstra of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and House Appropriations Committee members Tom Lathan and Jo Bonner, said a congressional aide, who requested anonymity.
In his official feed on the online service Twitter, Hoekstra said he was making his 11th visit to Iraq, which "appears calmer less chaotic than previous here."
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Afghanistan, Iran, NATO focus of security meeting
By David Rising And George Jahn, Associated Press Writers – Fri Feb 6, 8:06 am ET
MUNICH, Germany – A key security conference focused on NATO's commitment to Afghanistan opens Friday amid U.S. pressure on Germany and other key allies to deploy more troops. Concerns over Iran's nuclear defiance are also on the agenda.
Vice President Joe Biden will be on hand to meet the German and French leaders and to muster more support for NATO and U.S. efforts in Afghanistan even as the possibility of losing Manas Air Force base in Kyrgyzstan — a key supply point — looms in the background.
Moscow's delegation does not include Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, but Russia will be represented by Deputy Premier Sergei Ivanov. Russia has called on ex-Soviet republics to develop a force similar to NATO and opposes a U.S.-proposed missile shield in Eastern Europe.
Biden, a former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and deeply versed in U.S. policy abroad, is expected to push allies at the conference for a greater share of the diplomatic, military and economic burdens confronting the new administration of President Barack Obama in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
But before the conference opening Friday, German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung stressed that his country's military was already too far stretched to commit more troops beyond the 4,500 now in the relative calm north. Instead, he said the future focus should be on future civil reconstruction, in conjunction with military security.
"With military force alone, we will not be successful in Afghanistan," he told reporters.
Biden is also expected to sound out France on expanding its commitment.
The French parliament voted in September to keep 3,300 French troops in the Afghan theater, but has no current plans to increase the French contingent.
On Iran, Biden is likely to hear praise of the new U.S. administration's readiness to engage in direct dialogue with Tehran in attempts to curb its nuclear activities and ease fears it seeks to develop the atomic bomb.
The new U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Susan Rice, has said Obama's administration will engage in "direct diplomacy" with Iran. In his inaugural address, Obama addressed leaders of hostile nations by saying that "we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist."
The six nations — the five U.N. Security Council members plus Germany — have offered Iran a package of incentives if it suspends uranium enrichment and enters into talks on its nuclear program. The Security Council has imposed sanctions to pressure Iran to comply.
Iran insists it is only seeking nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. But concerns were heightened after it launched a satellite Monday, because the same technology could be used to deliver a nuclear warhead.
Ali Larijani, speaker of Iran's parliament, and Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, were expected to touch on Tehran's ambitions in a panel discussion later Friday.
Hopes were high that Biden would make inroads into lessening friction with Moscow over the proposed missile defense system and NATO expansion closer to Russia's borders.
"I see signals that the U.S. as well as Russia are interested in a new beginning," Wolfgang Ischinger, the conference chairman and a former German ambassador to London and Washington, was quoted as saying in Bonn's General-Anzeiger newspaper this week.
The U.S. delegation includes retired Gen. James Jones, Obama's national security adviser, Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Richard Holbrooke, Obama's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
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Nosedive in Afghan-US relations
Thursday, 5 February 2009 BBC News
Relations between President Karzai's Afghan government and Washington are at an all-time low. As Richard Holbrooke - President Obama's envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan - prepares to make his first visit to the region since being appointed, the BBC's Ian Pannell in Kabul looks at why the relationship has soured.
Hamid Karzai has become increasingly vociferous in his criticism of American military tactics and has been making half-hearted threats to shift his allegiance to Moscow if he does not get his way.
Washington has yet to publicly declare its hand but a series of well-placed leaks, briefs and snubs have raised the prospect that it could move its support elsewhere in this year's presidential election.
One Afghan newspaper spoke of "a new cold war".
A senior Afghan government official says the new Obama administration has insulted President Karzai and one prominent MP accuses America of "running a shadow-government".
'Narco-state'
The decline in relations began with a visit last year by Joe Biden, now the vice-president, to Kabul.
At the time, as the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, he attended a private meeting with Mr Karzai.
A well-placed source describes Mr Biden, exasperated at not getting "straight answers" on drugs and corruption, launching into a verbal tirade and storming out of the meeting.
In a country where honour and decorum are second only to God and country, this was less than tactful.
On the campaign trail and more recently in confirmation hearings, senior members of President Barack Obama's team have questioned the effectiveness and honesty of Hamid Karzai's government.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's written statement to Congress during her confirmation hearing called Afghanistan a "narco-state" that was "plagued by limited capacity and widespread corruption".
She may have been wise enough not to use the phrase in her public testimony but by the time it was reported on the front page of the newspapers in Kabul, it did not really make much difference.
'Potential impediment'
Earlier in January the Nato secretary-general wrote an opinion piece about the lack of leadership in the country, laying the blame not at the feet of the Taleban but the lack of governance.
Then there was a recent article in the New York Times. Quoting anonymous "senior administration officials", it said Washington planned to take a tougher-line with Kabul and that Hamid Karzai was now regarded as "a potential impediment to American goals" in the country.
Hamid Karzai is an avid reader of the Western press and is known to be highly sensitive to criticisms they may have of him. Publicly he has not responded but he is now under considerable pressure.
His government's writ is limited to Kabul, the north and a few urban spots elsewhere in the country.
His own popularity has fallen and some whisper privately and mischievously about his "state of mind".
When asked whether the country was heading towards a crisis, one senior political figure responded that the country was already in one.
Old Afghan hand
President Karzai has been holding a series of meetings with former Mujahedeen commanders in the past few weeks amid suggestions that he is trying to align the country with Russia.
That has certainly been his public stance. As well as a deliberately leaked "letter of understanding" with Moscow, President Karzai publicly warned America that unless it supplied the military hardware he wanted, he would look to other countries for support.
No-one was in a moment's doubt who this meant. The Russian ambassador, Zamir Kabulov, an old Afghan hand, was seen strutting around parliament last week.
He has warned that the US and Nato are repeating the same mistakes of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. As he was posted to the Soviet Embassy at the time, his opinion is worth considering.
Now President Karzai has sent a document to Nato outlining new "rules of engagement". If implemented they would substantially alter the mandate for foreign forces in the country.
It seems inconceivable that there could be a real and lasting schism between Kabul and Washington. It will be the job of Richard Holbrooke, the US Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, to ensure that does not happen.
But the date has been set for Afghanistan's presidential election and the West's disappointment with Hamid Karzai can no longer be disguised.
A number of challengers are jostling for American support and in the current climate, their chances are starting to improve.
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Afghans dispute men killed in U.S. raid were Taliban
Fri Feb 6, 4:26 am ET
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) – U.S.-led forces killed six men during a night raid in the southern Afghan province of Zabul, but Afghan officials disputed a U.S. military account that the victims were Taliban fighters.
Mohammad Hashim, a member of Zabul's provincial council, said that the dead men belonged to two families and were not involved in militancy.
A U.S. military statement said the operation was aimed at Taliban insurgents and the "ensuing engagement resulted in six militants killed."
Though supported by the West, President Hamid Karzai's government has been undermined by civilian casualties inflicted by Western forces fighting the Taliban.
Karzai faces dwindling public support, with a presidential election due in August, analysts say.
Afghanistan has seen a sharp escalation of violence in recent years and is going through its bloodiest period since U.S.-backed forces overthrew the Taliban in late 2001.
About 2,100 Afghan civilians were killed last year, more than a third of them by foreign and Afghan forces, according to the United Nations.
The Taliban insurgency flared back into life in 2005, a year after Karzai's election, and U.S. President Barack Obama has laid new emphasis on stabilizing Afghanistan and denying space for al Qaeda to regather its strength.
There are nearly 70,000 foreign troops under NATO and U.S. command trying to quell the Taliban and the United States is expected to nearly double its force in Afghanistan from 36,000 to more than 60,000 within 18 months.
(Reporting by Ismail Sameem; Writing by Sayed Salahuddin; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Sugita Katyal)
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Govt pledges election aid to Afghanistan
Thu Feb 5, 1:31 pm ET
LONDON (AFP) – Britain on Thursday pledged 10.6 million pounds in aid to help support Afghanistan's electoral process ahead of presidential elections in August.
The funds, aimed at helping support the Afghan Independent Election Commission's operations and educating citizens as to why elections and voting are important, are in addition to six million pounds already provided by Britain.
"Our support will also help the efforts to enable and encourage women's participation in the elections and educate voters," said International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander.
"Democracy is a powerful weapon against the Taliban (Islamist militia group) which is why they are so opposed to free and fair elections."
Anwar ul-Haq Ahadi, Afghanistan's finance minister for several years, on Thursday became the first high-profile candidate to officially throw his hat into the ring for the presidency.
President Hamid Karzai has vowed to run for a second term, while former interior minister Ali Ahmadi Jalali and Ahadi's predecessor as finance minister, Ashraf Ghani, are tipped as the main challengers to Karzai, but have yet to officially announced their candidatures.
Britain has around 8,300 troops in Afghanistan, mostly in the restive southern province of Helmand battling an insurgency mounted by the Taliban.
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Two Canadians injured in roadside blast in Afghanistan
Canwest News Service Friday, February 06, 2009
KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan - Two Canadian soldiers were injured in a roadside bomb blast while on patrol in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, the Canadian Forces reported.
The soldiers, whose names will not be released, were in their armoured vehicle in the ShahWaliKhot District, about 20 kilometres north of Kandahar City, when the improvised explosive device detonated.
Both soldiers were airlifted to Kandahar Airfield. One soldier was seriously injured, and is now listed to be in fair condition; the other had minor injuries and was released from hospital.
The incident occurred less than a week after Sapper Sean Greenfield, 25, was killed in a roadside blast. His death on Saturday brought the toll of Canadians killed in the conflict to 108.
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Iran and the US: United over Afghanistan?
By Syed Saleem Shahzad Asia Times Feb 7, 2009
KARACHI - The annual Munich Security Conference, which brings together a dozen world leaders and about 50 top diplomats and defense officials, starts on Friday for the 45th time with one item paramount on its agenda: the United States-led world order, given the troubles in Afghanistan and Iraq and the ongoing impasse with Iran.
The US has sent a high-ranking delegation led by Vice President Joe Biden and the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrook. They are expected to seek informal dialogue with Iran, represented by Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and parliament speaker Ali Larijani.
This contact on the event's sidelines will likely focus on the Iranian role in Iraq and the need for Tehran's cooperation over Afghanistan, especially in allowing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO's) non-military supply lines to pass through the Iranian port of Chabahar on the way to Afghanistan.
This has become a crisis point for NATO, given that the Taliban have severely disrupted its conveys as they pass through the Khyber Pass in Pakistan and elsewhere. In the latest incident, the Taliban this week blew up a bridge on the Peshawar-Torkham Road and NATO supplies are expected to be crippled for at least 10 days.
With about 80% of NATO's supplies going through Pakistan, and with an additional 30,000 US troops to be pumped into Afghanistan, it is crucial that these supply lines be protected, or routed elsewhere.
Although NATO has struck deals with some Central Asian republics and Russia for non-military supplies to pass through their territory, these routes are much longer and more expensive, leaving NATO with no choice but to negotiate with Iran.
Gilles Dorronsoro, a noted expert on Afghanistan and Turkey who has worked in both countries for over 20 years, commented, "The Taliban have been able to adapt very quickly to allied tactics. Their learning curve is good, and they have the psychological momentum," he wrote in a Carnegie Policy Briefing, "Focus and Exit: An Alternative Strategy for the Afghan War".
"The situation in 2009 is probably going to deteriorate, but the results of any increase in troop numbers will be difficult to assess before the summer of 2010. In the event of failure, the US administration will have very few options left, because sending another 30,000 troops would present a political challenge. This is why it is especially important to concentrate attention on areas where the troops can make a real difference (ie, Kabul and not Helmand), allowing the allies to build sustainable Afghan institutions and eventually withdraw their military forces."
Dorronsoro argues that the international community needs to concentrate on creating the stability necessary for troop withdrawal.
United States efforts to make progress in Afghanistan could to a large extent depend on what happens in two of its key allies - Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
A report by Simon Henderson for the think-tank The Washington Institute reveals an imbroglio within Saudi Arabia and speculates that given the serious ill health of Crown Prince Sultan and the deteriorating health of King Abdullah, the next few months could pose a serious challenge for American policy makers.
"After months of speculation about the health of the designated successor to King Abdullah, Crown Prince Sultan, Saudi officials are now openly talking about Sultan's ill health. The kingdom - a close US ally, the self-professed leader of the Islamic world, the world's largest oil exporter, and most recently the much-needed source of financial capital for the world's struggling economy - is heading for a period of changing leadership. The identities of the future kings, however, are so far unknown and largely unpredictable," Henderson observed.
Henderson discusses in detail the complexities involved in the choice of the next crown prince and the possibility of serious unrest in the royal family which could reduce its capability to support American designs in the region.
"Washington hopes to avoid an internal Saudi royal dispute ... Riyadh will be allergic to external interference or advice on such matters, but the outcomes of the probable transitions in the next few months will be of intense interest to the United States and much of the world," Henderson, a Baker fellow and director of the Gulf and Energy Policy Program at the Washington Institute, concluded.
In Pakistan, meanwhile, the situation in the most important non-NATO US ally in the "war on terror" is as unstable.
North-West Frontier Province, bordering Afghanistan, is now virtually under the control of the Taliban, which has diminished the Pakistan military's capability to support the US efforts against militancy.
The military is unable to prevent incidents such as the blowing up of the bridge in Khyber Agency, and the Taliban have pinned down troops on several fronts. On American pressure, Pakistan engaged militants in Bajaur and Mohmand agencies, but its troops have been unable to make any headway amid unabated guerrilla attacks.
The Taliban recently increased their activities in the Swat Valley - only three hours' drive from the capital Islamabad - and apart from a few areas they have seized the entire valley.
The situation could deteriorate in the coming weeks as opposition parties have announced a "long march" against the government on March 9 and there are growing reports of differences between Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gillani and President Asif Ali Zardari that could hamstring the government.
A conflict is also emerging between US President Barack Obama and the US military leadership. "The struggle reflects a fundamental choice between strategic withdrawal from Iraq and an attempt to prolong the US military presence in the country beyond 2011," noted investigative US journalist Gareth Porter in article for Le Monde Diplomatique. (See also Obama not bowing to top brass, yet Asia Times Online, February 4, 2009.)
Obama insisted that he would not adjust his schedule to bring it into line with the recommendations of General David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq and Afghanistan. "The president's job," said Obama, "is to tell the generals what their mission is."
These are some the developments that will be considered at the Munich meet. In anticipation of its worst year in Afghanistan since the Taliban were ousted in 2001, it is possible that the Americans will abdicate much of their interest in Iraq in favor of the Iranians, and in return, Tehran will allow passage to NATO's non-military supplies through Chabahar port.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
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Human rights worker denies receiving secrets
Associated Press Fri Feb 6, 4:22 am ET
LONDON – A human rights worker has denied that she received secret information from a senior British army officer arrested in Afghanistan on suspicion of leaking official secrets.
Human Rights Watch researcher Rachel Reid writes in Friday's Guardian newspaper that media reports, based on leaks from military officials, suggesting she and Lt. Col. Owen McNally were "close" are a "vicious, false slur."
Reid says she met McNally only twice, to discuss civilian casualties in U.S. and NATO air strikes. She says he did not give her any secret information.
The officer has been arrested on suspicion of leaking official secrets. He faces a maximum 14-year jail sentence.
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Canadian soldiers to target Afghan drug trade linked to Taliban
CBC News February 6, 2009
Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan will be ordered to attack opium traffickers and drug facilities when there is proof of direct links to the Taliban, CBC News has learned.
The new order follows a heated debate among NATO allies over whether the attacks could be declared war crimes.
Defence Minister Peter MacKay told CBC News soldiers would indeed target drug traffickers and drug production facilities.
"We're not going specifically to eradicate poppy crops, but we would go after proven drug traffickers with operations linked to the terrorists," he said.
MacKay, who is rumoured to be a candidate for the post of secretary general of NATO, said Afghanistan's police force will continue to have responsibility for "ordinary … criminals."
"What we're trying to do is step up our activity to cut off the linkage that allows for the supply of this explosive material that has been so deadly and so devastating."
"There is no question that there is direct linkage between the funding of terrorist activity and the poppy crop and the funds that are elicited from that poppy crop."
Commanders on the ground will decide whether Canada has the means to carry out individual operations aimed at drug traffickers, and all will meet Canada's legal obligations, said MacKay.
More than 2,500 Canadians are serving in Afghanistan's southern Kandahar province, a volatile region where Taliban-led attacks against foreign troops are frequent. British, Dutch and American troops are also in the southern area as part of a multinational NATO-led task force.
NATO backs decision, says chief
The issue had divided the 26-member military alliance.
Commanders on the ground had earlier refused an order from the organization's top commanders to target the drug trade because the NATO order failed to distinguish between drug traffickers and those who directly support the Taliban.
International law forbids nations from using military force against criminals, including drug traffickers.
Drug traffickers with links to the insurgency could be considered a legitimate target.
NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said Thursday there is "full agreement" within NATO's chain of command on the decision.
"We have full agreement … that we can go indeed after laboratories where the poppies are brought in and turned into heroin … or after the guys and the people who bring in the precursors," he said.
So-called precursor chemicals are materials that help refine opium into heroin.
"NATO will not act outside international law. This nexus between the insurgency and the narcotics business leads to the killing of our soldiers in Afghanistan," he said.
"That really is a price too high to pay for our soldiers."
With files from James Cudmore
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2 Afghans face death over translation of Quran
By HEIDI VOGT Associated Press February 6, 2009
KABUL – No one knows who brought the book to the mosque, or at least no one dares say. The pocket-size translation of the Quran has already landed six men in prison in Afghanistan and left two of them begging judges to spare their lives. They're accused of modifying the Quran and their fate could be decided Sunday in court.
The trial illustrates what critics call the undue influence of hardline clerics in Afghanistan, a major hurdle as the country tries to establish a lawful society amid war and militant violence.
The book appeared among gifts left for the cleric at a major Kabul mosque after Friday prayers in September 2007. It was a translation of the Quran into one of Afghanistan's languages, with a note giving permission to reprint the text as long as it was distributed for free.
Some of the men of the mosque said the book would be useful to Afghans who didn't know Arabic, so they took up a collection for printing. The mosque's cleric asked Ahmad Ghaws Zalmai, a longtime friend, to get the books printed.
But as some of the 1,000 copies made their way to conservative Muslim clerics in Kabul, whispers began, then an outcry.
Many clerics rejected the book because it did not include the original Arabic verses alongside the translation. It's a particularly sensitive detail for Muslims, who regard the Arabic Quran as words given directly by God. A translation is not considered a Quran itself, and a mistranslation could warp God's word.
The clerics said Zalmai, a stocky 54-year-old spokesman for the attorney general, was trying to anoint himself as a prophet. They said his book was trying to replace the Quran, not offer a simple translation. Translated editions of the Quran abound in Kabul markets, but they include Arabic verses.
The country's powerful Islamic council issued an edict condemning the book.
"In all the mosques in Afghanistan, all the mullahs said, 'Zalmai is an infidel. He should be killed,'" Zalmai recounted as he sat outside the chief judge's chambers waiting for a recent hearing.
Zalmai lost friends quickly. He was condemned by colleagues and even by others involved in the book's printing. A mob stoned his house one night, said his brother, Mahmood Ghaws.
Police arrested Zalmai as he was fleeing to Pakistan, along with three other men the government says were trying to help him escape. The publisher and the mosque's cleric, who signed a letter endorsing the book, were also jailed.
There is no law in Afghanistan prohibiting the translation of the Quran. But Zalmai is accused of violating Islamic Shariah law by modifying the Quran. The courts in Afghanistan, an Islamic state, are empowered to apply Shariah law when there are no applicable existing statutes.
And Afghanistan's court system appears to be stacked against those accused of religious crimes. Judges don't want to seem soft on potential heretics and lawyers don't want to be seen defending them, said Afzal Shurmach Nooristani, whose Afghan Legal Aid group is defending Zalmai.
The prosecutor wants the death penalty for Zalmai and the cleric, who have now spent more than a year in prison.
Sentences on religious infractions can be harsh. In January 2008, a court sentenced a journalism student to death for blasphemy for asking questions about women's rights under Islam. An appeals court reduced the sentence to 20 years in prison. His lawyers appealed again and the case is pending.
In 2006, an Afghan man was sentenced to death for converting to Christianity. He was later ruled insane and was given asylum in Italy. Islamic leaders and the parliament accused President Hamid Karzai of being a puppet for the West for letting him live.
Nooristani, who is also defending the journalism student, said he and his colleagues have received death threats.
"The mullahs in the mosques have said whoever defends an infidel is an infidel," Nooristani said.
The legal aid organization, which usually represents impoverished defendants, is defending Zalmai because no one else would take the case.
"We went to all the lawyers and they said, 'We can't help you because all the mullahs are against you. If we defend you, the mullahs will say that we should be killed.' We went six months without a lawyer," Zalmai said outside the judge's chambers.
The publisher was originally sentenced to five years in prison. Zalmai and the cleric were sentenced to 20, and now the prosecutor is demanding the death penalty for the two as a judge hears appeals.
Nearly everyone in court claims ignorance now.
The mosque's mullah says he never read the book and that he was duped into signing the letter. The print shop owner says neither he nor any of his employees read the book, noting that it's illegal for them to read materials they publish.
Zalmai pleaded for forgiveness before a January hearing, saying he had assumed a stand-alone translation wasn't a problem.
"You can find these types of translations in Turkey, in Russia, in France, in Italy," he said.
When the chief judge later banged his gavel to silence shouting lawyers and nodded at Zalmai to explain himself, the defendant stood and chanted Quranic verses as proof that he was a devout Muslim who should be forgiven.
Shariah law is applied differently in Islamic states. Saudi Arabia claims the Quran as its constitution, while Malaysia has separate religious and secular courts.
But since there is no ultimate arbiter of religious questions in Afghanistan, judges must strike a balance between the country's laws and proclamations by clerics or the Islamic council, called the Ulema council.
Judges are "so nervous about annoying the Ulema council and being criticized that they tend to push the Islamic cases aside and just defer to what others say," said John Dempsey, a legal expert with the U.S. Institute of Peace in Kabul.
Deferring to the council means that edicts issued by the group of clerics can influence rulings more than laws on the books or a judge's own interpretation of Shariah law, he said.
Judges have to be careful about whom they might anger with their rulings. In September, gunmen killed a top judge with Afghanistan's counter-narcotics court. Other judges have been gunned down as well.
Mahmood Ghaws said that even if his brother is found innocent, their family will never be treated the same.
"When I go out in the street, people don't say hello to me in the way they used to," he said. "They don't ask after my family."
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Afghanistan Appeal May Temper European Allies' Ardor for Obama
By Craig Whitlock Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, February 6, 2009; A13
MUNICH, Feb. 5 -- European leaders cheered when Barack Obama was elected president in November. They cheered again when he proclaimed during his inaugural address that America was "ready to lead once more" in the world, and yet again when he pledged to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
But when Obama sends his vice president and other top emissaries to an international security conference here this weekend to seek help with the war in Afghanistan, NATO allies are unlikely to be as enthusiastic, European defense officials and analysts said in interviews.
The Obama administration is expected to announce plans to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, where the United States and its allies fear they are losing ground in the war against the Taliban. Although European leaders say they are eager to curry favor with the new U.S. president, they are proving just as reluctant to contribute more soldiers or money to the NATO-led operation as they were during President George W. Bush's last years in the White House.
French Defense Minister Hervé Morin said last month that "there is no question, for now, of considering extra reinforcements" from Paris. Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said his country would start drawing down its 1,770 troops in Afghanistan next year. German officials have also ruled out sending more soldiers beyond a parliamentary decision last year to expand the force to 4,500.
Some European defense officials, however, have warned that a perceived lack of support for the Afghan mission will damage the political credibility of NATO members who otherwise want to be taken more seriously in Washington.
"If Europeans expect that the United States will close Guantanamo, sign up to climate-change treaties, accept European Union leadership on key issues -- but provide nothing more in return, for example in Afghanistan, than encouragement -- they should think again," NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said in a Jan. 26 speech in Brussels, where NATO has its headquarters. "It simply won't work like that."
John Hutton, Britain's defense secretary, last month chided unnamed European members of NATO for "freeloading on the back of U.S. military security" and said they had a "limited appetite" for the Afghanistan campaign.
"It isn't good enough to always look to the U.S. for political, financial and military cover," he said.
Britain has 8,900 troops in Afghanistan, second only to the United States, and is one of the few countries -- along with Poland -- that has said it may consider sending more.
All told, there are 55,000 troops under NATO command in Afghanistan, a coalition that includes small contingents from countries that do not belong to NATO, such as Australia and New Zealand.
About 23,000 U.S. troops are part of the NATO operation; an additional 13,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan operate separately, under their own command. NATO officials have said they would like about 10,000 more troops, as well as fewer restrictions on how much fighting soldiers can do, and where.
Germany, for instance, has mandated that its troops remain in northern Afghanistan, which is relatively peaceful, and that they cannot deploy in combat operations in the south, where the Taliban is strong. Italian forces, which are based in western Afghanistan, operate under similar limits.
The Obama administration has asked other NATO governments to begin thinking about what contributions they can make "beyond troops," including helicopters, training for Afghan security forces, assistance with judicial reform and counter-narcotics efforts, and infrastructure development. Responses to those queries will be factored into a new strategy Obama expects to propose at the NATO summit in early April, according to a senior administration official in Washington.
"We're going to come up with an updated strategy . . . [and] consult our allies, and we're all going to be in this together," he said. "I don't think we're going to come up with a list of demands that says you're either with us or against us or whatever."
Retired U.S. Army Gen. Dan K. McNeill, who commanded NATO's International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan until he stepped down in June, echoed other U.S. generals in saying the coalition especially needs more helicopters and better intelligence-sharing, as well as more soldiers.
He said European politicians who visited Afghanistan often expressed skepticism when he advised them that the NATO force was not big enough to cope with a growing counterinsurgency.
"I was taken to task by one European parliamentarian who said, 'You're just like all generals, you always want more money and soldiers,' " McNeill said in a telephone interview.
U.S. and European officials said they don't expect Vice President Biden to make detailed requests for troop deployments or more equipment when he speaks Saturday at the annual Munich Security Conference. But they said Biden will repeat the White House's intent to make Afghanistan a higher priority and its need for substantial help from NATO.
Other participants in the high-level conference include German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
Constanze Stelzenmueller, director of the Berlin office of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, said Washington and its transatlantic allies need to make the strategic review of the war a joint effort. "There is a very widespread consensus between the U.S. and Europe that there needs to be a strategic reassessment of the mission," she said.
Stelzenmueller said European countries in particular want to place more of an emphasis on better coordination of the military and development efforts.
"The Obama administration needs to make it clear that it understands this is not just about applying the military hammer," she said. "That will make it much easier to get the Europeans to increase their support."
But U.S. and European military officials are deeply divided on some key issues. For example, the Pentagon wants to take a harder line against opium growers and drug kingpins in Afghanistan, a major source of cash for the Taliban.
Many European countries advocate a softer approach, with some officials calling for a temporary legalization of opium production to avoid alienating Afghan farmers who grow poppies.
The conflict turned into a public spat last week when German news media reported on a leaked memo from U.S. Army Gen. John Craddock, the supreme allied commander in Europe, in which he urged NATO soldiers to attack drug producers and labs throughout Afghanistan, regardless of whether they support the Taliban.
European lawmakers and military officials reacted angrily, saying that Craddock was overstepping NATO's rules of engagement. In a statement, NATO characterized Craddock's memo as "general guidance," adding: "He has not, and never has, issued illegal orders."
Although many European countries are calling for a greater focus on humanitarian aid, training and reconstruction in Afghanistan, progress on those fronts has been plagued by inefficiency and a lack of coordination, according to many U.S. and European officials.
In November, Brig. Gen. Hans-Christoph Ammon, head of the German military's special forces command, said a German government program to train Afghan police officers had "failed miserably."
Ammon accused the German Interior Ministry, which oversaw the training, of spending too little and not taking the program seriously. At the rate it was going, he said, "it would have taken us another 82 years to set up a reasonable Afghan police force." U.S. and European Union police trainers have since taken over most of the duties.
Karl Lamers, deputy chairman of the German Parliament's defense policy committee, said Germany had done a "great job" in training Afghan police officers and had bolstered NATO's air transport capacity throughout the country, in addition to its peacekeeping duties in the northern provinces.
"We think 'more troops, more troops' will not be enough," said Lamers, a member of Merkel's Christian Democratic party. "We will not bring peace to Afghanistan only with military means."
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Afghanistan is a burden for us: French Foreign Minister
February 6, 2009
Washington (PTI): Observing that Afghanistan is now a burden, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has favoured giving Afghans control of their own destiny.
"Afghanistan, it is a burden for us, but we need to succeed," Kouchner told reporters at the State Department headquarters here after meeting US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
"We have to succeed in Afghanistan in offering support to democratic elected government and to develop the access to the people. Afghanisation is the word. For that, we need to secure the places," Kouchner said in French, which was translated into English by an interpreter.
Besides other important global issues such as Gaza, Iran and Afghanistan constituted a major part of discussions between the two leaders.
"We talked a lot about Afghanistan because it is a very serious issue. But we are determined. We are determined to continue to help, to continue on the path to help Afghanistan and the people of Afghanistan, as we have already done," he said.
Kouchner strongly advocated the case of Afghanisation, which he said is the key to success in the country. "That means we must give the people in Afghanistan control of their own destiny in the sense that with the progress that has been made already, it's there," he said.
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With a nudge and a wink, MoD has dragged me through the mud
The Guardian Rachel Reid Friday 6 February 2009
Yesterday it emerged that a senior British army officer, Colonel Owen McNally, had been arrested under the Official Secrets Act for allegedly passing classified information to a human rights worker in Afghanistan. Unnamed sources suggested he had become "close" to the campaigner Rachel Reid. Here, for the first time, she responds to what she says is a "vicious slur"
According to news reports, Colonel Owen McNally has been flown back to Britain, where he will reportedly be interviewed by military police. The Ministry of Defence has told media that I was the recipient of these secrets as a researcher for Human Rights Watch.
Whatever the MoD has whispered into the ear of the Sun, Col McNally and I met only twice, both times in a purely professional capacity, both times at the Nato military HQ in Kabul. Both times we met to talk about civilian casualties from US and Nato air strikes.
What has happened in the last couple of days has been bewildering. I do not understand how these two meetings might have led the British government to accuse McNally of a serious crime that could lead to a hefty jail sentence, and why my government might want to see my reputation dragged through the mud, when I live in a country where a woman's reputation can mean her life. The meetings seemed unexceptional. A QC retained by Human Rights Watch has confirmed that the kind of information I received is not covered by the Official Secrets Act.
If the ministry had been seriously concerned that one of their officers was leaking information, why leak it to the media? Why was my name released to the media by the MoD, with a (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) libel that our relationship was "close"? They would know exactly what impression they were creating, and presumably decided that my reputation was expendable in order to ensure coverage of their "story".
Why did journalists from the Sun, the Times and the Mail write this as a story focusing on the MoD's entirely bogus suggestion that I had some kind of "relationship" with McNally? Why is it that my photograph was published? Why have journalists not been asking questions about why the MoD has been encouraging them to publish a vicious, false slur about me in order stop me from doing my job for Human Rights Watch in asking for information from the Nato official in charge of monitoring civilian casualties?
Living in Afghanistan, where democracy, a free media, freedom of information and freedom of expression are still a faraway dream, I have developed a deep appreciation of the freedoms I grew up believing I had in Britain. I expect better from my own government and from the British media that I used to be a part of.
I am proud of the work I do in Afghanistan. I care deeply about civilian casualties, as should the Ministry of Defence. This is what they should be focusing their energies on, not impugning the reputation of a human rights worker or charging one of their officers for trying to explain to me the precautions that international military forces were taking to avoid killing Afghans.
I talk to Afghans in the south and east of the country where the conflict rages. They tend not to begin with the horrors of the Taliban and other insurgents. What they want me to hear first are their stories about the women and children bombed at a wedding party, the Qu'ran that was ripped up by foreign soldiers in a night raid, or the family shot dead in their car because they didn't understand orders in English to stop at a checkpoint. They are outraged and bewildered by the killings, in particular the air strikes. By UN estimates, more than 500 civilians were killed in air strikes in Afghanistan last year. The insurgents may have killed more than 1,000, but Afghans expect little from the Taliban.
The worst civilian casualty incident of last year took place in Azizabad, in a district called Shindand in the west of Afghanistan. In August 2008 the US launched a "kill/capture" operation, targeting a mid-ranking Taliban commander. The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission says that at least 76 civilians were killed, 59 of whom were children. The UN put the civilian death toll above 90. Among the many photographs of the dead, one in particular has always stuck in my mind. It is of a young girl who looks as though she could be sleeping. But beneath the long lashes of her closed eyes is a line of shrapnel wounds. She was five years old, and she was called Kubra. And in that photograph you can glimpse how the last moments of Kubra's life must have passed.
The US military, whose forces carried out the air strike, was cold and dismissive about the reports of civilian dead. Initially they denied any casualties, later admitting five to seven civilian deaths. It was only weeks later, after video evidence emerged that they were forced to investigate again and revised the civilian death toll up to 33. Whatever the final figure, the death toll from this incident was shocking. The subsequent military denials compounded the fury that Afghans already felt about these deaths.
In a letter to US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates on January 15, Human Rights Watch sharply criticised the Pentagon investigation. I don't know what the McNally case is really about. If I had to guess I would say senior US and UK defence officials are angry about our forensic dissection of the Pentagon's investigation, which exposed reassurances about US and Nato commitments to avoid further civilian casualties as at least partially hollow.
If the military would hold its people to account for these terrible mistakes then human rights organisations would leave them alone. In the meantime, they should remember that this has nothing to do with individuals like me, and everything to do with little girls like Kubra.
• Rachel Reid is Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch
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The Empire v. The Graveyard
TomDispatch By Tom Engelhardt 02/06/2009
Whistling Past the Afghan Graveyard, Where Empires Go To Die
It is now a commonplace -- as a lead article in the New York Times's Week in Review pointed out recently -- that Afghanistan is "the graveyard of empires." Given Barack Obama's call for a greater focus on the Afghan War ("we took our eye off the ball when we invaded Iraq..."), and given indications that a "surge" of U.S. troops is about to get underway there, Afghanistan's dangers have been much in the news lately. Some of the writing on this subject, including recent essays by Juan Cole at Salon.com, Robert Dreyfuss at the Nation, and John Robertson at the War in Context website, has been incisive on just how the new administration's policy initiatives might transform Afghanistan and the increasingly unhinged Pakistani tribal borderlands into "Obama's War."
In other words, "the graveyard" has been getting its due. Far less attention has been paid to the "empire" part of the equation. And there's a good reason for that -- at least in Washington. Despite escalating worries about the deteriorating situation, no one in our nation's capital is ready to believe that Afghanistan could actually be the "graveyard" for the American role as the dominant hegemon on this planet.
In truth, to give "empire" its due you would have to start with a reassessment of how the Cold War ended. In 1989, which now seems centuries ago, the Berlin Wall came down; in 1991, to the amazement of the U.S. intelligence community, influential pundits, inside-the-Beltway think-tankers, and Washington's politicians, the Soviet Union, that "evil empire," that colossus of repression, that mortal enemy through nearly half a century of threatened nuclear MADness -- as in "mutually assured destruction" -- simply evaporated, almost without violence. (Soviet troops, camped out in the relatively cushy outposts of Eastern Europe, especially the former East Germany, were in no more hurry to come home to the economic misery of a collapsed empire than U.S. troops stationed in Okinawa, Japan, are likely to be in the future.)
In Washington where, in 1991, everything was visibly still standing, a stunned silence and a certain unwillingness to believe that the enemy of almost half a century was no more would quickly be overtaken by a sense of triumphalism. A multigenerational struggle had ended with only one of its super-participants still on its feet.
The conclusion seemed too obvious to belabor. Right before our eyes, the USSR had miraculously disappeared into the dustbin of history with only a desperate, impoverished Russia, shorn of its "near abroad," to replace it; ergo, we were the victors; we were, as everyone began to say with relish, the planet's "sole superpower." Huzzah!
Masters of the Universe
The Greeks, of course, had a word for it: "hubris." The ancient Greek playwrights would have assumed that we were in for a fall from the heights. But that thought crossed few minds in Washington (or on Wall Street) in those years.
Instead, our political and financial movers and shakers began to act as if the planet were truly ours (and other powers, including the Europeans and the Japanese, sometimes seemed to agree). To suggest at the time, as the odd scholar of imperial decline did, that there might have been no winners and two losers in the Cold War, that the weaker superpower had simply left the scene first, while the stronger, less hollowed out superpower was inching its way toward the same exit, was to speak to the deaf.
In the 1990s, "globalization" -- the worldwide spread of the Golden Arches, the Swoosh, and Mickey Mouse -- was on all lips in Washington, while the men who ran Wall Street were regularly referred to, and came to refer to themselves, as "masters of the universe."
The phrase was originally used by Tom Wolfe. It was the brand name of the superhero action figures his protagonist's daughter plays with in his 1987 novel Bonfire of the Vanities. ("On Wall Street he and a few others -- how many? three hundred, four hundred, five hundred? had become precisely that... Masters of the Universe...") As a result, the label initially had something of Wolfe's cheekiness about it. In the post-Cold War world, however, it soon enough became purely self-congratulatory.
In those years, when the economies of other countries suddenly cratered, Washington sent in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to "discipline" them. That was the actual term of tradecraft. To the immense pain of whole societies, the IMF regularly used local or regional disaster to pry open countries to the deregulatory wonders of "the Washington consensus." (Just imagine how Americans would react if, today, the IMF arrived at our battered doors with a similar menu of must-dos!)
Now, as the planet totters financially, while from Germany to Russia and China, world leaders blame the Bush administration's deregulatory blindness and Wall Street's derivative shenanigans for the financial hollowing out of the global economy, it's far more apparent that those titans of finance were actually masters of a flim-flam universe. Retrospectively, it's clearer that, in those post-Cold War years, Wall Street was already heading for the exits, that it was less a planetary economic tiger than a monstrously lucrative paper tiger. Someday, it might be a commonplace to say the same of Washington.
Almost twenty years later, in fact, it may finally be growing more acceptable to suggest that certain comparisons between the two Cold War superpowers were apt. As David Leonhardt of the New York Times pointed out recently:
"Richard Freeman, a Harvard economist, argues that the U.S. bubble economy had something in common with the old Soviet economy. The Soviet Union's growth was artificially raised by huge industrial output that ended up having little use. America's was artificially raised by mortgage-backed securities, collateralized debt obligations and even the occasional Ponzi scheme." Today, when it comes to Wall Street, you can feel the anger rising on Main Street as Americans grasp that those supposed masters of the universe actually hollowed out their world and brought immense suffering down on them. They understand what those former masters of financial firms, who handed out $18.4 billion in bonuses to their employees at the end of 2008, clearly don't. John Thain, former CEO of Merrill Lynch, for instance, still continues to defend his purchase of a $35,000 antique commode for his office, as well as the $4 billion in bonuses he dealt out to the mini-masters under him in a quarter in which his group racked up more than $
15 billion in losses, in a year in which his firm's losses reached $27 billion.
At least now, however, no one -- except perhaps Thain himself -- would mistake the Thains for masters rather than charlatans, or the U.S. for a financial superpower riding high rather than a hollowed out economic powerhouse laid low.
As it happens, however, there was another set of all-American "masters of the universe," even if never given that label. I'm speaking of the top officials of our national security state, the key players in foreign and military policy. They, too, came to believe that the planet was their oyster. They came to believe as well that, uniquely in the history of empires, global domination might be theirs. They began to dream that they might oversee a new Rome or imperial Great Britain, but of a kind never before encountered, and that the competitive Great Game played by previous rivalrous Great Powers had been reduced to solitaire.
For them, the very idea that the U.S. might be the other loser in the Cold War was beyond the pale. And that was hardly surprising. Ahead of them, after all, they thought they saw clear sailing, not graveyards. Hence, Afghanistan.
Twice in the Same Graveyard
It's here, of course, that things get eerie. I mean, not just a graveyard, but the same two superpowers and the very same graveyard. In November 2001, knowing intimately what had happened to the USSR in Afghanistan, the Bush administration invaded anyway -- and with a clear intent to build bases, occupy the country, and install a government of its choice.
When it comes to the neocon architects of global Bushism, hubris remains a weak word. Breathless at the thought of the supposed power of the U.S. military to crush anything in its path, they were blind to other power realities and to history. They equated power with the power to destroy.
Believing that the military force at their bidding was nothing short of invincible, and that whatever had happened to the Soviets couldn't possibly happen to them, they launched their invasion. They came, they saw, they conquered, they celebrated, they settled in, and then they invaded again -- this time in Iraq. A trillion dollars in wasted taxpayer funds later, we look a lot more like the Russians.
What made this whole process so remarkable was that there was no other superpower to ambush them in Afghanistan, as the U.S. had once done to the Soviet Union. George W. Bush's crew, it turned out, didn't need another superpower, not when they were perfectly capable of driving themselves off that Afghan cliff and into the graveyard below with no more help than Osama bin Laden could muster.
They promoted a convenient all-purpose fantasy explanation for their global actions, but also gave in to it, and it has yet to be dispelled, even now that the American economy has gone over its own cliff. Under the rubric of the Global War on Terror, they insisted that the greatest danger to the planet's "sole superpower" came from a ragtag group of fanatics backed by the relatively modest moneys a rich Saudi could get his hands on. Indeed, while the Bush administration paid no attention whatsoever, bin Laden had launched a devastating and televisually spectacular set of assaults on major American landmarks of power -- financial, military, and (except for the crash of Flight 93 in a field in Pennsylvania) political. Keep in mind, however, that those attacks had been launched as much from Hamburg and Florida as from the Afghan backlands.
Given the history of the graveyard, Americans should probably have locked their plane doors, put in some reasonable protections domestically, and taken their time going after bin Laden. Al-Qaeda was certainly capable of doing real harm every couple of years, but their strength remained minimal, their "caliphate" a joke, and Afghanistan -- for anyone but Afghans -- truly represented the backlands of the planet. Even now, we could undoubtedly go home and, disastrous as the situation there (and in Pakistan) has become under our ministrations, do less harm than we're going to do with our prospective surges in the years to come.
The irony is that, had they not been so blinded by triumphalism, Bush's people really wouldn't have needed to know much to avoid catastrophe. This wasn't atomic science or brain surgery. They needn't have been experts on Central Asia, or mastered Pashto or Dari, or recalled the history of the anti-Soviet War that had ended barely a decade earlier, or even read the prophetic November 2001 essay in Foreign Affairs magazine, "Afghanistan: Graveyard of Empires," by former CIA station chief in Pakistan Michael Bearden, which concluded: "The United States must proceed with caution -- or end up on the ash heap of Afghan history."
They could simply have visited a local Barnes & Noble, grabbed a paperback copy of George MacDonald Fraser's rollicking novel Flashman, and followed his blackguard of an anti-hero through England's disastrous Afghan War of 1839-1842 from which only one Englishman returned alive. In addition to a night's reading pleasure, that would have provided any neocon national security manager with all he needed to know when it came to getting in and out of Afghanistan fast.
Or subsequently, they could have spent a little time with the Russian ambassador to Kabul, a KGB veteran of the Soviet Union's Afghan catastrophe. He complained to John Burns of the New York Times last year that neither Americans nor NATO representatives were willing to listen to him, even though the U.S. had repeated "all of our mistakes," which he carefully enumerated. "Now," he added, "they're making mistakes of their own, ones for which we do not own the copyright."
True, the Obama crew at the White House, the National Security Council, the State Department, the Pentagon, and in the U.S. military, even holdovers like Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Centcom Commander David Petraeus, are not the ones who got us into this. Yes, they are more realistic about the world. Yes, they believe -- and say so -- that we're, at best, in a stalemate in Afghanistan and Pakistan, that it's going to be truly tough sledding, that it probably will take years and years, and that the end result won't be victory. Yes, they want some "new thinking," some actual negotiations with factions of the Taliban, some kind of a grand regional bargain, and above all, they want to "lower expectations."
As Gates summed things up in congressional testimony recently:
"This is going to be a long slog, and frankly, my view is that we need to be very careful about the nature of the goals we set for ourselves in Afghanistan... If we set ourselves the objective of creating some sort of central Asian Valhalla over there, we will lose, because nobody in the world has that kind of time, patience and money." Okay, in Norse mythology, Valhalla may be the great hall for dead warriors and the Secretary of Defense may have meant an "Asian Eden," but cut him a little slack: at least he acknowledged that there were financial limits to the American role in the world. That's a new note in official Washington, where global military and diplomatic policy have, until now, existed in splendid isolation from the economic meltdown sweeping the country and the planet.
Similarly, official Washington is increasingly willing to talk about a "multi-polar world," rather than the unipolar fantasy planet on which the first-term Bush presidency dwelled. Its denizens are even ready to imagine a relatively distant moment when the U.S. will have "reduced dominance," as Global Trends 2025, a futuristic report produced for the new President by the National Intelligence Council, put it. Or as Thomas Fingar, the U.S. intelligence community's "top analyst," suggested of the same moment:
"[T]he U.S. will remain the preeminent power, but that American dominance will be much diminished over this period of time... [T]he overwhelming dominance that the United States has enjoyed in the international system in military, political, economic, and arguably, cultural arenas is eroding and will erode at an accelerating pace with the partial exception of military." Still, it's a long way from fretting about finances, while calling for more dollars for the Pentagon, to imagining that we already might be something less than the dominant hegemon on this planet, or that the urge to tame the backlands of Afghanistan, half a world from home, makes no sense at all. Not for us, not for the Afghans, not for anybody (except maybe al-Qaeda).
For all their differences with Bush's first-term neocons, here's what the Obama team still has in common with them -- and it's no small thing: they still think the U.S. won the Cold War. They still haven't accepted that they can't, even if in a subtler fashion than the Busheviks, control how this world spins; they still can't imagine that the United States of America, as an imperial power, could possibly be heading for the exits.
Whistling Past the Graveyard
Back in 1979, National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, plotting to draw the Soviets into a quagmire in Afghanistan, wrote President Jimmy Carter: "We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War."
In fact, the CIA-backed anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan that lasted through the 1980s would give the Soviets far worse. After all, while the Vietnam War was a defeat for the U.S., it was by no means a bankrupting one.
In 1986, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev vividly described the Afghan War as a "bleeding wound." Three years later, by which time it had long been obvious that transfusions were hopeless, the Soviets withdrew. It turned out, however, that the bleeding still couldn't be staunched, and so the Soviet Union, with its sclerotic economy collapsing and "people power" rising on its peripheries, went down the tubes.
Hand it to the Bush administration, in the last seven-plus years the U.S. has essentially inflicted a version of the Soviets' "Afghanistan" on itself. Now the Obama team is attempting to remedy this disaster, but what new thinking there is remains, as far as we can tell, essentially tactical. Whether the new team's plans are more or less "successful" in Afghanistan and on the Pakistani border may, in the end, prove somewhat beside the point. The term Pyrrhic victory, meaning a triumph more costly than a loss, was made for just such moments.
After all, more than a trillion dollars later, with essentially nothing to show except an unbroken record of destruction, corruption, and an inability to build anything of value, the U.S. is only slowly drawing down its 140,000-plus troops in Iraq to a "mere" 40,000 or so, while surging yet more troops into Afghanistan to fight a counterinsurgency war, possibly for years to come. At the same time, the U.S. continues to expand its armed forces and to garrison the globe, even as it attempts to bail out an economy and banking system evidently at the edge of collapse. This is a sure-fire formula for further disaster -- unless the new administration took the unlikely decision to downsize the U.S. global mission in a major way.
Right now, Washington is whistling past the graveyard. In Afghanistan and Pakistan the question is no longer whether the U.S. is in command, but whether it can get out in time. If not, when the moment for a bailout comes, don't expect the other pressed powers of the planet to do for Washington what it has been willing to do for the John Thains of our world. The Europeans are already itching to get out of town. The Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, the Indians... who exactly will ride to our rescue?
Perhaps it would be more prudent to stop hanging out in graveyards. They are, after all, meant for burials, not resurrections.
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