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Gates: US must stop civilian deaths in Afghan war
By Anne Gearan Associated Press June 12, 2009
BRUSSELS, Belgium – The United States and its allies must reduce the number of civilians killed in the hunt for the Taliban in Afghanistan, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday.
New U.S. general looks to shift tack in Afghanistan
Fri Jun 12, 7:16 am ET
LONDON (Reuters) – The United States plans to review tactics in Afghanistan in response to widespread anger about the high number of civilian casualties, the newly appointed U.S. commander said in comments broadcast on Friday.
Iran playing 'double game' in Afghanistan: Gates
Fri Jun 12, 11:24 am ET
BRUSSELS (AFP) – US Defense Secretary Robert Gates accused Iran Friday of playing a "double game" in Afghanistan, by professing to want good ties while undermining NATO-led efforts to provide security.
US plans push for 'information war' in Afghanistan
by Dan De Luce June 12, 2009
BRUSSELS (AFP) – The United States plans to devote more money and manpower to the "information war" in Afghanistan as NATO-led forces battle an aggressive media campaign by Taliban insurgents, officials said on Friday.
Bin Laden 'is still in Pakistan'
Friday, 12 June 2009 BBC News
Al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden is still hiding in Pakistan, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Leon Panetta has said.
Security developments in Afghanistan
June 12 (Reuters) - Following are security developments in Afghanistan at 1000 GMT on Friday.
Spain To Send 450 Extra Soldiers For Afghanistan Election
MADRID (AFP)--Spain's cabinet has agreed to send 450 soldiers to Afghanistan next month to reinforce security ahead of the Aug. 20 presidential election, a government statement said Friday.
Homesick Iranian women vote in Afghanistan
By Golnar Motevalli
HERAT, Afghanistan, June 12 (Reuters) - Fatemeh heard the call of her homeland on election day and it moved her to tears.
FACTBOX-Key facts about the Wakhan Corridor
June 12 (Reuters) - China and Afghanistan have agreed to study opening the 76-km (47-mile) border between the two countries.
NATO Seeks Troops in Afghanistan, Warns of Taliban Escalation
By Gregory Viscusi and James G. Neuger
June 12 (Bloomberg) -- NATO appealed to the alliance’s non- U.S. members to send more troops to Afghanistan, warning that President Barack Obama’s buildup is likely to trigger heavier fighting with the Taliban.
UNICEF Concerned By Rising Child Labor In Afghanistan
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty June 12, 2009
KABUL -- The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) says it is concerned by the growing number of working Afghan children, RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan reports.
Bomb kills senior Pakistan cleric
Friday, 12 June 2009 BBC News
A leading anti-Taliban cleric has been killed in a suspected suicide bomb attack at his Islamic religious school in the Pakistani city of Lahore.
Pakistan fights for its tribal soul
By Syed Saleem Shahzad Asia Times Online June 12, 2009
KARACHI - Pakistan's month-long military operation in the Malakand Division of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), which includes the scene of especially heavy fighting in the Swat Valley, has, per official figures,
Afghan Drug Addicts Getting Treatment
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty June 12, 2009
KABUL -- A ceremony marking the successful treatment of drug addicts in Afghanistan has been held in Kabul, RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan reports.
Play portrays Afghanistan's 30 tragic years
By TOMOKO OTAKE Japan Times June 12, 2009
A play about the history of Afghanistan inspired by former Afghan ambassador to Japan Haron Amin will be staged on June 16 and 17 at Space Zero in Shinjuku.
US moving to appeal Bagram detention ruling
Associated Press June 11, 2009
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration is moving to appeal a ruling that some detainees at a military air base in Afghanistan can use U.S. civilian courts to challenge their detention.
Ascetic Karzai rival says he's not crazy
Thu Jun 11, 2009 5:58pm EDT By Jonathon Burch
KABUL (Reuters) - Former Afghan planning minister Ramazan Bashardost lives year-round in a tent opposite parliament and is now mounting a campaign for president that many people consider quixotic and hopeless.
Lottery allocates places on Afghan ballot
Thu Jun 11, 8:27 am ET
KABUL (AFP) – Afghanistan's elections authority held a lottery Thursday to allocate places on the ballot for the August presidential vote as the list of candidates was being finalised after objections and withdrawals.
Not up to Canada to criticize Karzai's warlord appointment: Day
By Murray Brewster The Canadian Press June 11, 2009
OTTAWA — Canadians may wince about President Hamid Karzai's choice of a unsavoury warlord as a vice-presidential candidate but Ottawa has no place condemning it, says the minister in charge of the Afghanistan file.
Helmand Gets a Lifeline
Buoyed by new airstrip, some officials hope to see tourists – but realists just pleased they can export local produce.
Institute for War & Peace Reporting By Mohammad Ilyas Dayee (ARR No. 321, 11-June-09)
“It’s very expensive,” said Hajji Qudous, waving his one-way ticket to Kabul, which cost him 7,000 afghani, or 140 US dollars. “I hope other airlines soon begin to fly to Helmand. Then the price will come down.”
Hell of Afghanistan brought home to British troops
by Robin Millard – Fri Jun 12, 12:14 am ET
STANFORD, England (AFP) – The British Army has spent 14 million pounds (23 million dollars) on creating a replica Afghan village to get their soldiers used to life on duty in Helmand before they spend six months serving in the real Afghanistan.
Hearts on The Line in Pakistan
WASHINGTON POST By Ahmed Rashid Friday, June 12, 2009
MARDAN, Pakistan - Even before the explosion Tuesday at the Pearl Continental Hotel killed at least 16 people in Peshawar, Pakistan was at the center of global attention.
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Gates: US must stop civilian deaths in Afghan war
By Anne Gearan Associated Press June 12, 2009
BRUSSELS, Belgium – The United States and its allies must reduce the number of civilians killed in the hunt for the Taliban in Afghanistan, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday. He called the civilian deaths "one of our greatest strategic vulnerabilities."
"Every civilian casualty, however caused, is a defeat for us and a setback for the Afghan government," Gates told reporters.
Civilian casualties have been a source of tension between the Afghan government and U.S. and NATO troops. President Hamid Karzai has pleaded with U.S. officials to reduce the number of civilians dying as a result of the fighting.
American officials say that Taliban militants purposely try to cause civilian deaths that can be blamed on U.S. forces in order to turn ordinary Afghans against the international military effort.
Gates said little about the latest high-profile killings, a disputed incident in a western province in which Afghan officials have said that the civilian death toll was 140. U.S. commanders have said they believe no more than 30 civilians were killed, along with 60 to 65 Taliban insurgents.
"We can do better," Gates said.
Gates said preventing civilian deaths is a primary assignment for the American general he picked to turn around the stalemated Afghanistan.
As he headed to his first day on the job in Kabul, Gen. Stanley McChrystal paid a courtesy call Friday on NATO defense chiefs, a gesture meant to acknowledge the alliance's help even as the United States shoulders an ever-larger share of the fighting.
"I assure you that I take the responsibility very, very seriously," McChrystal told the ministers. He was in Brussels for a few hours for an update on NATO activity in Afghanistan.
The alliance has declared the Afghan war its highest military priority, but the fight against Taliban-led insurgents is unpopular in many European nations and several alliance countries are reducing or eliminating their forces.
McChrystal's Army fatigues stood out in a room full of business suits and dress uniforms. The general will be the overall commander for all forces in Afghanistan, including an American force expected to reach 68,000 by the end of this year, and about 32,000 allied troops.
Gates fired his last commander, and has said the war effort lacked focus and resources. He hand-picked McChrystal and named his own top military aide as the general's deputy in one of the clearest signs yet that the Obama administration is gravely worried about the course of the eight-year war.
Gates was in Europe for three days of consultations with NATO allies.
The military has given McChrystal his pick of officers and a free hand to rearrange what many considered an inefficient command structure. The United States is trying to ally NATO concerns about creeping "Americanization" of the war's direction, but will nonetheless install a new hierarchy that more closely resembles the U.S. military machine in Iraq.
NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer acknowledged Friday that development is not coming to Afghanistan as fast as the alliance had hoped, but said little about the direction of the overall war in opening remarks to the defense chiefs.
At a farewell news conference as he prepared to leave the top NATO job, de Hoop Scheffer acknowledged the tension within NATO and among European governments over the goal and importance of the Afghan fight. It is easier for him to talk about the development part of the mission, and far harder to explain that "we are there fighting terrorism," and that the stakes are high, he said.
"We cannot afford to lose," he said.
With insurgent violence at its highest point ever, U.S. officials acknowledge they are not winning in Afghanistan. While vastly superior in training and equipment, the combined U.S. and NATO militaries are hamstrung in certain parts of the country by an entrenched and flexible insurgency that relies on low-tech tactics, intimidation and payoffs.
President Barack Obama has promised to make the fight his focus in a way that former President George W. Bush did not. The Afghanistan fight, then going relatively well, became an afterthought in Washington, and always second in line for resources, following the 2003 U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq.
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New U.S. general looks to shift tack in Afghanistan
Fri Jun 12, 7:16 am ET
LONDON (Reuters) – The United States plans to review tactics in Afghanistan in response to widespread anger about the high number of civilian casualties, the newly appointed U.S. commander said in comments broadcast on Friday.
Speaking after his confirmation by the U.S. Senate, Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal said his focus would be balancing the "short-term tactical impact" of operations with the "long-term strategic effect," emphasizing that protecting the population was central to getting the balance right.
"One of the things we will do is review all of our rules of engagement and all the instructions to our units, with the emphasis that we are fighting for the population and that involves protecting them both from the enemy and from unintended consequences of our operation," McChrystal told the BBC.
"We know that while an operation may be conducted for the right reasons, if it has negative effects it can have a negative outcome for everyone."
McChrystal, a former commander of special forces in Iraq, is due to take command of the 56,000 U.S. troops and 33,000 others from NATO countries shortly, replacing General David McKiernan, who was effectively dismissed last month.
The high level of civilian casualties from U.S. air strikes and other attacks on suspected Taliban hideouts has become an extremely sensitive issue, with Afghanistan's leaders and the local population openly critical of the U.S. military.
An air strike last month in western Afghanistan killed a large number of civilians, with the U.S. military acknowledging 20-35 killed and the Afghan government saying it was 140.
"The most important part is shielding the Afghan people so they can accept the government of Afghanistan as legitimate and effective," McChrystal said of his priorities.
"So if we win this effort, it will be because we protected the population, and going after the high-value enemy targets will just be a supporting effort to do that."
The general acknowledged that the war in Afghanistan had a long way to run. When asked if he could do with more troops, he said that no general would ever turn down extra forces. He said an overall goal would be preventing al Qaeda's re-emergence.
"The guidance that I've been given as I interpret it is to prevent both al Qaeda's re-emergence and, in this case, the Taliban taking over Afghanistan, so that we don't have safe havens inside Afghanistan in the future," he said.
(Reporting by Luke Baker; Editing by )
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Iran playing 'double game' in Afghanistan: Gates
Fri Jun 12, 11:24 am ET
BRUSSELS (AFP) – US Defense Secretary Robert Gates accused Iran Friday of playing a "double game" in Afghanistan, by professing to want good ties while undermining NATO-led efforts to provide security.
"Iran is playing a bit of double game in Afghanistan," he told reporters at NATO headquarters in Brussels at the end of two days of talks with his allied counterparts.
"They are an important trading partner for Afghanistan, they profess to have warm relations with the Afghan government," he noted.
"At the same time, they're sending in a relatively modest level of weapons and capabilities to attack ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) and coalition forces.
"They're trying to do what they can to hurt us and hurt our allies and partners in Afghanistan, which also ends up hurting the Afghan people," said Gates.
In March, Iran and NATO held their first talks since the Iranian revolution 30 years ago in signs of a thaw in their ties, when Tehran's diplomat in Brussels met with a senior alliance official.
Iran has close ethnic and religious ties with Afghanistan, but the Islamic republic has suffered badly from the effects of surging opium production, with cheap and readily available heroin fuelling a sharp rise in drug use.
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US plans push for 'information war' in Afghanistan
by Dan De Luce June 12, 2009
BRUSSELS (AFP) – The United States plans to devote more money and manpower to the "information war" in Afghanistan as NATO-led forces battle an aggressive media campaign by Taliban insurgents, officials said on Friday.
US and NATO officials increasingly see public relations as crucial to turning the tide against the militants who have successfully spread their message through radio, the Internet and mobile phones.
As part of President Barack Obama's new strategy for Afghanistan, Washington plans to fund dozens of civilian public relations advisors to work with government ministries in Kabul and provincial governors across the impoverished country, a Western official told AFP.
On the military side, a senior US naval officer, Admiral Gregory Smith, has been assigned to oversee stepped up communications efforts under the new commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal.
Smith, who accompanied McChrystal on Friday to Brussels where NATO defence ministers met, has said the communications initiative may include funding for more radio transmission towers and news stations as well as guarding mobile phone towers.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates "has not been satisfied" with how communications have been handled but is confident the new commander will "devote the resources necessary" to improve how the military explains its mission, his press secretary Geoff Morrell said in Brussels.
Asked by AFP whether incidents should be handled differently, Gates said: "I think we could do better."
A Kabul government document outlining international civilian assistance in Afghanistan confirms a requirement for 45 communications advisors -- 11 working with the central government and the remainder deployed in the 34 provinces.
They would offer public relations advice to Afghan staff in ministries and governor's offices, including designing public information campaigns, said the document obtained by AFP.
The emphasis on public relations comes amid concern among US and NATO officials about the effect of civilian casualties from US-led air strikes. Insurgents have sought to exploit public outrage over the casualties.
General David Petraeus, head of US Central Command that oversees the region, said Thursday that the coalition had to be more agile in countering Taliban propaganda.
"When you're dealing with the press, when you're dealing with the tribal leaders, when you're dealing with host nations, your bosses, whatever it may be, you got to beat the bad guys to the headlines," Petraeus said in a speech in Washington.
"You have to be first with the truth and that requires really revamping what it is we do," he said.
Petraeus and others have called for more timely communications and allowing lower-level officers close to the battlefied to take decisions on releasing information.
The US Army is rewriting its information operations manual to reflect the new thinking.
Admiral Smith said in an interview last month that securing mobile phone towers would mean "more people can have access to cell phones to communicate amongst themselves through text messaging or just voice communications."
The goal of such efforts was to promote a lively debate among Afghans and not to force feed American ideas, he told the Council on Foreign Relations.
In an interview published Thursday, McChrystal said it was crucial for coalition forces to develop expertise in Afghan languages and do a better job of conveying their role to the Afghan people.
"At the end of the day, you're going to convince people, not kill them," McChrystal told the Wall Street Journal.
Apart from carrying out more ambitious media campaigns, US military and intelligence agencies are reportedly working to jam Taliban radio broadcasts in Pakistan and Afghanistan in a bid to prevent insurgents from freely issuing threats and declarations.
The insurgents have sought to sow distrust of foreign troops in radio broadcasts and intimidate opponents, delivering "night letters" to villages with warnings of retribution and distributing video of bombings via the web and mobile phones.
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Bin Laden 'is still in Pakistan'
Friday, 12 June 2009 BBC News
Al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden is still hiding in Pakistan, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Leon Panetta has said.
Mr Panetta reiterated that finding Bin Laden remains a top priority for the US, adding that he hoped the chances of locating him were now improved.
"We have a number of people on the ground in Pakistan who are helping us provide targets," he said.
Meanwhile, Pakistan's army continued to target militants across the north-west.
A military operation is continuing in the Swat valley where the Pakistani army has made a number of gains in recent weeks as it attempts to dislodge Taliban insurgents from their strongholds in the area.
Mr Panetta told reporters that as the Pakistani military closes in on Taliban militants, there will be a better chance of locating Bin Laden.
He emphasised that the al-Qaeda network remained the most serious threat to the US and that the group was still plotting attacks from their hide-outs.
In recent days the Pakistani army has targeted militant strongholds in the semi-tribal areas adjacent to Waziristan. There were reports of aerial bombardment around the Orakzai tribal region on Friday.
Militant sanctuaries
Waziristan has been described by US officials as "the most dangerous place on earth" and many analysts believe the area could harbour some of the world's most wanted men - including Osama Bin Laden.
The BBC's M Ilyas Khan in Islamabad says that both the US and Afghan governments have long believed that the entire al-Qaeda and Taliban leadership is hiding in one of the militant sanctuaries to be found Pakistan's tribal areas.
Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has also said that key militant leaders "may be hiding somewhere in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region."
But Pakistan has always tended to reject categorical statements about their whereabouts, saying that there is never specific information about it, our correspondent adds.
Mr Panetta's statement comes just over a week after a statement made in Islamabad by US special envoy Richard Holbrooke that the US intelligence community did not know where the al-Qaeda leadership was hiding.
On 3 June an audio recording purporting to be of the al-Qaeda leader was aired just as US President Barack Obama arrived in Bin Laden's native Saudi Arabia at the start of a Middle East tour.
The tape accused President Obama of of fuelling hatred of America in Pakistan.
Mr Holbrooke recently returned from a tour of the camps housing those displaced by the fighting in north-west Pakistan. He said he was struck by the swing in public opinion against the Taliban.
He promised much more aid for Pakistan to help them deal with the humanitarian crisis unfolding in their overstretched camps.
On Thursday, the US House of Representatives voted to triple non-military aid to Pakistan.
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Security developments in Afghanistan
June 12 (Reuters) - Following are security developments in Afghanistan at 1000 GMT on Friday.
* Denotes new or updated items.
HELMAND - Afghan police killed 12 insurgents in a clash in southern Helmand province on Thursday, the interior ministry said. One police officer was wounded.
* PAKTIA - A roadside bomb killed three Afghan soldiers in southeastern Paktia province, provincial officials said.
* FARYAB - Taliban insurgents shot dead a local police chief and his driver in an ambush in northwestern Faryab overnight, the interior ministry said.
KUNAR - Two Afghan civilians were killed and five wounded by mortar fire from NATO-led troops in eastern Kunar province on Thursday, the alliance said. The troops fired the mortar rounds in response to an attack by insurgents, it said.
* KANDAHAR - A soldier with the NATO-led force was killed in an explosion in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, the alliance said. The Ministry of Defence in London issued a statement saying a British soldier had been killed near Kandahar.
* Reuters could not reach the Taliban for comment on any of these reports.
(Compiled by Sayed Salahuddin; Editing by Paul Tait)
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Spain To Send 450 Extra Soldiers For Afghanistan Election
MADRID (AFP)--Spain's cabinet has agreed to send 450 soldiers to Afghanistan next month to reinforce security ahead of the Aug. 20 presidential election, a government statement said Friday.
The decision still requires parliamentary approval.
The soldiers will be in place from July 21 and will stay there "for 30 days after Aug. 20, or after the second round, if one takes place," said the statement issued after a cabinet meeting.
If parliament approves the decision the contingent will strengthen the force of 780 Spanish soldiers already in Afghanistan as part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's 62,000-strong International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF. A total 42 countries have contributed soldiers to ISAF.
In late May, U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced the U.K. contingent of 8,300 soldiers would be temporarily strengthened to 9,000 to reinforce security for the August election.
In a separate decision, Spain plans to send 70 soldiers from October to work with other ISAF troops guarding Kabul airport for a seven-month period, the government said.
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Homesick Iranian women vote in Afghanistan
By Golnar Motevalli
HERAT, Afghanistan, June 12 (Reuters) - Fatemeh heard the call of her homeland on election day and it moved her to tears.
"I voted because I love Iran. I've lived in Afghanistan for 30 years but I don't like Afghanistan," she told Reuters in Afghanistan's western Herat city, 125 km (80 miles) east of Iran, where dozens of Iranian women clutching their passports voted in Iran's presidential elections on Friday.
"I don't like my life here. I am here because I have four daughters, none of them are married yet."
Iran's election brought out a hidden community of women living in exile just across the border in Afghanistan, a country that shares a form of their Persian tongue -- Dari -- as one of its official languages but has starkly different traditions.
Voters were welcomed by Iranian music blaring from a brightly lit room in Iran's consulate in Herat, perhaps Afghanistan's most prosperous and developed city, which largely owes its growth to close trading links with western neighbour Iran.
According to the consulate's director, Mohammad Reza Nafar, at least 500 to 1,000 Iranian-Afghan families live in the area.
Most voters on Friday were Iranian women married to Afghan men, many now living in poverty in a much poorer country. They spoke with longing of home, and of hard lives in a strange land.
Fatemeh's Afghan husband has died, her children do not have Iranian citizenship and she can barely afford to look after them. She prays to God her daughters will be married soon so that she can return to Iran after decades away.
"The other day one of my daughters even suggested she try and get into Iran using smugglers. My life is very tough here, I miss Iran," she said crying.
BLACK CHADORS, NOT BLUE BURQAS
Most of the women wore the traditional Iranian-style chador -- a long black sheet held around their faces -- rather than the powder-blue burqa worn by many Afghan women which covers the face with a screen and was mandatory under the Taliban.
One woman who did not want to give her name said she had lived in Afghanistan for six years after meeting her Afghan husband in Iran. She was now living in poverty in a refugee camp on the outskirts of Herat.
"My husband is a heroin addict and I work as a clothes washer, I have four children," said the woman, originally from Iran's northeastern town of Sabzevar. "Life is very difficult. We don't have electricity or running water. I would like to go back to Iran but I have no money to go back."
The main contender to Iran's hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is moderate former prime minister Mirhossein Mousavi. Many Afghans have welcomed his bid in the hope a thaw with the West could improve security in Afghanistan.
The Iranian voters of Herat were divided. Shahrbanoo Nourizadeh, one of the few wearing an Afghan-style burqa, said she voted for Ahmadinejad: "I think he's helped the country and it's progressed a lot."
One of the few male voters, truck driver Gholamhossein Heidari, who drives through Afghanistan from Iran about once a week, said he had voted for Mousavi "because he has a very bright and clear manifesto. I think he'll be good for the country".
"Elections are very important, for any country, it's one of the most important parts of the law," he said.
(Editing by Peter Graff)
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FACTBOX-Key facts about the Wakhan Corridor
June 12 (Reuters) - China and Afghanistan have agreed to study opening the 76-km (47-mile) border between the two countries.
Here are key facts about the border area, known as the Wakhan Corridor.
* The Wakhan Corridor extends in a panhandle in Afghanistan's northeastern Badakhshan province up to the relatively small border with China's Xinjiang province. The corridor is roughly 210 km long (130 miles) long and between 20 km and 60 km wide. Tajikistan lies to the north and Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province and disputed Jammu and Kashmir lie to the south. The border at the eastern end in the Hindu Kush is one of the highest in the world at 4,293 metres.
* The corridor is populated primarily by Wakhi farmers and yurt-dwelling Kyrghyz herders, with the agricultural economy dominated by subsistence farming. The population has been estimated at about 10,600. People in the corridor suffer from a range of problems including poverty, ill health, lack of education, food insecurity and opium addiction, according to a United Nations Environment Programme and Food and Agriculture Organization report in 2003.
* The Anglo-Russian Boundary Commission awarded the area to Afghanistan in 1895-96 to create a buffer between the two empires. The corridor was once part of the fabled Silk Road but has been closed to regular border traffic for almost 100 years.
* The mountainous, sparsely populated Wakhan Corridor is the primary habitat in Afghanistan for snow leopards, which are listed as endangered or threatened under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. It is estimated there are only between 100 and 200 snow leopards left in Afghanistan, about the same number as in Bhutan, and a complete hunting ban has been in place since 2002. The Wakhan Corridor is also home to wild Marco Polo sheep.
* The Wakhan Corridor escaped the worst effects of the long years of war suffered elsewhere in Afghanistan since the December 1979 invasion by the Soviet Union. There are no minefields but there were several Soviet garrisons in the area.
(Sources: The United Nations Environment Programme and Food and Agriculture Organization, The Historical Dictionary of Afghanistan Second Edition 2002, Reuters)
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NATO Seeks Troops in Afghanistan, Warns of Taliban Escalation
By Gregory Viscusi and James G. Neuger
June 12 (Bloomberg) -- NATO appealed to the alliance’s non- U.S. members to send more troops to Afghanistan, warning that President Barack Obama’s buildup is likely to trigger heavier fighting with the Taliban.
While about 3,000 extra troops are heading to Afghanistan to bolster security during the presidential election campaign, most allied countries plan to pull the reinforcements out after the Aug. 20 vote.
“Most of the numbers will be on a temporary basis,” Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said after a two-day meeting of North Atlantic Treaty Organization defense ministers in Brussels. “My hope is that they’ll be allowed to stay because we are still not there in terms of needed forces.”
The reluctance to send more troops to Afghanistan threatens to turn NATO’s mission there into an increasingly American operation, reflected by a decision today to overhaul the command structure, giving the top three positions to U.S. officers.
The number of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan will rise to 68,000 from 54,000 at present once Obama’s planned troop increase is complete. The extra forces will counter increasing insurgent attacks in the east and south of the country.
Another 41 countries have a total of 32,000 troops in Afghanistan, led by Britain with 8,300. The next largest contributors are Germany, Canada, France, Italy and Poland.
Taliban Territory
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the strengthening of the 42-nation International Security Assistance Force, the official name for NATO’s Afghan mission, will trigger more fighting as the troops seek to win back Taliban-controlled territory.
“As U.S. troops move into areas of the south where there’s not been a major Afghan or ISAF security presence, we expect a heavy fighting season ahead,” he said. “The Taliban have each year increased the level of violence, and it should be the same this year, but I think that with the additional forces we have the chance to turn the tide of that momentum.”
Britain is offering 900 extra troops to provide security for the elections, Spain 450, Italy 400 and Canada 300. Poland has already sent 600, of which 400 will stay on after the elections, and Germany is also sending 600 with 400 of them staying.
In total, between 8,000 and 10,000 NATO troops will be dedicated to election protection, De Hoop Scheffer said. “We have generated the forces we need for the election,” he said.
Burden Sharing
“We have always felt that the burden should be more evenly shared,” Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak, who attended the meeting, said to reporters yesterday.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said the extra troops for the election won’t remain, and Spanish Defense Minister Carme Chacon said today it was unlikely that Spanish troops would stay more than a few months.
“Our contribution is related to the elections,” Chacon said at a briefing. Spain has 780 permanent troops in Afghanistan and is considering sending 40 members of the “guardia civil,” or military police, to help train the Afghan police.
Gates played down any disagreements with the allies, saying today’s meeting wasn’t about asking for more troops.
“We have a majority of troops but I would not minimize the role played by 32,000 partner troops,” Gates said. “They are playing an increasing role in police training and mentoring. I’ve not been silent about wanting more help but that’s not to say the contribution already being made isn’t huge.”
Government Security
Of the U.S. troops now in Afghanistan, about 36,000 serve in ISAF, which provides security for the Afghan government, and 18,000 are in Operation Enduring Freedom, the original anti- terrorist mission from 2001 which still combats militant groups such as al-Qaeda and also helps train the Afghan army.
NATO today agreed on a new command structure to give General Stanley McChrystal, who takes over tomorrow as commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, more time to concentrate on strategic planning, said De Hoop Scheffer.
Lieutenant General David Rodriguez will take over a new position commanding day-to-day military operations, while Major General Richard Formica will head the training mission for the Afghan Army, he said.
McChrystal attended today’s meeting in Brussels, stopping over for the day en route from Washington to Kabul.
NATO today also agreed to send three or four Awacs radar planes to help with air traffic control in the country’s increasingly busy skies. The allies also put NATO in charge of efforts to train and equip Afghan troops, a project that will require as much as $2 billion annually.
Currently the Afghan troop fund has 24 million euros ($34 million) with another 221 million euros pledged.
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UNICEF Concerned By Rising Child Labor In Afghanistan
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty June 12, 2009
KABUL -- The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) says it is concerned by the growing number of working Afghan children, RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan reports.
UNICEF officials said at a press conference in Kabul on June 11 that girls are more likely to be pressured into working than boys because they have fewer educational opportunities and are under greater social and cultural restrictions.
A UNICEF survey in 2003 showed that one in four Afghan children between seven and 14 is forced to work, and the number of working children has reportedly increased since then.
UNICEF says many Afghan families have no money to send their children to school and need them to earn money to support the family.
Girls also face security risks as insurgents and others have burned schools and threatened the girls who attend them.
UNICEF said it will offer more financial support and educational opportunities to children.
Afghanistan recently signed an international convention for preventing child labor, which UN officials expect will help reduce the extent of the problem there.
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Bomb kills senior Pakistan cleric
Friday, 12 June 2009 BBC News
A leading anti-Taliban cleric has been killed in a suspected suicide bomb attack at his Islamic religious school in the Pakistani city of Lahore.
The explosion struck the Jaamia Naeemia madrassa around the time of Friday prayers, killing Sarfraz Naeemi, who often spoke out against militants.
Another blast hit a mosque close to a military depot in the north-western garrison town of Nowshera.
At least six people were reported dead in the simultaneous suicide attacks.
The attacks come as Pakistan's army is broadening its offensive against the Taliban in north-western areas following gains made in the Swat valley area.
Swat supporter
In Lahore, the senior cleric at the Jaamia Naeemia madrassa, Sarfraz Naeemi, was greeting visitors in his office after Friday prayers when the suicide bomber managed to get inside and detonate explosives.
He was seriously injured and was said to have died on his way to hospital.
A spokesman for the madrassa confirmed that Mr Naeemi had been killed by the blast. There were other reports of injuries.
Mr Naeemi's son, Waqar, was close by when the bomber struck.
"I was still in the mosque when I heard a big bang. We rushed toward the office and there was a smell of explosives in the air. There was blood and several people were crying in pain," the Associated Press reported him as saying.
Images emerged from the scene of significant damage to the office where the explosives were detonated.
Sarfraz Naeemi was also shown on a stretcher, his clothes and beard spattered with masonry dust.
A leading Sunni Muslim scholar opposed to the Taliban, Mr Naeemi was known for his outspoken views against suicide bombings and militancy.
He was one of the few scholars who had openly supported the ongoing military operation in Swat and had labelled the activities of the Taliban "un-Islamic".
Mr Naeemi took part in a conference of Islamic scholars, convened by the government in May, which criticised suicide attacks and the beheading of innocent Muslims as un-Islamic.
He also told the media that the Taliban were "misusing" religion for their activities and were bringing a bad name to the Islamic faith.
He reportedly refused to have guards at his madrassa, saying it would restrict the entry of people into a place "where all should come freely".
In later remarks the scholar's other son, Raghib, said his father had been "threatened for opposing the Taliban".
"But my father used to say that I have got one life to live and I will dedicate it to my nation, the police, the army and the prophet," Raghib said.
He appealed for calm among his father's supporters, adding: "Very soon a common strategy will be announced."
North-western unrest
The other attack, in Nowshera, took place in a military high-security zone, close to an armed forces supply depot.
At almost exactly the same time as the bomber killed Sarfraz Naeemi in Lahore, a van drove up to the gate of a mosque compound during Friday prayers before the driver detonated the explosives.
The blast was so powerful that the roof of the mosque collapsed, with many people now feared to be buried under the debris.
Reports say several dozen worshippers, including members of the armed forces, have been injured. However, there is no confirmed death toll.
The BBC's Shoaib Hasan, in Islamabad, says the attacks expose the inability of Pakistan's security forces to halt Taliban retaliation for the offensive against them.
As the army's operations continue in Pakistan's north-west it is expected that such incidents may become more frequent.
Nowshera is close to Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province, which has itself recently been struck by bomb blasts.
The deadliest attack, on the city's luxurious Pearl Continental hotel, killed at least 18 people on Tuesday.
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Pakistan fights for its tribal soul
By Syed Saleem Shahzad Asia Times Online June 12, 2009
KARACHI - Pakistan's month-long military operation in the Malakand Division of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), which includes the scene of especially heavy fighting in the Swat Valley, has, per official figures, cost the lives of over 1,300 militants and led to the displacement of 3.5 million civilians.
The battle is far from over.
Under relentless pressure from the United States to get the job done once and for all, Pakistan is opening up new fronts in an attempt to wipe out Taliban militants and the al-Qaeda "franchise" under which they operate.
On Thursday morning, the Pakistan Air Force conducted strikes in Orakzai Agency in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, and ground and air operations have started in the Frontier Regions (Jani Khel - the tribal areas adjacent to the city) of Bannu district in NWFP. Al-Qaeda's shura (council) is believed to operate from Jani Khel.
The military is also expected to move in strength into the South Waziristan tribal area to go after a nexus that includes Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, Punjabi militants, Uzbeks and al-Qaeda. Clashes are reported to have already taken place.
Washington has reacted positively to the Pakistani initiatives, but garrison headquarters in Rawalpindi, the twin city of the capital Islamabad, are nervous. The top brass are aware of the tough fight their troops have had in Malakand Division and the resentment the operations have caused across the country.
Tuesday's attack on the Pearl Continental Hotel in Peshawar, the capital of NWFP, in which 19 people, including two United Nations staff, were killed and 70 wounded, is a stark reminder of the dangers of fighting the American war in the region.
Contacts familiar with the background to the attack told Asia Times Online it was approved by al-Qaeda and carried out by a nexus of militants that included Hakeemullah Mehsud of Orakzai Agency (a relative of Baitullah Mehsud), members of the Sunni militant group Laskhar-e-Jhangvi from the town of Darra Adam Khel in NWFP and the Omar group from the Frontier Regions of Peshawar.
In a message to Asia Times Online, a senior militant leader maintained that the operation had also aimed to take out US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) officials staying at the hotel. They were said to be in talks with Pakistani officials to work out ways to protect the 90% of NATO supplies for Afghanistan that pass through Peshawar.
This account, however, was disputed by Qudsia Qadri, editor-in-chief of the Pakistani Daily Financial Post, who told Asia Times Online that she stayed in the five-star hotel for a few days until Tuesday afternoon and she had not seen any FBI or NATO officials.
"The occupancy of the hotel was hardly 5%. I met a few foreigners, in the gym and at breakfast, but they were all working with NGOs [non-governmental agencies] to help the internally displaced people of Malakand," said Qadri.
How the attack was conceived
Baitullah Mehsud, al-Qaeda members and Punjabi militants live in North Waziristan and South Waziristan, remote regions on the border with Afghanistan far from Khyber Agency, through which NATO supplies pass, Kurram Agency, a hub of anti-Taliban Shi'ite forces, and Peshawar.
None of these three areas has indigenous Taliban. Therefore, Orakzai Agency, the only tribal area that does not have a border with Afghanistan, was chosen to station Taliban from South Waziristan and other regions.
By the beginning of this year, Orakzai Agency had been taken over by the Taliban and declared an Islamic emirate. The amir (leader) was Moulvi Saeed, but the public face was Hakeemullah Mehsud, a lieutenant of Baitullah Mehsud imported from South Waziristan.
Gradually, they brought in criminal elements, including anti-Shi'ite fugitives of the Laskhar-e-Jhangvi, and placed them in Darra Adam Khel, just on the outskirts of Peshawar. The Omar group was assigned to the frontier regions of Peshawar. With these groups in place, Khyber Agency and Peshawar could easily be accessed - exactly as happened with Tuesday's hotel attack.
The Pakistani security forces are braced for similar attacks now that the battle is being extended into South Waziristan and other tribal areas. At the same time, ethnic and political clashes have risen to unprecedented levels in the southern port city of Karachi, through which most of NATO's supplies enter Pakistan.
In the past week, over 50 people have been killed. The anti-Taliban Muttahida Quami Movement is attributed with most of the killing in a fight against members of a breakaway faction. Retaliation is expected in the coming days, which could result in even heavier bloodshed. The situation could become so bad that the military would have to intervene. The problem is, its forces are already spread thin in the north.
For the time being, these northern areas remain the prime concern, and the militants and al-Qaeda are ready.
Safe havens in the Hindu Kush
The Eastern Hindu Kush range, also known as the High Hindu Kush range, is mostly located in northern Pakistan and the Nuristan and Badakhshan provinces of Afghanistan.
This chain of mountains connects with several smaller ranges, such as Spin Ghar, the Tora Bora, the Suleman Range, Toba Kakar, and creates a natural corridor that passes through the entire Pakistani tribal areas and the Afghan border provinces all the way to the Pakistani coastal area in Balochistan province.
By 2008, al-Qaeda had taken control of the 1,500-square-kilometer corridor - something it had planned to do since fleeing Afghanistan when the Taliban were defeated by US-led forces in December 2001.
Al-Qaeda decided then to build a regional ideologically motivated franchise in South Asia to thwart the strategic designs of Western powers in the area.
While US forces were vainly trying to hunt down al-Qaeda in the Tora Bora mountains, the group was focused on establishing links with organizations such as the Jaishul al-Qiba al-Jihadi al-Siri al-Alami and Jundallah in the Pakistani tribal areas and organizing the recruitment of Pakistanis and Afghans to those organizations. The underlying reason for doing this was to destroy the local political and social structures and in their place establish an al-Qaeda franchise.
The plan worked. Today, in many parts of the Hindu Kush corridor, centuries-old tribal systems and their connections with the Pakistani establishment through an appointed political agent have been replaced by a system of Islamic warlordism.
The old breed of tribal elders, religious clerics and tribal chiefs, loyal to Pakistan and its systems, has been wiped out, to be replaced by warlords such as Haji Omar, Baitullah Mehsud, (slain) Nek Mohammad and (slain) Abdullah Mehsud. They are all al-Qaeda allies, and allow al-Qaeda freedom of movement in their areas within the corridor.
Al-Qaeda members from abroad also use the corridor to enter the Pakistani tribal areas. It is not always safe. Recently, security agencies arrested four Saudi nationals in Mohmand Agency. They were named only as Ahmed, Ali, Mohammad and Obaidullah and had arrived in Pakistan from Saudi Arabia in 2008-09 after passing through Iran. Had they traveled through Pakistani cities towards the tribal areas, they would most likely have been arrested much earlier.
Recently, al-Qaeda broadened its network by forging closer links with the Pakistani-based Iranian insurgency group Jundallah, which operates from around Turbat in Pakistan's Balochistan province.
Pakistan at a crossroads
This situation has brought Pakistan to a crossroads. Al-Qaeda has in many areas devastated the traditional tribal systems and established its franchise in very strategic terrain.
The country's administrative systems and law-enforcing agencies were not designed to cope with such developments. The only response it has been able to come up with is to mobilize the military - a controversial decision that could yet backfire.
There are several reasons why the militants were able to undermine the tribes. The militant organizations are highly organized, battle-hardened, heavily armed and well funded. And importantly, while tribal influence is limited to its own area, its own people, the militant organizations have cross-tribal, cross-border and international linkages. And while the tribes are bound by their tribal traditions and customary laws (riwaj), the militant organizations are not. They have out-gunned, out-funded and out-organized the tribal malik (leader) and his tribe.
Pakistan had planned to prop up the tribes, as the real strength of a country is its people. No government, whether civilian or military, can function or succeed until it has public support behind it.
This it started doing by signing agreements with selected tribes. These included ones with Sufi Mohammad in Malakand to prop up the administrative system. However, international pressure - mainly from Washington - forced Pakistan to abandon this roadmap in place of full-frontal military engagement with the militants.
Up until the latest offensive that began in Swat and which is now being extended, military action usually petered out after securing only temporary success. The government of the day generally lacked the will to go for the kill, and there remained segments within the intelligence apparatus and military sympathetic to the militants.
It now appears the government is prepared for a long fight, but ultimately it will have to take control of the corridor that provides the militants with the space from which to attack, regroup and attack again.
This would have to involve stepped-up cooperation with forces in Afghanistan to jointly patrol the border, and most importantly, a renewed attempt to revive the tribal systems where they have been infiltrated by militants.
Individually, these are mammoth tasks, in combination almost impossible. And as the planes and tanks roll in greater numbers across greater areas of Pakistan, these goals risk being lost in the fog of war.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief.
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Afghan Drug Addicts Getting Treatment
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty June 12, 2009
KABUL -- A ceremony marking the successful treatment of drug addicts in Afghanistan has been held in Kabul, RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan reports.
Deputy Health Minister Nadera Hayat Burhani told Radio Free Afghanistan that in the last two months the rehabilitation center in Kabul successfully treated 56 young addicts.
According to official Afghan statistics, there were about 920,000 drug addicts in Afghanistan in 2005, of whom 720,000 were men, 120,000 were women, and 60,000 were children.
It is believed that the current number of drug addicts in Afghanistan is around 1 million.
Although drug addicts in Kabul have greater opportunities for treatment now, experts say people outside the capital are largely ignored.
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Play portrays Afghanistan's 30 tragic years
By TOMOKO OTAKE Japan Times June 12, 2009
A play about the history of Afghanistan inspired by former Afghan ambassador to Japan Haron Amin will be staged on June 16 and 17 at Space Zero in Shinjuku.
"The Crossroads Country," produced by Tokyo International Players, follows the 30-year history of Afghanistan by re-enacting the political turmoil, assassinations and factional strife that have afflicted the country since it was invaded by the Soviet Union in 1979. It also depicts the life story of Amin, who also served as spokesman for the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.
Amin, who left Japan in May after a five-year stint, will come back here for the show, embassy officials said.
The play, which will be performed in English with Japanese subtitles and features a multinational cast, was written by Tokyo-based British playwright Alec Harris.
Tickets are ¥7,000 per piece at the door, but Japan Times readers will get a ¥2,000 discount if they say or show the special code "A19332002" at the entrance. For more information, visit crossroadscountry.com/
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US moving to appeal Bagram detention ruling
Associated Press June 11, 2009
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration is moving to appeal a ruling that some detainees at a military air base in Afghanistan can use U.S. civilian courts to challenge their detention.
The Justice Department asked a federal appeals court here Friday to hear its appeal on an expedited basis. The move was expected. U.S. District Judge John Bates, who made the original ruling April 2, suspended action in the case to give the government time to seek higher court review of his action.
The Justice Department told the appeals court that Bates' ruling was an unprecedented order that extended constitutional rights to citizens of Yemen and Tunisia held by U.S. armed forces at Bagram Air Field, in an active combat zone in Afghanistan. Bates had extended them rights previously given to terrorism detainees at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
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Ascetic Karzai rival says he's not crazy
Thu Jun 11, 2009 5:58pm EDT By Jonathon Burch
KABUL (Reuters) - Former Afghan planning minister Ramazan Bashardost lives year-round in a tent opposite parliament and is now mounting a campaign for president that many people consider quixotic and hopeless.
But he says he's not the crazy one. It is his former government colleagues who drive fancy imported cars and live in ostentatious mansions paid for with money intended to improve the lives of ordinary Afghans who he says are truly insane.
"In Afghanistan, values for some people is luxury, corruption and bodyguards. When an MP refuses this kind of life, they say I'm crazy!" Bashardost told Reuters in an interview in his tent on Thursday.
"For this minority you are not crazy if you use a luxury car from the American taxpayers' money. For these people you are not crazy when you are corrupt. For these people you are crazy when you refuse money," he says, waving both arms in the air.
The charismatic, outspoken Bashardost has modeled himself as a man of the people. He runs his campaign for the August 20 presidential election from his tent because he says it makes him more accessible to the Afghan people.
He briefly served as planning minister under President Hamid Karzai, whom he later fell out with after Bashardost openly criticised the role of aid agencies in the country and tried to shut some 2,000 of them down on charges of corruption.
Bashardost then resigned from cabinet, he says, because he no longer had the support of the president. He says he also came under a lot of pressure from foreign aid agencies and embassies.
"IT'S CRAZY!"
Bashardost said Karzai gave him $60,000 to spend on a car for himself when he was appointed planning minister. He gave the money back.
"I said: 'It's crazy. How can I have a car worth $60,000 when a teacher earns $60?'" Bashardost said. "This is the money of the American taxpayer, the British taxpayer. This is money that should be spent on other things for the country."
"They cannot say anything else about me. They cannot say Mr. Bashardost is corrupt. They cannot say Mr. Bashardost has old values, only that he is crazy," he says, wearing traditional Afghan baggy trousers and shirt, its collar lined with the colors of the Afghan flag.
Bashardost said the reason why the Taliban fought against the government was because it was full of corrupt officials, warlords and criminals. If he became president he would put all those people on trial and the insurgents would in turn lay down their weapons, he said.
"We cannot build a new system with old people. It's not possible. We cannot build democracy in Afghanistan with the enemy of Afghanistan," Bashardost said.
Bashardost says he used to be close to Karzai but has not spoken to him since resigning from cabinet. But he insists he only disagrees with Karzai's politics and that the president was not his enemy.
"Karzai's vision, his philosophy about society, about the state, is a tribal vision," Bashardost said.
Despite a widespread perception that Karzai -- who has received endorsements from many of the most powerful leaders in the country -- can win easily, Bashardost says he is confident he will oust the president.
"I hope to win in the first round. Absolutely!" he says. "We have another choice in Afghanistan. We have other possibilities. It is time for a change."
(Editing by Peter Graff and Paul Tait)
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Lottery allocates places on Afghan ballot
Thu Jun 11, 8:27 am ET
KABUL (AFP) – Afghanistan's elections authority held a lottery Thursday to allocate places on the ballot for the August presidential vote as the list of candidates was being finalised after objections and withdrawals.
The Independent Election Commission said it expected to announce the final list Saturday, a day later than scheduled.
Forty-four candidates, including President Hamid Karzai, are on the ballot but at least one has since withdrawn and three were disqualified, for reasons including links to armed groups.
The names of those who have been barred will be released Saturday but they are not expected to include the frontrunners -- Karzai and his former finance and foreign ministers, Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah respectively.
Around 10 of the presidential candidates attended Thursday's draw at a Kabul hotel. Karzai was allocated 37th place while the prized first place went to a relatively unknown candidate, Haji Rahim Jan.
There will be some reshuffling of places on the ballot once it is clear how many candidates have been dropped from the final list.
The lottery system was intended to ensure candidates could not complain of favouritism in the allocation of places on the ballot, commission chief Azizullah Luddin said.
Another 3,324 people have registered for the provincial council elections, which will also be held on August 20, of whom 54 have been disqualified.
The presidential election is only the second in Afghanistan's turbulent history and a test of US-led efforts to install democracy in the destitute nation troubled by a growing Taliban-led insurgency.
Senior commission official Zakaria Barekzai told AFP that security was still the main concern despite the efforts of security forces to thwart any attacks.
Afghan and international troops have been cracking down on insurgent hotspots in operations they say have killed scores of insurgents in recent weeks.
"The second challenge is logistics because we have a poor infrastructure in the country and some remote areas are a big challenge for us," Barekzai said.
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Not up to Canada to criticize Karzai's warlord appointment: Day
By Murray Brewster The Canadian Press June 11, 2009
OTTAWA — Canadians may wince about President Hamid Karzai's choice of a unsavoury warlord as a vice-presidential candidate but Ottawa has no place condemning it, says the minister in charge of the Afghanistan file.
The choice of Mohammad Qasim Fahim, a former militia commander, has been condemned by diplomats and human-rights workers as major step backward.
But International Trade Minister Stockwell Day, who chairs the cabinet committee on Afghanistan, said Thursday that Canadians should have faith in the Afghan people and the fledgling democracy in that country.
"There are times when we will look at certain candidates who are running and we will say, if I was involved in that election, if I was running against that candidate, I'd be making his or her past history very clear," Day told a House of Commons committee.
"But we have made a commitment that we're not going to interject ourselves into the election process."
Instead of lecturing Afghans about politics, Day said Canada has chosen to be more pragmatic by improving the economy and infrastructure, and "helping them become a country that can provide for their own security and take care of their own needs."
There is a "reluctance" to say "anything about a particular candidate," he told the all-party special committee on Afghanistan.
But the opposition said the sacrifice of 119 soldiers, as well as billions of dollars in development, has given Canada the right to speak its mind.
"Just be straight up and say it like it is," said New Democrat Paul Dewar, the party's foreign affairs critic.
The federal government had no hesitation condemning a new Shiite family law, which effectively legalized rape within a marriage, and has not been shy about confronting other countries, Dewar added.
He said not only are ordinary Afghans counting on Canadian aid and development, they're looking for human-rights leadership.
"When I was in Afghanistan a year-and-a-half ago, you would hear from members of Parliament who would say: why aren't you guys speaking out?"
Western diplomats failed last month to convince Karzai, whose administration has been accused of corruption, to steer clear of Fahim, a powerful warlord said to be involved with criminal gangs and arms smuggling.
And as the campaign for the Aug. 20 vote heats up, more allegations of sleazy politics have surfaced.
Karzai this week denied reports that he attempted to bribe fellow presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah to drop out of the election.
Opponents have also accused the president and his brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, of voter intimidation.
Day said the positive news is that an independent media is on the rise in Afghanistan, including 372 private newspapers or magazines and 16 private television stations.
If there are political allegations, they can be circulated "so people can make up their own minds," said Day.
But the federal government's 2007 human rights report on Afghanistan warned that in the run-up to the presidential election, freedom of expression and freedom of the media "will require careful monitoring."
It noted that seven journalists have died over the last two years and 20 arrested in "cases of threats and intimidation, including by government officials and others."
The report, obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act, also spoke of the plight of children, who routinely face sexual violence in Afghanistan.
The assessment contrasts with a sanitized official Canadian government report, released last week, that tracks the country's progress in achieving benchmarks prior to the withdrawal of Canada's combat troops in 2011.
Opposition MPs complained that Day's report painted an overly upbeat picture and said information, such as the human-rights report, should be included in the quarterly federal report.
But Day dismissed the criticism, saying the government's assessment points out that "not one of the categories" of benchmarks have been fulfilled.
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Helmand Gets a Lifeline
Buoyed by new airstrip, some officials hope to see tourists – but realists just pleased they can export local produce.
Institute for War & Peace Reporting By Mohammad Ilyas Dayee (ARR No. 321, 11-June-09)
“It’s very expensive,” said Hajji Qudous, waving his one-way ticket to Kabul, which cost him 7,000 afghani, or 140 US dollars. “I hope other airlines soon begin to fly to Helmand. Then the price will come down.”
Qudous was one of twenty impatient but happy passengers waiting to take an Ariana Airlines flight to the Afghan capital on June 8. Earlier, the plane they were waiting to board made a little history, when it landed on a restored runaway in Lashkar Gah.
It was the Afghan carrier’s first flight in 52 years to the capital of the embattled province of Helmand.
The plane, an Antonov-24, carrying 42 passengers, touched down at the Bost airfield amid much fanfare. Helmand has been largely cut off from the rest of Afghanistan for several years, prisoner of an increasingly robust insurgency and an active drug mafia.
Now, for the first time in decades, Helmandis can travel regularly to the national capital, Kabul.
Work on an airport complex at Bost, supported by the Americans and the British, began ten months ago. When completed, the site will boast a terminal, an agricultural park and a fruit processing plant, and will cost more than 52 million dollars. The runway alone cost 11.5 million.
It’s been a long time coming. United States ambassador Sheldon T Mills inaugurated construction of the first airport in Lashkar Gah in 1957, when Helmand was home to a small army of US engineers and builders, who sought to counter Soviet influence by funneling vast amounts of aid to the province, turning it into what was called “Little America”.
But years of war and insurgency have turned the once thriving area into a grim and dangerous place, where the main cash crop is poppy and where local residents risk their lives on local roads littered with improvised explosive devices, IEDs, and patrolled by gunmen.
At an opening ceremony days earlier, the new US ambassador, Karl Eikenberry, sounded a note of solemn celebration.
“I am delighted to be opening this bridge between Helmand and the world,” he said, adding that he hoped the new airport would help to bring peace and security to the war-torn province.
Eikenberry was given a turban at the close of his speech. Donning it, the recently retired general could almost have been mistaken for an Afghan.
Up until the opening of the new, 2000-metre runway, travel to Helmand was an expensive and perilous venture.
Firms such as Partners in Aviation and Communications Technology, PACTEC, or Central Asia Development Group, CADG, flew small eight- or 12-seaters into Lashkar Gah. Passengers well remember the dizzying corkscrew descents, designed to foil insurgent attempts to hit the aircraft from the ground.
The plane would set down on a rudimentary airstrip in the middle of the desert, stirring up a long plume of dust.
“I was always so embarrassed when foreign guests would come in on these planes,” said Ghafoor Tokhai, head of the local department of transportation. “They would cover their noses because of the clouds of dust.”
Helmand officials says they are confident the opening of the new runway will encourage tourists to come to see the province’s main historical site, the 1,000-year old complex Qala-e-Bost, whose famous arch adorns the 100-afghani note.
“This is a very big change for Helmand,” said Alishah Mazlumyar, head of the information and culture department. “I am sure that it will attract tourists who desperately want to see Qala-e-Bost. I am hopeful that [the United Nations cultural agency] UNESCO will now pay attention to Qala-e-Bost, because of all the tourists. But they have not said anything to us yet.”
Mazlumyar may be jumping the gun a bit. No matter how good the runway, it is difficult to imagine that large numbers of visitors will be drawn to what is arguably one of the most dangerous places in an already dangerous country.
Helmand is a major centre of the Taleban insurgency, and the world capital of poppy cultivation. This has turned the province into a cauldron where firefights, suicide bombers, NATO raids and kidnappings are frequent occurrences.
Nor does Helmand afford any infrastructure that might tempt tourists – there are no hotels and very few restaurants, even in Lashkar Gah.
More realistic expectations include a boost in Helmand’s agricultural output, since fruit and vegetables can get to market more easily and in better condition. The airport’s fruit processing centre is designed to help in this venture.
“Now Helmand’s fruit and nuts can reach world markets without delay,” said Abdul Rashid Stanekzai, head of Helmand’s economy department. “It will help not only the farmers, but everyone – it can change Helmand from a drug province to a fruit province.”
Stanekzai also expects an increase in visitors.
“An airport will connect us to the world,” he said. “We will have tourists, and people from other civilisations.”
But a cynic from Bolan district, who did not want to be named since he used to be a high-ranking government official in Helmand, was not convinced.
“Building an airport is a good thing,” he said. “But now it will just be easier to put poppy right on the airplane.”
Security experts have also been heavily involved in the planning of the airport. Given the volatility of Helmand, ensuring the safety of air transportation will not be a simple undertaking.
“This airport is a major achievement, but we have to provide security,” said Jabar Khan, commander of the border police in Helmand. “There is the chance of attack. So we have to make sure the [planes] are safe. If, God forbid, there were to be an attack, no flights will dare to come again.”
Helmand governor Gulab Mangal told the media that he had given orders to establish security checkpoints close to the airfield. “We will do whatever is needed,” he said.
The airport will also make it easier for foreign aid workers to travel to Helmand to monitor the work being done by local contractors, say observers.
According to staff at the department of rural rehabilitation and development, who spoke on condition of anonymity, reconstruction in Helmand was flagging badly, due in large part to the inability of international supervisors to travel to the province.
“Many projects remained just on paper,” said one official. “But now the chance of stealing will be decreased.”
Mohammad Ilyas Dayee is an IWPR-trained journalist in Helmand.
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Hell of Afghanistan brought home to British troops
by Robin Millard – Fri Jun 12, 12:14 am ET
STANFORD, England (AFP) – The British Army has spent 14 million pounds (23 million dollars) on creating a replica Afghan village to get their soldiers used to life on duty in Helmand before they spend six months serving in the real Afghanistan.
The tense atmosphere in Sindh Kalay village bazaar explodes as a Taliban suicide bomber strikes. Afghan locals scream in pain and terror and nervous British patrol troops hit the deck.
Yelling in Pashto, fruit-sellers flee and exhausted Welsh soldiers drag a victim to safety, blood pouring from the stump of his leg into the straw, mud and chicken droppings of the noisy, smelly market.
But this familiar scene is not taking place in strife-torn Helmand Province: the war in Afghanistan is now being rehearsed in the green English countryside.
"There's no point investing in something like this unless it's really realistic," said Colonel Richard Westley, the commander of Operational Training Advisory Group (OPTAG), which runs the training course.
"The music, the mosque, chickens round your feet. That could be Sangin or Gereshk market. The hackles go up. You're in Afghanistan, and that's what we want.
"A guy in a black turban pulls up on a motorbike. Who is he? You see the fear on the face of an 18-year-old private from Nottingham.
"But he must be exposed to trauma in training. If not, he will freeze in theatre."
The people sitting around brewing tea, baking bread and smoking water pipes behind the high compound walls are real Afghans, expats recruited to spend two months living as Pashtun villagers in rural Norfolk, eastern England.
Elders sit in discussion; youngsters wheel about on bicycles while market traders peddle their goods. Others stay indoors or hang around on corners.
It is a far cry from the old facility at the British Army's Stanford Training Area: a 1980s Northern Irish village later adapted to resemble Bosnia, then dressed up as Afghanistan.
"The whole village is very similar and we try to put the life in it," said Fazel Beria, who recruits the expats, mainly from London.
"The important thing for the Afghans here is that the that lives of Afghans will be saved if British soldiers know about Afghan culture, way of life and religion," he told AFP.
In one compound, troops with landmine detectors act on information and check out reports of a bomb-making facility. Soldiers find a potential explosive device and call in expert back-up.
In another, a young officer sits down on the rugs for a "shura" council with village elders twice his age.
Speaking through an interpreter, he patiently listens to their complaints about damage to a well but explains that he cannot simply give out the 500 dollars they need -- and the Taliban must been flushed from the village first.
"Do you take your boots off? Do you eat the food you're offered? You don't want your officers being ill for four days afterwards," one Afghanistan veteran said.
Sheltering from the rain, OPTAG Colour Sergeant Jimmy Lynas watches from a shop front as soldiers from 1st Battalion the Royal Welsh patrol through.
"The local nationals bring the village to life," he told AFP as he listened in on the Pashto market patter.
"They cook their own food, so the smells of the village are the same. They're burning fires, running round on motorbikes, which can only make our training better."
Simon Lloyd, commander of the eastern Defence Training Estates, also watches on.
"We've put a phenomenal amount of effort in to make this as realistic as we possibly can, to train the soldiers to the very highest possible level," he explains.
"There are 250,000 props out there, including the telegraph poles, the meat, the sandals.
"We're trying to take the shock of being in theatre away from the troops so that when they go out into Afghanistan they realise they have been through the experience before. They can concentrate on getting the results of the patrol right. The aura of the place around them won't affect them."
The suicide bomber attacks, sending the market into chaos.
Even the injured Afghans being evacuated to safety are played by real amputees.
"We don't just leave the locals," said Lynas.
"We need to look after them as well. That's what this war's about."
Britain has 8,300 troops in Afghanistan, rising to 9,000 for the August elections. Some 166 British troops have died since operations against the Taliban extremists began in October 2001.
The first troops to go through the week-long training at the new facility will deploy to Afghanistan in a few months' time.
Colonel Westley stresses the whole project is about saving lives.
"What price on our human treasure?" he said.
"If the enemy is using a new tactic or piece of equipment, and I don't know about it in minutes, people will die."
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Hearts on The Line in Pakistan
WASHINGTON POST By Ahmed Rashid Friday, June 12, 2009
MARDAN, Pakistan - Even before the explosion Tuesday at the Pearl Continental Hotel killed at least 16 people in Peshawar, Pakistan was at the center of global attention. Yet for all the concern about terrorism, the world has been stunningly indifferent to the plight of the more than 2.4 million people who have fled the Swat Valley, where the Pakistani army is for the first time seriously attacking the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
If the internally displaced Pakistanis are not properly cared for, public opinion, which has shifted dramatically in recent weeks to support the offensive against the Taliban, could once again turn in support of compromise. Last week, the Taliban launched a series of devastating suicide attacks to both divert security forces and cower public opinion. The truck bomb Tuesday night in Peshawar, northwestern Pakistan's provincial capital, reportedly injured 70.
The mass exodus from the battle zone to the southern plains has been the largest and fastest displacement of people since the genocide in Rwanda 15 years ago, U.N. officials say. Most of the displaced fled the Swat Valley in just two to three weeks last month.
While the government response has been mixed, ordinary Pakistanis have reacted en masse, loading up trucks in Karachi and Lahore with wheat, sugar, electric fans and bedding and sending them north to towns such as Mardan in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), the center of the crisis. Yet their efforts seem meager next to the enormity of the humanitarian disaster.
President Obama seems to be the only world leader concerned about the displaced civilians. The United States allocated $110 million and then an additional $200 million after Obama's special envoy Richard Holbrooke assessed the situation last week.
Holbrooke castigated Europe for its lack of support and then sought to raise funds in the Arab world, which has not responded to the Pakistanis' plight. Islamabad says that no European or Muslim Arab country has sent any major aid.
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has warned that the United Nations may be forced to cut all its services, including food supplies, by July if its appeal for $543 million in emergency aid goes unmet. After nearly a month, donor countries have pledged only 20 percent of that. The International Committee of the Red Cross -- the only aid agency working with civilians wounded from the fighting and with those civilians who have remained in the destroyed towns of Swat -- seeks $38 million, which would double its Pakistan budget for this year.
Strategically, much is at stake. The fighting in Swat is not just against extremism but for the hearts and minds of future generations. "Pakistani public support for the campaign against the Taliban and help to the [internally displaced] could dissipate fast if international aid is not forthcoming," a senior U.N. official told me. "Moreover, dissatisfied [displaced civilians] could become targets for recruitment by the Taliban and al-Qaeda."
Already, police here have caught more than 50 Taliban adherents among the displaced, either hiding or trying to coerce youngsters into becoming suicide bombers. Worryingly, among the many secular Pakistani charities working here are extremist organizations such as Falah-i-Insaniat, as the Lashkar-i-Taiba militant group that carried out the massacre in Mumbai last year is now known. Falah-i-Insaniat also supports the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Such groups -- which are heavily funded by extremist sympathizers abroad -- are not likely to run out of money soon.
The humanitarian situation is bleak: Only about a tenth of the displaced are living in proper refugee camps. The rest have been taken in by relatives or locals and are living in private back yards, homes, fields, mosques and school buildings. This amazing public generosity and concern are part of traditional Pashtun culture, but they cannot last indefinitely. While Pashtuns are the major ethnic group in the region, the Taliban -- whose followers are largely Pashtun themselves -- has sought to denigrate and destroy traditional Pashtun culture.
The U.N. World Food Program has devised an innovative system to feed those displaced who are living outside the camps. It has set up 25 "humanitarian hubs" within walking distance of most of the people, and families who have registered with the government can pick up supplies.
"We bring food to where the people are, instead of people coming to where the food is," says Wolfgang Herbinger, head of the World Food Program in Pakistan. "But we will run out of food in a few weeks if pledges are not made now." The program is feeding 2.1 million people and is 60 percent short of its estimated costs to buy more food.
The fresh thinking in placing such hubs where other aid agencies provide electric fans, cooking utensils and other supplies could also prove useful in war zones in Afghanistan, where direct civilian aid is lacking.
The real battles this summer against the Taliban and al-Qaeda will be fought in Pakistan as much as in Afghanistan. By refusing to see this humanitarian crisis as an exercise in winning hearts and minds, however, the world seems to be sleepwalking its way to defeat.
Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist and a fellow at the Pacific Council on International Policy, is most recently the author of "Descent Into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia."
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