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UN chief: 2009 is critical year for Afghanistan
By Edith M. Lederer, Associated Press Writer – Fri Mar 13, 7:18 pm ET
UNITED NATIONS – The United Nations' chief said Friday he expects more attacks and armed clashes in Afghanistan as voters head to the polls in a few months, additional international troops arrive and more foreign militants flow in.
Gen. Petraeus: No Iraq-style surge in Afghanistan
By Pat Eaton-robb, Associated Press Writer – Fri Mar 13, 9:25 pm ET
EAST HARTFORD, Conn. – The commander of the U.S. Central Command said Friday that an Iraq-style surge cannot be a solution to the problems in Afghanistan.
5 killed in Afghan operation targeting bomb-maker
By JASON STRAZIUSO, Associated Press Writer
KABUL – A helicopter-borne special operations mission by U.S. troops and Afghan forces early Saturday killed five people one province south of Kabul, sparking an angry protest from villagers who said the victims were civilians.
Afghan police say victims of U.S. raid not militants
Sat Mar 14, 5:57 am ET
KABUL (Reuters) – Afghan police disputed whether five men killed in a raid by U.S. and Afghan troops on Saturday were militants.
Obama Afghan Plan Focuses on Pakistan Aid and Appeal to Militants
By HELENE COOPER and THOM SHANKER The New York Times March 13, 2009
WASHINGTON — The emerging outlines of President Obama’s plan for Afghanistan include proposals to shift more American efforts toward problems in neighboring Pakistan and to seek some kind of political
Losing Afghanistan
By NICHOLAS THOMPSON The New York Times March 15, 2009
In early January 1988, 39 Soviet paratroopers were positioned on a cliff overlooking the Gardez-Khost road in southeastern Afghanistan. Their job was to protect the soldiers below, who were trying to open up the dangerous,
Building Infrastructure, Security Key For Afghanistan
by Tom Bowman National Public Radio (NPR)
Morning Edition, March 13, 2009 · The Obama administration is near the end of a major review of the war effort in Afghanistan, and top on the list of priorities is increasing security in the country.
Netherlands to send commandos to Afghanistan
www.chinaview.cn 2009-03-14 20:03:38
BRUSSELS, March 14 (Xinhua) -- The Netherlands is to send 76 commandos and marines to the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan in April, Radio Netherlands reported.
In Afghanistan, more than the mission that's failing
CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD From Saturday's Globe and Mail March 14, 2009 at 1:00 AM EDT
It took “a long time for this elementary truth to be spoken,” my colleague Jeffrey Simpson wrote this week under a headline, “Yes, the Afghan mission is ‘failing' and, yes, the rituals continue.”
Afghanistan As Catalyst For U.S.-Iran Cooperation
By Abbas Djavadi Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty March 13, 2009
In a ground-breaking counternarcotics operation, Iranian, Afghan, and Pakistani forces have cooperated in arrests and the seizure of illicit drugs. The UN's chief antidrug official, Antonio Mario Costa, described the operation
US finalises new Afghan strategy
Friday, 13 March 2009 BBC News
President Barack Obama's administration is close to announcing its new strategy for the war against the Taleban in Afghanistan, officials say.
Afghanistan: US must overhaul policies to defeat jihadis, says think-tank
Kabul/Washington/Brussels, 13 March (AKI) - Jihadi extremists will never be defeated in Afghanistan unless the United States administration led by president Barack Obama overhauls US political,
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UN chief: 2009 is critical year for Afghanistan
By Edith M. Lederer, Associated Press Writer – Fri Mar 13, 7:18 pm ET
UNITED NATIONS – The United Nations' chief said Friday he expects more attacks and armed clashes in Afghanistan as voters head to the polls in a few months, additional international troops arrive and more foreign militants flow in.
Calling 2009 a critical year, Ban Ki-Moon painted a grim picture: deteriorating security, widespread corruption, and the failure of the government and the international community to meet the expectations of the Afghan people who need aid to cope with drought and rising food prices.
"The government, security forces and population of Afghanistan, along with its international partners, face a critical test in 2009," Ban said in a report to the Security Council and the General Assembly.
"At stake over the next six months is the relegitimization of the government's authority through credible elections, as well as the continuation of the constitutional order," he said.
The Afghan election commission set Aug. 20 as the date for presidential and provincial council elections, three months after the expiration of President Hamid Karzai's term on May 22.
The question of who should be in charge of the country during that three month period is the hottest political issue in Afghanistan, and Ban said "all sides have strong arguments."
"There is no higher responsibility in Afghanistan right now than that of the three branches of government to find a solution to the constitutional issue in a way that ensures the existence of a functioning government between May 22 and the inauguration of the next presidential term," the secretary-general said.
Ban cited U.N. statistics showing that 2008 was the most violent year in Afghanistan since 2001, with 31 percent more incidents than in 2007, with an average of 857 incidents per month during the last half of the year compared with 625 per month in the first half.
"There are currently no indications that the security situation will improve before the summer of 2009," Ban said.
"Factors contributing to this include the forthcoming elections, a possible rise in incidents as a result of increased international military forcs, (and) reports of increased foreign jihadist fighters in Afghanistan...," he said.
Ban also cited statements by the insurgents that they will continue to attack government and military supply lines around the country, which are the same routes used by civilians working in humanitarian and development programs.
The secretary-general asked the Security Council to extend the U.N. mission in Afghanistan, which is helping with the election and coordinating international aid efforts, for a year.
The U.S.-led invasion ousted the Islamist regime in 2001, but the militant movement has regained control of large swathes of the country. U.S. and NATO forces have been unable to reverse the gains.
Last month, President Barack Obama ordered 17,000 more U.S. troops to bolster the record 38,000 American forces already in Afghanistan, a likely down payment on the request by ground commanders to double the U.S. force to 60,000.
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Gen. Petraeus: No Iraq-style surge in Afghanistan
By Pat Eaton-robb, Associated Press Writer – Fri Mar 13, 9:25 pm ET
EAST HARTFORD, Conn. – The commander of the U.S. Central Command said Friday that an Iraq-style surge cannot be a solution to the problems in Afghanistan.
Gen. David Petraeus, speaking before about 800 people at an event sponsored by the World Affairs Council, acknowledged that the situation in Afghanistan has been spiraling downward and is likely to get worse before it gets better.
In a speech that also touched on issues ranging from the nuclear threat in Iraq to pirates off Somalia, Petraeus said more resources are needed in Afghanistan, both military and especially civil to help build a stable government there.
"The secretary of defense and I are among the biggest champions with members of Congress for increasing the resourcing for the State Department and the Agency for International Development," he said.
The U.S.-led invasion of Aghanistan ousted the Islamist Taliban regime in 2001, but the militant movement has regained control of large swaths of the country. U.S. and NATO forces have been unable to reverse the gains.
Petraeus blamed the problems on a resilient "syndicate of extremists," financing from the drug trade, safe havens in Pakistan and frustration with the slow development of the country's fledgling government.
"We must help our Afghan partners create the breathing space that'll allow the people to stand up for themselves as the Iraqi people did during the awakening movements there," he said. "That also will allow the government to begin working for its people and begin providing essential services, instead of just struggling to survive."
Last month, President Barack Obama ordered 17,000 more U.S. troops to bolster the record 38,000 American forces already in Afghanistan, a likely down payment on the request by ground commanders to double the U.S. force to 60,000.
But Petraeus said a large military surge like the one in Iraq would not work in Afghanistan because there is not enough infrastructure on the ground to handle one, and because it is imperative that Afghans not view coalition forces as conquerors.
"You do need to tenaciously pursue the enemy and the extremists," Petraeus said. "But you also need to be building, and to develop, and to assist, and to help and to partner."
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5 killed in Afghan operation targeting bomb-maker
By JASON STRAZIUSO, Associated Press Writer
KABUL – A helicopter-borne special operations mission by U.S. troops and Afghan forces early Saturday killed five people one province south of Kabul, sparking an angry protest from villagers who said the victims were civilians.
The U.S. military said the combined forces called for suspects in a house to surrender during the overnight raid, but that militants opened fire, forcing the joint forces to fire back. It said the mission targeted the leader of a roadside bomb-making cell.
However, a spokesman for the governor of Logar province said a government delegation traveled to the site and confirmed that five civilians had been killed.
Angry villagers gathered in protest near a government compound later Saturday and police opened fire on them to prevent them from storming the building, governor's spokesman Den Mohammad Darwesh said. Two people were wounded, he said.
U.S. spokesman Col. Greg Julian denied that any civilians were killed in the mission.
"They were five armed militants that fired on a joint force ... when they went in to get a targeted individual," Julian said. "They called them out when they arrived, and these guys came out shooting and were killed in the process."
The combined forces found grenades and other weapons during a search of the compound, a U.S. statement said.
Discerning who is and is not a civilian has long been difficult in the Afghan conflict. Militants do not wear uniforms. Many civilians own guns and will fire them when foreign troops enter their villages at night.
As well, local Afghan officials have been known to falsely claim that civilians were killed in an operation, either under pressure from militants or in hopes that villagers can claim payments from the U.S. or Afghan government. However, U.S. officials have also been slow to acknowledge when American troops have killed Afghan civilians in past instances.
Journalists and human rights monitors can rarely travel to remote battle sites to confirm information from officials.
The fact that Afghan special forces were on the raid is a significant step that helps insulate the U.S. military somewhat against charges of killing civilians. Afghan troops typically have not taken part in such operations in the past.
After angry condemnations by President Hamid Karzai over the last several months on the issue of civilian deaths, the U.S. recently agreed to put Afghan forces on all of its missions, including sensitive overnight raids conducted by U.S. Special Operations Forces.
Despite that step, the Ministry of Defense spokesman said he knew nothing about the raid. Darwesh said Logar's governor contacted U.S. officials in the province to ask for an explanation, but they responded that they did not know about it because it was conducted from the U.S. base at Bagram — a reference to U.S. Special Operations Forces.
Darwesh said a delegation that included provincial lawmakers visited the site of the raid and reported that all five people killed were civilians — a mullah from Kabul and four farmers. Darwesh earlier identified the dead as a father and four of his adult sons.
Close to 3,000 American soldiers arrived in Logar and the neighboring province of Wardak in January to secure the two regions on Kabul's doorstep.
The troops were the first wave of American reinforcements this year. President Barack Obama has said he will send an additional 17,000 American forces to bolster the 38,000 already in the country. The troops will help secure violent regions in the south ahead of presidential elections later this year.
Taliban and other militants have increased attacks during the last three years and now control wide swaths of countryside that NATO troops and Afghan forces can't protect.
In other violence, Britain's Defense Ministry said a British soldier died in an explosion in southern Afghanistan on Saturday near Musa Qala, a region in Helmand province with many Taliban. The soldier is the 150th member of British forces to die in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, the ministry said.
___
Associated Press reporter Rahim Faiez contributed to this report.
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Afghan police say victims of U.S. raid not militants
Sat Mar 14, 5:57 am ET
KABUL (Reuters) – Afghan police disputed whether five men killed in a raid by U.S. and Afghan troops on Saturday were militants.
The predawn raid took place in the Charkh district of Logar province, some 80 km (49 miles) southwest of the capital Kabul. The U.S. military said the operation aimed at disrupting a network that had been carrying out roadside bombings.
"A firefight began when armed militants engaged the force, five enemy combatants were killed in the firefight," a U.S. military statement said.
Afghan police and officials, however, said the men killed were non-combatants.
"I confirm that those killed by U.S. forces were civilians... four brothers and a father," said General Mostafa Mohseni, the police chief in Logar province.
The head of the provincial council Abdul Hakim Sulaimankhil condemned the killing of civilians.
More than 3,000 fresh U.S. troops have been recently deployed in Logar and neighboring Wardak province.
Civilian casualties are the greatest source tension between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Western governments fighting the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, and there has been dwindling public support for the continued presence of nearly 70,000 foreign troops in the country.
More than 2,100 civilians were killed in Afghanistan last year, 40 percent more than 2007, the United Nations said. Around a quarter were killed by international forces.
President Barack Obama has issued orders for some 17,000 more troops to be set to Afghanistan.
Military officials expect the violence to increase this year as foreign troops move into areas where they have seldom patrolled before.
(Reporting by Hamid Shalizi, Editing by Valerie Lee)
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Obama Afghan Plan Focuses on Pakistan Aid and Appeal to Militants
By HELENE COOPER and THOM SHANKER The New York Times March 13, 2009
WASHINGTON — The emerging outlines of President Obama’s plan for Afghanistan include proposals to shift more American efforts toward problems in neighboring Pakistan and to seek some kind of political reconciliation with the vast majority of insurgents in the region, according to administration officials.
The plan reflects in part a conclusion within the administration that most of the insurgent foot soldiers in Afghanistan and Pakistan are “reconcilable” and can be pried away from the hard-core organizations of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. At least 70 percent of the insurgents, and possibly more, can be encouraged to lay down their arms with the proper incentives, administration officials have said.
A strategic review nearing completion is being carried out by a team of high-ranking administration officials whose recommendations will be subject to Mr. Obama’s approval. After seven years of a United States-led war effort in Afghanistan, officials involved in the review say that the military to date has succeeded primarily in driving the most hard-core Taliban and other extremist militants out of Afghanistan and into western Pakistan, including the mountainous tribal areas and the city of Quetta.
To put more pressure on those Pakistani sanctuaries, United States and Pakistani officials said they expected the plan to recommend at least a continuation of what amounts to a covert war carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency inside Pakistan, using drone aircraft for missile strikes on insurgent hide-outs.
The plan will also call for an increase in military and financial aid to Pakistan, though there was still a debate on just how much additional aid should be provided, the officials said.
One senior Obama official said the military aid to Pakistan would be aimed at trying to get its army to focus more on counterinsurgency and less on its long-running feud with India.
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., speaking to NATO allies this week in Brussels, called 5 percent of the Taliban “incorrigible — not susceptible to anything other than being defeated.” A senior European diplomat involved in Afghanistan said officials believed that number to be 100 to 1,000 Qaeda and Taliban members. Mr. Biden said he believed that “another 25 percent or so” were uncertain about their commitment to the insurgency, while about 70 percent were involved because it meant “getting paid.”
But how exactly the Afghan government and the United States will pry away those insurgents remained unclear. Whatever is decided must be presented by the Afghan government, Mr. Biden said. “I do think it is worth engaging and determining whether or not there are those who are willing to participate in a secure and stable Afghan state,” he said.
Mr. Biden’s comments echoed those made by Mr. Obama during an interview last week with The New York Times, in which he said reconciliation in Afghanistan could be comparable to the successful American effort to reconcile with Sunni militias in Iraq.
Senior military officials have submitted three separate reviews to the White House: those from Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of American forces in the region; and Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, of the National Security Council. That work has contributed to the final package being assembled by Bruce O. Riedel, a former C.I.A. analyst who is chairman of the administration’s strategic review. Others involved in the review include Richard C. Holbrooke, the special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Michele A. Flournoy, the under secretary of defense for policy.
Administration officials said Mr. Obama would probably announce the findings late next week or the week after, in advance of an international conference on Afghanistan that is scheduled for the end of the month in The Hague. Drafts of the final strategy are expected to be reviewed by a cabinet-level panel of Mr. Obama’s national security team next week. A senior Pentagon official said the review would set out specific goals over the next three to five years.
While officials said no decision had been reached on the level of nonmilitary financial assistance to be offered to Pakistan, senior Congressional aides pointed out that before leaving the Senate for the White House, Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden sponsored legislation to triple nonmilitary aid to Pakistan over the next five years, to $1.5 billion a year.
Mr. Holbrooke and General Petraeus briefed senators on Capitol Hill on Thursday about the review. Congressional aides said a similar bill providing for increased aid to Pakistan would soon be reintroduced by the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, John Kerry of Massachusetts, and the ranking Republican, Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana.
Beyond the Pakistan aid proposal, there is agreement that the Afghan National Army, which has proved to be an effective force for internal security and has earned popular respect, should be expanded — but no decision has been made on its ultimate size, according to senior Pentagon officials.
Several European officials said that the overarching theme behind the Afghanistan review was that NATO was looking for a way out of Afghanistan, and that everything done now was toward that end. “The goal now is simply to get to a point to prevent Afghanistan and Pakistan from becoming a place from which you can launch attacks on the West,” a senior European official said.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has sounded a similar theme, although not quite so starkly. “The mission is to prevent the Taliban from retaking power against a democratically elected government in Afghanistan and thus turning Afghanistan, potentially again, into a haven for Al Qaeda and other extremist groups,” Mr. Gates said on National Public Radio this week, setting ambitions for the military that are far more limited than the stated goals under the Bush administration.
“We need to have goals, at least in the near- to midterm, that are achievable,” he said.
It is not clear whether the Obama administration intends to extend the secret authorizations signed last summer by President George W. Bush that allow American commandos to carry out limited raids inside Pakistan. In carrying out missile strikes, the C.I.A. has steadily developed its own network of sources in the tribal areas, and combined with improved information-sharing with Pakistan’s main intelligence agency in recent months, as well as some technical advances like installing more mobile towers to intercept cellphone calls, the agency has been getting much better intelligence on its drone targets than it did just a few months ago, officials said.
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.
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Losing Afghanistan
By NICHOLAS THOMPSON The New York Times March 15, 2009
In early January 1988, 39 Soviet paratroopers were positioned on a cliff overlooking the Gardez-Khost road in southeastern Afghanistan. Their job was to protect the soldiers below, who were trying to open up the dangerous, heavily mined route. All around waited Islamic fundamentalists who had spent the last eight years fighting the Red Army and the government it had installed in Kabul just after Christmas 1979.
Soon, groups of black-clad mujahedeen, probably from Pakistan, were crawling toward the Soviets from all directions, machine guns blazing. The Soviets fought back valiantly. A helicopter soared in daringly through heavy fog to deliver ammunition. One soldier died while trying to wire together weak spare batteries to make a radio work.
For all their courage, though, the Soviets were adrift. They were outsiders, fighting outsiders, in a third country — and they didn’t really understand why. The Pakistanis believed they were on a mission from God and screamed “Allah Akbar!” as they headed toward battle. The Soviets could think to respond only with the names of their faraway hometowns. “For Borisov!” one hollered as he threw a grenade.
The scene sums up much of the folly of the Soviet war in Afghanistan. The Russians held off the attackers and got the road open. But the paratroopers soon left their position, the tanks below moved on, and the mujahedeen quickly retook it all. The fight was won, but the battle was lost — and of course the war would be too. Three and a half years later, Borisov became part of a newly independent Belarus.
Gregory Feifer relates these events in his fascinating new book, “The Great Gamble.” It’s a highly readable history of the conflict, which began with so haphazard a decision to intervene that Feifer gives credence to the assertion of one general staff officer that “no one ever actually ordered the invasion of Afghanistan.” It just happened through inertia and confusion under the sclerotic Soviet leadership of the late ’70s and early ’80s.
The author, NPR’s Moscow correspondent, tells the story mainly through the eyes of Soviet veterans and spies. The results are vivid and original — even though there are limitations to basing so much of the book on individual, self-serving recollections. For example, Feifer describes in detail how the K.G.B. hustled four Afghan ministers out of the country in ammunition boxes. It’s a great story, but Feifer appears to rely on one K.G.B. intelligence operator for most of the dialogue and drama. And two pages after it ends, Feifer reveals that one of the allegedly smuggled ministers denies the whole thing.
The book’s structure and style mean that Feifer adds little specifically to the question that will draw many readers: What can the United States learn for its own wars today? Feifer flicks at the topic, but the grim answers he offers have already been absorbed: don’t shoot up wedding parties, never underestimate fanatics who know the terrain, and remember that all politics in Afghanistan are messy. Remember, too: Fighting these guys is hard. According to Feifer, the mujahedeen were canny enough to smuggle heroin into Soviet barracks to get their adversaries hooked.
Even if Feifer fails to offer what his publisher calls “striking lessons for the 21st century,” he succeeds in his main goal: presenting a new side of a long, sorry war that would leave an estimated 1.3 million Afghans dead and the Taliban surging through the ravaged countryside toward Kabul. It’s “a tragic human story,” Feifer writes — and one that he recounts with skill.
Nicholas Thompson is a senior editor at Wired and a fellow at the New America Foundation.
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Building Infrastructure, Security Key For Afghanistan
by Tom Bowman National Public Radio (NPR)
Morning Edition, March 13, 2009 · The Obama administration is near the end of a major review of the war effort in Afghanistan, and top on the list of priorities is increasing security in the country. Violence has spiked, especially in the southern regions — a stronghold of the Taliban.
Gen. David McKiernan, the top commander in Afghanistan, has been pressing for more than a year to get more troops in the region he described as "an area where we do not have sufficient security presence, an area that has deteriorated somewhat, an area where we need persistent security presence in order to fight a counterinsurgency."
McKiernan has gotten some of what he asked for, as President Obama recently approved sending 17,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan.
Just a few weeks ago, the president traveled to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, where 8,000 Marines there were supposed to deploy to Iraq. Instead, by May they'll be beefing up McKiernan's force in Afghanistan, where they will be positioned alongside British troops in the southern province of Helmand.
McKiernan has plans for the other new troops as well. In Kandahar province, 4,000 American soldiers will work with Canadian forces. Defense officials hope these additional U.S. troops can stabilize Afghanistan within the next three to five years. That would address the first of the so-called concrete goals that Defense Secretary Robert Gates talks about.
Infrastructure Development
Another goal for Afghanistan is helping to develop roads, electricity, schools and irrigation to the tune of billions of dollars.
Air Force Lt. Col. Brett Sharp was tasked with building a road to cut through the mountains of Afghanistan last fall.
"It's going to be the main artery from Gardez to Khost and provide a connection between Pakistan and the ports that are in Pakistan all the way through those provinces up to Kabul, so it will increase economic development throughout the entire southeast region," says Sharp, who has since left his post and turned over the job of building the road to another Air Force officer.
That's the pattern: The task of fighting — and building — Afghanistan has largely fallen to the military. Now there's a big push to get more civilians to help out.
"I would say that really where we need the help as we look to the weeks and months ahead is on the civilian side," Gates told NPR earlier this week. "Whether it's agricultural specialists or people who can help with governance, economic development and so on."
Some of those civilians are on their way. McKiernan says dozens of FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration agents are coming to help go after Afghan drug labs and traffickers, a key funding source for the Taliban.
A Struggling Government
But McKiernan says that's just a start. If the military is sending thousands more soldiers and Marines, civilians have to step up, too.
"There has to be a parallel commitment of civilian capacity-building," McKiernan says.
That's a pitch Obama is expected to make to NATO allies at a summit next month in France: send more civilian government experts as well as others from private organizations and universities.
Those extra civilians, together with the military, will press ahead on another concrete goal Obama talks about for Afghanistan: a more responsible government.
"You don't see that yet in Afghanistan," Obama says. "They've got elections coming up, but effectively the national government seems very detached from what's going on in the surrounding community."
Local Afghans would choose a harsher word to describe President Hamid Karzai's government: corrupt. They say it's not providing even basic services, and that Karzai's hand-picked officials are stealing government funds or demanding payoffs, right down to the police and customs agents.
Here, the solution isn't more troops or dollars, it's politics — like working more with local leaders and tribal chiefs, instead of just the national government.
That also means pushing Karzai to do a better job of governing and prodding him to fire corrupt officials.
An outline of the Obama administration's new strategy is expected later this month.
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Netherlands to send commandos to Afghanistan
www.chinaview.cn 2009-03-14 20:03:38
BRUSSELS, March 14 (Xinhua) -- The Netherlands is to send 76 commandos and marines to the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan in April, Radio Netherlands reported.
The Dutch Foreign Ministry and the Defense Ministry told the parliament in a letter on Friday that the troops were needed to gather intelligence and to arrest Taliban leaders.
Since the end of 2007, there have been no Dutch commandos or marines in Afghanistan. However, the letter said, as elections in the country approach, their presence is now urgently required.
The arrival of the 76 soldiers, together with reinforcements for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), will bring the total number of Dutch troops in Afghanistan to almost 2,000, Radio Netherlands said.
The Netherlands deployed troops in the south of Afghanistan in August 2006 and the mission expires by the end of 2010. The Netherlands is under pressure from the United States and some other NATO allies to remain in the country after 2010.
The Netherlands will host an international conference on the future of Afghanistan on March 31 in The Hague, when government ministers and representatives of international bodies will discuss Afghanistan's administration, security and future development.
Editor: Fang Yang
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In Afghanistan, more than the mission that's failing
CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD From Saturday's Globe and Mail March 14, 2009 at 1:00 AM EDT
It took “a long time for this elementary truth to be spoken,” my colleague Jeffrey Simpson wrote this week under a headline, “Yes, the Afghan mission is ‘failing' and, yes, the rituals continue.”
He was quoting, with approval and that weary wisdom common to those who live in Central Canada, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's recent remarks on CNN to the effect that military victory isn't possible in Afghanistan.
“Now pouring out of Stephen Harper,” wrote James Travers of the Toronto Star on the same subject, “is the smoke that the Taliban can't be beaten.” His colleague, Haroon Siddiqui, said, “the Prime Minister says NATO cannot win, period. So what are we doing there?” The previous week, Mr. Travers's and Mr. Siddiqui's colleague, Thomas Walkom, said of the PM's acknowledgment, “I find this admission breathtaking … if the Taliban can't be beaten, what are Canadian troops doing in Afghanistan? If the Taliban can't be beaten, why are our soldiers still dying?”
Collectively, the pundits were surprised, if modestly pleased, that the Canadian PM had finally smartened up and was now seeing the war as they do, to quote Mr. Simpson, as “an ill-defined mission that defied all the rules of counterinsurgency,” led by “an enthusiastic general [this would be the former Canadian Forces' boss, Rick Hillier]” who bamboozled both press and politicians.
Wow: I don't know where these boys, including the PM, have been since 2006, when Canadian troops arrived in Kandahar; well I do know, and the answer is Ottawa and Toronto.
But that the Afghan mission, certainly once it moved to the south, was always going to be bloody difficult, fraught with peril, complicated, lethal and perhaps even doomed is not news. It isn't news to Canadian soldiers or to those who have covered them in Afghanistan, and it ought not to come as a shock to Canadians, either.
As my critics will tell you, I have been to Kandahar only as a reporter embedded with Canadian soldiers, the army's program which sees journalists travel outside the big safe base at Kandahar Air Field with the troops.
In journalism schools and in some newsrooms too, embedding is seen as synonymous with shilling. At the very least, the best of those who do it, including several prominent reporters who have also travelled and worked in Afghanistan on their own, are seen as having sacrificed objectivity.
In my case, because I also wrote a book about Canadian troops, and because I make no secret of my general affection for the breed, I am probably seen by some as embedding's most egregious offender.
Yet most of the embedded Canadian journalists I can think of were also simultaneously managing to tell the objective truth about the mission from the moment it began.
Even I was doing it. In the summers of 2006 and 2007, when I was there frequently, I wrote several long stories, all of which appeared prominently in this paper, about the grim prospects for success in Kandahar.
I quoted the former Canadian ambassador to Afghanistan, Chris Alexander, now working with the United Nations there, in a lengthy interview in which he described in detail the country's problems – particularly the rising insurgency being run from Pakistan (it was already rising then), the futility of relying on military action alone and the sheer mind-numbing complexity of the task. I wrote about Canadians having to repeatedly retake the same tiny patches of ground because whenever they left, Afghan security forces couldn't hold them. I wrote about a terrific report on the mess that was being made by the West of reforming the Afghan National Police, done by a respected independent research agency – and how just about every other fledgling Afghan institution was in the same boat as the police. I repeatedly quoted Canadian battle commanders saying that this mission was not going to be easy, bloodless or even necessarily successful.
I didn't go half the places Rosie DiManno of the Star did, didn't stay as long as Graeme Smith of this paper or as often as Steve Chao of CTV, but even I, a soldier-loving army shill, could stumble upon and report what smart, informed people, none of whom sugarcoated a damn thing, were saying.
Mr. Simpson mentioned rituals, by which he meant the return of a soldier's casket to Canada, reporters dwelling “yet again on the bravery of the departed,” official statements of regret.
Instructively, however, it was the death this week of another man, an Afghan “fixer” named Jawed (Jojo) Ahmad, that got as much if not more attention than the Canadians who were returning home dead.
Fixers used to be the smooth operators who reporters hired to drive them around the war zone, provide them with intelligence, arrange interviews and translate.
These days, however, some of them, such as Jojo, actually do for some organizations the on-the-ground interviews in places that are deemed too dangerous for Western reporters to go or where Western news agencies don't want their reporters to go. The result, for the fixer who does this, is more money than he could have imagined, and for the news organization, a new form of journalism – reporting at a real remove, whereby the fixer-journalist takes the risks and does the interviews and hands the results over to the reporter.
I knew Jojo too, although not well, and he was a likeable, canny, balls-out young guy who thrived for a time in the corrupt, divided, dangerous place that is his country – until he didn't, and then he was shot and killed. No one could fault him for being an opportunist.
But it is saying something – about Afghanistan and Canada and journalism – that he should have been as publicly mourned here as the returning Canadian troops, who whatever else you might say about them, were killed serving something greater than themselves.
In what a friend of mine calls the age of propaganda, where the most cynical citizens choose to believe that their government (and thus their army) lies to and manipulates them all the time, men such as Jojo, and even their excellent Taliban contacts, are ascribed virtues they may not have, and emerge as reliable truth-tellers.
That isn't so, which is why I think that it isn't the mission, or only the mission, which is failing here.
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Afghanistan As Catalyst For U.S.-Iran Cooperation
By Abbas Djavadi Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty March 13, 2009
In a ground-breaking counternarcotics operation, Iranian, Afghan, and Pakistani forces have cooperated in arrests and the seizure of illicit drugs. The UN's chief antidrug official, Antonio Mario Costa, described the operation as "a very important political message" to drug traffickers across the region.
As so often, many problems of the region need to be solved at the regional level -- through cooperation, and not confrontation. Iran seriously suffers from the narcotics being shipped via its territory to the West. Don't say it has nothing to do with U.S.-Iranian relations.
Most of those drugs are produced in Afghanistan's Pashtun regions, where the Taliban presence is strong, with proceeds feeding the Taliban and insurgency. Both Tehran and Washington have direct interests in a stable Afghan government, and thus in fighting the Taliban.
Late March will see an international "big-tent meeting with all the parties who have a stake and an interest in Afghanistan," as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described it. The date and venue of the conference have yet to be determined, but Clinton recently acknowledged that Iran will be invited to the meeting. Iranian leaders have not committed themselves yet, but there are good indications that they will participate.
The meeting will provide a venue for each side to evaluate the other's candidness in negotiations based on mutual respect, and their approach to resolving problems that go well beyond Afghanistan: Not just Iraq, the Middle East, and the nuclear issue, but also sanctions against Iran and Tehran's security concerns.
The Afghanistan meeting could mark the beginning of a new era in U.S.-Iranian relations; previous attempts under the Bush administration did not go anywhere.
A "tentative Iranian offer to make a deal on all that divided us was rejected in the we-don't-talk-to-evil days," as H. D. S. Greenway writes in the "International Herald Tribune." And the two sides used the few public meetings on Iraq of the last few years to embarrass one another publicly.
Both Washington and Tehran need to acknowledge past mistakes, pledge sincerely not to repeat them, and start anew. If they are successful in that effort -- which requires time and patience -- the outcome will benefit both sides: for the United States, which is still fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; and for Iran, which while internally stable, in contrast to its two neighbors, is suffering from sanctions and isolation.
Abbas Djavadi is associate director of broadcasting with RFE/RL. The views expressed in this commentary are his own, and do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL
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US finalises new Afghan strategy
Friday, 13 March 2009 BBC News
President Barack Obama's administration is close to announcing its new strategy for the war against the Taleban in Afghanistan, officials say.
"We're just about done," Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm Mike Mullen said.
Officials say that key objectives will be getting Pakistani help in the fight against extremism and reducing American expectations for military victory.
The White House expects to announce the new objectives for the war - which it admits is not being won - next week.
Safe havens
Officials say that the role of Pakistan is critical within the new strategy and that it must be made to realise that doing more to contain extremism is in its own interests as well as those of the international community.
President Obama is expected to explain his plans to allies when he attends a Nato summit in Europe next month.
His priorities are expected to mirror 15 goals detailed in a 20-page classified report to the White House from the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Prominent among them are eradicating Taleban and al-Qaeda safe havens in north-western Pakistan, pursuing a regional approach to reduce extremism while simultaneously boosting economic aid.
Another top priority is to ensure that the Afghan government does not collapse as a result of the Taleban insurgency - an objective officials say again can only be fulfilled by securing the co-operation of Pakistan and by substantially increasing the size of Afghanistan's security forces.
Better governance
Adm Mullen said that the review addresses "the safe haven in Pakistan, making sure that Afghanistan doesn't provide a capability in the long run or an environment in which al-Qaeda could return or the Taleban could return".
He said it was also important to ensure Afghanistan remained stable and had better governance.
The in-house review was carried out by the White House National Security Council and details objectives over the next three to five years.
Officials stress that the timeframe of the review does not mean that the US military will leave within that time.
Gen David Petraeus, head of US Central Command, and Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, met more 12 senators to discuss the war on Thursday.
Correspondents say that the meeting was part of the administration's effort to gather support for trimmed-down US objectives in Afghanistan, especially in relation to democracy and self-sufficiency.
A key premise is that the military alone cannot win the war, officials said.
But part of the strategy is also military, with the deployment of 17,000 additional troops this year in order to "buy time" for less tangible counterinsurgency tactics to take hold.
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Afghanistan: US must overhaul policies to defeat jihadis, says think-tank
Kabul/Washington/Brussels, 13 March (AKI) - Jihadi extremists will never be defeated in Afghanistan unless the United States administration led by president Barack Obama overhauls US political, economic and military policies in the country, according to a new report released by the International Crisis Group.
The report by the Brussels-based group entitled, 'Afghanistan: New US Administration, New Directions, reviews the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan after seven years of US-led intervention and highlights what should be done to create stability and security.
"The Afghanistan crisis is the outcome of decades of internal conflict", says Crisis Group president Gareth Evans. "No short-term solution will resolve the crisis overnight. Time and patience are needed to build the infrastructure and institutions to stabilise the Afghan state and root out or neutralise jihadi influence."
The report says the Taliban dominates the south, east and centre of Afghanistan and is increasing its presence in the west and also carries out terror attacks in major population centres.
While it aims to demoralise the Afghan population and wear down the patience of the international community the report says the Taliban does not have widespread support.
"The Taliban today is not a standing army but rather a disparate network of groups", says Joanna Nathan, Crisis Group senior analyst.
"It does not have significant public support among a population tired of war, and the vast majority of people remain far more fearful of what would happen if foreign troops were to leave rather than stay."
Because the Bush administration's so-called "war on terror" put short-term efforts to the fore, after seven years, Afghanistan lacks robust representative Afghan institutions.
This is partly a result of the US administration leaving the agenda too much in the hands of the US military. Civilian institutions must now reassert their authority in Washington.
The new US administration should learn from past mistakes and above all focus US efforts on enabling the Afghan government to expand its reach and legitimacy through the provision of security, rule of law and public services to its citizens.
"The narrow focus on confronting al-Qaeda through counter-terrorism measures often characterised by aggressive military action, arbitrary detentions, indiscriminate raids and house searches in the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan has not only failed to reduce religious extremism, but fuelled local discontent and violence," the report says.
The crisis group says what is needed in Afghanistan itself is the creation of a resilient state, which will only emerge if moderate forces and democratic norms are strengthened.
It requires robust institutions that can uphold, and are accountable to the rule of law.
"The Obama administration must also send clear signals to the Pakistani military that there will be a very high price to pay for tacit or explicit support for jihadis, local or regional", says Samina Ahmed, Crisis Group's South Asia project director.
"This is the minimum necessary to dissuade Pakistani spoilers from trying to destabilise the Afghan enterprise."
The report says the Obama administration should focus on training the Afghan army and also have a time frame for closing the Bagram prison.
Altogether the US has pledged some $21 billion dollars in security assistance and $11 billion dollars of reconstruction and humanitarian aid in Afghanistan over the last seven years.
The US has also devoted tremendous military resources as the main troop contributor to Afghanistan, with some 24,900 of the 56,400 ISAF personnel, in addition to thousands of troops involved in training the Afghan National Army and Police and separate counter-terrorism forces.
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