 |
||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Serving you since 1998 | ||||||||||||
|
|
Afghanistan braces for possible election run-off
By Maria Golovnina
KABUL (Reuters) – Election officials in Afghanistan were expected to announce on Saturday whether President Hamid Karzai is the outright winner of August's disputed election or must face a second vote against the runner-up.
Afghan Election Runoff Key to U.S. Success
U.S. Can't Win in Afghanistan if Government It Is Backing Is Seen as Illegitimate - But Runoff May Delay War Plan
CBS Oct. 16, 2009
It looks like the Afghan people have to do it all over again - and it's not just the presidency of Hamid Karzai that's riding on the outcome, reports CBS News national security correspondent David Martin.
Crisis looms in Kabul over Karzai election results
The Guardian By Jon Boone in Kabul and Ewen MacAskill 10/17/2009
Washington - Frantic diplomacy under way as report looks set to give Afghan president less than 50% of the vote, forcing run-off
Karzai 'faces West poll pressure'
Saturday, 17 October 2009 BBC News
There has been a flurry of diplomatic activity in the Afghan capital ahead of the announcement of the results of the presidential poll, the BBC has learned.
Don't Settle for Stalemate in Afghanistan
By Ike Skelton and Joe Lieberman Sunday, October 18, 2009 The Washington Post
Six months ago the Obama administration concluded that the only way to stop Afghanistan's slide into insecurity and prevent the reemergence of a terrorist haven was to put in place an integrated counterinsurgency
Obama's Afghan Squeeze Play
By Jim Hoagland Sunday, October 18, 2009 The Washington Post
Is President Obama dithering on Afghanistan, as critics claim? Or do loyalists praising his deliberate pace have it right? Both camps rush past the obvious: The president is almost certainly applying a calculated,
Kerry: too soon to send more troops to Afghanistan
WASHINGTON (AP) -- With Afghanistan's election crisis deepening, Sen. John Kerry says it would be irresponsible for the U.S. to consider sending additional troops to the region at this time.
Afghanistan faces further political turmoil
By Matthew Green and Fazel Reshad in Kabul October 17 2009 19:04 Financial Times
Fears were growing on Saturday that Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s president, will reject the findings of a fraud investigation into the country’s flawed elections, raising the risk that Afghanistan will plunge deeper into political turmoil.
Three US soldiers, 25 Taliban dead in Afghanistan
Sat Oct 17, 10:45 am ET
KHOST, Afghanistan (AFP) – Bomb attacks in Afghanistan claimed the lives of three US soldiers, officials said on Saturday, as NATO and Afghan forces killed 25 Taliban fighters in separate assaults.
Afghan women still struggle, 8 years on
(CNN) -- Afghan women have had seen their status rise and fall repeatedly over the past three decades, before the strictly Islamic Taliban muscled their way to power and forced women to again wear the burqa and stay out of school.
U.S. eyes continuing Japanese support in Afghanistan
Xinhua www.chinaview.cn 2009-10-16
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration on Thursday voiced its appreciation for Japan's efforts to fight extremists in Afghanistan, saying it hopes that the Japanese government could continue to support the U.S. operation.
AFGHANISTAN: IS POWER-SHARING DEAL IN THE OFFING IN KABUL?
Aunohita Mojumdar 10/15/09 Eurasianet
Widespread evidence of fraud marred Afghanistan’s August 20 presidential vote and subsequently raised disturbing questions about the future legitimacy of Afghanistan’s executive branch.
Will We Stay 50 Years In Afghanistan?
Tom Hayden: An Influential Pentagon Strategist Advocates A Multi-Decade Counterinsurgency Campaign
CBS.com - Politics October 17, 2009
Let us say, hypothetically, that American forces kill or capture Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, enabling President Obama to declare victory and bring our troops home. Would he? Not according to the Pentagon's plan
In Afghanistan, Taking a Risk for Democracy
The Washington Post - Opinion Saturday, October 17, 2009
Former senior U.N. official Peter W. Galbraith ["What I Saw at the Afghan Election," Outlook, Oct. 4] and some in the Western press are trying to act as judge, jury and executioner when dealing with Afghanistan's Aug. 20
How to solve the dilemma
The Washington Times By M. Ashraf Haidari 10/17/2009
Struggle across border with Pakistan
Afghanistan and Pakistan are fighting a common enemy in the Taliban and al Qaeda. But the nature of insurgency and engagement is quite different in the two countries. The Pakistani military is fighting an insurgency
‘We don't want to become a second Afghanistan'
Why the al-Qaeda kidnappers of Canadian diplomats now have governments across the western Sahara on the run
Globe and Mail Geoffrey York Friday, Oct. 16, 2009
At first, he thought it was just the desert wind, whispering through the predawn darkness. But then the soldier heard the sound again, and he realized the sickening truth: His slumbering troops were surrounded by terrorists
French FM pays unannounced visit to Afghanistan
Xinhua www.chinaview.cn 2009-10-17
KABUL - French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner paid a surprise visit to Afghan capital Kabul on Saturday, a private television channel reported.
Over a dozen inmates break prison in N. Afghanistan
www.chinaview.cn 2009-10-17 19:38:50 Print
KABUL, Oct. 17 (Xinhua) -- Over a dozen inmates broke a jail in Afghanistan's northern Balkh province, director Mohammad Usman Parwani said Saturday.
Terror Expert Discusses Taliban, Al-Qaeda Funding
October 17, 2009 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
WASHINGTON -- Although the Taliban is growing rich from the drug trade in Afghanistan, some officials, including U.S. Assistant Treasury Secretary for Terrorist Financing David Cohen, say Al-Qaeda's leadership
Air strike kills 20 Taliban militants in E Afghanistan
KHOST, Afghanistan, Oct. 17 (Xinhua) -- At least 20 Taliban militants were killed in air strike against the militants' hideout in Afghanistan's eastern Paktika province late Friday, spokesman of local administration said on Saturday.
Canada denies paying Afghan Talibans for peace
OTTAWA, Oct. 16 (Xinhua) -- Canadian officials on Friday denied media reports that Canadian military troops in Afghanistan ever paid off Taliban in exchange for not being attacked.
Afghanistan re-opens request for corridor road
By Zhang Xin China Daily October 16, 2009
Afghanistan is once again eager to develop the Wakhan Corridor along the China border, Afghan Second Vice-President Mohammad Karim Khalili said yesterday in Beijing.
Pashtun peace prophet goes global
By Dawood Azami BBC World Service Friday, 16 October 2009
As the international community discusses its policies towards violence-stricken Afghanistan and Pakistan, a question arises time and again - how to pacify and win the support of the Pashtun population?
Bin Laden: 'an austere dad who loved nature': wife
by Andrew Beatty Fri Oct 16, 12:08 pm ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – Osama bin Laden was an austere father who banned toys and modern appliances at home, but also a flower-growing nature lover who spoke fluent English and adored fast cars, according to his wife and son.
Pakistan Opens Offensive in a Militant Stronghold
By JANE PERLEZ October 18, 2009 The New York Times
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan moved large contingents of its troops into the militant stronghold of South Waziristan on Saturday, the army said, beginning a long-anticipated ground offensive against militants from Al Qaeda
Pakistan army launches Waziristan operation, 12 militants killed
ISLAMABAD, Oct. 17 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan's security forces Saturday launched the long-awaited operation in South Waziristan, the stronghold of Taliban in Pakistan, the Pakistani army said.
Back to Top
Afghanistan braces for possible election run-off
By Maria Golovnina
KABUL (Reuters) – Election officials in Afghanistan were expected to announce on Saturday whether President Hamid Karzai is the outright winner of August's disputed election or must face a second vote against the runner-up.
Speculation mounted in Kabul that enough votes would be eliminated from Karzai's tally to trigger a second round against former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah.
"The second round is definitely on the radar screen right now," said one official familiar with the process.
The August 20 election, marred by allegations of widespread fraud, has left Afghanistan in a state of political uncertainty at a time when the United States is deciding whether to send more troops there to fight a resurgent Taliban.
Nearly two months after polling day, the U.N.-backed Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) is due to unveil its findings of a probe into fraud allegations some time this weekend.
If enough votes were disqualified to push Karzai's share of the vote below 50 percent, the incumbent would face Abdullah in a second round -- barring possible legal steps to invalidate the decision or an Abdullah decision to withdraw.
Officials were tightlipped ahead of the announcement, giving rise to a whirl of speculation and rumors that Karzai could seek a compromise deal with Abdullah to avoid a second round.
The ECC is looking into various categories of suspected fraud and complaints, but only a portion of its recommendations are likely to be released on Saturday, officials said.
The ECC was holding closed-door meetings with independent Afghan election officials throughout the day. Once it has approved ECC findings, the Afghan election commission will adjust the tallies and announce the final result.
RUN-OFF "LIKELY"
Karzai won 54.6 percent of the vote, according to preliminary figures. More than 250,000 votes will have to be thrown out from his tally for it to fall below 50 percent.
In the United States, policy makers were closely watching the outcome of the protracted process that has sparked tension between Karzai and his Western backers.
"It is likely that they will find that President Karzai got very close to the 50+1 percent," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told CNN in an interview.
"So I think one can conclude that the likelihood of him winning a second round is probably pretty high."
If mandated, a run-off pitting Karzai against Abdullah would be due within two weeks. Security threats stemming from the insurgency and the onset of the bitter Afghan winter, which makes much of the country impassable, could undermine the effort.
Aleem Siddique, spokesman for the U.N. mission which appointed three of the ECC's five members, said preparations were under way for a possible run-off, including measures designed to eliminate any risk of repeated fraud.
"Where required, staff will be replaced (at polling stations)," he said. "Polling stations will not open where security could lead to attempted fraud."
(Editing by Golnar Motevalli and Alex Richardson)
Back to Top
Back to Top
Afghan Election Runoff Key to U.S. Success
U.S. Can't Win in Afghanistan if Government It Is Backing Is Seen as Illegitimate - But Runoff May Delay War Plan
CBS Oct. 16, 2009
It looks like the Afghan people have to do it all over again - and it's not just the presidency of Hamid Karzai that's riding on the outcome, reports CBS News national security correspondent David Martin.
Bruce Riedel, a principal architect of the Obama administration's strategy in Afghanistan, says the runoff is critical to American success.
"The most immediate requirement we need is to fix the Afghan election fiasco," Riedel said. "We have got to come up with a better solution than the one we have right now."
A runoff is not likely to produce a new president. Secretary of State Clinton has already declared Karzai the preemptive favorite.
"I think one can conclude that the likelihood of him winning a second round is probably pretty high," Clinton said.
But, says Alexander Thiery of the U.S. Institute for Peace, it gives Karzai a chance to erase the stigma which hangs over his victory in August.
"The legitimacy of this election has been so tainted by the allegations of fraud that a runoff holds the promise in some ways of clearing away some of that illegitimacy," Thiery said.
The U.S. can't win in Afghanistan if the government it is backing against the Taliban is seen as illegitimate. But a runoff will take time.
"It could delay at least for another month and a half our learning who the next president of Afghanistan will be," Thiery said.
And General McChrystal, the American commander in Afghanistan, is still waiting for the president to grant his urgent request for more troops.
"This situation is not static," Riedel said. "It is going downhill and it is going downhill rapidly."
In August McChrystal warned that without more troops in the next 12 months the war could be lost. By the time the Obama administration makes a decision he could be down to 10 months.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Crisis looms in Kabul over Karzai election results
The Guardian By Jon Boone in Kabul and Ewen MacAskill 10/17/2009
Washington - Frantic diplomacy under way as report looks set to give Afghan president less than 50% of the vote, forcing run-off
Britain and the United States are attempting to avert a political crisis in Afghanistan as fears mounted in Kabul that Hamid Karzai will refuse to accept the results of an official inquiry into massive electoral fraud that is expected to trigger a fresh round of voting.
Diplomatic sources in the Afghan capital said the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, was due to call the Afghan president amid concerns that he will reject the findings of the Election Complaints Commission (ECC), due to be published on Saturday. Downing Street confirmed that Gordon Brown has telephoned the Afghan president twice this week. The US ambassador to Kabul is expected to visit the presidential palace.
Clinton indicated that a second round of voting would follow the expected report. "Whatever the ECC's recommendation is, I believe it should be followed. And if that requires a second round that is what should happen," she said in an interview with CNN. She added she expected Karzai to win: "I think one can conclude that the likelihood of him winning a second round is probably pretty high."
The US fears that without a second round of voting leading to a clear result, the legitimacy of Karzai's presidency would be open to question.
Karzai's share of the vote is expected to drop to below 50% as a result of the inquiry, forcing a run-off with his main rival, Abdullah Abdullah. However, Karzai remains convinced that the level of vote-rigging has been greatly exaggerated.
A western diplomat said that a report in Friday's Washington Post claiming that Karzai's share of the vote is set to fall from 55% to 47 – far lower than expected – had sparked a major political crisis in Kabul. "He is in total denial – he genuinely does not accept the level of fraud. He believes it's an American attempt to force him into a second round," the diplomat said.
Clinton said the US and Nato are looking at the logistics of holding another election. "I think the ballots have been printed and certainly the military, through Nato and through our own troops, is looking at how you would secure such a second round."
She said it could be held within the next few weeks before the winter snows close the option until the spring. The latest possible date is thought to be in mid-November, but the UN maintains that election materials could be sent out around the country next week if necessary.
The uncertainty over the election outcome is complicating the Obama administration's intense internal debate over US strategy in Afghanistan. A decision on whether to agree to a request from the US commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, for 40,000 more troops is still several weeks away, a White House spokesman said.
Asked if Obama should delay a decision on sending extra US troops to Afghanistan until after the issue of a new government in Kabul was resolved, Clinton said: "I think that the president is well aware of all the permutations of what can happen in the election."
Although the ECC is due to publish the findings of its investigation of a sample of the 3,498 suspicious ballot boxes, the process of turning their results into a final vote totals will be taken by the Independent Election Commission (IEC), a body largely controlled by Karzai and whose staff have been accused of involvement in election fraud. Steps have also been taken to reduce fraud, including the replacement of 200 district field officers in areas of previous fraud.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Karzai 'faces West poll pressure'
Saturday, 17 October 2009 BBC News
There has been a flurry of diplomatic activity in the Afghan capital ahead of the announcement of the results of the presidential poll, the BBC has learned.
Senior sources say top international figures have been working to persuade President Hamid Karzai that he may have to face a second round of voting.
A fraud investigation is expected to bring Mr Karzai's vote tally below the 50% needed to avoid a run-off.
Officials say Mr Karzai is furious over the prospect of facing a second round.
The fraud allegations which have surfaced in the two months since the 20 August poll have generated huge political uncertainty, reports the BBC's Martin Patience in Kabul.
It comes at a time when Washington is debating whether to send more troops.
Fraud findings
Mr Karzai was initially awarded 55% of votes in the poll, with his nearest rival, Abdullah Abdullah, getting 28%.
But the UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) is due to report its findings into fraud allegations this weekend.
It will report to the Independent Election Commission (IEC), which could adjust the final tally based on the report - bringing Mr Karzai's vote total below 50%, and triggering a run-off.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown telephoned the candidates on Friday.
Senior sources told our correspondent they had urged Mr Karzai to accept the findings of the ECC's fraud investigations.
The French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and US Senator John Kerry - chair of the US Senate's foreign relations committee - are also in Kabul meeting Mr Karzai and Mr Abdullah.
Karzai 'fury'
Mrs Clinton told CNN: "It is likely that they will find that President Karzai got very close to the 50-plus-1" (50% of votes, plus one vote) threshold for a second round of voting.
She added: "I think one can conclude that the likelihood of him winning a second round is probably pretty high."
But officials told our correspondent that Mr Karzai is furious at the turn of events, and is threatening to delay - or even block - attempts to hold a second round.
His position appears to have been strengthened by the IEC. Its spokesman said that not all the findings of the investigation may be implemented - despite the fact that the IEC is constitutionally bound to obey the orders of the ECC.
Their reported confrontation may delay the official announcement of results - providing a breathing space for the frenzied diplomatic efforts, unnamed diplomats have told news agencies.
Strategy review
A run-off between Mr Karzai and Mr Abdullah would be due within two weeks, although security concerns and winter snows could hamper efforts.
The US is reviewing its strategy in Afghanistan.
Three American soldiers were killed in bomb attacks in the country as Nato-led forces fought Taliban militants.
Two of them died in eastern Afghanistan on Friday and one in southern Afghanistan, officials said.
AFGHAN FRAUD ALLEGATIONS
13 Oct: Karzai casts doubt on fair functioning of ECC, but his opponents accuse him of manufacturing his concerns
30 Sep: UN recalls envoy Peter Galbraith following row over the vote recount process
15 Sep: ECC chief says 10% of votes need to be recounted
8 Sep: IEC says votes from 600 polling stations "quarantined"
3 Sep: Claims 30,000 fraudulent votes cast for Karzai in Kandahar
30 Aug: 2,000 fraud allegations are probed; 600 deemed serious
20 Aug: Election day and claims 80,000 ballots were filled out fraudulently for Karzai in Ghazni
18 Aug: Ballot cards sold openly and voter bribes offered
Back to Top
Back to Top
Don't Settle for Stalemate in Afghanistan
By Ike Skelton and Joe Lieberman Sunday, October 18, 2009 The Washington Post
Six months ago the Obama administration concluded that the only way to stop Afghanistan's slide into insecurity and prevent the reemergence of a terrorist haven was to put in place an integrated counterinsurgency strategy focused on protecting the Afghan population, building up the Afghan national security forces and improving Afghan governance.
We strongly supported the president's decision and continue to believe that he was right. He also made the right decision last week when, in a meeting with congressional leaders, he ruled out withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan.
The key question confronting the administration now is not whether to pursue counterinsurgency in Afghanistan but whether to provide that counterinsurgency effort with the resources it needs. We believe that providing those resources will be critical.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal's assessment states that his new strategy requires additional resources and the proper execution of an integrated civilian-military counterinsurgency campaign. To this end, he has reportedly forwarded to the president a range of resource options, each with differing levels of risk to the mission. We hope that President Obama will carefully weigh these recommendations and provide his commander with the necessary forces and civilian resources he needs to properly execute a counterinsurgency campaign.
Some suggest that we should send just enough forces to "hold the line" against the Taliban and prevent them from retaking the major population centers, while continuing to build up the Afghan army and police. In our view, this course would probably be a prescription for stalemate -- which, in a counterinsurgency, is a prescription for failure.
Indeed, as McChrystal warned in his recent assessment, "Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) -- while Afghan security capacity matures -- risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible."
Other critics justify opposition to a properly resourced counterinsurgency by pointing to other problems and priorities in the region that also require attention. But exactly how would sending fewer forces to Afghanistan put us in a stronger position to persuade the Afghan government to crack down on corruption and reform? Or persuade reconcilable elements of the Taliban to abandon insurgency and come over to our side? Or get nuclear-armed Pakistan to tackle the extremist threat on its own territory?
Failure to provide Gen. McChrystal with the military resources he needs to reverse the insurgency's momentum would make all these challenges harder to manage by reinforcing doubts throughout the region about our commitment to this fight and our capacity to prevail in it. But if we can roll back the Taliban and establish basic security in key population centers, as a properly resourced counterinsurgency will allow us to do, it will put us in a position of far greater strength and credibility from which to convince Afghans and others throughout the region that it is in their interest and worth the risk to work with us.
The population security established with an increase of military forces will provide the opportunity to employ additional civilian resources to help the Afghan people build more acceptable governance structures on a local level, help reform the central government and begin to establish the real services that Afghans want their government to provide. We should be clear: We will not win this conflict because we send some specific number of additional troops to Afghanistan. But those additional troops are, in our opinion, probably necessary to buy the time and space to help the Afghan people win their own fight against the Taliban and other extremist groups.
Here at home, we must stabilize public support by convincing an increasingly skeptical American people that the Afghan war is in fact winnable. This will happen when Americans begin to see the kind of visible gains that only a properly resourced counterinsurgency campaign can achieve through the use of additional troops to establish security and additional civilian resources to aid governmental reform and economic growth. On the other hand, if we send too few troops to regain the initiative from the insurgency and too few civilian resources to help cement those hard-won gains, public support will likely collapse.
There should be no confusion about what is at stake in this fight. The last time they were in power, the Taliban not only brutally suppressed the human rights of their own people, they also welcomed Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda network into Afghanistan, refusing to give them up even after Sept. 11, 2001. Allowing the Taliban to return to power would represent a major victory for extremist forces throughout the world, tilt the balance of power in South Asia in their favor and further endanger America's homeland security from terrorists trained there.
The president was right to call the war in Afghanistan "a war of necessity." Now it is time to treat it as such and commit the decisive force that will allow Gen. McChrystal to break the Taliban's momentum as quickly as possible.
Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) is chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) is chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Obama's Afghan Squeeze Play
By Jim Hoagland Sunday, October 18, 2009 The Washington Post
Is President Obama dithering on Afghanistan, as critics claim? Or do loyalists praising his deliberate pace have it right? Both camps rush past the obvious: The president is almost certainly applying a calculated, cold-blooded squeeze on his partners in the Afghan endeavor to get what he needs for a successful policy.
Obama is orchestrating a drawn-out review that is actually a policy instrument itself. That reality is (happily for Obama) obscured by the miasma of leaks, counter-leaks and guesswork that has settled over official Washington. But three things are absolutely clear:
First, Hamid Karzai cannot be accepted as the legitimate ruler of Afghanistan on the basis of August's election. He should either accept an immediate runoff ballot or agree to become Afghanistan's ceremonial president and appoint a national unity government to run the country. Only then can the United States and its allies move forward to significantly expand military and civilian aid to Kabul.
Second, NATO's European members must greatly increase their involvement (and spending) in civilian reconstruction projects and provide some more manpower. Little noticed in Washington's overheated debate about troop numbers, a new U.S.-European bargain on counterinsurgency is an essential feature of Gen. Stanley McChrystal's bestseller of a secret report to the president.
Third, the Obama administration must not slip back into letting Pakistan present itself as an aggrieved party whose delicate national sensibilities are unjustly offended by suggestions that its army and intelligence services might be ripping off U.S. aid and covertly encouraging terrorism.
They are doing just that. And they must continue to be told directly that Washington is keeping score. Congress gently did that in passing a $7.5 billion, five-year aid bill that requires assurances that the money will not be stolen -- provoking nationalist outcries in Islamabad.
This third task will be easier if Defense Secretary Robert Gates and others cease publicly moaning about how "we turned our backs" on Pakistan in 1989. Pakistan's refusal to heed U.S. warnings about developing nuclear weapons forced the Bush 41 administration -- of which Gates was a senior official -- to halt aid to a country determined to become a proliferation rogue.
Pakistan spread nuclear technology to Iran and North Korea and continued its support for Taliban and al-Qaeda networks for its own perverted reasons of national security and/or greed -- not out of hurt pride.
Yes, Pakistan is the problem from hell and essential to the fight for Afghanistan. But the record of the Bush 43 and Obama administrations shows that only when the United States applies pressure -- instead of apologizing to Islamabad for the past or trying to play three-dimensional strategic chess with its rulers -- does Pakistan provide significant support for U.S. goals.
Afghanistan's Karzai has turned into a similar problem for Team Obama. He successfully resisted Washington's efforts to get him to resign or hold fair and free elections in August. Allegations of widespread fraud call into question Karzai's ability to work with the administration, which now prefers to watch him twist in the wind rather than frontally assault him. Obama gave subtle but clear backing for U.N. coordinator Kai Eide on the fraud issue by instructing the U.S. ambassador to appear with Eide at a Kabul news conference.
But this leaves only one weapon to squeeze Karzai into sharing power with more honest, competent Afghans: the threat of U.S. withdrawal. Obama allows that idea or something close to it to linger in the air as the review ostentatiously grinds on, perhaps to get Karzai's attention. But there is a harsh reality behind the implicit threat that both Washington and Kabul must understand: Obama could be driven to dramatically scale down U.S. support if Karzai continues to be a major obstacle to change. Karzai can push Afghanistan over the brink if he does not work with Obama.
A similar warning is directed at European nations that have stinted on combat support while emphasizing their largely theoretical commitment to reconstruction and development. McChrystal believes that NATO must become more active and deeply involved in reconstruction efforts if the United States adds tens of thousands of troops for military tasks. New European troops, even if the numbers are small, also are needed.
Afghanistan is at the brink, as Obama's review prudently recognizes. Only a focused effort by Washington and Kabul -- and other capitals -- can pull it back. The president is right to give that message time to sink in everywhere, see what results it produces and then act.
jimhoagland@washpost.com
Back to Top
Back to Top
Kerry: too soon to send more troops to Afghanistan
WASHINGTON (AP) -- With Afghanistan's election crisis deepening, Sen. John Kerry says it would be irresponsible for the U.S. to consider sending additional troops to the region at this time.
In taped remarks, Kerry said it would be misguided to have a troop buildup to achieve a mission of "good governance" when the election is not yet finished.
Kerry, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was in Kabul today.
His visit came as Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, resisted international pressure to accept fraud rulings that could force him into a runoff with his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah. Due to harsh weather, a runoff may not happen until next spring.
Kerry spoke on CNN's "State of the Union," which airs tomorrow.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Afghanistan faces further political turmoil
By Matthew Green and Fazel Reshad in Kabul October 17 2009 19:04 Financial Times
Fears were growing on Saturday that Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s president, will reject the findings of a fraud investigation into the country’s flawed elections, raising the risk that Afghanistan will plunge deeper into political turmoil.
A UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission had been due to release the results of a recount on Saturday that Western diplomats believe will deprive Mr Karzai of enough votes to indicate a run-off with Abdullah Abdullah, his main rival.
However, delays in publishing the investigation’s findings stoked concerns among diplomats that Mr Karzai may use his influence over a separate Independent Election Commission, which must certify any final results, to block any attempt to deprive him of outright victory.
Those concerns will be heightened by comments from Zekria Barakzai, the deputy chief electoral officer at the IEC, who warned that it might be impossible to hold a run-off due to the threat of Taliban attacks and the encroaching winter. The IEC’s top officials are appointed by Mr Karzai.
”Holding a second round of the election is really challenging for the IEC. Security and weather will make it pretty impossible to run a second round,” Mr Barakzai told the Financial Times.
The prospect of protracted wrangling over the results of a complex recount process could prolong political uncertainty and throw Western strategy for fighting a strengthening Taliban insurgency deeper into disarray. A prolonged dispute could raise the risk of ethnic tensions between Mr Karzai’s Pashtun community in the south and the Tajik minority in the north, many of whom back Mr Abdullah.
Envoys are seeking to forge a compromise between Mr Karzai and Mr Abdullah that would resolve the crisis stemming from evidence of widespread fraud at the August 20 elections, though a source close to the discussions said no breakthrough seems imminent.
The source said Mr Karzai’s supporters were insisting that they be granted victory in the first-round to allow them to improve their bargaining position ahead of power-sharing talks with Mr Abdullah.
“They don’t want a second round, they think they have won the election, and that their right is being taken away from them. They want to negotiate from a position of strength,” the source said. “Ultimately whatever happens there has to be a broad political understanding to avoid polarisation and fault lines.”
The source added that Mr Abdullah’s camp was intent on the recount process being allowed to run its course in the belief that any order to hold a second round – even if it is not implemented – will bolster their hand in power-sharing talks.
Mr Karzai and his officials have already begun to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the recount in the past few days, reinforcing concerns that they may be preparing the ground to reject its conclusions.
Waheed Omer, a spokesman for Mr Karzai’s campaign, said he was concerned that the recount might be being ”politically manipulated,” although he said he still had confidence in the process.
Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, Hillary Clinton, the U.S. Secretary of State, and Gordon Brown, the UK prime minister, called the various candidates on Friday amid growing international concerns about Afghanistan’s political future.
Both Mr Karzai and Mr Abdullah’s supporters deny they are in discussions over any political solution. Diplomatic sources believe, however, that contacts between the two camps are taking place through various mediators.
Nellika Little, a spokeswoman for the ECC, said that results had not been issued on Saturday due to the extreme care being taken by the commission, whose members are partly appointed by the UN. “The commissioners are being super-cautious about making sure that their numbers are right,” she said. “They see more the need to get this right than rush it because everyone’s waiting for a result.”
The ECC may start to release some of its findings on Sunday, although it is unclear how soon it will release a full enough picture to determine whether the IEC will be obliged to call a run-off.
Diplomats say repeated changes in the methodology used by the ECC for its audit in the past few weeks have added another layer of confusion to the elaborate process.
The IEC has also raised the prospect of further disputes by insisting that it reserves the right to question the ECC’s findings. “After the Electoral Complaints Commission hands over the results to the IEC then the IEC will take it’s time to review the results and see if any changes are required,” said a senior IEC official.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Three US soldiers, 25 Taliban dead in Afghanistan
Sat Oct 17, 10:45 am ET
KHOST, Afghanistan (AFP) – Bomb attacks in Afghanistan claimed the lives of three US soldiers, officials said on Saturday, as NATO and Afghan forces killed 25 Taliban fighters in separate assaults.
The NATO-run International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said the three American troops died in two attacks on Friday.
"Two US service members were killed in an improvised explosive device (IED) attack in eastern Afghanistan October 16, and one US service member was killed in an IED attack in southern Afghanistan on the same day," ISAF said.
IEDs, home-made bombs planted on roadsides and difficult to detect, are claiming increasing numbers of foreign soldiers fighting the insurgency in Afghanistan.
US President Barack Obama is under pressure to order thousands more soldiers to Afghanistan, where the commander of the 100,000-strong US and NATO force, General Stanley McChrystal, has reportedly asked for 40,000 extra troops.
NATO's commander in the south, Dutch Major General Mart de Kruit, told AFP in an interview this week that 10,000 to 15,000 more troops were required to ensure security in the region.
In the deadliest incident reported Saturday, an air strike killed 20 militants late Friday in Urgun district, in southern Paktika province, said Hamidullah Zawak, spokesman for the provincial governor.
"These people intended to attack security posts and the US-led coalition. They were killed before they could do so," he told AFP by telephone.
The Afghan defence ministry said meanwhile five militants were killed in an Afghan army commando operation on Friday in the Gereshk district of Helmand province, also in the south.
In Sangin district, also in Helmand, one Afghan soldier was killed and another injured during a small-arms attack, the ministry added.
Southern Afghanistan -- the spiritual heartland of the Taliban -- has seen the most fierce fighting since US-led international forces toppled the hardline Islamist regime in 2001.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Afghan women still struggle, 8 years on
(CNN) -- Afghan women have had seen their status rise and fall repeatedly over the past three decades, before the strictly Islamic Taliban muscled their way to power and forced women to again wear the burqa and stay out of school.
The U.S. bombardment of Afghanistan in 2001 drove the Taliban from the halls of power, again lifting women to a better place. But now, a leading female member of the Afghan parliament says, those hard-won gains are retreating.
"After 2001, I call it like a golden opportunity for woman in the first five -- three, four, five -- five years," Fawzia Koofi, one of 68 female members of the parliament, told CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Thursday.
"However, like you had women in the parliament, you have several movements of women. You have girls going back to school. You have female doctors in the hospitals. You have female teachers who are going to school. With all this, I think the past three years, the situation of women is getting worse."
The problem, she said, lies in political attitudes.
"Unfortunately, there are certain elements within the government, outside the government, nowadays mainly within the government, who don't believe in women's progress, because they think, if women becomes stronger, they will lose the power," Koofi said.
"I think there is need for a strong political government and a civil government that actually is committed to equal rights and opportunities and to the rule of law," she said. "Everybody, according to the Constitution, is equal before the law."
"This is first. Rule of law is the key for progress of women."
Koofi said that polling indicated that "the ordinary people of Afghanistan" were comfortable and in some cases favored female legislators -- and, perhaps more importantly, were supportive of women's issues.
But, she said, the greater danger lies with Afghanistan's former rulers -- the fundamentalist Taliban.
"I think if they come back to power, women will be the first victim, because they have demonstrated a strong voice of equality," Koofi said.
The Taliban imposes harsh restrictions on women, frequently flogging them for violating their strict interpretation of Islamic sharia law.
"It's not a time for the international community and Afghan government to talk about bringing back Taliban to power," she said. "I think the situation would go even worse compared to what it was in 1997 and 1998, when it comes to women's issues, because after the removal of Taliban, you had such outspoken women who were asking for their rights, who were asking for democracy, who were asking for equality."
Koofi's comments come as the Obama administration considers its Afghanistan policy. Some argue for a shift to counterterrorism operations and away from counterinsurgency operations, which critics argue might give the Taliban a leg up in the fight for the country.
But the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, has asked for thousands more troops to continue his counterinsurgency strategy.
A key test for Afghanistan will come when the final election results from Afghanistan's disputed election are released, possibly as soon as this weekend. How Afghan leaders react to those results will be closely watched by not only human rights campaigners such as Koofi, but also the United States and NATO countries that are considering their strategy in Afghanistan.
"I think what's important is, first of all, not only for women of this country, for any human being in Afghanistan, we need to, first and foremost, have a stable, strong government to be able to function and deliver," Koofi said. "And then both men and women of this country will be able to benefit."
Back to Top
Back to Top
U.S. eyes continuing Japanese support in Afghanistan
Xinhua www.chinaview.cn 2009-10-16
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration on Thursday voiced its appreciation for Japan's efforts to fight extremists in Afghanistan, saying it hopes that the Japanese government could continue to support the U.S. operation.
The Japanese government has said that it would end its nearly eight-year-old refueling mission in support of U.S.-led operation in Afghanistan.
"First and foremost, we want to thank the government of Japan for its contributions to our efforts to fight extremism in Afghanistan. Japan's contributions have been very important, and we greatly appreciate everything that Japan has done in that regard," said State Department spokesman Robert Wood.
"We hope that Japan will find a way to continue to support the operations in Afghanistan, but that will be up to the Japanese government," said the spokesman.
Japanese Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa said that the refueling mission would end based on the law when its current legal mandate expires in January, 2010, but suggested that Japan could continue to provide support in an alternative way.
Reports here said the Japanese government led by Yukio Hatoyama, who claims that Tokyo should take more humanitarian measures in Afghanistan, could present a new plan on supporting the U.S.-led operation when President Barack Obama pays his first visit to Japan on November 12.
The Obama administration, who vowed to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaeda and its extremist allies, has been reviewing an overall strategy of the war in Afghanistan, and considering whether to send additional troops to the country.
General Stanley McChrystal, top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, warned that the United States would lose the war against al-Qaeda and Taliban without rapidly sending up to 40,000 additional troops to Afghanistan.
By the end of this year, according to previous deployment plans, there will a total of 68,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates will visit Japan next week and meet senior government and military officials on the "transformation of the alliance" between the United States and Japan. Korean Peninsula's nuclear crisis and Afghanistan's situation are expected to top agenda of Gates' visit.
Editor: Mu Xuequan
Back to Top
Back to Top
AFGHANISTAN: IS POWER-SHARING DEAL IN THE OFFING IN KABUL?
Aunohita Mojumdar 10/15/09 Eurasianet
Widespread evidence of fraud marred Afghanistan’s August 20 presidential vote and subsequently raised disturbing questions about the future legitimacy of Afghanistan’s executive branch. It now seems that the country’s leading political actors are exploring a way to restore the election’s integrity. Ironically, it appears as though a back-room bargain, rather than continued reliance on the ballot box, may be the preferred way to solve the crisis of legitimacy.
What is encouraging competing Afghan factions to talk is the apparent likelihood that a large share of the vote for incumbent Hamid Karzai will be declared invalid, thus necessitating a presidential run-off. Instead of actually proceeding with the run-off -- a process that could drag out the election process into the spring - Karzai and his primary challenger, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, may feel inclined to strike a bargain. Such a deal might preserve the incumbent in office, but with far greater checks on his authority than is presently the case.
A political accommodation would appeal to Abdullah since he would be hard-pressed to prevail in a run-off. In addition, the prospect of holding a second-round of voting in the winter is something the international community is desperately eager to avoid. The chief fear is that the logistical and security challenges of conducting the second round in cold weather would be impossible to surmount. Thus, the election could turn into a source of instability for Afghanistan.
In an interview with EurasiaNet at his Kabul residence on October 14, Abdullah appeared cagily open to the idea of resolving the legitimacy question through a bargain. His immediate priority, he emphasized, was to ensure a fair vote count from the August 20 poll. Beyond that, however, he seemed open to various possibilities.
"I will take it up from that point [i.e. the announcement of results]. It’s a different environment. That means it might go to a second round. If it doesn’t go to a second round, it is a different scenario," Abdullah said. "I am not ruling anything in; I am not ruling anything out. I am focusing on today. Post-announcement it is a different environment."
Speaking of the post-recount period, a close associate of Abdullah told EurasiaNet that "different scenarios can come into play at that stage." The source said the options being discussed included a government of national unity, a caretaker government or a loya jirga (grand council). The source, though, was careful to distance Abdullah’s supporters from the last option.
In response to repeated questioning, Abdullah told a news conference on October 15 that he personally preferred a second round of polling and that he had not dismantled the infrastructure for renewed campaigning.
Results that necessitate a second round would presumably be advantageous for Abdullah. He would theoretically have more leverage to obtain political concessions in the event he opts to cut a political deal with Karzai. While Abdullah would be disinclined to join any Karzai-led government, a reconfigured power-sharing arrangement that reduced the powers of the presidency is one option that Abdullah might go along with. Abdullah is on record as favoring a constitutional rebalancing that gives the legislative branch more authority, at the expense of the executive.
Any process that transparently eliminates fraudulent votes from the August poll would also help the international community. The UN especially has lost credibility over charges and counter charges between the organization’s top man in Afghanistan, Kai Eide, and his deputy, Peter Galbraith, who accused Eide of trying to conceal fraud and favor Karzai.
While Kabul has long been rife with rumors about back-room political bargaining, the first signs of the broad contours of a deal became evident during a news conference October 11. During that event, Eide for the first time acknowledged widespread fraud. Eide’s willingness to call fraud a fact, before the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) had completed its evaluation process, suggests he knew the ECC would eventually acknowledge widespread irregularities.
The second inkling of this likely scenario was Supreme Court nominee Maulavi Mustafa Barakzai’s sudden October 12 resignation from the ECC on grounds that the organization was biased. Since Barakzai is considered a Karzai loyalist, his resignation suggested that the ECC recount, which is nearing completion, would not validate a first-round Karzai election victory.
Karzai himself then attempted to exert pressure on the process, telling ABC news on October 13, that the "resignation has cast a serious doubt on the functioning of the commission." This put pressure back on the Abdullah camp and the murmurs once again shifted to a scenario of a first-round Karzai victory.
Forcing the ball back into the incumbent’s court at his October 15 news conference, Abdullah denounced Karzai’s efforts to impugn the ECC. While indicating that he was not completely satisfied with the ECC’s methodology, Abdullah told reporters he would base his judgment on the final ECC count and that he wanted an outcome where "the results are close to the real results."
Indicators suggest that the two contestants in Kabul would prefer to work out an agreement before the announcement of the oft-delayed final results, now scheduled for the weekend of October 17-18. Whether or not a deal can be reached will depend on a variety of variables, including the extent of pressure the international community is willing to exert.
Editor's Note: Aunohita Mojumdar is an Indian freelance journalist based in Kabul. She has reported on the South Asian region for the past 19 years.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Will We Stay 50 Years In Afghanistan?
Tom Hayden: An Influential Pentagon Strategist Advocates A Multi-Decade Counterinsurgency Campaign
CBS.com - Politics October 17, 2009
Let us say, hypothetically, that American forces kill or capture Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, enabling President Obama to declare victory and bring our troops home. Would he? Not according to the Pentagon's plan for a fifty-year "Long War" of counterinsurgency spanning Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Horn of Africa, the Philippines and beyond.
Military intellectuals envision a prolonged cold war against Al Qaeda, with hot wars along the way. It happens that the Long War is over Muslim lands rich with oil, natural gas and planned pipelines. The Pentagon identifies them as hostile terrain where Al Qaeda and its affiliates are hidden.
Among the top experts responsible for this fifty-year war plan, concocted in 2005 in windowless offices in the Pentagon, is Dr. David Kilcullen, a former Australian soldier, an anthropologist, former top adviser to Gen. David Petraeus and current aide to Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Kilcullen is a media favorite, the subject of a long New Yorker profile by George Packer, glowing columns by David Ignatius in the Washington Post and weighty late-night conversations with Charlie Rose.
Kilcullen's recent book, The Accidental Guerrilla, presents the case for a Long War of fifty or even 100 years' duration, with chapters on Iraq (a mistake he believes was salvaged by the military surge he promoted in 2007-08), Afghanistan (where he recommends at least a five-to-ten-year campaign), Pakistan (whose tribal areas he sees as the center of the terrorist threat) and even Europe (where, he says, human rights laws create legislative "safe havens" for urban Muslim undergrounds).
Kilcullen testified recently before the Senate that Afghanistan and Pakistan will require two more years of "significant combat," plus another decade of nation building at an additional cost of $2 billion per month. Given the current military cost of $4 billion per month, that could mean more than $80 billion annually for Afghanistan alone, or $1 trillion if Obama serves two terms, not counting long-term costs like veterans' healthcare.
"Significant combat" and "hard fighting" (the phrase of Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) are euphemisms for the highest American casualty rates in the war's eight-year history, about fifty per month since Obama's surge began in July. Another two years of this hard fighting could mean 1,200 American dead beyond the approximately 630 who were killed in Afghanistan during the Bush years. (American mercenaries working for private security companies are not included in the body count.) Unless he changes course, Obama will have to justify 2,000 American deaths, thousands more wounded and $500 billion in budget expenditures for Afghanistan going into his 2012 re-election campaign. Continuing costs for Iraq and rising costs for Pakistan will inflate those numbers considerably.
Civilian casualties strewn across these battlefields have been obscured by the fog of war, but hundreds of thousands of people, mainly civilians, could ultimately die in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, each of them leaving a legacy of vengeful violence.
These projections reveal a staggering audacity--not Obama's audacity of hope but an audacity of martial commitment. A fifty- to 100-year military campaign--the subtitle of Kilcullen's book is Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One--will span thirteen presidential terms and twenty-five Congressional sessions, casting a long shadow over generations of politicians not yet running for office. The Long War assumes either perpetual democratic approval by many voters not yet alive or that democracy will simply be circumvented by the national security state. Bin Laden will be dead of natural causes or otherwise long before it's over.
The audacity becomes ever more dangerous without checks and balances. Without his acknowledging it, Kilcullen's plan plays directly into what he believes is Al Qaeda's strategy of exhausting the United States militarily and economically. And yet he thinks the Long War is inevitable.
There has been little public discussion of the Long War. The term is attributed to Gen. John Abizaid, head of Central Command from 2003 to 2007; it is endorsed by counterinsurgency theorist John Nagl, who heads the Center for a New American Security; and it has been critically reviewed only in a collection, The Long War, edited by Andrew Bacevich.
The world counterterrorism community that is planning the Long War, Kilcullen has said, is "small and tightly knit." This is precisely Bacevich's complaint. In the preface to his book he writes, "National security policy has long been the province of a small, self-perpetuating, self-anointed group of specialists...dedicated to the proposition of excluding democratic influences from the making of national security policy. To the extent that members of the national security apparatus have taken public opinion into consideration, they have viewed it as something to manipulate." The fraternity of counterinsurgency specialists is an even smaller bubble insulated from civic society. They bear a distinct resemblance to the Vietnam-era elite described by David Halberstam as "the best and the brightest," the New Frontiersmen who were propelled to the "dizzying heights of antiguerrilla activity and discussion," revived the Green Berets and ultimately crashed in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
Today's special operatives may track down and kill Osama bin Laden, as they did Che Guevara in Bolivia in 1967. But the process of revolutionary nationalism will go on under the Taliban or its successors, as it did in Latin America, resulting in Evo Morales's 2005 election amid banners extolling Che's memory. Kilcullen's counterinsurgency model, while giving lip service to winning hearts and minds, ultimately relies on exterminating revolutionaries, whether they are known as outside agitators, conspiratorial communists or, to use Kilcullen's label, takfiris (Muslim terrorists).
The counterinsurgency doctrine is promoted as being "population-centric" as opposed to "enemy-centric," leading some to think it means a combination of Peace Corps-style development and community-based policing. Indeed, counterinsurgency differs sharply from "kinetic" war, which is based on conventional use of combat troops and bombardment. This is why Kilcullen disapproved of the ground invasion of Iraq and is critical of the current use of Predator strikes from the air, which alienate the very civilian populations whose hearts and minds must be won.
The central flaw in Kilcullen's model is his belief in the "accidental guerrilla" syndrome. Drawing partly on a public-health analogy, he defines Al Qaeda as a dangerous virus that grows into a contagion when its Muslim hosts face foreign intervention. The real enemy, he thinks, is the global network of hard-core Al Qaeda revolutionaries who want to bring down the West, overthrow Arab regimes and restore a centuries-old Islamic caliphate. Like Obama, Kilcullen hopes to "disrupt, dismantle, and eventually defeat al Qaeda" without provoking the contagion of resistance from the broader Muslim world. The "accidental guerrillas" who fight us, he writes,
do so not because they hate the West and seek our overthrow but because we have invaded their space to deal with a small extremist element that has manipulated and exploited local grievances to gain power in their societies. They fight us not because they seek our destruction but because they believe we seek theirs.
But of course, these accidental guerrillas are no accident at all. They inevitably and predictably emerge as a nationalist force against foreign invaders. Their resistance to imperialism stretches back far before Al Qaeda. In fact, Al Qaeda was born with US resources, as a byproduct of resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and earlier oppression of hundreds of Islamic radicals in Egyptian prisons.
Kilcullen would like to believe that the "accidental guerrilla" syndrome can be avoided by a surgical counterinsurgency combined with Western liberal reform, as opposed to a ham-fisted, knock-down-the-doors combat approach. But he admits that imposing law and order American-style in Afghanistan is a "temporary" form of neocolonialism that will produce violent popular resistance.
The strategic dilemma is created when this neocolonialism fosters a corrupt regime of warlords, drug lords and landlords, as it has in Kabul. The first priority of Kilcullen's counterinsurgency doctrine is "a political strategy that builds government effectiveness and legitimacy while marginalizing insurgents, winning over their sympathizers, and coopting local allies." Obama's recent surge in Afghanistan, whose purpose was to protect Afghanistan's presidential election process, had the opposite result: sending Americans to fight for an unpopular Kabul machine that committed fraud on a massive scale.
The counterinsurgency in Pakistan, while killing a score of Taliban leaders, has contributed to an even worse public reaction. America's client president, Asif Ali Zardari, has a 25 percent approval rating, against his opponent's 67 percent. Fully 80 percent of Pakistanis polled in July and August were opposed to US assistance to their government's fight against terrorism and Al Qaeda; 76 percent opposed Pakistani cooperation with US drone strikes. The polling excluded the country's tribal areas, where the opposition would be even greater.
When faced with massive popular opposition, does the counterinsurgency model call for strategic retreat? Apparently not. Instead, the fallback military option is ratcheted up in hopes of either defeating the guerrillas or dissuading the accidental guerrillas from growing in number. That is why 95 percent of this year's budget for Afghanistan is still devoted to the military campaign, the exact opposite of the ratio that Kilcullen recommends as the best practice for counterinsurgency. Instead of pulling the plug, he favors soldiering on until the Taliban and Al Qaeda are defeated in the "hard fighting" and a decade of "nation building" can commence in the rubble. This is a faith-based doctrine if there ever was one.
Adherence to the model also forces Kilcullen and other counterinsurgency devotees to downplay the secretive and violent underside of their approach. The cult of clandestinity is symbolized by General McChrystal, whose entire career in Iraq remains a classified secret. What we do know about McChrystal comes from the leading mainstream narrator of the Iraq War, Bob Woodward, in his book The War Within. Woodward writes that the key to the Iraq surge, in addition to buying off the Sunni insurgency, was a top-secret program of extrajudicial executions run by McChrystal, which was "possibly the biggest factor in reducing" Baghdad's violence during that election year. One US adviser in charge of tracking down and killing insurgents, according to Woodward, said the efficiency of the program gave him "orgasms." This secret program may have been what Kilcullen had in mind when he described the surge as "a truly decisive action" to "comb out the insurgent sleeper cells," as if they were lice. Kilcullen later told the Po
st's admiring Ignatius that America needs "black" as well as "white" special-ops to implement his strategy of "overt de-escalation; covert disruption." So much for hearts and minds.
That Kilcullen may be the true progeny of the "best and brightest" is evident from his attempt--in 2004 writings--to salvage the US Phoenix program from its discredited image in histories of the Vietnam War. Kilcullen has written that he favors a "global Phoenix program" against insurgents today. "Contrary to popular mythology," he believes that the "maligned" Phoenix program was "highly effective" in disrupting the Vietcong infrastructure. Under Phoenix, according to the 1971 Congressional testimony of William Colby, the former pacification director in South Vietnam, more than 20,000 Vietcong suspects--many of them the civilian infrastructure in Vietcong-controlled areas--were killed from 1968 to 1971.
Run by the CIA through South Vietnamese police units, the program employed methods of torture including electric shocks to testicles and vaginas, and truncheons to the ears. Tens of thousands of South Vietnamese villagers were uprooted and resettled in fortified "strategic hamlets," in accordance with the counterinsurgency doctrine of protecting the civilian population. Thirty years later the Iraq surge seems to have included another version of the Phoenix program, directed by McChrystal. Countless Iraqis were targeted and killed, while others were rounded up and surrounded in concertina wire under watchtowers in what the Pentagon and Kilcullen call "gated communities."
This may be the part where an inbred secrecy ultimately leads to a brilliant but delusional Apocalypse Now sensibility, expressed in the Joseph Conrad character Kurtz's exclamation "Exterminate all the brutes!" The further tragedy of counterinsurgency is that it does not stop in the face of failure but starts all over again from its own ashes. In the end, its secrets will not be kept from its victims in Afghanistan and Pakistan, who suspect and know all too well who is killing them, but from well-meaning Americans living in our own gated communities amid democratic structures that seem unable to save us from a remote-controlled, engineered ignorance.
To his credit, President Obama and his White House advisers see the quagmire ahead, with the majority of Democrats opposing escalation in Afghanistan, with Iraq teetering and Pakistan sliding over the edge, and with no funding for a Long War. There is no short-term way to repair the self-inflicted dysfunctions of the Kabul regime, nor is there any plan likely to win public approval in Pakistan. The military and the Republicans will accuse Obama of failure if he tries to withdraw, and of a quagmire if he stays. Instead of treating counterinsurgency as a holy text, he needs to study the hardest maneuver of all, strategic retreat (like John F. Kennedy in Laos, Ronald Reagan in Lebanon or Bill Clinton in Mogadishu), in order to avoid greater losses that threaten the very promise of his presidency.
Back to Top
Back to Top
In Afghanistan, Taking a Risk for Democracy
The Washington Post - Opinion Saturday, October 17, 2009
Former senior U.N. official Peter W. Galbraith ["What I Saw at the Afghan Election," Outlook, Oct. 4] and some in the Western press are trying to act as judge, jury and executioner when dealing with Afghanistan's Aug. 20 national elections. The Afghan government and the United Nations have never denied that there were irregularities and instances of rigging, but it would be an exercise in futility for any party to deprive Afghans of their sovereign right to elect a leader, a right for which many sacrificed life and limb.
U.S. history offers its own parallel to what is happening in Afghanistan.
Abraham Lincoln didn't break with America's democratic tradition even during the Civil War; the presidential election of 1864 went ahead during a bloody period in which more than 600,000 soldiers and civilians died. Lincoln's aides were divided on the issue, and opponents favored postponing the election until its safe conduct and validity could be ensured.
A similar situation played out this year in Afghanistan when a host of President Hamid Karzai's aides and U.S. and U.N. officials vigorously attempted to persuade him to delay the elections until a more opportune time. Mr. Karzai remained steadfast, arguing that he would not go down in history as setting a precedent that would allow any future leader with good intent or ulterior motive to harm Afghanistan's democratic process.
America's 1864 election was held without women, slaves and Indians being allowed to participate, and it spawned claims of fraud. Lincoln defeated the Democratic nominee, Gen. George McClellan, with overwhelming support among Union soldiers.
Just as the United States under Lincoln struggled to preserve the democratic tradition, Mr. Karzai also subjected himself to the risk of losing the election, since most of Afghanistan's southwest was heavily affected by the ongoing terrorist assault.
Despite negative coverage by the world media, which had the potential of creating conflict and confusion, millions of Afghan citizens chose to vote in the face of deadly attacks by the very extremists who have vowed to carry the war to the heartland of the West.
TAJ AYUBI Kabul, Afghanistan The writer is a political adviser to Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
Back to Top
Back to Top
How to solve the dilemma
The Washington Times By M. Ashraf Haidari 10/17/2009
Struggle across border with Pakistan
Afghanistan and Pakistan are fighting a common enemy in the Taliban and al Qaeda. But the nature of insurgency and engagement is quite different in the two countries. The Pakistani military is fighting an insurgency mainly against its own people. It's different in Afghanistan: Our Afghan forces are fighting terrorist mercenaries that primarily infiltrate from, and are trained and equipped by, elements from across our southeastern border.
Furthermore, the Pakistani security institutions have 62 years of experience, maintained by the country's heavy defense spending and international aid. By contrast, Afghanistan's security institutions are just emerging. These fundamental differences necessitate that the counterterrorism effort and the perception of the region be bifocal - focusing on the specific conditions in each country rather than lumping them into one, overly simplified "Af-Pak" region.
In Afghanistan, as recommended by the commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the number of U.S. and NATO forces must be increased to provide transitional stability. This would allow the Afghan security forces to develop, gradually enabling us to protect our citizens and provide an environment for democracy to take root and for trade and investment to flourish. And as we expand, train and equip our security institutions, we can take greater security responsibility from ISAF to stabilize and defend Afghanistan.
Things are different in Pakistan, however. There, the Taliban have been strategically tolerated to provide refuge for al Qaeda and its affiliated networks in order to operate and direct terrorist activities in Afghanistan. In his recent assessment, Gen. McChrystal noted that the insurgency in Afghanistan is "clearly supported from Pakistan. Senior leaders of the major Afghan insurgent groups are based in Pakistan, are linked with al Qaeda and other violent extremist groups, and are reportedly aided by some elements of Pakistan's ISI," which is its intelligence service.
The frequent peace deals that Pakistan signed with various local Taliban groups between 2004 and 2008 are prime examples of accommodating the Taliban, which senior Pakistani officials have termed "a local solution to a local problem." In February 2009, for instance, Pakistan and the Taliban entered into a peace agreement in the Swat Valley.
However, the United States, NATO and Afghanistan strongly objected to it. We knew that the peace deal would enable the Taliban and al Qaeda to resupply and organize to carry out increased terrorist operations in Afghanistan. As expected, security began deteriorating in both countries soon after the peace deal. In Pakistan, the withdrawal of military forces from the Swat Valley led to its complete fall to the Taliban, where they soon declared Shariah rule. This, in turn, led to intensification of insurgency and terrorist attacks by the Taliban in the south and east of Afghanistan.
So far, Pakistan's sweeping military operations to retake the lost ground from the Taliban have led to a massive humanitarian crisis and displacement of civilians in the North-West Frontier Province. This has alienated the border region's most impoverished tribes, among whom al Qaeda has heavily recruited desperate and illiterate youths to carry out suicide attacks in Afghanistan.
At the same time, Pakistan's conventional operations have proved inept against an unconventional, elusive enemy. These operations have either displaced Taliban fighters to new areas in Pakistan or pushed them over into Afghanistan.
Thus, to help operationalize the U.S. policy of disrupting, dismantling and defeating al Qaeda, Pakistan's capable military and intelligence institutions must focus on strategic rather than tactical operations. Such operations by Pakistan can succeed only if the country sincerely commits to honest intelligence-sharing with its key allies: the United States, NATO and Afghanistan.
Effective intelligence will enable Pakistan and its allies to focus on and hit the strategic targets: leadership of al Qaeda and Taliban, their financing sources within and outside Pakistan, as well as terrorist sanctuaries in rural or urban areas of the country. The net result of such direly needed cooperation among Pakistan and its allies would go a long way to avoid civilian suffering in Pakistan and Afghanistan and to succeed in the fight against extremism and terrorism in both countries.
Indeed, to the enemy, Afghanistan and Pakistan are one and the same: training grounds, sources of recruits and targets of their unscrupulous acts of terrorism. But our situations are clearly different even though we are fighting the same common enemy. It is up to us and the international community to understand our unique positions and different circumstances, and to alter the Af-Pak perception of the region accordingly. As the renewed international effort, spearheaded by the United States, gathers steam, this consideration becomes crucially important. The enemy does not distinguish between us. We must.
M. Ashraf Haidari is the political counselor of the Embassy of Afghanistan.
Back to Top
Back to Top
‘We don't want to become a second Afghanistan'
Why the al-Qaeda kidnappers of Canadian diplomats now have governments across the western Sahara on the run
Globe and Mail Geoffrey York Friday, Oct. 16, 2009
At first, he thought it was just the desert wind, whispering through the predawn darkness. But then the soldier heard the sound again, and he realized the sickening truth: His slumbering troops were surrounded by terrorists from the Sahara branch of al-Qaeda, and the ambush was about to begin.
It was a mismatch. The insurgents had night-vision goggles, bulletproof vests and rocket-propelled grenades. The soldiers carried amulets and Koranic verses for protection. They were also outnumbered 3 to 1. Two hours later, almost half of the 60 soldiers were dead, and the rest were fleeing for their lives.
The ambush, which took place on July 4, was another shocking victory for al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the terrorist group that has swiftly spread its influence across North Africa, opening a new front in global terrorism and drawing U.S. military forces into yet another corner of the world.
After the disastrous defeat, Mali's President vowed a “total struggle” against the terrorists. But since then, his army has made no effort to pursue them, creating the impression that, despite its rhetoric, the government is afraid of tangling with al-Qaeda.
Senior government members admit that AQIM is better armed than they expected, and they say Mali will not pursue the terrorists until there is agreement on a joint operation among all the armies of the Sahara region – an agreement that has been discussed for months, yet is still delayed by disputes among Mali, Algeria, Mauritania and Niger.
Formed in 2006 when al-Qaeda struck a deal with an Algerian-based terrorist group, AQIM is fighting to expel Westerners and set up an Islamic theocracy. It has launched scores of attacks and suicide bombings in the four Saharan states, with more than 10 hits on Western targets in Algeria and Mauritania, including European tourists, a French embassy and an American aid worker.
In Canada, the terrorist group is most famous for kidnapping Canadian diplomats Robert Fowler and Louis Guay in Niger last December. But the two high-profile hostages – who were released in April – were not the only Canadian targets. Last year, AQIM car bombers in Algeria attacked a bus carrying employees of SNC-Lavalin Group Inc., the Montreal-based engineering firm, killing 12 and injuring dozens.
While Western targets remain vulnerable, AQIM's terrorist activity poses an even greater threat: that the Islamic extremists could overwhelm the weak states of the Sahara, where they already have entrenched bases, trafficking networks and government links.
“These people can go for months in the desert without encountering any authority,” said Adghaimar Ag Alhouseyni, commander of the Timbuktu detachment of Mali's National Guard. “They're like invisible people. They even have weapons that we don't know about – light weapons, but powerful. And they have night-vision equipment. They can see us and we can't see them.”
Mali is hoping that the United States or Algeria will provide helicopters or jets to pursue the terrorists. “The government doesn't have the resources to fight them alone,” said Assarid Ag Imbarcaouane, a vice-president of Mali's parliament. “They are well-armed and mobile. They move in small groups, but they're very numerous.”
The Pentagon has responded with the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership, which, among other things, sent 300 U.S. military advisers to bases in Mali for three months this year. Locals in Timbuktu point to a house on the edge of town, surrounded by surveillance cameras, where the U.S. Green Berets were based while training Malian soldiers.
The U.S. presence failed to deter the terrorists. On June 10, they launched one of their most audacious assaults.
In a convoy of six pickup trucks, they slipped into the outskirts of Timbuktu, the fabled town on the edge of the Sahara. One vehicle drove to the family home of the local intelligence chief, Lieutenant-Colonel Lamana Ould Bou, who had arrested several AQIM members. With two gunmen positioned on the roof and at the gate, two others entered the house and shot the colonel. As they fled, one of the killers' turbans slipped off and the colonel's family saw his long beard, the trademark of the Islamic radicals.
The colonel's Arab tribesmen vowed to take revenge. Calling themselves the “Delta Force” in homage to Hollywood war films, they created a militia unit and formed an alliance with Mali's regular army, pledging to “cut off the beards” of the terrorists.
After several days of searching, the army and militia found a temporary AQIM base in a remote corner of the desert, about 700 kilometres north of Timbuktu. With nearly 300 men, they greatly outnumbered the rebels and after three hours of fighting on June 17, nearly one-third of the estimated 90 Islamists were dead.
The hunt continued for two weeks. About 200 kilometres north of Timbuktu, nomads reported suspicious truck movements, and the soldiers found a lone AQIM vehicle, which they attacked and then followed through the desert. Just before sunset on July 3, they spotted a terrorist camp in the distance.
But by now the army unit was smaller, with one unit having split off to search in a different direction. The AQIM cell, meanwhile, had obtained reinforcements from two other cells.
Despite months of training by the U.S. Special Forces advisers, Mali's army made a fundamental tactical blunder. Survivors say their commander ordered his fatigued men to rest for the night – within range of the AQIM encampment.
“I tried to tell him that it was a mistake, but he wouldn't listen,” says Mousa, a sergeant in a special Malian army unit that was set up to chase the terrorists.
By 4:15 a.m. on July 4, the extremists had crept to within 15 metres of the sleeping soldiers. That was when Mousa discovered them, and the firefight began. “They planned to cut our throats, one by one,” he says. “That's how close they were. Some of our soldiers were shot while they were still sleeping.”
The two highest-ranking soldiers in the unit, a colonel and a captain, were among the 29 soldiers and militia members who perished. The Islamists also captured three soldiers and seized three vehicles and many of their weapons.
Since then, the army and its allies have been on hold. “The government has told us to wait,” says one Arab militia member, a survivor of the July 4 battle. “I don't understand why. We don't just want to get rid of them – we want to kill them. They're bringing evil into this region. They killed some of our greatest leaders.”
He believes the AQIM units have gained strength in the past year from their kidnapping operations, which have produced millions in ransom payments. “You can tell from the weapons they buy and the money they pay to anyone who helps them with supplies or information.”
Analysts agree that the hostage-taking strategy has bolstered the terrorists. “AQIM's increased focus on kidnap-for-ransom operations has allowed for the group's expansion, helping fund recruitment, training, propaganda and terrorist attacks,” Michael Leiter, director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Centre, said in testimony to a Senate committee.
The Islamists seem to have mysterious connections to high-ranking informants in Mali's government. “They must have good sources,” says Mousa, the army sergeant. “Every time we go on a mission, they seem to know who is in our ranks, how many we are and where we are going.”
The conflict with AQIM is devastating the economy in northern Mali. In places such as Timbuktu, tourism has collapsed. Foreign aid workers are under orders to stay away from the north. The U.S. and France have pulled out hundreds of oil-exploration workers and humanitarian volunteers.
Yet Mali lacks the money and appetite for a protracted war in the desert. “The problems are the distance and the enormous cost of supplying the army at such a great distance,” says Soumeylou Boubeye Maiga, a former Malian defence minister.
Since the terrorists are targeting Westerners, many people in Mali perceive the AQIM issue as “other people's war” – a problem for the West, not the locals. “Mali doesn't want to be caught in the middle of a big war,” Mr. Maiga says. “The authorities don't feel that the threat justifies a big war. We don't want to become a second Afghanistan.”
While Mali shies away from conflict, AQIM is entrenching itself in the Sahara. “They're even marrying into the local communities and convincing young people of their ideology,” says Baba Ould Sheik, a politician in northern Mali who helped to negotiate the release of the Canadian hostages this year.
“If al-Qaeda is not tackled, the whole of the north could be controlled by al-Qaeda within the next five or 10 years.”
Back to Top
Back to Top
French FM pays unannounced visit to Afghanistan
Xinhua www.chinaview.cn 2009-10-17
KABUL - French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner paid a surprise visit to Afghan capital Kabul on Saturday, a private television channel reported.
During his stay to Afghanistan the French Foreign Minister would hold meeting with his Afghan counterpart Rangin Dadfar Spanta and other Afghan officials.
Times of London, according to media reports, had recently disclosed that Italian soldiers for keeping on security in Sarobi district had paid money to Taliban but did not inform the French troops before pulling out and that led to Taliban attack and killing 10 French soldiers in a single battle in Afghanistan in August 2008.
Over 2,700 Frnech troops have been serving in Afghanistan within the framework of NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan to help strengthen security in the post-Taliban country.
Editor: Fang Yang
Back to Top
Back to Top
Over a dozen inmates break prison in N. Afghanistan
www.chinaview.cn 2009-10-17 19:38:50 Print
KABUL, Oct. 17 (Xinhua) -- Over a dozen inmates broke a jail in Afghanistan's northern Balkh province, director Mohammad Usman Parwani said Saturday.
"Thirteen prisoners, all of them criminals, holed the wall of Nahr-e-Shahi prison and escaped Friday night," Parwani told Xinhua.
The escapees, he added, were criminals had been arrested on charges of robbery and murders.
Five employees of the jail have been taken into custody in this regard, Parwani added.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Terror Expert Discusses Taliban, Al-Qaeda Funding
October 17, 2009 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
WASHINGTON -- Although the Taliban is growing rich from the drug trade in Afghanistan, some officials, including U.S. Assistant Treasury Secretary for Terrorist Financing David Cohen, say Al-Qaeda's leadership has recently fallen on hard times financially. RFE/RL's Washington correspondent Andrew F. Tully in spoke about this with New York-based Rachel Ehrenfeld, a prolific author who specializes in terrorism and financial corruption.
RFE/RL: Dr. Ehrenfeld, how do groups like the Taliban and Al-Qaeda get money to operate?
Rachel Ehrenfeld: Taliban and Al-Qaeda -- their initial funding came mostly from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. This is going back when they were just organizing, years ago. Since Afghanistan is a wonderful place for growing [the poppies that are made into] heroin, the opium production has increased dramatically. This is how [the Taliban] make a lot of income. Al-Qaeda has been taxing the farmers and getting a portion [of its funding] from the Taliban from the opium revenues. But [they also get funding from] other groups, like the Iranians, all kinds of jihadist groups wherever -- in Afghanistan as well as Pakistan. You don't need much in order to orchestrate a terrorist attack. Putting together a bomb or having a suicide belt put on someone doesn't cost that much money.
RFE/RL: How does the U.S. government know about these sources of money, and how much certain groups have left?
Ehrenfeld: They're probably based on their activities everywhere, and usually I [observe] another area of illegal activities such as drug trafficking. The general idea is that if you seize a lot [of drugs], you are curtailing their activity. Well, if you seize a lot -- to me -- it means that there is much more going around. And even if we increase the supervision on the banks -- and banks are cooperating a little bit -- it means that there is much more going on.
RFE/RL: The United States has had some success in limiting the Al-Qaeda leadership's access to its money. How does it do that?
Ehrenfeld: Apparently the U.S. government has a list in [the] Treasury [Department]. There is a special office in Treasury that is in charge of seizing and freezing assets of terrorists. It's called the OFAC, the Office of Foreign Asset Control. So if you look at the recent activities [of OFAC], you will see that there was much more activity related to [the] seizure of assets and freezing of assets of Colombian and Mexican drug cartels, etc., and some North Korean and Iranian [assets], than that of Al-Qaeda. I really don't see a lessening in the activity of Al-Qaeda. I would like to believe the government [when it says it's limiting Al-Qaeda's access to its assets]. I hope that they are right.
RFE/RL: Are you disputing Cohen's statement that Al-Qaeda is running low on money?
Ehrenfeld: "I believe that he believes in his statement, based on information which he is privy to. I haven't been privy to that information, and therefore I can look at information I have and say, well, judging by the activities [of Al-Qaeda], I don't see a lessening of activities, and my measurements are different. I certainly want to believe him.
RFE/RL: For several years now, many terrorist attacks around the world haven't been attributed directly to Al-Qaeda, but to independent groups that have been inspired by Al-Qaeda. You said a moment ago that it doesn't cost much to set up a terrorist attack. So does Al-Qaeda need much money anymore?
Ehrenfeld: They're inspirational, but they need money in order to recruit people, they need money to train, they need money to buy weapons, they need money to corrupt people, they need money to travel around the world, they need money to pay for the families of the martyrs. How do you think these people are living? They are not getting a salary. The families [of martyrs] have to be able to pay for themselves. This is part of the benefits of belonging to this group. The families are being taken care of, and people who join this group know that.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Air strike kills 20 Taliban militants in E Afghanistan
KHOST, Afghanistan, Oct. 17 (Xinhua) -- At least 20 Taliban militants were killed in air strike against the militants' hideout in Afghanistan's eastern Paktika province late Friday, spokesman of local administration said on Saturday.
"The international troops' warplanes targeted suspected hideout of the militants in Urgon district Friday evening, killing over 20 rebels at the spot," Hamidullah Zuwak told Xinhua.
In separate incident, seven armed militants were arrested as Afghan National Security Forces backed by international troops launched an operation against militants in the same district earlier the day, he added.
Taliban militants fighting Afghan, U.S. and NATO forces have yet to make comments.
War-plagued Afghanistan has seen increasing Taliban-led insurgency throughout the country while U.S. president Barack Obama has approved to send additional 13,000 troops to curb the deteriorating situation.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Canada denies paying Afghan Talibans for peace
OTTAWA, Oct. 16 (Xinhua) -- Canadian officials on Friday denied media reports that Canadian military troops in Afghanistan ever paid off Taliban in exchange for not being attacked.
The denial came after the Agence France-Presse reported that Canadian soldiers tried to buy off insurgents citing an unnamed Western military source. A British newspaper also reported Friday that Italian military and intelligence officials had handed over money to the Taliban in exchange for peace.
Canadian Defense Minister Peter MacKay said Friday it was the first time he was hearing of the report and described it as likely "Taliban propaganda."
"I would rely on military officials on the ground to be aware if such a thing were happening," MacKay said in the eastern city of St. John's, according to the Canadian Press.
"I strongly suspect that this is more Taliban propaganda. Of course, they're not bound by rules of engagement or simple things such as truth."
A spokesperson from the Canadian troops in Kandahar said Friday the report is "totally baseless."
Major Mario Couture told the Canadian Press that Canadian soldiers do pay out sums to Afghans who agree to hand in their weapons, while offering others paid work to encourage them to turn their backs on the Taliban, but they have never tried to buy off Talibans.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Afghanistan re-opens request for corridor road
By Zhang Xin China Daily October 16, 2009
Afghanistan is once again eager to develop the Wakhan Corridor along the China border, Afghan Second Vice-President Mohammad Karim Khalili said yesterday in Beijing.
"It is an opportunity for both Afghanistan and China to boost security and trade cooperation by opening the 76-km-long border shared by Afghanistan and China," he said.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai proposed the idea of constructing a Wakhan road connecting Afghanistan and China to his Chinese counterpart, President Hu Jintao, last year. The Afghan vice-president said "the Chinese side agreed to begin a feasibility study on the road building" during his meeting with Premier Wen Jiabao in January.
Fu Xiaoqiang, senior researcher with the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations in Beijing, said that Afghanistan has asked China on several occasions to open the border in the Wakhan Corridor as an alternative supply route for fighting the Taliban.
The nearly impassable corridor, located in the Pamir mountain region, poses technical difficulties for China to build a road. But Khalili insisted that the road would be valuable to the region and worth the hardship and expense.
The US sees China's role in maintaining stability and reconstruction in Afghanistan an important part of the anti-terrorism policy.
Western media reported in early March that NATO wants China to support its military operation in Afghanistan.
Wang Shida, a researcher in Afghan studies at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, said building the Wakhan road is a huge challenge with a huge cost.
"The corridor is even not easily accessible because it is located at an extremely high altitude on the Pamir, which is among the world's highest mountains and is closed for many months a year because of adverse weather," he said.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Pashtun peace prophet goes global
By Dawood Azami BBC World Service Friday, 16 October 2009
As the international community discusses its policies towards violence-stricken Afghanistan and Pakistan, a question arises time and again - how to pacify and win the support of the Pashtun population?
Pashtuns are commonly known for their warrior nature and martial history. But they also produced one of the most successful non-violent movements of the 20th Century, which resisted British colonialism in what is now Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and tribal areas.
The dramatic story of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the founder of the little-known pacifist movement, has been told for the first time in a major international documentary film called The Frontier Gandhi: Badshah Khan, a Torch for Peace.
The 90-minute film, premiered in the third edition of the Middle East International Film Festival (MEIFF 2009) in Abu Dhabi, is produced and directed by Teri C McLuhan who spent more than two decades planning, researching and executing the project.
'Servants of God'
Ghaffar Khan - also known as King Khan, Pride of the Afghans and the Frontier Gandhi - emerged as a social reformer in the early 1920s with the aim to unite, educate and reform his fellow Pashtuns.
Pashtuns (also known as Pathans or ethnic Afghans) form the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan and the second biggest in Pakistan.
In 1929 Ghaffar Khan founded the Khudai Khidmatgar (KK or Servants of God) movement to free the predominantly Pashtun NWFP and the rest of British India from colonialism through strikes, political rallies and non-violent opposition.
The KK volunteers, who also included women, were known as the Red Shirts because of the red uniform they wore.
The movement is estimated to have had 100-300,000 members - and was described as the first non-violent army in the world. It endured some of the worst suffering of the Indian independence movement.
The movement later became an affiliate of the Indian National Congress and Ghaffar Khan became a close friend of Mahatma Gandhi.
"It is true that there are attacks on a daily basis, but there is a possibility to revive the peace movement through projects like this film," says Teri C McLuhan, director of the film.
"I think Badshah Khan's personality can play a very important role in bringing the region together to a peaceful co-existence, because there is simply no other option."
Filmed across Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, Frontier Gandhi illuminates the little-known but fascinating story of Ghaffar Khan through interviews with several founding members of the movement (all more than 90 years old), experts and his family members.
South Asian leaders interviewed for the film include President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan (who praises Mr Khan and talks of his memory of meeting him when he was a boy), former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf (who does not view Mr Khan as a Pakistani patriot) and former Indian Prime Minister IK Gujral.
"It is highly encouraging that foreigners are taking an interest in our history and heroes," said an Afghan who watched the film.
Rediscovery
"It is a very important film... it is about a chapter of history we didn't know about," says Peter Scarlet, executive director of MIEFF, who selected the film for the festival.
"The film is important to learn about this visionary, a warrior of peace who, despite all the hardships, continued to preach the gospel of peace."
Many people who saw the film described the timing of the release as very important.
"At a time when the whole region is boiling, we really need what Bacha Khan believed in. We need to spread his word and act like him," said an Afghan, Siraj Hilal, after watching the film.
Ghaffar Khan's followers hope that his message will be revived through many books published recently about him - and that the film will play a big role in showing another side of Pashtun life.
"The prejudice that existed against Badshah Khan during the Cold War is diminishing now and the world is discovering him from anew" says Afrasiab Khattak, head of the Awami National Party in NWFP.
"This film will help a lot in introducing Badshah Khan to the rest of the world."
Ghaffar Khan opposed the partition of India in 1947 and continued to fight for the rights of the Pashtuns in the newly created state of Pakistan.
His aim was to unite the Pashtuns - who were divided during the struggle for influence in Afghanistan - into several administrative systems.
He paid dearly for his principles, spending around 30 years in British and Pakistani jails.
Nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize, Ghaffar Khan died in the Pakistani city of Peshawar in 1988 at the age of 98. According to his last wish, he was buried in Jalalabad, eastern Afghanistan, hoping that one day Pashtuns in Afghanistan and Pakistan will be united into one country.
Although his movement and followers were suppressed, by both the British and Pakistani authorities, Ghaffar Khan's brand has survived.
His legacy lives on by means of the Awami National Party (ANP) a Pashtun-centric political party heading the provincial government in the NWFP.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Bin Laden: 'an austere dad who loved nature': wife
by Andrew Beatty Fri Oct 16, 12:08 pm ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – Osama bin Laden was an austere father who banned toys and modern appliances at home, but also a flower-growing nature lover who spoke fluent English and adored fast cars, according to his wife and son.
In a book to be published at the end of this month, the Al-Qaeda boss's first wife Najwa and fourth son Omar give a rare glimpse into bin Laden's personal life up to the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States he is believed to have masterminded.
They chart bin Laden's transformation from a pious teenage newly-wed to the global face of Islamic extremism, a role that took the family from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan, Sudan, Afghanistan and at one point, Najwa revealed, to the United States.
Shortly after Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, bin Laden and his wife, whom he married aged 17, visited Indianapolis and Los Angeles for a meeting with his mentor, Palestinian cleric Abdullah Azzam.
"We were only there for only two weeks, and for one of those weeks, Osama was away in Los Angeles to meet with some men in that city," Najwa told the book's co-author Jean Sasson, later recalling the gathering was with Azzam.
Soon after, bin Laden began to travel to Pakistan and Afghanistan to fight against the Soviet occupation, returning to tell his sons tales of battles in Afghan caves and mountains under Soviet fire.
He eventually returned to Saudi Arabia a hero, but at home was increasingly disciplinarian, punishing his children -- who eventually numbered more than a dozen -- for transgressions such as "showing too many teeth" while laughing.
Meanwhile, Najwa was kept in seclusion with Osama's new wives, one of whom she picked, in a spartan home without the mod-cons that make life in the stifling desert lands of Saudi Arabia and Sudan more comfortable.
"My father would not allow my mother to turn on the air conditioning that the contractor had built into the apartment building," Omar relayed.
"Neither would he allow her to use the refrigerator that was standing in the kitchen."
Despite this aversion to modern appliances, bin Laden indulged in his penchant for fast cars, including at least one gold-colored Mercedes. He once even bought a speed boat.
"Nothing gave him more satisfaction than having a full day to take a speedy drive to the desert, where he would leave his automobile while he took long walks," said Najwa.
After being forced into exile in Sudan because of his vocal opposition to US troop deployments in Saudi Arabia, bin Laden would later take pride in growing sunflowers as he dodged assassination plots and built the Al-Qaeda network.
"Osama's favorite undertaking was working the land, growing the best corn and the biggest sunflowers," Najwa said.
But his love of nature was also colored by growing political fervor.
He forced the family to spend nights in the desert, with only dirt as cover from the cold. He also forced his sons to climb desert mountains without water to toughen them ahead of more difficult times.
But there were more lighthearted moments with bin Laden, whom his sons admired as a good horseman, a fluent English speaker -- thanks to his school days -- and a mathematics whiz.
"My father was so well known for the skill that there were times when men would come to our home and ask him to match his wits against a calculator," Omar said, adding his father usually won.
They also spoke about a man who loved eating fruit, particularly mangoes, took two sugars in his tea, whose favorite meal was marrow-stuffed zucchini and who liked to listen to BBC radio.
Spooks will no doubt pour over the book for new clues to bin Laden's habits or whereabouts.
They will learn he may be able to pilot a helicopter, but also suffers from bouts of malaria and is partially blind in his right eye thanks to a boyhood metalwork injury for which he received treatment in London.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Pakistan Opens Offensive in a Militant Stronghold
By JANE PERLEZ October 18, 2009 The New York Times
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan moved large contingents of its troops into the militant stronghold of South Waziristan on Saturday, the army said, beginning a long-anticipated ground offensive against militants from Al Qaeda and the Taliban in treacherous terrain that has stymied the army in the past.
The operation is the most ambitious by the Pakistani Army against the militants, who have unleashed a torrent of attacks against top security installations in the last 10 days in anticipation of the assault. The militants’ targets included the army headquarters where planning for the new offensive had been under way for four months.
The United States has been pressing the army to move ahead with the campaign in South Waziristan, arguing that it is vital for Pakistan to show resolve against the Qaeda-fortified Pakistani Taliban, which now embraces a vast and dedicated network of militant groups arrayed against the state, including some nurtured by Pakistan to fight India.
American officials have said the fighting there would probably not substantially help the American and NATO effort in Afghanistan because most militants who cross the border to fight there are from a different area in Pakistan and because the Taliban stronghold within South Waziristan is not directly along the border.
But if successful, the operations could put pressure on Al Qaeda, a pivotal supporter of the Taliban in Afghanistan, providing training and strategic planning.
The front in South Waziristan was the fourth operation by the army against the Taliban in a year, and the campaigns in the less remote parts of the country’s tribal areas have shown that guerrilla tactics can bedevil an army trained in conventional warfare against its archenemy, India.
In Bajaur and Mohmand, two tribal areas close to the provincial capital, Peshawar, and far less mountainous than South Waziristan, the army has been forced to launch repeated air attacks against persistent Taliban attacks, even though much of the area was declared cleared of militants almost a year ago. Civilians who fled Bajaur and Mohmand have been unable to return, and towns flattened by the army have remained in ruins.
Even in the Swat Valley, where the military was able to make most cities safe enough for residents to return, the army was unable to knock out the leadership.
In Washington, senior American military officials were closely monitoring the long-awaited offensive, with some expressing skepticism about how extensive a ground campaign the Pakistani Army would actually carry out.
“This is going to be much tougher than their offensives in Swat and Bajaur this year,” said one top American officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We just don’t know how committed the army will be.”
Still, Obama administration officials said Saturday they were pleased Pakistan at least decided to go ahead with the offensive. Some senior administration officials voiced concerns immediately after the death of Baitullah Mehsud, the country’s public enemy No. 1, that the Pakistani military would let up in its counterinsurgency efforts.
Precise information about the start of the assault Saturday was impossible to verify immediately. No reporters are traveling with the troops, and phones in Wana, the administrative capital of South Waziristan, were not answered Saturday.
But it was clear that the military faced a potent, heavily armed enemy that has been preparing for months, bringing in reinforcements from across Pakistan’s tribal region, and diverting Taliban fighters from Afghanistan.
In South Waziristan, the Taliban loyal to the Mehsud tribe are relying on hardened Uzbek fighters, and despite the death of the leader, Baitullah Mehsud, in an American missile strike in August, the Taliban leadership appears largely intact.
The guerrillas are practiced at hit-and-run tactics intended to keep the troops bottled up until the snow falls next month and well beyond. Bunkers and tunnels have been under construction with the help of excavation machinery commandeered in the past several years from local contractors, civilians from South Waziristan said.
In the North-West Frontier Province, civilian officials said Saturday that they had been told by the military that soldiers were moving in a pincer movement from government areas in Shakhai in the west, Razmak in the north into Makeen and from Jandola in the east into Spinkai Raghzai.
In the last few days, F-16 fighter jets have hammered the mountainous enclave, where the Pakistani Taliban, now led by Hakimullah Mehsud, keep their operations center, according to civilians in Wana who had been reached by telephone at the time.
The region inside a ring of government-held towns, Jandola, Razmak and Shakhai, is the homeland of the Mehsud tribe, who have a reputation as the fiercest of fighters in Pakistan.
In a taste of Taliban tactics, an army convoy heading to the area of operations from North Waziristan was hit by a remote-controlled bomb Saturday, killing two soldiers and wounding four others, according to a journalist reached by telephone in Miram Shah, the capital of North Waziristan. That area in North Waziristan was supposed to have been neutralized after talks between a militant group led by Gul Bahadar and the military, the journalist said.
Most of the areas where the army is headed are 6,000 to 7,000 feet high. In previous operations against the Taliban in the same area — in 2004, in 2005 and again in early 2008 — the army settled for a truce.
This time, under the leadership of General Kayani, the army is better prepared. It also has been left little choice about whether to take on the operation given the onslaught of attacks by the Taliban and Al Qaeda against the Pakistani state, politicians have said in the past several weeks.
The United States was expected to provide additional surveillance, reconnaissance and eavesdropping equipment to the Pakistani military, and possibly increase noncombat Predator drone surveillance flights over the rugged mountainous battle area to help the Pakistani forces identify and single out Taliban strongholds.
Earlier this summer, the United States resumed secret drone flights performing military surveillance in the tribal areas to provide Pakistani commanders with a wide array of videos and other information on militants, according to American officials.
About 28,000 soldiers were involved in the operation in South Waziristan and were set to face about 10,000 militants, including 1,500 particularly tough Uzbek fighters, army officials said.
The proportion of soldiers to militants did not appear to be very high, some military specialists said, noting that in the Swat Valley in May, the Pakistani Army fielded more than 30,000 soldiers against a similar number of less experienced militants.
The army expected the South Waziristan operation to last about two months, a period that stretches into the winter season there, a Pakistani official who has been briefed by the military said.
The military was confident that this time the soldiers could retake and hold the Mehsud area, the official said.
But military experts noted that South Waziristan was at the southern tip of the tribal areas and needed a much longer supply line than Bajaur and Mohmand.
Tens of thousands civilians have fled South Waziristan in the past few months in anticipation of fighting, moving in with relatives all over Pakistan. Thousands more have moved into government-held towns on the edge of South Waziristan in the last several days, United Nations officials said.
The preparations for the South Waziristan campaign had been thorough, but the effort is fraught with uncertainties, said a former brigadier, Javaid Hussain.
“It is the fear of the unknown that is weighing very heavily on those involved in the planning,” he said.
Reporting was contributed by Ismail Khan and Pir Zubair Shah from Peshawar, Pakistan, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Pakistan army launches Waziristan operation, 12 militants killed
ISLAMABAD, Oct. 17 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan's security forces Saturday launched the long-awaited operation in South Waziristan, the stronghold of Taliban in Pakistan, the Pakistani army said.
The army spokesman Athar Abbas said the operation started at 3:00 local time (2100 GMT) Saturday morning in South Waziristan tribal agency near the border with Afghanistan.
The army said about 30,000 soldiers are in place to take on an estimated 10,000 hard-core Taliban militants in the lawless area. About 500 commandos arrived in the region on Friday, security officials said.
Abbas said the operation is launched in six tehsils of the area and is likely to continue for six to eight weeks, but no final deadline can be given.
Local TV reports said the security forces killed 12 militants in the first day of the operation in South Waziristan.
In a press release, the army said four soldier were killed and 12 others injured during the operation in Waziristan.
In Swat, the statement said, the security forces arrested nine militants during the search and clearance operation.
On relief activities, it said, 312,446 cash cards have been distributed amongst the internally displaced persons (IDPs) of Malakand. But the army warned that up to 250,000 civilians are expected to dislocate in South Waziristan.
More than 80,000 civilians had fled from South Waziristan in anticipation of the offensive and the UN refugee agency said more people are leaving this week.
Nearly 2,000 militants have been killed since Pakistani security forces launched the military operation against Taliban militants late April after militants in early April entered the Buner district from the neighboring Swat district and refused to vacate the area despite their pledge to do so.
Back to Top
Disclaimer:
This news site is mostly a compilation of publicly accessible articles
on the Web in the form of a link or saved news item. The news articles
and commentaries/editorials are protected under international copyright
laws. All credit goes to the original respective source(s).