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How to Rig an Election
By Peter W. Galbraith time.com from October 19, 2009 issue
No one will ever know how Afghans voted in their country's presidential elections on Aug. 20, 2009. Seven weeks after the polling, the U.N.-backed Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) is still trying to separate
Afghan election audit ends, but no results yet
By SARAH DAVISON McClatchy Newspapers via MiamiHerald.com
By Sarah Davison KABUL, Afghanistan -- The audit of Afghanistan's presidential vote ended Friday, seven weeks after the disputed election gave incumbent President Hamid Karzai 54.6 percent of the vote.
UN seeks to explain Afghanistan vote fraud concerns
www.chinaview.cn 2009-10-09 07:20:36 By William M. Reilly
UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 8 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations as an organization, rather than a group of nations not necessarily united, has been stung recently by accusations of fraud in the Afghanistan presidential elections
Tainted Afghan govt cost too high: analysts
by Lynne O'donnell – Thu Oct 8, 11:41 pm ET
KABUL (AFP) – With presidential elections in shambles and the security situation worsening, faith in the Western-backed Afghan government is being sorely tested just as the US considers whether to boost troop numbers.
Afghan Vote Fraud Allegations May Not Sink Karzai, Corker Says
By Viola Gienger
Oct. 9 (Bloomberg) -- The disputed election of Afghan President Hamid Karzai may be less worrying to war-weary Afghans than to the Obama administration, according to U.S. Senator Bob Corker, who observed the August election.
Obama discusses troop levels for Afghanistan
By Philip Elliott, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON – Hours after winning a Nobel Peace Prize, President Barack Obama assembled his war council in the White House basement to discuss the 8-year-old Afghanistan conflict that military commanders are pressing him to escalate.
Taliban condemns Obama's Nobel Peace Prize
by Waheedullah Massoud – Fri Oct 9, 7:53 am ET
KABUL (AFP) – The Taliban Friday condemned Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize, saying rather than bring peace to Afghanistan he had boosted troop numbers and continued the aggressive policies of his predecessor.
AP source: Obama focusing on al-Qaida, not Taliban
By JENNIFER LOVEN, AP White House Correspondent Jennifer Loven, Ap White House Correspondent Fri Oct 9, 12:25 am ET
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama is prepared to accept some Taliban involvement in Afghanistan's political future and will determine how many more U.S. troops to send to the war based only on keeping al-Qaida
US forces in Afghanistan leave base after attack
By Todd Pitman, Associated Press Writer – Fri Oct 9, 3:55 am ET
KABUL – U.S. forces have withdrawn from an isolated base in eastern Afghanistan after a fierce insurgent attack last week that marked one of the deadliest battles of the war for U.S. troops, the NATO-led coalition said Friday.
Taliban key commander, dozen other killed in W Afghanistan
KABUL, Oct. 9 (Xinhua) -- Afghan forces backed by NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) launched an operation against Taliban hideouts in Herat province in west Afghanistan and killed a key commander
Suicide attack kills six in Afghanistan: officials
Fri Oct 9, 4:40 am ET
KHOST, Afghanistan (AFP) – A suicide attack in southeastern Afghanistan killed six guards working for a road construction company, while NATO forces killed 15 Taliban insurgents elsewhere, officials said.
Canadian PM firm on 2011 troop exit from Afghanistan
Fri Oct 9, 1:03 pm ET
OTTAWA (AFP) – Prime Minister Stephen Harper reaffirmed Friday that Canadian combat troops would leave Afghanistan in 2011, but vowed his country would then focus on boosting development and humanitarian efforts.
High end of troop request for Afghanistan: 60,000-plus
Gen. Stanley McChrystal included an option to send at least 60,000 more US troops to Afghanistan.
By Gordon Lubold | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor from the October 9, 2009 edition
Washington - Gen. Stanley McChrystal's troop request for Afghanistan includes an option to send at least 60,000 additional American forces to buttress the war effort there – a higher troop request than previously known.
NATO mandate in Afghanistan extended
KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) -- The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to pass a resolution extending the mandate of NATO-led military forces in Afghanistan for a year, hours after a deadly bombing near the Indian Embassy in Kabul.
Obama picks Kan. Army general for top Afghan post
AP via Yahoo! News
TOPEKA, Kan. – President Barack Obama has nominated the commander of Fort Leavenworth to lead U.S. and NATO efforts to train Afghan forces as they fight a resurgent Taliban.
Top Indian diplomat in Afghanistan after bombing
By Maria Golovnina – Fri Oct 9, 3:36 am ET
KABUL (Reuters) – A top Indian diplomat arrived in Kabul on Friday to inspect the site of a huge bomb attack on the Indian embassy a day earlier that killed 17 people and renewed focus on India's tense relations with Pakistan.
India: Afghanistan's influential ally
Thursday, 8 October 2009 BBC News
India believes its embassy was the target of a bomb attack in the Afghan capital, Kabul. If confirmed, it would be the second attack on the embassy in just over a year. The BBC's Soutik Biswas examines why India, one of Afghanistan's closest allies, might be chosen as a target.
Brown to Set Out U.K. Troop Position on Afghanistan Next Week
By Kitty Donaldson
Oct. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Prime Minister Gordon Brown will make a statement on Afghanistan to Parliament on Oct. 14 as speculation mounts that he ready to commit more British troops.
Clinton to talk Iran, Afghanistan on Russia trip
By Jeff Mason – Fri Oct 9, 1:02 am ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Iran and Afghanistan will dominate talks by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton next week on a trip to Britain and Russia that could also spur progress on a new nuclear arms reduction treaty with Moscow.
Emerging Goal for Afghanistan: Weaken, Not Vanquish, Taliban
By Scott Wilson Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, October 9, 2009
As it reviews its Afghanistan policy for the second time this year, the Obama administration has concluded that the Taliban cannot be eliminated as a political or military movement, regardless of how many combat forces are sent into battle.
A To-Do List for Afghanistan
By Turki al-Faisal The Washington Post Friday, October 9, 2009 12:00 AM
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- As President Obama considers what to do about Afghanistan, it is important that he hear perspectives from all sides concerned about that critical region. In Riyadh
Obama could face party revolt on Afghanistan
Key Democrats warn that if the president decides to send more troops to Afghanistan, they might oppose it, perhaps even moving to cut off funds for the buildup.
By James Oliphant and Richard Simon October 9, 2009 The Los Angeles Times
Reporting from Washington - Key Democrats on Capitol Hill warned Thursday that a decision by President Obama to send more troops to Afghanistan could trigger an uprising within the party, possibly including an attempt to cut off funds for the buildup.
U.N. Infighting Threatens to Upstage Afghan War
By Thalif Deen IPS-Inter Press Service
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 8 (IPS) - The increasingly deadly battle between Western military forces and Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan is on the verge of being upstaged by a growing political brawl between two senior U.N.
1,000 US troops in Afghanistan costs $1 bn per annum
Press Trust of India October 09, 2009
Washington - Sending 1,000 troops to Afghanistan would cost the US exchequer $1 billion per annum, the White House has said, amidst report that the American commanders on the ground have asked for 40,000 more troops for this South Asian country.
Ancient art brings new hope for war-weary Afghanistan
by Phil Hazlewood Fri Oct 9, 3:39 am ET
KABUL (AFP) – In his spacious office at the National Museum of Afghanistan, overlooking the bombed-out shell of the former royal palace in Kabul, Omara Khan Massoudi draws heavily on a cigarette and relaxes into a sofa.
Afghanistan's Virtual Museum
By Isia Jasiewicz | NEWSWEEK Oct 9, 2009 From the magazine issue dated Oct 19, 2009
Despite what you might think from its name, the Museum of Afghan Civilization will be the very model of a modern major museum when it opens in January. It will be housed in an angular, postmodern building
Suicide bomb kills at least 49 in Pakistan market
by Lehaz Ali Lehaz Ali – October 9, 2009
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) – A massive suicide car bomb ripped through a packed market in the Pakistani city of Peshawar on Friday, killing at least 49 people and injuring over 100 in a region beset by Taliban attacks.
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How to Rig an Election
By Peter W. Galbraith time.com from October 19, 2009 issue
No one will ever know how Afghans voted in their country's presidential elections on Aug. 20, 2009. Seven weeks after the polling, the U.N.-backed Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) is still trying to separate fraudulent tallies from ballots. In some provinces, many more votes were counted than were cast. E.U. election monitors characterize 1.5 million votes as suspect, which would include up to one-third of the votes cast for incumbent President Hamid Karzai. Once fraud occurs on the scale of what took place in Afghanistan, it is impossible to untangle.
Afghanistan's fraudulent elections complicate President Obama's job as he weighs a recommendation from General Stanley McChrystal, his top commander there, to send as many as 40,000 additional troops to support a beefed-up counterinsurgency strategy. But for that strategy to work, the U.S. needs a credible Afghan partner, which Afghanistan's elections now seem unlikely to produce. (See pictures from election day in Afghanistan.)
A war undertaken to defeat al-Qaeda is increasingly seen through the lens of these elections. In my home state of Vermont — where the National Guard is about to deploy to Afghanistan — people seek me out to ask why our soldiers should be fighting for a corrupt Afghan government clinging to power by fraud. I am quite sure the same question is being asked of political leaders in both the U.S. and Europe.
Unfortunately, I am unable to provide reassuring answers. Over the past four months, I served as the deputy head of the U.N. mission in Kabul and had a firsthand view of the fraud that plagued Afghanistan's presidential vote. Each time I proposed actions to deal with it, Kai Eide, the head of the U.N. mission in Afghanistan, overruled me. Like any good subordinate, I respected my boss's decision, but in private, I told him I thought he was making a mistake in downplaying the fraud. When the press learned of our disagreement (through no fault of ours), U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon removed me from my post. This is an account of what went wrong — and why success in Afghanistan will remain beyond our grasp until the problems I witnessed are fixed.
The Ghost Vote
Afghans perpetrated the fraud, and they are, of course, ultimately responsible for the consequences. They include the local election staff, government officials and local warlords and power brokers. Afghanistan's Independent Elections Commission (IEC), a seven-member board appointed by Karzai to supervise the elections, was anything but independent. Its head met weekly with Karzai (but not with the other candidates), and the commission consistently made decisions that benefited the Karzai campaign.
Because the elections were so critical to political stability in Afghanistan — and, therefore, prospects for the U.S.-led military mission — the U.S. and its allies needed them to go smoothly. The U.N. Security Council tasked the U.N. mission in Afghanistan to support the IEC and other Afghan institutions in the conduct of "free, fair and transparent" elections. On two occasions, I started to take action that could have reduced the risk of fraud. In July, I learned that there were 1,500 polling centers (out of a total of 7,000) sited in places either controlled by the Taliban or so insecure that no one from the IEC, the Afghan army or the Afghan police had ever visited. It was obvious that these polling centers would never open on election day. They were also perfect vehicles for fraud. Since no observer, campaign representative or voter could go to the locations, it would be easy for the election staff — on its own or in collaboration with local officials — to say voting had taken place and then report a tally.
Along with ambassadors from the U.S., NATO, the E.U. and the U.K., I urged the election commissioners and the Afghan Ministers of Defense and Interior to close down these ghost polling centers. Serving a President who was to benefit from the fraud, the Afghan ministers complained about my approach to my boss, Eide, and he ordered me to stop. On election day, these ghost polling centers produced hundreds of thousands of fraudulent votes for Karzai. (After controversy erupted over my dismissal, the U.N. told some reporters that I wanted to disenfranchise voters by closing polling centers; this was absurd. The only ones I wanted taken off the books were ones that had never opened.)
With support from U.N. election experts working within the commission, the IEC published safeguards to exclude obviously fraudulent ballots from the preliminary tally of election results. These guidelines were a matter of common sense. For example, they excluded results from polling centers that had never opened or that reported more votes than they had ballot papers. A week before the IEC was to announce the results, I learned that it was considering abandoning these safeguards. I called the chief electoral officer to express my concern. Within two hours, I found myself summoned to meet the Foreign Minister, who, on direct instructions from Karzai, protested my interference in the Afghan election process. At that time, however, my intervention was successful, and the IEC voted to keep the safeguards.
Days later, the IEC discovered that sticking to its published safeguards would exclude enough fraudulent Karzai ballots to keep his total below 50%. This would lead to a second-round runoff, which Karzai desperately hoped to avoid. The IEC reconvened and voted 6 to 1 to drop safeguards, explaining that the commissioners had just read the Afghan election law and discovered that they had no authority to throw out fraudulent votes. This novel and inventive reading of the law did not convince many Afghans. My boss, however, sided with Karzai, and I was ordered to drop the matter. Four days later, I left Afghanistan and was subsequently relieved of my position by the Secretary-General.
So what should be done now? The U.N. raised $300 million from the U.S. and other Western countries to pay for the Afghan elections. The taxpayers from these countries surely expected the U.N. to spend their money on honest elections, not fraudulent ones. And countries sending troops to Afghanistan surely expected the U.N. to support elections that would put Afghanistan on a path to democracy and stability, not ones making the military mission incomparably more difficult. It is ridiculous to argue, as senior U.N. officials do now, that the U.N. had no authority to insist that the Afghan authorities conduct honest elections.
There is no easy solution to Afghanistan's election mess. If the ECC removes enough fraudulent votes, Karzai will fall below 50%, and there will be a second round of voting. However, the factors that caused problems on Aug. 20 — ghost polling stations, corrupt election staff and a partisan commission — are still present. Dealing with those factors will require leadership that the head of the U.N. mission has yet to demonstrate. If Karzai emerges the winner of the rushed and incomplete audit process now under way, Afghanistan's internal peace will depend on Karzai's opponents accepting — or at least tolerating — the outcome. Karzai's main opponent, Abdullah Abdullah, has said publicly that he does not believe the U.N.'s envoy is neutral. By failing to address the obvious fraud in Afghanistan's elections, the U.N. has lost credibility that is desperately needed for it to act as a postelection peacemaker.
Karzai's opponents are likely to be skeptical that the complaints process can change a fraudulent election into a good one. The Obama Administration should focus on persuading Karzai to adopt some of the opposition's program, including arrangements for genuine power-sharing by Afghanistan's diverse ethnic groups. Even so, Afghanistan's flawed elections have now become a major drag on Obama's new strategy, which just six months ago seemed to offer real hope for that war-torn land. It need not have turned out this way.
Galbraith served as deputy special representative of the Secretary-General of the U.N. in Afghanistan from June 1 to Oct. 1, 2009
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Afghan election audit ends, but no results yet
By SARAH DAVISON McClatchy Newspapers via MiamiHerald.com
By Sarah Davison KABUL, Afghanistan -- The audit of Afghanistan's presidential vote ended Friday, seven weeks after the disputed election gave incumbent President Hamid Karzai 54.6 percent of the vote. A certified result is days away, however, and patience is wearing thin.
Analysts are warning about a possible outbreak of political violence, especially in the north of the country.
Investigators suspect that there may have been widespread fraud in the Aug. 20 vote. Karzai claimed thousands more votes in some provinces than estimated turnout, for example.
The U.N.-appointed Electoral Complaints Commission is reviewing a sample of 10 percent of about 3,000 ballot boxes that each contained more than 600 votes or in which single candidates received 95 percent or more of the votes. That agency will send the audit results to the government's Independent Election Commission, which then must calculate and certify the result.
"It will take a few days," said Nellika Little at the Electoral Complaints Commission. "Maybe mid-next week, maybe a little later."
If the audit nullifies enough ballots, Karzai's share of the ballots could drop below 50 percent and trigger a second round of voting.
The question of Karzai's legitimacy poses a problem for the Obama administration, which is engaged in a review of strategy in the region. President Barack Obama and top advisers met Friday to discuss counterinsurgency efforts, including increasing the number of American troops in the country.
Tension is rising in Afghanistan, especially in Kabul, where a Taliban suicide bomber killed 17 people and wounded dozens Thursday. It was the second major suicide blast in Kabul in a month.
Police are warning of more trouble ahead.
"This delay in the election process, if they keep delaying it there will be more things happening," said Gen. Sayed Abdul Ghafar Sayed Zada, the head of criminal investigation for the Afghan National Police.
Analysts said there was a growing risk of an outbreak of political violence in the north, especially in Balkh province, which borders Uzbekistan. Although the province was calm until six months ago, there have been recent reports that minority Pashtun communities known to favor Karzai have been arming to defend themselves.
Gov. Atta Mohammed Noor backed former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah for the presidency, and Noor has threatened violence if a fraudulent win for Karzai is allowed to stand.
"No domestic or foreign power can stop people from their right to express their resentment against the vote-rigging in the presidential elections," Noor said recently.
Kabul's Ministry of the Interior responded with a statement calling the fraud accusations baseless. "These charges are politically motivated," it said.
Abdullah has renounced violence, and Martine Van Bijlert of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, a policy research organization, said that politically, it wasn't a rational option for Abdullah.
In Noor's case, however, it might be different. He can expect Karzai to replace him, and he'll have enemies after many years ruling with a firm hand, among them warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, a Karzai ally who's been accused of human rights abuses.
On Friday, Noor said he thought that a second round of voting was necessary and he called for the removal of all government ministers and for the head of the Supreme Court to replace Karzai while it takes place.
"If Karzai wins with a transparent vote from the people, I will congratulate him," Atta said through an interpreter. "But if he wins with fraudulent votes, that election won't have legitimacy and I won't accept it."
(Davison is a McClatchy Newspapers special correspondent.)
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UN seeks to explain Afghanistan vote fraud concerns
www.chinaview.cn 2009-10-09 07:20:36 By William M. Reilly
UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 8 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations as an organization, rather than a group of nations not necessarily united, has been stung recently by accusations of fraud in the Afghanistan presidential elections and/or favoring President Hamid Karzai for re-election.
So much of a sting has been felt that in the last two days unusual denials have been mounted: Wednesday it was by a panel of experts at the UN Headquarters in New York -- the second of its sort in as many weeks -- and Thursday by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's special representative in Afghanistan, Kai Eide.
Eide has been the target of the leading accusation, lodged by his now former deputy, Peter Galbraith.
Basically, Galbraith said there was fraud in the Aug. 20 balloting and that Eide withheld evidence of it and that he favored Karzai, who garnered nearly 55 percent of the first round vote.
If enough fraud is found in the Karzai count it could lead to a loss of votes and a runoff election. A runoff would have to be held soon because of the imminent onset of winter and heavy snow shutting down travel.
The institutional reply to the accusations has been to acknowledge fraud is possible but in its role of supporting the Afghanistan poll, it would not be proper for Eide to release information on fraud, especially if unverified, without being asked.
In turn, UN officials have said Galbraith, who allegedly wanted to close 1,500 of 6,900 polling places in not-secure regions, was attempting to disenfranchise supporters of Karzai.
The president is a member of the Pashtun ethnic group, strong in the South and Southeast of the country.
The UN response to accusations of corruption in the election is to say it is up to the Independent Election Commission (IEC) and the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) to investigate and, when asked, provide information.
In the meantime, the United Nations wants the ECC's current audit to continue to see if wrongdoing took place during the balloting and then decide what has to be done about investigating and go from there.
The world body Monday launched an investigation into the charges, Edmond Mulet, UN assistant-secretary-general for peacekeeping said on Wednesday at a press conference in UN headquarters.
He was accompanied by Wolfgang Weisbrod Weber, director of Asia and Middle East Division of the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, and Craig Jenness, director of the Electoral Assistance Division of the UN Department of Political Affairs.
The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), which Eide heads up, comes under control of the peacekeeping department.
Only last week a UN official briefed reporters on how the world organization was only supporting the Afghans in their election and not monitoring, per se. Observing, yes, but technically not monitoring.
Galbraith had said UNAMA had sent out people to observe how many people went to polling places and their reports didn't jibe with vote counts from some regions.
On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported receiving a spreadsheet detailing those discrepancies.
"In some provinces the official vote count exceeded the estimated number of voters by 100,000 or more," the newspaper said the spreadsheet showed, "providing further information that the contest was marred."
"In southern Helmand province -- where 134,804 votes were recorded, 112,873 of them for President Hamid Karzai -- the United Nations estimated that just 38,000 people voted, and possibly as few as 5,000, according to a UN spreadsheet obtained by The Washington Post," the newspaper added.
It said the information seemed to "worsen a credibility crisis for the UN special envoy," Eide.
However, the Post said that in an interview last week Eide "acknowledged withholding the data, saying that the information could not be verified and that he required a formal request in order to share it. He said he was confronted by a 'confusing situation' in which 'a lot of information was coming from sources that had their own agenda.'"
Galbraith, a former U.S. ambassador to Croatia, was reported to have political ambitions. He was reported in Norway on Thursday.
The newspaper said Eide didn't want to hand over "a bunch of information if we haven't made a solid assessment of it."
At the Wednesday press session, Jenness said a review was being undertaken to examine the issue of high voter turnout, and secondly, high numbers of votes cast for one candidate or another.
A final determination on the number of participants at polling stations would be made after all ballots were scrutinized, including from the South, the news conference participants said. Only those considered legitimate would be counted.
"There is anxiety and everybody wants this process to be over as quickly as possible," Weber added. The United Nations had pressed the ECC to conclude its work quickly without jeopardizing the process, so that if a second round was needed, it could be held two weeks after the final results were announced, as electoral rules stipulated.
Responding to charges Eide had sided with Karzai in endorsing the elections' outcome, Weber said Eide had sided with the two bodies tasked with carrying out the investigation: the IEC and ECC.
Weber said Eide's mission was to examine regulations, including on the question of fraud, which would strengthen those institutions.
One of the objectives of UNAMA was to strengthen the Afghan government and instill confidence in it among the Afghan people.
That is one of the objectives of the NATO forces fighting in Afghanistan, instilling confidence, and, most certainly, the amount of confidence Kabul has from the Afghan people is a consideration for U.S. President Barack Obama in his review of the level in which the United States supports NATO.
Editor: Xiong Tong
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Tainted Afghan govt cost too high: analysts
by Lynne O'donnell – Thu Oct 8, 11:41 pm ET
KABUL (AFP) – With presidential elections in shambles and the security situation worsening, faith in the Western-backed Afghan government is being sorely tested just as the US considers whether to boost troop numbers.
Allegations that the UN's special envoy to Afghanistan concealed evidence of fraud in the polls have added to concerns that the cost of supporting the discredited government of Hamid Karzai is becoming too high.
With no result in the August 20 elections, fraud allegations have gathered such momentum some analysts said even a run-off between the front-runners might not salvage any credibility for the process.
"This whole process is a failure," said Haroun Mir, of Afghanistan's Centre for Research and Policy Studies.
"I think the accusations of fraud have become so big that even if we go for a run-off I doubt we will be able to rescue any credibility for these elections."
"It's just too late, especially in terms of security, as you see we have had another suicide attack in the most secure place in Kabul, outside the Interior Ministry," he said, referring to Thursday's bombing which killed 17 people.
Afghans voted on August 20 but the elections have been overshadowed by fraud allegations and controversy over the UN's role in keeping the process clean.
Most allegations have been directed at incumbent Hamid Karzai, including findings by European Union observers that a quarter of all votes, or 1.5 million, were suspicious.
Karzai leads preliminary results with around 55 percent of the vote. He needs 50 percent plus one vote to be declared the winner. His main rival, Abdullah Abdullah, has around 28 percent.
Observers -- including sacked former deputy UN special envoy to Afghanistan, Peter Galbraith -- have said 30 percent of Karzai's votes were fraudulent.
The Washington Post on Wednesday cited what it said was confidential UN data showing huge discrepancies in the election, with vote counts in some provinces exceeding actual voters by more than 100,000. Related article: US may target Al-Qaeda over Taliban
The newspaper cited a spreadsheet it said was kept secret by Eide, who has been under pressure to release details of what Galbraith has described as "very extensive" voter fraud.
On Thursday Eide released a statement saying suggestions "that I asked for fraud to be covered up are patently false".
The Post report came as US President Barack Obama considers a request for another 40,000 troops for Afghanistan, while opinion polls in the West show falling support for the eight-year war.
The Taliban are gaining ground, and the 2009 death toll among foreign forces -- with more than 100,000 fighting the insurgency under US and NATO command -- is more than 400.
Thursday's suicide blast was the fifth audacious attack on Kabul since mid-August -- and the second on the Indian embassy, which the insurgents said was the target, since July 2008.
A violent campaign against the elections kept voter turnout below 40 percent -- even lower in southern Taliban strongholds -- and showed the government's inability to provide security, said Norine MacDonald, head of the International Council on Security and Development.
"President Obama sent more troops to the south to secure the election for Afghan people and all that's happened is American troops have died," she said.
"Unless we clean up the process and Karzai is re-elected in a free and fair process, all we really know is that we're dealing with a government that is either complicit or stood idly by as a fraud that benefited them was commited."
The Independent Election Commission (IEC) -- widely regarded as favouring Karzai -- on Thursday completed an audit of suspect ballots to determine the level of fraud and if a run-off is needed.
A final result is expected before the end of next week.
Western diplomats in Kabul said that until the IEC announces the winner, following an analysis of the audit data by the UN-backed Election Complaints Commission, Afghanistan's electoral process cannot be judged a failure.
Ambassadors of NATO countries had been "exasperated" by the fraud allegations against Karzai and the UN, said one diplomat, "but we need to reach a conclusion".
Said another, also on condition of anonymity: "There is a credibility crisis, for sure.
"But it is not possible to judge the credibility of the process until it is over, and everyone is so sick of it that they are likely to want to forget very quickly how painful it has been and just move on," he said.
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Afghan Vote Fraud Allegations May Not Sink Karzai, Corker Says
By Viola Gienger
Oct. 9 (Bloomberg) -- The disputed election of Afghan President Hamid Karzai may be less worrying to war-weary Afghans than to the Obama administration, according to U.S. Senator Bob Corker, who observed the August election.
Karzai probably retains enough popularity to win reelection even in a runoff or a rerun of the election, Senate Foreign Relations Committee member Corker said.
“Internal to the country, I don’t get the sense they’re nearly as concerned about this election process as we are,” said Corker, a Tennessee Republican. “My antenna is up regarding making too big a deal out of this as a reason to change our policy.”
U.S. officials cite the fraud allegations as one reason President Barack Obama is reviewing the strategy he laid out in March for defeating al-Qaeda by ensuring it can never again find a haven in Afghanistan. The examination will help determine whether Obama adds as many as 40,000 more troops to the 68,000 the U.S. will have in Afghanistan by the end of the year.
The disputed election is “a concern to us,” Democrat Obama has said.
“What’s most important is that there is a sense of legitimacy in Afghanistan among the Afghan people for their government,” Obama told reporters in Pittsburgh last month. “If there is not, that makes our task much more difficult.’
Mobilizing Afghans
Central to the original policy was training local army and police and strengthening the government’s ability to deliver education, health care and other services to the population.
A lack of credibility might weaken Karzai’s capacity to mobilize his government and the Afghan people to work with the NATO-led alliance against the Taliban insurgents that harbored al-Qaeda until their ouster following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the U.S.
Karzai had a clear advantage over his closest challenger, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, in a poll of Afghans conducted a month before the election by the International Republican Institute. About 44 percent of respondents in the poll, conducted in person, planned to vote for Karzai compared with 26 percent for Abdullah, according to the Associated Press.
“You’re dealing with a Karzai government knowing that, one way or another, the end result of the election, at best, is Karzai again,” said Anthony Cordesman, a military strategist at the Center for Security and International Studies in Washington. “That’s certainly an area of intense study in the White House.”
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said the results of the national and international investigations of the August election should show whether Karzai’s disputed majority can be verified.
Government Legitimacy
“What’s important is whether or not the government of Afghanistan has legitimacy in the eyes of the Afghans,” Gates said on CNN’s State of the Union program on Sept. 27. “All of the information that we have available to us today indicates that continues to be the case.”
U.K. General David Richards, chief of the general staff, said Afghans don’t want a second election and are ready to accept Karzai to avoid further instability.
‘President Karzai does understand that we’re all watching,” Richards, who was a commander in Afghanistan before taking his current post, told an audience at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington policy group, last month.
The White House is awaiting the outcome of the election spokesman Robert Gibbs said earlier this week.
“Until the election is determined, he’s the leader of the country and we continue to work with him,” Gibbs told reporters at the White House.
To contact the reporter on this story: Viola Gienger in Washington at vgienger@bloomberg.net.
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Obama discusses troop levels for Afghanistan
By Philip Elliott, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON – Hours after winning a Nobel Peace Prize, President Barack Obama assembled his war council in the White House basement to discuss the 8-year-old Afghanistan conflict that military commanders are pressing him to escalate.
The president and his top national security advisers huddled in the Situation Room to hear top military officials make their case for tens of thousands of additional troops to target al-Qaida. The session marked the first time Obama has questioned his inner circle specifically about troop levels needed to right a war that has languished in progress and popularity.
A decision, though, was not in the offing.
"I still think we're probably several weeks away," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters before the meeting began. "I think the president feels like the discussions are going well."
Obama has told top advisers he wants to identify objectives before committing troops or military assets to achieve them. Even his closest advisers say they have no idea where Obama is leaning on a war he inherited but now must execute.
Friday's session was the fourth of at least five with Obama and more than a dozen key administration officials, including top diplomats and military brass. Before Friday, the lengthy discussions involving Afghanistan and Pakistan stuck to strategy formulation.
Those talks have sharpened the mission's focus to fighting al-Qaida above all other goals and downgraded the emphasis on defeating the Taliban, a senior administration official who participated in the discussions said Thursday. The official was authorized to talk to The Associated Press but not to be identified, because the discussions were private.
Under the evolving strategy, the official said, the U.S. would fight only to keep the Taliban from retaking control of Afghanistan's central government — something it is now far from being capable of — and from turning the country back into the sanctuary for al-Qaida that it was before the 2001 invasion ousted the regime.
The official said Obama will determine how many more U.S. troops to deploy to Afghanistan based only on keeping al-Qaida at bay.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, is believed to have presented Obama with a range of options, from adding as few as 10,000 troops to as many as 40,000. It's an unpopular position among some of Obama's fellow Democrats and even among some of the officials he has summoned to the secure conference room.
Obama's renewed focus on defeating al-Qaida — the same objective he outlined when he first announced a new Afghanistan strategy in March — has many implications for the debate over a war that the public is souring on. According to a new Associated Press-GfK poll, public support for the war has dropped to 40 percent from 44 percent in July.
National security adviser James Jones has said that according to maximum estimates, al-Qaida has fewer than 100 fighters operating in Afghanistan without any bases or ability to launch attacks on the West. Instead, the U.S. fight in Afghanistan is against the Taliban, now increasingly defined by the Obama team as distinct from al-Qaida. While still dangerous, the Taliban are seen as indigenous with almost entirely local and territorial aims and far less of a threat to the U.S.
A focus on al-Qaida is the driving force behind an approach being advocated by Vice President Joe Biden as an alternative to the McChrystal recommendation for a fuller counterinsurgency effort inside Afghanistan.
Biden has argued for keeping the American force there around the 68,000 already authorized, which includes the 21,000 extra troops Obama ordered earlier this year. The vice president proposes significantly increasing the use of unmanned Predator drones and special forces for the kind of surgical anti-terrorist strikes that have been successful in Pakistan and Somalia.
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AP White House Correspondent Jennifer Loven contributed to this report
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Taliban condemns Obama's Nobel Peace Prize
by Waheedullah Massoud – Fri Oct 9, 7:53 am ET
KABUL (AFP) – The Taliban Friday condemned Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize, saying rather than bring peace to Afghanistan he had boosted troop numbers and continued the aggressive policies of his predecessor.
"We have seen no change in his strategy for peace. He has done nothing for peace in Afghanistan," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told AFP.
"We condemn the award of the Nobel Peace Prize for Obama," he said by telephone from an undisclosed location.
"When Obama was elected president, we were hopeful he would keep his promise to bring change. But he brought no change, he has continued the same old strategy as (President George W.) Bush. Profile: Barack Obama
"He reinforces the war in Afghanistan, he sent more troops to Afghanistan and is considering sending yet more. He has shed Afghan blood and he continues to bleed Afghans and to boost the war here," he said.
Obama won the award less than a year after he took office with the jury hailing his "extraordinary" diplomatic efforts.
Obama, 48, took office in January and has since sought to restore US standing in the world after widespread criticism over the war in Iraq and the superpower's attitude to efforts to control global warming.
He is currently considering a request from his military commanders to send another 40,000 troops to Afghanistan, where a Taliban insurgency is gaining strength, and the death toll of foreign soldiers has surged.
Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai, whose government is supported by the US and NATO allies, welcomed the award as "appropriate".
"His hard work and his new vision on global relations, his will and efforts for creating friendly and good relations at global level and global peace make him the appropriate recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize," Karzai's spokesman Siamak Hirai said.
A prominent Afghan candidate for the prize, women's and human rights activist Sima Samar, told AFP she respected the Nobel committee's decision.
Through her spokesman, Nader Nadery, she said she was happy her candidacy had "brought major recognition to Afghanistan's women" and to her own work.
As Obama considers escalating the US troop presence in Afghanistan, he is expected to meet with senior military advisers again on Friday as speculation is rising that he may not opt for an increased counter-insurgency force.
The senior commander of the more than 100,000 US and NATO troops in Afghanistan, US General Stanley McChrystal, has warned that the war against the Taliban could fail without reinforcements.
Speculation is rising that Obama may see the Taliban, which is spreading its footprint across Afghanistan, posing less of a threat to US security than Al-Qaeda and may choose to concentrate effort on Pakistan instead.
On the streets of Kabul, Afghans said they did not believe Obama's policies had improved the situation in their war-ravaged country.
Indeed, said shopkeeper Ahamd Tawab, "the situation is getting worse here".
Abdul Hakeem, an eighteen-year-old tailor, said: "At least I can say that he is better than George Bush."
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AP source: Obama focusing on al-Qaida, not Taliban
By JENNIFER LOVEN, AP White House Correspondent Jennifer Loven, Ap White House Correspondent Fri Oct 9, 12:25 am ET
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama is prepared to accept some Taliban involvement in Afghanistan's political future and will determine how many more U.S. troops to send to the war based only on keeping al-Qaida at bay, a senior administration official said Thursday.
The sharpened focus by Obama's team on fighting al-Qaida above all other goals, while downgrading the emphasis on the Taliban, comes in the midst of an intensely debated administration review of the increasingly unpopular war.
Aides stress that the president's decision on specific troop levels and the other elements of a revamped approach is still at least two weeks away, and they say Obama has not tipped his hand in meetings that will continue at the White House on Friday.
But the thinking emerging from the strategy formulation portion of the debate offers a clue that Obama would be unlikely to favor a large military increase of the kind being advocated by the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal. McChrystal's troop request is said to include a range of options, from adding as few as 10,000 combat troops to — the general's strong preference — as many as 40,000.
Obama's developing strategy on the Taliban will "not tolerate their return to power," the senior official said in an interview with The Associated Press. But the U.S. would fight only to keep the Taliban from retaking control of Afghanistan's central government — something it is now far from being capable of — and from giving renewed sanctuary in Afghanistan to al-Qaida, the official said.
The official is involved in the discussions and was authorized to speak about them but not to be identified by name because the review is still under way.
Bowing to the reality that the Taliban is too ingrained in Afghanistan's culture to be entirely defeated, the administration is prepared to accept some Taliban role in parts of Afghanistan, the official said. That could mean paving the way for Taliban members willing to renounce violence to participate in a central government — the kind of peace talks advocated by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to little receptiveness from the Taliban. It might even mean ceding some regions of the country to the Taliban.
In Kabul on Thursday, a suicide car bomber detonated his vehicle outside the Indian Embassy and killed 17 people in the second major attack in the city in less than a month. The Taliban claimed responsibility.
Obama has talked positively about reaching out to moderates in the Taliban since he first announced a new Afghanistan strategy in March. It would be akin to, though more complicated than, the successful efforts in Iraq to persuade Sunni Muslim insurgents to cooperate with U.S. forces against al-Qaida there.
Obama has conferred nearly every day this week on the war, and continued that Thursday afternoon with Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
On Wednesday, the eighth anniversary of the war launched by President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Obama and more than a dozen officials in his war council met for three hours to focus on Afghanistan's neighbor, Pakistan. Another of those larger discussions — the fourth of five currently scheduled — is set for Friday, on Afghanistan. That meeting also could feature the group's first discussion of specific troop options.
In the first two of the sessions, which are taking place in the secure Situation Room in the White House basement, Obama kept returning to one question for his advisers: Who is our adversary, the official said.
The answer was al-Qaida, as it was back in March.
Amid changing circumstances in Afghanistan, the renewed determination has big implications for the current war debate.
There now are no more than 100 al-Qaida in Afghanistan. Instead, the U.S. fight in Afghanistan is against the Taliban, now increasingly defined by the Obama team as distinct from al-Qaida. While still dangerous, the Taliban is seen as an indigenous movement with almost entirely local and territorial aims and far less of a threat to the U.S.
Obama's team believes some elements in the Taliban are aligned with al-Qaida, with its transnational reach and aims of attacking the West, but probably not the majority and mostly for tactical rather than ideological reasons, the official said.
"They're not the same type of group," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said. "It's certainly not backed up by any of the intelligence."
That leaves the primary aim in Afghanistan to deny al-Qaida any ability to regroup there as it did when the Taliban was in power before the U.S. ousted them.
A focus on al-Qaida is the driving force behind an approach being advocated by Biden as an alternative to the McChrystal recommendation for a fuller counterinsurgency effort inside Afghanistan.
Biden has argued for keeping the American force there around the 68,000 already authorized, including the 21,000 extra troops Obama ordered earlier this year, but significantly increasing the use of unmanned Predator drones and special forces for the kind of surgical anti-terrorist strikes that have been successful in Pakistan, Somalia and elsewhere.
There also is increasing reluctance among Obama's advisers to commit large additional numbers of troops because of concerns about the impact on already severely strained U.S. forces and the troubled Karzai government.
In Pakistan, however, the administration has been encouraged by the government's recent willingness to aggressively battle extremists inside its borders. Getting additional cooperation from Pakistan is delicate, as the anti-extremist operations remain extremely controversial there and the U.S.-backed civilian government in Islamabad is weak. But the administration sees opportunity there nonetheless.
Clinton has not revealed how she is leaning in the sessions, according to aides. While she is broadly supportive of building up troop levels — although not necessarily in the bigger numbers favored by McChrystal — she also believes economic and other civilian efforts must be prominent parts of the plan too, said the aides, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to detail her views.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, long wary of a large troop presence in Afghanistan, appears to have grown more comfortable with the prospect of a moderate, middle-path increase.
Many lawmakers from Obama's own Democratic Party do not want to see additional U.S. troops sent to Afghanistan. According to a new Associated Press-GfK poll, public support for the war has dropped to 40 percent from 44 percent in July.
Rep. David Obey, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee who led an effort in 2007 to block money for the Iraq war, emerged with deep concerns from an hourlong Capitol Hill briefing Thursday for House lawmakers of both parties by Obama national security adviser James Jones. Obey cited the high cost to the country of a ramped-up war, as well as doubts about the ability of the Afghan and Pakistan governments to be effective partners.
Republicans, meanwhile, are urging Obama to heed the military commanders' calls soon or risk failure. "Unnecessary delay could undermine our opportunity for success," House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio said Thursday.
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Associated Press writers Anne Gearan, Pamela Hess, Matthew Lee and Ann Sanner contributed to this report.
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US forces in Afghanistan leave base after attack
By Todd Pitman, Associated Press Writer – Fri Oct 9, 3:55 am ET
KABUL – U.S. forces have withdrawn from an isolated base in eastern Afghanistan after a fierce insurgent attack last week that marked one of the deadliest battles of the war for U.S. troops, the NATO-led coalition said Friday.
The pullout of troops and equipment from the Kamdesh outpost near the Pakistan border is likely to embolden insurgent fighters in the region. The Taliban claimed "victory" for pushing the forces out and said they had raised their flag above the town.
The NATO coalition said the withdrawal had been planned well before the Oct. 3 battle and was part of a wider strategy outlined by the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who has said for months he plans to shut down such isolated strongholds to focus on more heavily populated areas in an effort to protect civilians.
The Kamdesh base was largely burned down during the fierce gunbattle that left eight Americans, three Afghans and an estimated 100 insurgents dead, according to NATO.
U.S. Master Sgt. Thomas Clementson said coalition forces destroyed what was left of the outpost.
Speaking by telephone from an undisclosed location, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said the U.S. bombarded the outpost with airstrikes after leaving, as well as the local police headquarters.
"This means they are not coming back," Mujahid said. "This is another victory for Taliban. We have control of another district in eastern Afghanistan."
"Right now, Kamdesh is under our control, and the white flag of the Taliban is raised above Kamdesh."
In a statement Friday, the NATO-led force said the move was "part of a previously scheduled transfer."
It said "troops and equipment were moved ... to other locations in eastern Afghanistan in preparation for future assignment to more populated areas."
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Taliban key commander, dozen other killed in W Afghanistan
KABUL, Oct. 9 (Xinhua) -- Afghan forces backed by NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) launched an operation against Taliban hideouts in Herat province in west Afghanistan and killed a key commander along with a dozen of his men, senior military commander in western region said Friday.
"The operation supported by NATO's helicopter gunships launched in Gazara district at 10:00 p.m. local time Thursday and continued until 02:00 a.m. Friday as a result Taliban commander Ghual Yahya Akbari along with his 12 armed men were killed," General Jalandar Shah Behnam told Xinhua.
However, he did not give more details.
Akbari was a leading commander of Taliban militants in west Afghanistan and often carried out attacks against government interests.
Meantime, Taliban outfit which has speed up activities has yet to make any comment.
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Suicide attack kills six in Afghanistan: officials
Fri Oct 9, 4:40 am ET
KHOST, Afghanistan (AFP) – A suicide attack in southeastern Afghanistan killed six guards working for a road construction company, while NATO forces killed 15 Taliban insurgents elsewhere, officials said.
A suicide bomber detonated an explosives-laden vehicle at the Sky construction company in the Jadran district of Paktia province, local governor Abdul Wali Jadran told AFP.
"Six security guards of the company were killed and another three were wounded in the blast," Jadran said.
Separately, NATO and Afghan soldiers killed a Taliban commander and 11 of his men in an overnight operation in western Herat province, said Jalandar Shah Behnam, the Afghan army corp commander for western Afghanistan.
The operation was launched after a tip-off about the whereabouts of the hideout of Ghulam Yahya Akbari, who he described as a local Taliban commander.
"The joint forces killed Akbari and his men in a firefight. We were supported by NATO helicopters but no air strike was needed," he said.
Akbari was a former anti-Soviet fighter who served as Herat major before the Taliban took over the country, after which he joined the anti-Taliban resistance from 1996 until they were overthrown in a US-led invasion in 2001.
He was director of public works for the province in the years immediately following the Taliban's overthrow, but turned against the government three years ago.
In another operation, three militants were killed in a clash that erupted after insurgents attacked a joint Afghan police and Swedish NATO forces patrol in Chahar Bolak district of northern Balkh province, the deputy provincial police chief said.
Eight years after the Taliban regime was ousted, the militants are spreading their web from their southern power base to the relatively peaceful north and west of the country.
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Canadian PM firm on 2011 troop exit from Afghanistan
Fri Oct 9, 1:03 pm ET
OTTAWA (AFP) – Prime Minister Stephen Harper reaffirmed Friday that Canadian combat troops would leave Afghanistan in 2011, but vowed his country would then focus on boosting development and humanitarian efforts.
"Canada's military mission in Afghanistan will end in 2011," Harper told reporters. "And we will not be extending the military mission, period."
By the time the deadline is reached, "we will have been in Afghanistan longer than we will have been in both world wars combined," added the premier.
"I think it is time to transform that mission towards development and humanitarian efforts. That's what we're already doing."
Canada currently has some 2,800 soldiers routing insurgents in volatile Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan as part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.
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High end of troop request for Afghanistan: 60,000-plus
Gen. Stanley McChrystal included an option to send at least 60,000 more US troops to Afghanistan.
By Gordon Lubold | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor from the October 9, 2009 edition
Washington - Gen. Stanley McChrystal's troop request for Afghanistan includes an option to send at least 60,000 additional American forces to buttress the war effort there – a higher troop request than previously known.
General McChrystal, the top US commander in Afghanistan, included in his classified troop request a "menu" of options, with the high number thought to be about 40,000 reinforcements. But Obama administration officials are confirming privately that the high end is more than 60,000.
The higher number, reported first by The Wall Street Journal on Friday, may be McChrystal's straw man – likely to be knocked down but useful as a negotiation point in getting more troops than he might otherwise. Some experts, though, say the military is not prone to playing a numbers game to try to hedge its bets.
"The military doesn't do that as far as I know," says Karin von Hippel, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank in Washington. McChrystal "was doing a very realistic assessment."
The White House debate over how to move forward in Afghanistan continues Friday, with President Obama's top national security team meeting for a fourth time.
The deliberative approach stems in part from "surge" opponents, who question whether thousands of additional forces can achieve US aims there. Vice President Joe Biden, for example, is reportedly urging Mr. Obama to consider a narrower strategy designed only to defeat Al Qaeda and not to commit to a counterinsurgency model requiring so many additional American troops. His arguments, or those akin to them, seem to be swaying many in the White House, who are reading books on lessons of the Vietnam War. A decision is still a week or so away, say administration officials.
The troop request submitted to the White House this week is an "analytical document" that offers Obama a range of options but that nevertheless makes one specific recommendation, said Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell Wednesday.
But Mr. Morrell made an important distinction. McChrystal's war assessment and troop request are based on the assumption that the US should employ a counterinsurgency warfare model. If the White House abandons that approach, it could try to skirt the criticism that Obama is not listening to his field general.
"So if the decisions that are made in the coming weeks are different from [the assumption that the US is pursuing a counterinsurgency strategy], there can be adjustments made to the request," Morrell said.
If the president does decide to send more US troops, it is far from clear when any of them could arrive. Although Army officials have said a handful of brigades – which are 3,500 to 5,000 troops each – are ready to go by year's end, the Pentagon would need many months to muster 40,000 troops, let alone 60,000.
During his confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill this summer, McChrystal said he would need about 18 months to show progress on the ground. The Defense Department's inability to field that many troops until next summer means it would likely take McChrystal longer than that to show progress.
In all, about 278,000 troops are in Afghanistan, including 68,000 American troops, 40,000 allied troops, and 170,000 Afghan National Security Forces, including police and army.
Gen. Dan McNeill, a previous US commander of forces in Afghanistan, said two years ago that to mount a counterinsurgency properly, a country the size of Afghanistan needs a force of about 400,000.
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NATO mandate in Afghanistan extended
KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) -- The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to pass a resolution extending the mandate of NATO-led military forces in Afghanistan for a year, hours after a deadly bombing near the Indian Embassy in Kabul.
The suicide car bomb attack on Thursday left at least 17 people dead, most of them civilians, and 63 wounded.
"I think this is another reminder of the dangers that the Taliban pose to the Afghan population and to the international community in Afghanistan, and the importance of the continued international efforts there," said John Sawers, Britain's ambassador to the world body, after the resolution was passed.
The council provides international legal approval for the deployment of NATO troops to assist in the protection of civilians in armed conflict.
The resolution, however, did not address troop numbers, an issue that has generated controversy since the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, requested an additional 40,000 troops.
The Security Council also condemned the attack, calling for the "perpetrators, organizers, financiers and sponsors of this reprehensible act of terrorism" to be brought to justice.
In addition to extending the mandate, the resolution stressed the need to bolster Afghan security forces to help them become self-sufficient in protecting their country.
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO's new leader, recently announced that NATO forces would begin training Afghan police and increase training of the Afghan National Army.
Some 90,000 international forces are deployed in Afghanistan, with 35,000 serving with NATO and 65,000 with the United States.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the Thursday bombing, saying an Afghan national in a sport utility vehicle carried out the attack.
The bomber had intended to strike the embassy, Indian officials said.
"The suicide attack(er) ... attempted (to go) through one of the embassy gates," Vishnu Prakash, spokesman for India's external affairs ministry, told CNN on Thursday. "The embassy was the target."
The bomb went off about 8:30 a.m., just as offices and shops were opening for the day. The force of the blast shattered some of the embassy's windows, according to Prakash.
The bombing came a year after a similar deadly attack outside the Indian Embassy.
The Thursday attack killed 17 -- most of them civilians -- and 63 were wounded, Interior Ministry spokesman Ezmary Bashary said.
The Taliban said the attack killed 35 people, including high-ranking Indian Embassy officials, as well as international and Afghan police officers.
The blast damaged a security checkpoint outside the the embassy, said staffer J.P. Singh, but "there were no casualties on the Indian side."
The embassy is in the center of Kabul, in a shop-lined street across from the Interior Ministry and several other government buildings.
The explosion shattered car windows and toppled restaurant walls. Paramedics dug through twisted metal and debris, looking for survivors.
A statement from President Hamid Karzai's office called the blast an obvious assault on civilians and said "the perpetrators of this attack and those who planned it were vicious terrorists who killed innocent people for their malicious goals."
About a year ago, another suicide car bomb detonated outside the embassy. Among the 58 people killed in the July 7, 2008, attack were two Indian diplomats and 14 students at a nearby school.
More than 100 were wounded in that blast.
Afghan and Indian officials accused Pakistan's spy agency of involvement in that attack. Pakistan denied the accusation.
India is the sixth largest donor to Afghanistan, providing millions of dollars to help with reconstruction efforts there.
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Obama picks Kan. Army general for top Afghan post
AP via Yahoo! News
TOPEKA, Kan. – President Barack Obama has nominated the commander of Fort Leavenworth to lead U.S. and NATO efforts to train Afghan forces as they fight a resurgent Taliban.
Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV would join the war's top military commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal in Afghanistan if confirmed by the Senate this fall. Caldwell would focus on training local police and army forces.
Caldwell has led the Kansas post since 2007. His nomination was announced Thursday.
McChrystal wants as many as 40,000 additional troops to help develop Afghanistan's fledging military. There are 65,000 U.S. forces in Afghanistan now, along with 40,000 more from NATO countries.
Obama is meeting with top military commanders to assess the request.
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Top Indian diplomat in Afghanistan after bombing
By Maria Golovnina – Fri Oct 9, 3:36 am ET
KABUL (Reuters) – A top Indian diplomat arrived in Kabul on Friday to inspect the site of a huge bomb attack on the Indian embassy a day earlier that killed 17 people and renewed focus on India's tense relations with Pakistan.
The attack, which harmed no Indian embassy staff, occurred as India seeks to retain influence in Afghanistan and control any possibility of an Islamist surge in a region with traditional ties to Islamabad.
India last year accused Pakistan's military spy agency, the ISI, of orchestrating an attack on the Indian embassy that killed 58 people. While New Delhi has made no public accusations in the latest blast, links will most likely be drawn to Pakistan.
In Kabul, Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao was due to visit the embassy and meet top Afghan officials to discuss security, but no details were immediately available.
"The foreign secretary is here for a day to meet Foreign Minister (Rangeen Dadfar) Spanta and visit the embassy," said an embassy spokesman.
Another Indian diplomat told Reuters separately that Rao would meet Afghan President Hamid Karzai to discuss security.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the latest blast which was carried out by a suspected suicide bomber and wounded 76.
Afghanistan itself has uneasy relations with Pakistan, but improving ties between them is now a key part of U.S. President Barack Obama's strategy against regional Islamist militancy.
Pakistan has long seen Afghanistan as a strategic fall-back position in the event of war with India and fears being squeezed between India and a potentially hostile, Indian-backed Afghanistan.
The explosion in the center of Kabul also highlights worsening security in the country as the NATO-led war in Afghanistan enters its ninth year.
This year has already been the deadliest for foreign troops fighting an increasingly fierce Taliban insurgency. The rise in casualties has made many in the West question their countries' involvement.
Washington is embroiled in a debate over whether to boost the size of its force in Afghanistan to confront the Taliban insurgency or to scale back the U.S. mission and focus on a more modest goal of striking at al Qaeda cells.
To prevail in the counter-insurgency fight, U.S. General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, has asked for a minimum 40,000 more troops, two sources told Reuters in Washington.
(Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi; Writing by Maria Golovnina; Editing by Ron Popeski)
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India: Afghanistan's influential ally
Thursday, 8 October 2009 BBC News
India believes its embassy was the target of a bomb attack in the Afghan capital, Kabul. If confirmed, it would be the second attack on the embassy in just over a year. The BBC's Soutik Biswas examines why India, one of Afghanistan's closest allies, might be chosen as a target.
A day before the explosion in Kabul, India hosted an international meeting in the capital, Delhi.
The subject, ironically, was: "Peace and stability in Afghanistan, the way ahead."
But it also pointed to India's growing clout in Afghanistan - it appears to be more than the "soft power" which India's junior foreign minister Shashi Tharoor had once described as the country's "greatest asset" in Afghanistan.
After the fall of the Taliban in 2001 India moved quickly to regain its strategic depth in Afghanistan.
It opened two new consulates in Herat and Mazhar-e-Sharif and reopened two others in Kandahar and Jalalabad which had been shut since 1979.
Leading donor
India also became one of Kabul's leading donors - it has pledged to spend $1.2bn on helping rebuild the country's shattered infrastructure, making it the sixth largest bilateral donor.
Funds have been committed for education, health, power and telecommunications. There has also been money in the form of food aid and help to strengthen governance.
India is building the country's new parliament building, erecting power transmission lines in the north, and building more than 200km (125 miles) of roads.
It is digging tube wells in six provinces, running sanitation projects and medical missions, and working on lighting up 100 villages using solar energy. It is also building a dam and handing out scholarships to young Afghan students.
India has also given at least three Airbus planes to Afghanistan's ailing national airline. Several thousand Indians are engaged in development work.
Work on the projects has also moved briskly.
In January, India completed building the 218km Zaranj-Delaram highway in south-west Afghanistan near the Iranian border.
In May, an India-made power transmission line to Kabul and a sub-station were opened, bringing 24-hour electricity to the capital for the first time in 17 years.
The new parliament building in Kabul and a new dam in Herat should be ready by next year.
'High profile'
Bilateral trade has grown rapidly, reaching $358m in 2007-2008.
"India's reconstruction strategy was designed to win over every sector of Afghan society, to give India a high profile with Afghans, gain the maximum political advantage and, of course, undercut Pakistani influence," says analyst Ahmed Rashid.
Pakistan has had misgivings about increasing Indian influence in Afghanistan since the Taliban were ousted.
"Afghanistan has been a prize that Pakistan and India have fought over directly and indirectly for decades," wrote analyst Robert D Kaplan.
Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf openly accused Afghan President Hamid Karzai of kow-towing to India. Islamabad has also said the Indian consulates in Kandahar and Jalalabad were funnelling arms and money to insurgents in Pakistan's troubled Balochistan region.
All this once provoked Mr Karzai, who went to university in India, to say: "If Pakistan is worried about the role of India, let me assure [you], I have been very specific in telling the Indians that they cannot use Afghan soil for acts of aggression against another country."
Analysts say Pakistan believes its influence is declining in post-war Afghanistan.
"India's success in Afghanistan stirred up a hornet's nest in Islamabad which came to believe that India was 'taking over Afghanistan'," says Ahmed Rashid in his book Descent Into Chaos.
Changing fortunes
Local Taliban are blamed for attacking and kidnapping Indians in the country.
There have been explosions and grenade attacks on the Indian consulates in Herat and Jalalabad.
In January 2008, two Indian and 11 Afghan security personnel were killed and several injured in an attack on the Zaranj-Delaram road.
In November 2005, a driver with India's state-run Border Roads Organisation was abducted and killed by the Taliban while working on the road.
There have been other attacks on Indians too.
In 2003, an Indian national working for a construction company was killed by unknown attackers in Kabul's Taimani district.
In 2006, an Indian telecommunications engineer was abducted and killed in the southern province of Zabul.
India's fortunes in Afghanistan have swung back and forth for much of the past two decades
A staunch ally of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, India supported the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.
This decision made India hugely unpopular among Afghans.
A decade later, it continued to back the Communist-regime of President Najibullah, while Pakistan threw its entire support behind the ethnic Pashtun mujahideen warlords, particularly the Islamist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who were fighting Soviet troops.
So when the Taliban swept to power and put an end to a bloody civil conflict among warlords, India was left without any influence in the country.
It ended up backing the Northern Alliance, which controlled territory north of the Shomali plains near Kabul.
Pakistan, on the other hand, backed and recognised the pariah Taleban regime and gained further strategic depth in the region.
Afghanistan's interior ministry said the 2008 attack on the Indian embassy was carried out "in co-ordination and consultation with an active intelligence service in the region".
It was clearly alluding to Pakistani agents, who have been blamed for a number of attacks in Afghanistan.
We may never know precisely who carried out the attacks.
But the bombing points to the "Great Game" still being played out between neighbours seeking to gain influence in Afghanistan.
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Brown to Set Out U.K. Troop Position on Afghanistan Next Week
By Kitty Donaldson
Oct. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Prime Minister Gordon Brown will make a statement on Afghanistan to Parliament on Oct. 14 as speculation mounts that he ready to commit more British troops.
“The prime minister is open-minded on whether more troops are needed in Afghanistan and whether we should send more troops,” his spokesman Simon Lewis told reporters in London today. “Downing Street has not given any number in terms of any possible troop uplift.”
Newspapers including The Times of London have reported that the 9,000-strong U.K. contingent in Afghanistan, the second- largest after the U.S., will be boosted by about 500. Brown’s spokesman has refused to confirm or deny those reports.
U.S. President Barack Obama is reviewing strategy in Afghanistan and is under pressure from his military commanders to send thousands more troops to help fight the Taliban insurgency. Brown says any increase in U.K. troop numbers is contingent on there being enough resources and equipment to support them and NATO allies doing more to share the burden.
To contact the reporter on this story: Kitty Donaldson in London at kdonaldson1@bloomberg.net
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Clinton to talk Iran, Afghanistan on Russia trip
By Jeff Mason – Fri Oct 9, 1:02 am ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Iran and Afghanistan will dominate talks by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton next week on a trip to Britain and Russia that could also spur progress on a new nuclear arms reduction treaty with Moscow.
Clinton leaves on Friday for a European tour that includes a stop in Switzerland to commemorate an accord between rivals Armenia and Turkey as well as a visit to Dublin and Belfast to support peace in Northern Ireland.
The meatiest portion of the trip will be in Russia.
Clinton, who has sought to "reset" U.S. ties with the Kremlin, said she was encouraged by Moscow's role in talks with Britain, China, France, the United States and Germany -- dubbed the P5+1 -- on curbing Iran's nuclear ambitions.
"The cooperation that we are seeing from our Russian partners in the P5+1 context is very encouraging," she told reporters on Thursday, adding Iran would be a topic next week.
"We will certainly be looking at the options that we have to explore going forward from what was a positive but not conclusive meeting in Geneva," she said.
The six world powers recently held talks with Iran in Geneva, which officials described as constructive. Russia has been traditionally reluctant to impose sanctions on Iran.
Several other issues will also feature in Clinton's talks with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Analysts believe a recent U.S. decision to revamp plans for a missile defense shield in Europe will aid both nations in working together on a host of issues.
"The 'reset' is happening," said Steven Pifer, a Russia expert at the Washington-based Brookings Institution.
"While there are still a lot of difficult issues in the U.S.-Russia relations, at this point you have some positives that weren't there at the end of 2008."
Many areas still rankle.
A State Department official said Clinton would broach human rights and Russia's treatment of Georgia, with which it fought a five-day war last year. Moscow recognized South Ossetia and another rebel province, Abkhazia, as independent states.
Clinton will also press for more help in Afghanistan after Russia recently allowed the United States to fly weapons, hardware and personnel across its territory to that country, where insurgent violence has reached its highest levels of the eight-year war.
"The Russians could provide more assistance to Afghanistan including ... in the form of weapons for the Afghan army, training, counternarcotics," the official said.
ARMS IN RUSSIA, PEACE IN NORTHERN IRELAND
The top U.S. diplomat hopes to advance talks to replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expires on December 5. President Barack Obama and Medvedev agreed on the outlines of a deal in July, but several hurdles may make it difficult to finish by the December deadline.
The secretary will also fly to Kazan in Russia's Republic of Tatarstan to illustrate the U.S. desire to engage with Russians across the country.
Before going to Russia, Clinton, whose husband, Bill Clinton, took a major role as president in the push for peace in Northern Ireland, will visit Belfast and Dublin.
The trip, her first there as secretary of state, shows the former first lady's commitment to resolving remaining issues related to Northern Ireland's peace process, the State Department official said.
Northern Ireland has enjoyed relative peace since a 1998 peace deal between pro-British Protestants and minority Roman Catholics who now share power in a regional assembly. But hard-line splinter groups remain a threat and dissident republicans have stepped up attacks on police.
"I think this is sort of the Clinton family signature foreign policy issue," said Heather Conley, a European affairs expert at the CSIS think tank.
Clinton will also meet with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in London to discuss Afghanistan and Iran, while reassuring some anxious Britons about the strength of the "special relationship" between their two nations.
"These consultations will underscore the strength of the UK-U.S. relationship and the continuous high-level engagement we enjoy with our friends and allies," Assistant Secretary Phil Gordon told reporters.
(Editing by Peter Cooney)
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Emerging Goal for Afghanistan: Weaken, Not Vanquish, Taliban
By Scott Wilson Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, October 9, 2009
As it reviews its Afghanistan policy for the second time this year, the Obama administration has concluded that the Taliban cannot be eliminated as a political or military movement, regardless of how many combat forces are sent into battle.
The Taliban and the question of how the administration should regard the Islamist movement have assumed a central place in the policy deliberations underway at the White House, according to administration officials participating in the meetings.
Based on a stark assessment by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and six hours of debate among the senior national security staff members so far, the administration has established guidelines on its strategy to confront the group.
The goal, senior administration officials said Thursday, is to weaken the Taliban to the degree that it cannot challenge the Afghan government or reestablish the haven it provided for al-Qaeda before the 2001 U.S. invasion. Those objectives appear largely consistent with McChrystal's strategy, which he says "cannot be focused on seizing terrain or destroying insurgent forces" but should center on persuading the population to support the government.
"The Taliban is a deeply rooted political movement in Afghanistan, so that requires a different approach than al-Qaeda," said a senior administration official who has participated in the meetings but has not advocated a particular strategy.
Some inside the White House have cited Hezbollah, the armed Lebanese political movement, as an example of what the Taliban could become. Hezbollah is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. government, but the group has political support within Lebanon and participates, sometimes through intimidation, in the political process.
Some White House advisers have noted that although Hezbollah is a source of regional instability, it is not a threat to the United States. The senior administration official said the Hezbollah example has not been cited specifically to President Obama and has been raised only informally outside the Situation Room meetings.
"People who study Islamist movements have made the connection," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Obama identified al-Qaeda as the chief target of his Afghanistan policy in March, when he announced that he would dispatch an additional 21,000 U.S. troops to the region, and his advisers have emphasized during the policy review that the administration views al-Qaeda and the Taliban as philosophically distinct organizations. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Thursday that "there is clearly a difference between" the Taliban and "an entity that, through a global, transnational jihadist network, would seek to strike the U.S. homeland."
"I think the Taliban are, obviously, exceedingly bad people that have done awful things," Gibbs said. "Their capability is somewhat different, though, on that continuum of transnational threats."
While some White House officials are advocating a narrower approach in Afghanistan focused first on al-Qaeda, some senior military leaders have endorsed McChrystal's call to vastly expand the war effort against insurgents, including those from the Taliban. The general is seeking tens of thousands of additional troops to carry out his strategy, and Obama will take up the specifics of that request for the first time Friday during a meeting at the White House with his national security team.
In his 66-page assessment of the war, McChrystal warns that the next 12 months will probably determine whether U.S. and international forces can regain the initiative from the Taliban.
McChrystal, whom Obama named in May as commander of the 100,000 U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan, writes that "most insurgents are Afghans" and "are directed by a small number of Afghan senior leaders based in Pakistan." He says in the report that the Taliban operates a "shadow government" that "actively seeks to control the population and displace the national government and traditional power structures."
But weakening the Taliban politically, as McChrystal and the emerging White House strategy calls for, has been complicated by recent events on the ground.
For example, McChrystal's strategy relies on building an effective Afghan government as an alternative to the Taliban. But that goal has been undermined by widespread allegations of electoral fraud appearing to benefit President Hamid Karzai. Such allegations have raised questions about the legitimacy of his government.
At the same time, McChrystal is redeploying troops to towns and cities to better protect the Afghan population. The decision effectively leaves large stretches of territory to the Taliban, made up of a variety of groups united by an opposition to the international military presence. McChrystal argues in his assessment that securing the population and building a viable political alternative to the Taliban are at times more important than holding territory in such a counterinsurgency campaign.
Asked how many troops would be needed to weaken the Taliban to an acceptable degree, the senior administration official said, "That's the question. That's the sweet spot we're looking for." About 68,000 U.S. troops are already scheduled to be on the ground in Afghanistan by the end of the year.
Obama has informed staff members and congressional leaders that he does not contemplate reducing the U.S. military presence there in the near term, and even those within the administration who argue against additional combat forces support maintaining the number of troops already there.
Saying that additional troops would provide the Taliban with fodder for further propaganda, Vice President Biden and some other senior White House officials have pushed an alternative. They have outlined a plan that would maintain current combat troop levels, speed up training of Afghan forces, intensify drone strikes against al-Qaeda operatives and help the nuclear-armed government of Pakistan counter the Taliban within its borders.
"If you accept as a premise that you will not eradicate every last element of the Taliban, preventing it from providing sanctuary to al-Qaeda or threatening the government will still require resources," the official said. "That's why we're not talking about only a counterterrorism campaign."
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A To-Do List for Afghanistan
By Turki al-Faisal The Washington Post Friday, October 9, 2009 12:00 AM
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- As President Obama considers what to do about Afghanistan, it is important that he hear perspectives from all sides concerned about that critical region. In Riyadh, it is clear that the Taliban is weak in Afghanistan. Their record in government is well remembered by Afghans, including large numbers of Pashtuns, all of whom suffered greatly at the hands of Mohammad Omar's Taliban cohorts.
The Taliban is not a cohesive or uniform political party with a chain of command and a political manifesto. Rather, any disaffected, rebellious or aggrieved Afghan who overtly opposes the government by military means and otherwise has come to be identified as a member of the Taliban.
Osama bin Laden has become not only the symbol of opposition to world order in general and to the United States in particular, but he is looked upon by disaffected youths -- and not just Muslims -- as an indomitable, untouchable Robin Hood. Even if he no longer organizes and executes terrorist acts, the fact that he survives reinforces that appeal every day and adds to his charisma. Bringing him to account is a necessity, whether by capture or by death.
So, what should the Obama administration do?
- Overcome the misguided handling of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who was initially shunned and denigrated by the administration, forcing him to reach out to unsavory politicos and "warlords" to win the recent elections. If there were a viable opposition to Karzai, then you could undermine him. But there is not.
Abdullah Abdullah, Karzai's main opponent in the election, is a Tajik, and he will not be accepted to lead the country by either the Pashtuns or the Uzbeks, the two largest components of Afghanistan's tribal structure. Abdullah's "Westerly ways" further undermined his credibility among nationalists. Once the commission investigating the recent election fraud declares its conclusions, the United States should move on and concentrate on setting benchmarks for Karzai, especially on development projects.
- Change the media theme from attacking the Taliban and calling them the terrorists to concentrating on al-Qaeda and "foreign terrorists." By removing the stigma of terrorism from the Taliban, you can pursue meaningful negotiations with them. Mohammad Omar has never enjoyed the full support of Pashtuns. He is a lowly figure in tribal terms, and he is blamed by many of them for the calamity that has befallen Afghanistan. Reaching out to tribal leaders is what will move negotiations.
- Fix the Durand Line. As long as this border drawn by the British is not fixed, Pakistan and Afghanistan will be at loggerheads and always suspicious of one another. A joint development project for the border area, announced by both Pakistan and Afghanistan, and supported by the United States and the world community, will direct people's eyes to the future rather than the past.
- Convene a meeting of the security-intelligence departments of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Russia, China and Saudi Arabia to devise ways of eliminating al-Qaeda's leadership. China, Russia and Saudi Arabia have a long-standing vendetta with al-Qaeda and will contribute intelligence and other resources to rid the world of this cancer.
- Push India and Pakistan to fix Kashmir. That is doable, once both countries see a determined effort by the United States in that direction. Both countries are beholden to the United States -- Pakistan for the military and financial support it receives and India for the nuclear energy agreement it has signed with Washington.
- Take on the heroin trade. The challenge can be met by a program that America used in the 1960s in Turkey, where opium poppies were extensively grown and processed into heroin. The United States bought the entire crop from the farmers directly and allowed them to plant alternative crops for their livelihood. There is no more heroin trade in Turkey.
Resolution, reflection and determination are the key characteristics of Obama's personality. He should stick with them. As in all difficult issues, when people see these qualities on display, most of them will be persuaded to follow.
When the Pashtuns, among whom bin Laden hides, see the determination to get him, they will calculate differently from when they see that nobody cares. When Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari see resolution in Obama's demands for benchmarks and for settling the border dispute between their countries, they will adhere. When India and Pakistan feel the strength of an American push on Kashmir, they will come along.
When Russia, China and Saudi Arabia sense a seriousness of purpose on eliminating the al-Qaeda leadership, they will gladly provide whatever support they can. When the U.S. financial commitments on development are met, the people of Afghanistan will regain their confidence in America's word.
And when President Obama's advisers or interlocutors tell him that he can't do this or that, he should just say to them: Yes, we can.
Prince Turki al-Faisal was the longtime director general of Saudi Arabia's intelligence service, the Al Mukhabarat Al A'amah. He was also the Saudi ambassador to the United States.
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Obama could face party revolt on Afghanistan
Key Democrats warn that if the president decides to send more troops to Afghanistan, they might oppose it, perhaps even moving to cut off funds for the buildup.
By James Oliphant and Richard Simon October 9, 2009 The Los Angeles Times
Reporting from Washington - Key Democrats on Capitol Hill warned Thursday that a decision by President Obama to send more troops to Afghanistan could trigger an uprising within the party, possibly including an attempt to cut off funds for the buildup.
"I believe we need to more narrowly focus our efforts and have a much more achievable and targeted policy in that region," said Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. Otherwise, he said, "we run the risk of repeating the mistakes we made in Vietnam and the Russians made in Afghanistan."
Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), an influential voice on military affairs who is also on the committee, predicted a fight on the House floor if a request to fund a troop increase came to a vote.
"The public is worn out by war," Murtha said. "The troops, no matter what the military says, are exhausted."
Obey's and Murtha's comments were the strongest suggestions from congressional Democrats that Obama could face significant opposition if he follows Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's recommendation to send up to 40,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, in addition to the 68,000 already there, as part of a counterinsurgency strategy to keep the Taliban from regaining power. The lawmakers' statements came on a day when the president's national security advisor, James Jones, briefed House members on the situation.
A schism erupting among Democrats would present Obama with his first serious backlash within his party. That possibility may be a reason he reached out to congressional Republicans at a White House meeting this week.
Obama is in the midst of reviewing his administration's policy in Afghanistan. In addition to McChrystal's call for a troop buildup, options include expanding the Afghan army and narrowing the war effort to focus on Al Qaeda. Already, the administration says it is regarding the Taliban as a local movement, while Al Qaeda is a global threat to the United States.
Congressional Republicans have pressed Obama to approve McChrystal's troop request, casting the decision as a test of the president's commitment to the war.
But whereas Obey and Murtha have been openly critical of the idea, most Democrats have kept their views more closely held, saying they would await the president's decision before expressing an opinion.
During the George W. Bush administration, congressional Democrats attempted to use the budget to change the course of the Iraq war. They failed, with some Democrats joining Republicans to ensure that the troops remained fully funded. With a Democrat now in the White House, a public row with Congress would seem even less likely, unless the situation in Afghanistan deteriorated further.
In June, several war critics in the House tried to force the administration to produce an exit strategy. The measure failed, with some Democrats and almost all Republicans voting against it.
Obama is likely to need GOP support if his Afghan policy faces another vote. Murtha conceded as much Thursday.
"The House right now, I'm convinced, will vote for a supplemental [funding bill] for whatever he asks for," he said. "It won't be easy. And it may not have a majority of Democrats."
Still, Obama can count on some Democratic support, said Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks).
"If Bush was still in power, there would be much less support. We trust Obama that if we give him resources to accomplish a particular mission in a particular way, that's what he will do," Sherman said.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said that his caucus would support Obama's decision. Still, a troop expansion could encounter fierce criticism.
Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is traveling to Afghanistan next week to review the situation. If he reaches a different conclusion than Obama, aides say, Kerry will use his committee to push the administration to explain itself.
Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, has also expressed concern about a troop buildup. But this week, Levin said he hoped the president would find a compromise that would satisfy most lawmakers.
"I don't think anybody wants to preclude the possibility that there could be strong bipartisan support for that decision before it's made," Levin said.
Aides close to the Democratic leadership say it is unlikely to coalesce around a single position.
Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.), a member of both the Senate foreign relations and intelligence committees, has emerged as a fierce critic of McChrystal's recommendation. Feingold favors a timetable for withdrawal and says if Obama decides to send more troops, Congress should contest it.
joliphant@latimes.com
richard.simon@latimes.com
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U.N. Infighting Threatens to Upstage Afghan War
By Thalif Deen IPS-Inter Press Service
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 8 (IPS) - The increasingly deadly battle between Western military forces and Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan is on the verge of being upstaged by a growing political brawl between two senior U.N. officials overseeing the battle-ravaged South Asian nation.
"The accusations that the United Nations has covered up, or that I asked for fraud to be covered up, are patently false," an indignant U.N. special representative for Afghanistan Kai Eide said Thursday.
"I intend to deal openly with all these allegations against the United Nations and myself relating to fraud and bias, at the appropriate time," he added.
Eide, a Norwegian diplomat and a onetime ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), did not provide a time-frame for his rebuttal.
The charges have come mostly from Peter Galbraith, Eide's deputy and a U.S. national, who was fired from his job last week by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
The firing was prompted primarily because Galbraith called for the annulment of the presidential election, which was held over a five-day period beginning Aug. 20, due to fraud and ballot stuffing.
The two frontrunners are incumbent President Hamid Karzai and his closest rival Abdullah Abdullah, a former Afghan foreign minister.
The final results are expected to be announced shortly.
Galbraith, who has accused Eide of favouring Karzai, is also reported to have proposed the setting up of a transitional government marginalising the two presidential candidates.
"Afghanistan is already a lost cause," an Asian diplomat told IPS, "It's a pity that the victims of this internal conflict are going to be Afghans who are caught up in a massive fraud not of their making."
At a press conference Wednesday, Craig Jenness, director of the U.N.'s Electoral Assistance Division, told reporters that the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) in Kabul is investigating some 2,500 complaints submitted by candidates at the election.
He said the ECC is also considering information provided by the U.N. Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) and compiled by U.N. staffers on the ground and at polling booths.
At last count, 100 of the 358 "suspicious" ballot boxes remain to be examined both by the ECC and the Independent Election Commission (IEC).
Eide, a Norwegian diplomat, also blasted the media for its "repeated attacks" on him and his conduct.
He said the accusations against him range from being partial in this election process to ordering his staff to conceal fraud by allegedly asking them to suppress reports.
"My silence is now being exploited, to a point where these allegations are impeding the ongoing election process. This is unacceptable," he declared.
"I have been motivated by my determination to make every effort to bring the election process to a conclusion," he added.
He said an audit of suspicious ballot boxes, which is being undertaken by the IEC amd the ECC in the presence of monitors and representatives of candidates, is nearing its end.
"We need to allow both these bodies, which were created under the laws of this country, to conclude their investigations, identify fraud, and deliver a credible result in the next few days," Eide added.
He also said that the UNAMA is clearly mandated by Security Council Resolution 1868 (2009) "to support the electoral process but not to interfere in it".
"This has been, and remains, the basis of all my efforts," he declared.
So far, Eide has had strong backing from the United Nations, which is standing by its man.
"What Kai Eide did, what he was supposed to do and what he did very faithfully, is to side with the institutions [in Afghanistan]," Wolfgang Weisbrod-Weber, head of the Asia and Middle East Division at the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, told reporters Wednesday.
"This is a line we very much support... to trust the institutions and to trust the mechanisms that were in place to detect fraud. We'll see where the chips fall," he added.
Vijaya Nambiar, the secretary-general's chief of staff, was quoted as saying that Galbraith received his marching orders because he called for an "unconstitutional government".
Asked to confirm, Edmond Mullet, assistant secretary-general for peacekeeping, told reporters "that was one of various reasons".
Galbraith wanted to close 1,500 to 6,900 polling stations, as they were in volatile regions. But in the end, only about 500 were closed.
Asked if the United Nations will eventually render a verdict on whether or not the presidential election was valid, U.N. spokesperson Michele Montas told reporters: "It is not for the U.N. to do that. It's for the people."
She also pointed out that the United Nations was not monitoring elections.
"The United Nations will neither agree nor disagree. We are just supporting the electoral process and the electoral institutions," Montas said.
She said there were additional monitors from the 27-member European Union (EU) and other international bodies "that will say whether they feel the election was free and fair".
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1,000 US troops in Afghanistan costs $1 bn per annum
Press Trust of India October 09, 2009
Washington - Sending 1,000 troops to Afghanistan would cost the US exchequer $1 billion per annum, the White House has said, amidst report that the American commanders on the ground have asked for 40,000 more troops for this South Asian country.
"I think the figure that I saw is for every thousand troops per year, it's a billion dollars," White House spokesman, Robert Gibbs, told reporters at his daily press briefing, adding that no decision has been taken on the sending additional troops to Afghanistan.
In March this year, US President Barack Obama had announced sending an additional 21,000 troops and trainers to the region. But with the Taliban gaining momentum, General Steanley McChrystal, Commander of the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, has sought an additional 40,000 troops.
This if sanctioned, would raise the number of US forces in Afghanistan to more than 100,000; and as per Gibb's calculation would incur an additional financial burden of $40 billion per annum.
Gibbs said Obama would discuss today the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan and also the question of additional resources.
Cost would be a factor when deciding on sending additional resources to Afghanistan, he said in response to a question.
"Well, it's something we certainly have to be mindful of. We don't have unlimited money. We certainly don't have unlimited troops," Gibbs said.
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Ancient art brings new hope for war-weary Afghanistan
by Phil Hazlewood Fri Oct 9, 3:39 am ET
KABUL (AFP) – In his spacious office at the National Museum of Afghanistan, overlooking the bombed-out shell of the former royal palace in Kabul, Omara Khan Massoudi draws heavily on a cigarette and relaxes into a sofa.
He has just spent more than an hour showing local dignitaries a new exhibition of a selection of some 2,000 Afghan artefacts which were illegally smuggled out of the country during three decades of conflict and civil war.
Their return, he said, was a "good beginning".
"We lost a lot of things from our museum and from illegal excavation in different parts of Afghanistan. This is very important," said Massoudi, who was appointed the museum's director-general in 2002, after the fall of the Taliban.
Along a gloomy corridor and up a grand staircase, visitors peered into glass cabinets of stone carvings dating back 10,000 to 15,000 years, copper-blue jugs and dishes, faded coins and light terracotta-coloured Buddhist period pots.
Taking pride of place in the two rooms set aside for the exhibition is a copper oil burner from the Ghaznavid empire of the 10th to 12th century, fashioned into the shape of a magnificent plumed peacock.
No less remarkable than the craftsmanship on display is the story of the antiquities' return to Afghanistan, known more recently for destruction and human suffering than thousands of years of artistic creativity and innovation.
Three years ago, customs officials stopped smugglers trying to take the looted goods through British airports, sparking a huge international effort to trace their origin, catalogue and repatriate them.
In all, 2,098 pieces weighing 3.5 tonnes were recovered and returned earlier this year. Half belong to the pre-Islamic period before the seventh century and most were illegally excavated and smuggled out of the country, said Massoudi.
"Each piece is priceless," he added.
Britain's ambassador to Afghanistan Mark Sedwill, who attended this week's unveiling, said the antiquities' return was a "good day for Afghanistan" and an important step in the country's development.
"Afghanistan still faces an enormous challenge, as we all know," Sedwill told dignitaries.
"But today we have the opportunity to put back in place one of the building blocks of Afghanistan's future -- that's rebuilding Afghanistan's cultural heritage."
About 70 percent of the museum's 100,000-piece collection was looted by mujahideen fighters during the civil war of the 1990s and exhibits were damaged by rocket fire.
The Taliban, who in 2001 destroyed the giant carved Buddhas in Bamiyan, central Afghanistan, also smashed the museum's pre-Islamic Buddha figures, deeming them un-Islamic.
But Afghanistan -- a crossroads of civilisations on the ancient Silk Road influenced by centuries of trade, invasion and migration -- is not an isolated case.
Iraq saw thousands of ancient artefacts, some dating back to the birth of civilisation, looted from museums or destroyed in the anarchic aftermath of the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
The UN's heritage body UNESCO described the situation as a "disaster".
Interpol's database of stolen works of art and cultural property is 34,000-strong, with regular reports of theft and disappearances from across the world.
A raft of international conventions exists to prevent the illicit trafficking in cultural property, with the focus on theft prevention and identification of stolen goods through awareness campaigns with museums and art dealers.
A "red list," similar to that for endangered animals, exists and UNESCO is pushing better cataloguing as the key to fighting the black market trade and making detection easier.
But Amareswar Galla, chairman of the International Council of Museums' cultural task force, said more still needs to be done.
"Stopping the illicit trafficking in cultural property can't be done by one country. Two countries can't do it. We all have to do it," he told AFP in Kabul.
Impoverished Afghanistan in particular needs more help to protect its rich array of archaeological sites from illegal excavation and trafficking of artefacts, he said.
Nevertheless, the return of the Afghan treasures is "extremely significant," he said.
"It sends the message out that the motto is 'no' to illicit trafficking and in order to do that we need to promote repatriation and know that objects are being repatriated," he added.
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Afghanistan's Virtual Museum
By Isia Jasiewicz | NEWSWEEK Oct 9, 2009 From the magazine issue dated Oct 19, 2009
Despite what you might think from its name, the Museum of Afghan Civilization will be the very model of a modern major museum when it opens in January. It will be housed in an angular, postmodern building, designed by France's Yona Friedman. It will display the art of Afghanistan from prehistory to today, with works collected from all over the world. And it will have a nifty Web site, complete with high-definition reproductions and interactive information guides. What the museum won't have is a front door. Or a parking lot. Or a cafeteria. That's because the museum is the first designed as a virtual building only.
Why put the objects in an imaginary building, instead of just creating a Web site full of pictures? Pascale Bastide, president of the Paris-based association Afghanculture, says she hopes that hiring an architect will imbue her project (afghanculturemuseum.org) with the gravitas of a traditional museum, as well as make viewers feel as though they are actively traveling to a museum rather than passively seeing reproductions of its artwork. Bastide is quick to admit that "nothing replaces real contact with an objet d'art," but the site's interactive approach comes close. Visitors will encounter a digital image of Friedman's design, set against its imagined location: the Bamiyan caves, where two monumental Buddha statues had stood since the fourth century A.D. before being destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. Viewers can spin the building to view it from all sides, then click to enter multimedia "pavilions," which can be organized chronologically, geographically, or thematically. Friedman's design will serve as the shell. The interior will change just like in a real-world museum, where curators erect temporary walls according to an exhibition's needs. Bricks and mortar aside, the Museum of Afghan Civilization will operate like a typical art institution. The Web site will have a director (Bastide) and a team of curators (a Princeton professor, a French museum conservator, an Afghan archeologist, and an Afghan linguist). Oh, and there's also a designer with a background in videogames.
Afghanculturemuseum.org obviously isn't the only museum with a Web site, but its purely virtual form could affect the traditional museum world. For one thing, it all but eliminates the debate over whether a museum's priority should be to display artworks or preserve them. Today's digital reproduction technologies are generally harmless to the art (unlike the light and air in a museum), so they allow the public to see works otherwise accessible only to those with white gloves and doctorates.
Virtual museums still take money to launch; Bastide is looking for $10 million in private and government funding. They won't make the MoMAs of the world obsolete, either. But their lower maintenance costs and sustainable ap-proach to exhibitions might mean few-er traditional museums created in the future. That said, Bastide hopes that one day, in a stable, democratic Afghanistan, a physical Museum of Afghan Civilization might be built. But for now, the virtual approach will allow the museum to live—without having to exist.
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Suicide bomb kills at least 49 in Pakistan market
by Lehaz Ali Lehaz Ali – October 9, 2009
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) – A massive suicide car bomb ripped through a packed market in the Pakistani city of Peshawar on Friday, killing at least 49 people and injuring over 100 in a region beset by Taliban attacks.
The blast, which hit around midday, left charred corpses strewn in a shopping area in the city's main Khyber Bazaar, with cars reduced to burning wreckage and a colourful city bus destroyed and flung on its side.
Interior Minister Rehman Malik blamed the Taliban and said the attack could force the military to bring forward a planned operation to wipe out Islamist militant strongholds in the northwest tribal region bordering Afghanistan.
"They are compelling us to launch the operation in South Waziristan early. We will take a decision on the operation against terrorists over the next few days," he told reporters in Islamabad.
It was the sixth bombing in Peshawar in four months and comes as the Pakistani Taliban have vowed to increase attacks to avenge the killing of their leader Baitullah Mehsud in a US drone strike in August.
"We have 49 dead bodies brought to the hospital. Three of them are women and seven are children," said Doctor Zafar Iqbal, the registrar of Peshawar's main Lady Reading Hospital. All of the dead were civilians, he added.
Senior provincial minister Bashir Ahmad Bilour confirmed the death toll, saying that more than 100 people were injured in the blast. About 50 people remain in serious condition, doctors said.
At the scene, the blackened bodies of victims lay on the street as injured shoppers in torn and blood-soaked clothing were helped from the rubble.
At least 12 shops were completely destroyed in the blast, while passers-by desperately tried to free survivors from a city bus flung onto its side.
Bomb disposal squad chief Shafqat Malik told reporters that police evidence suggested the suicide bomber had rammed a car -- with explosives and ammunition packed into its side panels -- into the crowded bus.
"There was blood and pieces of human body everywhere. People were crying in pain for help," said Miskeen Khan, who received shrapnel wounds to his face.
Ghulam Nabbi, a shopkeeper at the Khyber Bazaar, told AFP: "It was like somebody threw me out of my shop. For some time my mind stopped working, but then I started running to a safe place."
Police official Mohammad Karim estimated the size of the bomb at about 100 kilogrammes (220 pounds).
"The target was civilians. The Taliban want to pressure government by such attacks, but we will never bow down to them. Operations will continue until the last militant is eliminated," provincial minister Bilour told AFP.
Pakistan's military is wrapping up a fierce offensive against Taliban rebels in the northwestern Swat valley launched in April, and are poised to start a new operation in the semi-autonomous tribal belt on the Afghan border.
The offensives, coupled with an increase in drone attacks by US aircraft targeting Islamists in the northwest, have provoked a furious reaction from the Taliban militia based in the tribal belt. Related article: US Afghan strategy
Despite reports of fierce infighting among the militants after the death of Baitullah Mehsud, the Taliban appear to have regrouped, analysts say, with new commander Hakimullah Mehsud keen to show his strength.
"Increasing militant attacks now reflect that they have found space to regroup and launch fresh attacks," said Ishtiaq Ahmed, an international relations professor at Islamabad's Quaid-i-Azam University.
Peshawar is the main city in the northwest and has been a frequent target of militants linked to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
Pakistan, on the frontline of the United States' war on Al-Qaeda, has been hit by a wave of bombings that have killed nearly 2,200 people across the nuclear-armed country over the past two years. Chrono of major attacks
Friday's blast is the deadliest in Pakistan since March this year, when a suicide bomber attacked a packed mosque in the northwestern town of Jamrud at prayer time, killing around 50 people.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on Monday on a UN office in Islamabad that killed five aid workers.
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