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Karzai rival calls on supporters to stay calm
By Maria Golovnina – Tue Sep 1, 8:03 am ET
KABUL (Reuters) – Afghan President Hamid Karzai's main rival Abdullah Abdullah staged a rally of village elders on Tuesday to denounce fraud in last month's election and said he was doing all he could to keep his supporters off the streets.
Afghan tribal leaders call for Karzai to quit after detailing election fraud
James Hider in Kabul Times Online (UK) September 1, 2009
In a crowded conference hall in Kabul, hundreds of angry tribal elders and local officials from southern Afghanistan gathered today to protest against what they dubbed massive electoral fraud that robbed entire
Accusation of Brazen Ballot-Stuffing Casts New Doubt on Karzai
By DEXTER FILKINS The New York Times September 2, 2009
KABUL, Afghanistan — Just a week before this country’s presidential election, the leaders of a southern Afghan tribe called Bariz gathered to make a bold decision: they would abandon the incumbent and local favorite
Spotlight on Afghan vote fraud squad
by Jennie Matthew – Tue Sep 1, 1:04 am ET
KABUL (AFP) – The credibility of Afghanistan's elections could depend on a small team working day and night inside two heavily guarded peach villas in a wealthy Kabul suburb.
Experts: Elections Last Chance to Resolve Afghan Conflict
By Ravi Khanna VOA News Washington 01 September 2009
The slow tally of Afghanistan's election returns and the mounting accusations of fraud are raising questions about credibility of the August 20 election. Analysts in Washington warn if the election is widely viewed as illegitimate
Poll Fraud Probe Will Decide Runoff
By Lal Aqa Sherin*
KABUL, Sep 1 (IPS) - Partial results in Afghanistan's presidential polls tend to favour President Hamid Karzai with Abdullah Abdullah, former foreign minister, trailing in second place. Kabul lawmaker Ramazan Basherdost
More Evidence of Helmand Poll Fraud
As the vote count trickles on, complaints have grown to a flood.
Institute for War & Peace Reporting By IWPR reporters (ARR No. 334, 01-Sep-09)
“I know there was no fraud in Nad Ali,” said Hajji Dastagir, a local candidate in Afghanistan’s August 20 elections. “No ballot boxes were stuffed at the polling centres. The election workers brought boxes in that were already filled.”
Envoys to meet in Paris to discuss situations in Afghanistan, Pakistan
Xinhua www.chinaview.cn 2009-09-01
PARIS - Western envoys and representatives from Afghanistan and Pakistan will meet here on Wednesday to discuss the situations in the two countries, the French Foreign Ministry said on Monday.
Years wasted in Afghan effort, UN official says
By Jason Straziuso, Associated Press Writer
KABUL – The international community has wasted years in Afghanistan by not coordinating its efforts, a top U.N. official said Tuesday on the eve of a meeting by U.S. and European envoys to discuss the country's recent election and deteriorating security.
No exit strategy from Afghanistan: Swedish FM
KABUL (AFP) – The international community, with more than 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, does not have an exit strategy and will stay committed for the long term, Sweden's foreign minister said Tuesday.
Groundwork Is Laid for New Troops in Afghanistan
By PETER BAKER and DEXTER FILKINS The New York Times September 1, 2009
WASHINGTON — A new report by the top commander in Afghanistan detailing the deteriorating situation there confronts President Obama with the politically perilous decision of whether to deepen American involvement
Afghanistan welcomes civilian focus of US review
Tue Sep 1, 6:15 am ET
KABUL (AFP) – The Afghan government on Tuesday welcomed the civilian focus in a blueprint compiled by a top US general calling for a revised strategy in the eight-year war against Taliban insurgents.
Clinton told of security failings in Afghanistan
By Richard Lardner, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON – Guards hired by the State Department to protect diplomats and staff at the U.S. embassy in Afghanistan live and work in a "Lord of the Flies" environment in which they're subjected to
WANTED: ‘HUGGY-BEAR’ TALIBAN FOR BROWN’S AFGHAN ESCAPE
By Arthur Kent, Skyreporter.com
August 30, 2009 - Prior to this past weekend, British troops in Afghanistan could be forgiven for nursing a suspicion that their civilian masters are dissembling, incompetent pretenders to Winston Churchill’s brand of wartime leadership.
White House Doesn't Expect Resource Decision On Afghanistan For 'Several Weeks'
WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- President Barack Obama will read the military's report on Afghanistan while he vacations later this week at Camp David, but the White House says any decisions on whether to allocate
Next phase in Afghanistan may require more troops
By Anne Gearan, Ap National Security Writer
WASHINGTON – More troops and a new strategy for using them are emerging as critical components to the 8-year-old effort by U.S. and NATO forces to defeat the Taliban and secure Afghanistan.
How Crime Pays for the Taliban
By Aryn Baker Time Magazine / Kunduz Monday, Sep. 07, 2009
To understand why America and its allies are losing the war in Afghanistan, consider the story behind one deadly attack. On July 6, in the northern Afghan province of Kunduz, a powerful improvised explosive device,
Afghan policy showing cracks
McClatchy Newspapers By Nancy A. Youssef Tuesday, September 01, 2009
WASHINGTON - The prospect that U.S. Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal may ask for as many as 45,000 more American troops in Afghanistan is fueling growing tension within President Barack Obama's
Group: US Embassy Security in Kabul Risky
Security Guards Overworked, Sleep-Deprived and Subject To Humiliating Hazing, Including Being Urinated On, Watchdog Says
(CBS/AP) A private security company hired by the U.S. State Department to protect diplomats and staff at the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan provides shoddy security and fosters a "Lord of the Flies environment"
Did the Pentagon Blacklist Journalists in Afghanistan?
By Jason Motlagh Time Magazine / Kabul Tuesday, Sep. 01, 2009
Journalists covering the Afghan war rely heavily on coalition forces to gain access to a hardscrabble backcountry populated by Taliban militants. So the reaction was far from muted when the news broke last week
China hopes Afghanistan can resume peace, stability at an early date
BEIJING, Sept. 1 (Xinhua) -- China on Tuesday expressed its hope that Afghanistan could take the path of peace and stability at an early date as the vote-counting of the Afghan presidential election is underway.
IT'S TIME TO LEAVE AFGHANISTAN
September 1, 2009 New York Post
'YESTERDAY," reads the e-mail from Allen, a Marine in Afghanistan, "I gave blood because a Marine, while out on patrol, stepped on a [mine's] pressure plate and lost both legs." Then "another Marine with
Afghanistan: A new plan is needed
Telegraph.co.uk 01 Sep 2009
Telegraph View: The commander of US and Nato troops has likened his force to a bull charging a matador (the Taliban) and being weakened with every sword thrust. Something must be done.
Afghanistan Commander's Report Submitted, But Secret
By Al Pessin VOA News The Pentagon 31 August 2009
The U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, has delivered his eagerly-awaited assessment to his bosses in Washington and Brussels, but the document is being kept secret.
Civilians Killed and Wounded by Taleban Mines
Rebels make Helmand a sea of landmines, targeting military and civilians.
Institute for War & Peace Reporting By Mohammad Ilyas Dayee in Helmand (ARR No. 334, 01-Sep-09)
“I hate the world now,” said Ismail, standing outside the emergency hospital in Lashkar Gah. “My wife has been killed. I wish that Mullah Omar’s wife would also die in this type of explosion.”
Taliban mutilated me: Afghan voter
The Age September 1, 2009
An Afghan man says Taliban militants cut off his nose and both ears as he tried to vote in the August 20 presidential election.
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Karzai rival calls on supporters to stay calm
By Maria Golovnina – Tue Sep 1, 8:03 am ET
KABUL (Reuters) – Afghan President Hamid Karzai's main rival Abdullah Abdullah staged a rally of village elders on Tuesday to denounce fraud in last month's election and said he was doing all he could to keep his supporters off the streets.
Abdullah has accused Karzai's government of stuffing ballot boxes on a massive scale and has lodged hundreds of allegations of fraud in the August 20 ballot.
With about half of votes tallied so far, partial results show Karzai maintaining a lead over Abdullah, although still without the outright majority needed to avoid a potentially destabilizing run-off in October. Final results are due later this month.
In a packed hall in central Kabul, 300 tribal elders dressed in flowing white robes shook fists and delivered emotional speeches as they urged Abdullah to take action against what they described as widespread electoral violations.
Addressing them from a stage flanked by armed guards, Abdullah vowed to protect their votes, but urged restraint.
"My main concern today is that there is a lot of pressure from the people on me (to hold) demonstrations," Abdullah told Reuters on the sidelines of the meeting.
"Kandahar wants to do demonstrations. Khost wants to do demonstrations. Ghazni wants to do demonstrations. And I have to stop them," he said, referring to cities in the violent south and east where he says fraud was its worst.
"I ask them for calm, I ask them for patience."
Most votes have yet to be counted in the Pashtun south, Karzai's main support base. Those votes could yet tip the balance in favor of a first-round victory for Karzai, but some of those votes could be thrown out if Abdullah's complaints are upheld.
The election was a major test for Karzai after eight years in power and for U.S. President Barack Obama's new regional strategy to defeat the Taliban and stabilize Afghanistan in the face of recent gains by insurgents.
An independent fraud watchdog, the Election Complaints Commission, is investigating almost 2,500 allegations of abuse, including 567 it says are serious enough to affect the outcome.
Three of the commission's five members are United Nations appointees.
Abdullah's main support base is among Tajiks in the north but Tuesday's gathering included elders from southern regions, where he has made an effort to show he has support.
"We do not agree with this election. We must unite hand in hand and think of a better government," said one elder, Haji Manan, from Helmand province, a Taliban stronghold.
"In my district, nobody went to polling stations to cast ballots for any candidate on election day. But now 20,000 boxes are full of votes in favor of Karzai."
Karzai has not commented on fraud allegations.
Abdullah has said he will reject the result if he believes fraud played a part in the outcome, although he has played down suggestions of civil unrest.
"I can ask for action that is constitutional and peaceful at some stage," he said. "But at this stage I will wait until the election complaints commission completes its job."
(Editing by Paul Tait)
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Afghan tribal leaders call for Karzai to quit after detailing election fraud
James Hider in Kabul Times Online (UK) September 1, 2009
In a crowded conference hall in Kabul, hundreds of angry tribal elders and local officials from southern Afghanistan gathered today to protest against what they dubbed massive electoral fraud that robbed entire districts of their votes and allocated them to the incumbent president, Hamid Karzai.
In a string of searing testimonies, community leaders told of how villages that had been too terrified to vote because of Taleban threats, of mysteriously produced full ballot boxes, and with most of the votes cast for Mr Karzai, often by his own men or tribal leaders loyal to him.
Hamidullah Tokhy, a tribal elder from Kandahar province in the south, whose governor is Mr Karzai’s brother, said: “How is it that in a district which a governor can only visit once every two years, where it’s too dangerous for the police to go, where even Nato can’t fly, how come there were 20,000 votes collected?”
The meeting was chaired by Abdullah Abdullah, the main rival to Mr Karzai in the June 20 elections, which an increasing number of Western observers and local officials say have been fatally compromised by evidence of systematic voter fraud.
Mr Abdullah, trailing in partial results already released, swore to defend the rights of voters and pledged he would not to accept any position in government with Mr Karzai, ruling out hopes of a compromise government of national unity. He said that he was having to urge calm on outraged victims of the apparent fraud, as some called for mass protests or even armed resistance.
A day before international envoys, including Richard Holbrooke from the United States and Sherard Cowper Coles for the UK, were due to meet in Paris to discuss the possible outcomes of the elections, a picture emerged of large swaths of the country falling foul of electoral manipulation by the Government.
Abdulkayam Balets, a grey-bearded and turbaned elder who had been in charge of a polling station in Shurawaq, in the southern province of Kandahar, said no ballot boxes reached his facility. They were instead sent to the district office, where they were stuffed with votes for Mr Karzai by members of his party.
“We want Karzai to resign and an interim government installed, then we can have a free election that he can’t manipulate by force,” he said.
Fazel Mohammed had a polling centre set up in his house in the same area, and confirmed all the ballot boxes were sent to the Shurawaq district office. “There were 30 people in there, voting for Hamid Karzai. I told them, ‘This is not right, but they said ‘We’ve got the guns and power, that’s why we’re doing it,’” he told The Times.
Haji Abdul Manan, an elder from Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province, where British forces have been engaged in heavy fighting with the Taleban, said that most people had been too scared to venture out on election day. “In all the districts there was fraud. Nobody could vote, but the ballot boxes were full of votes for Hamid Karzai,” he said.
Earlier, speaking on the podium, Mr Manan had called for a violent response to the fraud, a sign that disenchantment with the polls could further undermine Afghanistan’s already bloody political landscape. "I implore military resistance. I swear to God, if an Islamic government, a religious government, does not take office we're against it,” he said. “The Americans are entering our houses. Our sons are being killed," he added.
Isatullah, an election official in Paktia, just south of Kabul, told The Times by telephone that bodyguards of a powerful tribal leader had shown up at his polling centre on motorbikes and cast around 60 ballots each for Mr Karzai in the ballot boxes. Officials were too afraid to stop them, he said.
Mr Abdullah said that he would not drop his protests against vote-rigging, although he urged calm on his people, amid fears that massive demonstrations could degenerate into the bloodshed that marked the anti-government protests in Iran this summer.
"My main concern today is that there is a lot of pressure from the people on me [to hold] demonstrations. Kandahar wants to do demonstrations. Khost wants to do demonstrations. Ghazni wants to do demonstrations. And I have to stop them," he said. "I ask them for calm, I ask them for patience."
“I still hope the Electoral Complaints Commission will be able to deal with this, but finally, I will not accept the outcome decided by this massive fraud,” he said as he left the meeting.
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Accusation of Brazen Ballot-Stuffing Casts New Doubt on Karzai
By DEXTER FILKINS The New York Times September 2, 2009
KABUL, Afghanistan — Just a week before this country’s presidential election, the leaders of a southern Afghan tribe called Bariz gathered to make a bold decision: they would abandon the incumbent and local favorite, Hamid Karzai, and endorse his challenger, Abdullah Abdullah.
Mr. Abdullah flew to the southern city of Kandahar to receive the tribe’s endorsement. The leaders of the tribe, who live in a district called Shorbak, prepared to deliver a local landslide.
But it never happened, the tribal leaders said.
Instead, aides to Mr. Karzai’s brother, Ahmed Wali — the head of the Kandahar provincial council and the most powerful man in southern Afghanistan — detained the governor of Shorbak, Delaga Bariz, and shut down all of the district’s 45 polling sites on election day. The ballot boxes were taken to Shorbak’s district headquarters, where, Mr. Bariz and other tribal leaders said, local police stuffed them with thousands of ballots.
At the end of the day, 23,900 ballots were shipped to Kabul, Mr. Bariz said, with every one marked for President Karzai.
“Not a single person in Shorbak District cast a ballot — not a single person,” Mr. Bariz said in an interview here in the capital, where he and a group of tribal elders have come to file a complaint. “Mr. Karzai’s people stuffed all the ballot boxes.”
The allegations by Mr. Bariz, and several other tribal leaders from Shorbak, represent the most serious allegations so far that have been publicized against Mr. Karzai’s electoral machine, which faces a deluge of fraud complaints from around the country.
The Afghan Electoral Complaints Commission said Tuesday that the number of complaints about vote stealing and other frauds had reached 2,615. Mr. Karzai’s campaign is accused of forging ballots, stealing votes and preventing others from going to the polls.
Mr. Karzai and his aides deny any sort of fraud, and they have hunkered down in the presidential palace to await the final results. But the allegations are casting a cloud over his re-election campaign, raising the prospect that his presidency, even if he wins, could be seriously tainted.
At the same time, the allegations are increasing the pressure on American officials to ensure that the alleged fraud is properly investigated. An election widely perceived as having been stolen could deal a serious setback to the Obama administration, which has committed itself to prevailing here in the nearly 8-year-old war against the Taliban and al Qaeda militants.
Allegations like those described by Mr. Bariz are throwing the basic integrity of the election into question.
As recently as 10 months ago, Mr. Bariz said, he had considered himself an ally of President Karzai. He had been nominated by a group of Bariz elders to be the governor of Shorbak District, a desolate stretch of sand and scrub that sits on the country’s southwestern border with Pakistan. Mr. Bariz’s nomination was ratified by Tooryalai Wesa, the governor of Kandahar Province, who was appointed by President Karzai.
But as election day neared, Mr. Bariz and other leaders in his tribe said they could not bring themselves to support Mr. Karzai for another five-year term. The reason, he said: Mr. Karzai’s government had done so little good.
“ “There are no clinics, no schools, no roads, no water dam — nothing,” Mr. Bariz said.“We decided to support someone who would unify the country,” Mr. Bariz said. The leaders of the Bariz tribe picked Mr. Abdullah, the former foreign minister.
In theory, the decision by the elders sealed Mr. Abdullah’s victory in Shorbak: Nearly everyone in Shorbak is from the Bariz tribe.As is common in many such societies, tribal leaders in Afghanistan often negotiate with politicians to deliver the votes of their tribe.
Mr. Abdullah’s campaign manager in southern Afghanistan, Esmatullah, said the candidate met a large group of Bariz tribal elders in Kandahar on Aug. 12 to receive their endorsement. It was a joyous affair, Esmatullah said, for which even women turned out. But not everyone who wanted to come to the endorsement ceremony was able to make it.
“The police were blocking the roads,” said Esmatullah, who like many Afghans uses only one name.The next day, Mr. Bariz said, officials in Kandahar were furious. One of Kandahar’s senior officials, Mohammed Anas, ordered Mr. Bariz not to return to his home in Shorbak. Mr. Anas said he had no choice.
“When I asked him why he wouldn’t let me go home, he said “Because your whole tribe is going to vote for Dr. Abdullah,” Mr. Bariz said.
Mr. Bariz did not speak to Ahmed Wali Karzai, only to more junior officials like Mr. Anas. But few decisions of any import are believed to be taken in Kandahar without the approval of President Karzai’s younger brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai. On the streets, his nickname is “The King of the South.” Last year, for instance, Ahmed Wali Karzai was widely seen as having replaced the governor, Rahmatullah Raufi, when he fell out of favor.
When election day finally came, the ballots were never delivered to the polling centers in Shorbak, according to two Bariz tribal leaders who were charged with overseeing the sites. Instead of going to the poll centers, all the ballots and ballot boxes were delivered to the district government’s headquarters. That place, the tribal leaders said, had been commandeered by the Afghan Border Police.
“The ballots were never delivered,” said Abdul Quyoum, a farmer from the village of Karaze, where one of the polling center was supposed to be. “I waited all day.”
Mr. Quyoum was one of two tribal elders from Shorbak who traveled to Kabul with Mr. Bariz. The other was Fazul Mohammed, who told a nearly identical story.
When the ballots were not delivered to the polling center, Mr. Mohammed said, he walked to the district government headquarters to see what was wrong. The building, he said, was being guarded by Afghan Border Police. As an election official, Mr. Mohammed said, he was allowed to go inside.
“The border police were stuffing the ballots hundreds of them into the boxes,” he said. “And there were other people who were counting the ballots and keeping the records.”
Mr. Mohammed said he protested, but was told to leave. Later, he said, he was told that a total of 23,900 ballots had been filled out, all in Mr. Karzai’s name.
“Dr. Abdullah did not receive a single vote,” he said.
Mr. Bariz, the governor, said he has not returned to Shorbak.
“I don’t think I am going to be governor much longer,” he said.
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Spotlight on Afghan vote fraud squad
by Jennie Matthew – Tue Sep 1, 1:04 am ET
KABUL (AFP) – The credibility of Afghanistan's elections could depend on a small team working day and night inside two heavily guarded peach villas in a wealthy Kabul suburb.
Afghanistan's independent Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) has the arduous job of investigating more than 2,500 claims that fraud compromised the country's presidential and provincial elections on August 20.
Staff work seven days a week with the mostly Afghan workers exhausted by the dawn-to-dusk Muslim fast of Ramadan as they sit behind laptops at new desks on fitted carpets, probing the multitude of alleged irregularities.
As complaints pour in, filing cabinets are brought out of storage, neatly labelled and filled to bursting with documents.
"We have received 2,564 total complaints during the campaign period and 2,097 complaints on election day," said spokesman Ahmad Muslim Khuram as marksmen prowled the roof -- a sign that danger is real in Afghanistan.
Dressed in jeans, the young man talks about his past as presenter of an Afghan TV music show and the challenges of returning from a lifetime in exile after the 2001 US-led invasion overthrew the Taliban.
The ECC says the outcome of investigations into 690 complaints could determine who gets the presidency if the commission invokes its power to disqualify ballots, order a re-count or re-polling.
This year's most serious complaints, such as alleged ballot stuffing, voter intimidation and ghost polling stations, are more than double the number of "priority A" complaints received after Afghanistan's 2005 elections.
"I'd say it's one of the most difficult ones I've done because we've got 300 people working to make sure that we do the best job possible," said ECC chairman Grant Kippen, a Canadian who has worked on elections around the world.
So great is the workload that Kippen leaves open the prospect of pushing back the tight deadline to finalise investigations and certify the final result.
"There is a notional working date right now of September 17, but that is a working date only. If we find that we need more time, then we'll take what time is necessary," he told AFP.
It has already been a race against time. The commission only moved into its premises in May. Some of its provincial offices were not up and running until candidates were already pressing the flesh on the campaign trail.
"It's been really, really challenging," Kippen said.
With results from nearly half the polling stations announced so far, Karzai leads former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah by 45.8 percent to 33.2 percent but still lacks the majority needed to avoid a second round.
Fraud is threatening to become a byword for the polls as Western allies have expressed dismay over charges of wrongdoing while Karzai and Abdullah each claim victory.
The contested nature of the election makes the ECC's work vital.
Operating on a budget of 13 million dollars, the commission was set up with UN assistance as an independent Afghan entity under Afghan electoral law.
Its board is made up of two Afghan commissioners -- appointed by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and the supreme court -- and three foreigners appointed by the UN special envoy to the country.
The team assigned to allegations from Kabul work in the basement. Nine investigators, lawyers and administrators sit in silence behind laptops on uncluttered desks.
While supposed to lend transparency to voting, the ECC has been criticised as "irrelevant" by analysts who accuse Karzai of cooking back-room deals to shore up as wide as possible a coalition after a first round victory.
Abdullah has alleged "state-engineered" fraud and says it "remains to be seen" if the ECC was strong enough to disallow suspect votes.
Others must determine whether the credibility of the elections is at risk, says the ECC, reserving judgement on how far -- if at all -- its findings could sway the final result.
"There are going to be people that don't like the decisions that we take but the hours that we're putting in (are) to make sure that we base whatever decisions we make on fact, on evidence," said Kippen.
Whenever that happens, the ECC will cease to exist 30 days after the results are finally certified.
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Experts: Elections Last Chance to Resolve Afghan Conflict
By Ravi Khanna VOA News Washington 01 September 2009
The slow tally of Afghanistan's election returns and the mounting accusations of fraud are raising questions about credibility of the August 20 election. Analysts in Washington warn if the election is widely viewed as illegitimate, the Obama's administration's policy in Afghanistan would suffer a major setback.
As the votes continue to be tallied in Afghanistan, it is still not known if incumbent President Hamid Karzai will win outright - or face a second round against the probable runner-up, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah.
But amidst the vote counting, the rising claims of fraud are clouding the election. The number of fraud claims have doubled since the August 20 vote - and resolving them could even delay the announcement of official results.
Some Afghan experts in Washington say all this is raising questions about the credibility of election, which they consider crucial. The experts describe it as the last chance for the international community to put the country onto a democratic path.
Bruce Riedel at the Brookings Institution advises the Obama administration on Afghanistan. He says, "This really is a last chance. We have had three chances to get it right in Afghanistan. We have blown the previous two, in the 1990s and after 2001."
Riedel and others say if the Afghan government is considered illegitimate, there will be repercussions for NATO and on neighboring Pakistan.
"That will reinforce their deeply held belief that we [the U.S.] are going to cut and run in Afghanistan sometime in two or three years and all they need to do is to wait us out and then their Taliban friends will take over at least half of the country," Riedel said.
But for a long-term success in Afghanistan, the U.S. must focus on creating legitimate government institutions in that country, says Kimberly Kagan of the Institute for the Study of War. She says the coalition forces can help with that.
"The issue is that, as we saw in Iraq, that sometimes the coalition forces need to fill in when the indigenous government is not ready to perform all of the functions of building the state," she states.
Restoring the Afghan people's faith in their government by defeating the insurgency is another key element, according to analysts. Kagan says one way to do this is to focus on small-scale economic projects to help alleviate poverty. "So we really need to think about how to use military resources in order to create the immediate conditions for defeating the insurgency," she adds.
Bruce Riedel agrees. He says it is crucial because the Obama administration inherited an under-resourced war, and now faces the difficult task of convincing the American people that its counter-insurgency strategy is working.
"This situation has deteriorated so far that there are really only two questions now," he says. "Can it be stabilized with any amount of resources or is it just too little too late?"
Experts say the outcome of the elections will provide the answer to those questions. If the two leading candidates get less than 50 percent of the votes there are two scenarios:
Either the two men will cut a deal to share power or there will be a second-round election. The experts say a runoff will provide credibility to the faltering democratic process in Afghanistan, and will also demonstrate that the counter-insurgency strategy of the Obama administration is working.
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Poll Fraud Probe Will Decide Runoff
By Lal Aqa Sherin*
KABUL, Sep 1 (IPS) - Partial results in Afghanistan's presidential polls tend to favour President Hamid Karzai with Abdullah Abdullah, former foreign minister, trailing in second place. Kabul lawmaker Ramazan Basherdost who is at third place, seems to have garnered more votes than former World Bank economist, Dr. Ashraf Ghani.
With a majority of polling stations yet to announce their results, and investigations into major fraud complaints underway, the contest is still wide open.
Whoever the winner, unless that candidate wins over 50 percent of the vote, a runoff will be inevitable.
Daud Ali Najafi, head of the Independent Election Commission (IEC), says that his agency is prepared for such an eventuality. "The preliminary work of the second round, such as designing ballot papers, is already well under way," says Najafi.
Richard Sun, of the International Republican Institute, a USAID-backed election monitoring group, says that if the election does go to a second round the technical issues that plagued the first round of elections - such as lack of hole punches for ballots - "should not arise."
Overall, election monitoring groups were satisfied with the electoral process, despite violence, threats against voters and widespread corruption. They are quick to point out, however, that though the elections were fair, the freedom of voters was severely restricted.
"Thursday's (Aug. 20) elections were fair," says Phillip Moran, head of a European team of 300 election observers. "But they were not free."
Grant Kippon, head of the Election Complaints Commission (ECC), says that over 225 complaints were filed immediately after the election. Of these, 150 have been sorted through and approximately 35 were assigned "high priority," meaning that if true, these allegations could affect the outcome of the contest.
The complaints run the gamut from ballot stuffing, tampering with ballot boxes, problems with indelible ink, non-IEC personnel present at polling stations, polling stations opening late, and voters being threatened to vote for a particular candidate.
Kippon also says that many of the complaints came from Kandahar, Ghazni, Wardak and Kunduz provinces.
The ECC investigation process involves teams of 250 investigators in provinces throughout Afghanistan, who will look into complaints and then send results to the ECC office in Kabul.
"All complaints that could potentially affect the outcome of the election will be dealt with in a thorough manner," Kippon said at a press conference, days after the election.
Kippon and others in the ECC say that they will look into all irregularities, whether ECC receives an official complaint or not.
The Fair Elections Federation of Afghanistan (FEFA) says that participation in this year's election was as low as 20 percent in the troubled regions of Afghanistan. The northern part of the country saw much higher turnouts while in the south, voters stayed home out of fear for their lives.
Throughout the country, polls were allowed to stay open for an hour past the original closing time of 4 p.m. Analysts on a Killid national radio broadcast, said that people all over Afghanistan were frightened of what a trip to the polls might bring.
Analyst Ustad Habibullah Rafi said that "no positive or major change has come to people's lives, so people do not want to participate in elections. But what participation is taking place should be appreciated."
The registration numbers alone tell the tale of how Afghan participation has changed since the last election. In 2004, 12 million Afghans were registered to vote. This year the number of voting cards delivered went up to 17 million, though only estimated 6.5 million people voted.
In Kabul alone there were many clashes between Afghan security forces and insurgent fighters. Explosions rocked the 5th, 7th and 12th police districts of the city. The 8th district was the site of a fierce battle, perhaps the longest military engagement in the country on Election Day.
Punch tools - small, hand-held pliers used to indicate that a voting card has been used-- were in short supply on Election Day. Many of the punch tools that were available did not work properly and election officials were forced to use scissors or other sharp objects to mark the cards.
These inefficiencies led to voter fraud. In Takhar province, one man admitted to Radio Killid that he voted three times with two cards because the punch tools were not working. He says that no one at the polling station seemed to mind.
Najafi, head of the IEC, says that he raised this issue with polling centres prior to the election, but still no steps were taken to rectify the situation.
A lack of indelible ink was also apparent as soon as the polls opened. At one north Kabul polling station, poll workers delayed the start of polling for almost two hours while they awaited a delivery of ink.
Substandard ink was also a problematic hurdle to fair elections. Many voters complained that the ink washed off shortly after it was applied, making vote fraud an easy game.
Basherdost who voted at Kabul's Habiba High School noticed that the ink did not stay long on his finger. "This is clear fraud," the candidate said, holding up his finger for journalists to see. Bashardost also filed an official complaint with the ECC.
The IEC's Azizullah Lodeen first rejected that these things even happened. After Killid gave him concrete evidence, Lodeen backtracked, admitting that these things happened but "this is not a common problem. Perhaps it happened once or twice. Also, these people could have used special chemicals to remove the ink."
(*Published under an agreement with the Killid Group. This independent Afghan media group and IPS have been partners since 2004.) (END/2009)
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More Evidence of Helmand Poll Fraud
As the vote count trickles on, complaints have grown to a flood.
Institute for War & Peace Reporting By IWPR reporters (ARR No. 334, 01-Sep-09)
“I know there was no fraud in Nad Ali,” said Hajji Dastagir, a local candidate in Afghanistan’s August 20 elections. “No ballot boxes were stuffed at the polling centres. The election workers brought boxes in that were already filled.”
Almost two weeks after Afghanistan’s presidential and provincial council elections, it is clear is that the process was badly flawed. Allegations of widespread fraud continue to plague the Electoral Complaints Commission, which has so far received more than 2,500 official complaints.
The results are being dribbled out, with half the count already released. As of Tuesday, September 1, president Hamed Karzai held a comfortable, but not overwhelming, lead of just under 46 percent of the votes to just over 33 per cent for his chief rival, Abdullah Abdullah.
The process is going so slowly that most observers think there is little chance that the Independent Election Commission will be able to meet its deadline of September 17 for proclamation of official results. By that time, all complaints are supposed to have been vetted and investigated, and a determination made as to the credibility of the ballot.
If neither candidiate clears 50 percent-plus-one, a runoff will be held sometime in early October. While election experts are hopeful that a second round might give the poll a greater semblance of legitimacy, other observers worry that, given Afghanistan’s increasingly precarious security situation, a runoff might become a flashpoint for popular discontent.
Meanwhile, the two frontrunners are engaged in a war of nerves: Abdullah has complained widely to the media that his victory is being stolen from him, while Karzai is insisting just as vehemently that he is the legitimate choice of the Afghan people.
Supporters of both men have stated publicly that they will not accept defeat, and early fears that the elections could lead to violence have been resurrected.
But, if Helmand, arguably Afghanistan’s most volatile province, is any indication, it will be a long, tough fight before a winner can be declared.
Voters stayed at home in droves on election day in Helmand, cowed by Taleban threats or, perhaps, unprepared to consider risking their lives for a government that seems to have done little to help and protect them over the past eight years. Recent military operations have ostensibly cleared part of the province, but the retreating or defeated Taleban have retaliated by turning the province into a minefield.
Some estimates put the turnout as low as 5-10 percent.
Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands of votes are being counted, with observers crying foul.
“From morning till evening on election day, only 47 votes were cast in our entire polling centre,” said Muzhtaba, who worked in a polling site in the Chanjir area of Nad Ali district. “But when the boxes were opened, we saw none that did not have several hundred ballots. All of the boxes were stuffed by the heads of polling stations.”
He shook his head in disgust.
“I am sorry that I participated in this process,” he said.
But Abdullah Ahad Helmandwal, head of the Nad Ali shura, or council, insisted that the vote had been transparent.
“Nobody can prove that even one vote was faked,” he said.
Still, dozens of witnesses have come forward to tell their stories.
“I was registering voters in one of the sites in Nad Ali,” said Muzamel Shukri. “A local commander brought me forms full of hundreds of voter registration card numbers. I refused to give him the ballots, but then the head of the site, who is a poor teacher, came to me, very frightened, and said ‘do whatever (he) says’.”
In Nawa district, which had been the scene of a major offensive against the Taleban just days before the election, the situation was much the same. Helmand governor Gulab Mangal visited Nawa on election day, accompanied by a group of journalists.
One election worker, who did not want to be named, said that only 240 voters had turned up at the Nawa high school, the district’s main polling centre.
“But all the ballot boxes are full,” he said.
Engineer Abdul Hadi, who heads Helmand’s election commission, rejects any allegations that his staff were involved in falsifying the vote.
“There was so little fraud it cannot even be measured,” he said. “If anyone says anything different, let them prove it. Otherwise, it’s a lie and we do not accept it.”
Members of the provincial council were not at all reticent with their accusations.
“In Sangin, Nawa and Nad Ali there was huge fraud carried out by Karzai supporters,” said Adam Sefatullah. “They cast all the votes for the nation, with their hands in the ballot boxes. I am ready to swear to this.”
In Nahr-e-Saraj and Qala-e-Bost the story was the same.
“What elections?” laughed a man from Nahr-e-Seraj, who was carrying a green sack of food on his back. “There was just the mafia there. Everybody was stuffing ballot boxes, and all the votes went to one man. Mr President.”
The reporters who produced this story have asked that their names be withheld for reasons of security.
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Envoys to meet in Paris to discuss situations in Afghanistan, Pakistan
Xinhua www.chinaview.cn 2009-09-01
PARIS - Western envoys and representatives from Afghanistan and Pakistan will meet here on Wednesday to discuss the situations in the two countries, the French Foreign Ministry said on Monday.
"The goal of the meeting on Sept. 2 is to examine how the international community can be of most use to the action for the next Afghan government," the ministry said in a statement.
The so-called AfPak envoys from Britain, France, Germany, the United States and the United Nations will discuss their response to Afghanistan's presidential elections.
The vote-counting of the Afghan presidential election, held on Aug. 20 was continuing. Incumbent President Hamid Karzai was leading the partial result, according to the electoral office.
However, it would take a couple of weeks before the final result could be announced due to allegations of fraud in the elections and the restless situation in the country.
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Years wasted in Afghan effort, UN official says
By Jason Straziuso, Associated Press Writer
KABUL – The international community has wasted years in Afghanistan by not coordinating its efforts, a top U.N. official said Tuesday on the eve of a meeting by U.S. and European envoys to discuss the country's recent election and deteriorating security.
Senior officials from 27 countries — including special U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke — were to meet Wednesday in Paris, where officials were expected to urge Afghans to take more responsibility in the almost eight-year international effort to rebuild the country.
Kai Eide, the top U.N. official in Afghanistan, said the international community needs to embrace well-coordinated, big-picture goals that will help Afghanistan in the long term.
"The piecemeal approach is not going to get results," Eide said. "Enough is enough with the piecemeal approach."
Eide did not elaborate, but he and other critics have complained that foreign governments tend to favor funding small, relatively easy projects without a national impact rather than major missions — such as overhauling the transport network — which would serve as an economic engine for the whole country.
The Paris meeting comes as the country faces mounting security and political challenges. Fighting is increasing; August was the deadliest month of the war for U.S. forces with at least 49 deaths, followed closely by July with 44.
Uncertainty over the outcome of last month's presidential election hang over the political front following delays in the vote count and allegations of widespread fraud.
Vote tallies released Monday from the Aug. 20 balloting showed President Hamid Karzai leading with 45.8 percent. Challenger Abdullah Abdullah trailed with 33.2 percent. Ballots have been counted from almost half of the country's voting stations. Karzai needs 50 percent of the votes to avoid a runoff.
Hundreds of Afghans from the country's ethnic Pashtun south — Karzai's stronghold — met with Abdullah in Kabul on Tuesday to show their support. The tribal leaders alleged that massive fraud had taken place in the south, and that some districts that had no voting stations still somehow sent thousands of ballots to Kabul to be counted.
The support from the Pashtun tribesman is significant in a country where tribal allegiances trump almost everything. Karzai is an ethnic Pashtun, while Abdullah is half Tajik and half Pashtun, but is primarily seen as the northern, Tajik candidate.
Abdullah, who has also accused Karzai's supporters of intimidating voters and large-scale ballot-stuffing, said Tuesday he would not strike a deal in order to achieve "power or position" in office.
"I would like to assure you that I will not make any deal over your rights and the trust you have in me; I am not ready for any kind of deal," Abdullah told supporters at a meeting in Kabul.
He also said he was ready to challenge any decision he sees as violating the constitution. "We have legal ways, peaceful ways to struggle to win our rights, and we will not ignore our right," he said.
Although he didn't mention what legal steps he would take, Abdullah appeared to hope election officials would send the election into a second round.
On the other side of town, a group of about 60 pro-Karzai parliamentarians called on Afghans to let the election commission carry out its work. A written resolution said that the encouragement of Afghans to protest the election results would "disrespect the blood of those countryman who devoted their lives to provide the opportunity to hold this election" — a message likely aimed at Abdullah supporters.
"Any announcement of not accepting the results of the election would cause violence and instability in the country and that can cause a serious negative effect on democracy and national interest in our country," the resolution said.
As Abdullah ramps up his accusations that Karzai supporters committed widespread fraud, many fear that Abdullah supporters could take to the streets.
U.S. officials had hoped the presidential election would establish an Afghan government with the legitimacy to combat the Taliban, corruption and the country's huge drug trade. The fraud allegations, however, have raised the specter of more violence.
Taliban attacks spiked this summer, and U.S. military leaders are considering asking for more troops to combat the increasing violence.
President Barack Obama has already committed 21,000 new American forces to Afghanistan this year — an increase that will bring the total U.S. commitment to 68,000 by the end of the year. A record 100,000 U.S. and NATO troops are stationed in Afghanistan.
An American service member died Tuesday of wounds suffered in a bombing the day before in southern Afghanistan, the U.S. command said.
The death was the first for the U.S. in September and comes after the deadliest month of the eight-year Afghan war for American troops. At least 49 U.S. troops died in Afghanistan in August, according to a count by The Associated Press based on official announcements.
___
Associated Press reporter Rahim Faiez contributed to this report.
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No exit strategy from Afghanistan: Swedish FM
KABUL (AFP) – The international community, with more than 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, does not have an exit strategy and will stay committed for the long term, Sweden's foreign minister said Tuesday.
"There is no time line, it is clear that no one has an exit strategy, because we have a transition strategy," Carl Bildt, whose country is currently president of the European Union, told AFP.
"It is vital that Afghans have the confidence that we will stay," he said.
The emphasis of the foreign presence was shifting, he said, from military action against Taliban-liked insurgents, to training Afghan security forces and helping build a civilian governance infrastructure.
"There has to be a move from a military-heavy presence to a civilian-heavy presence," he said.
"One of the big problems in Afghanistan in the last 30 to 40 years is that there have been too many exit strategies and not enough transition strategies," Bildt said before leaving Kabul after a two-day visit to Afghanistan.
The US and NATO commander in Afghanistan on Monday submitted a long-awaited review into the eight-year war, calling for a revised strategy to defeat the Taliban and reverse the "serious" situation in the country.
The United States and NATO have called for new thinking in Afghanistan to counter record numbers of Taliban attacks since the 2001 US-led invasion.
Bildt said the emphasis of the new strategy was on "civilian, political, economic resources" to build "rule of law, governance and anti-corruption mechanisms".
"These are critical to winning this war," he said, because "this is not a conflict that can be won by military means alone".
Bildt said he met the deputy commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, General Jim Dutton, and discussed the review submitted by General Stanley McChrystal on Monday.
The Afghan government has welcomed the civilian focus in McChrystal's review, as civilian deaths and collateral damage have caused widespread anger.
Afghanistan is bogged down in controversy over presidential elections. President Hamid Karzai is leading a painstaking vote count but the polls have been clouded in allegations of massive fraud.
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Groundwork Is Laid for New Troops in Afghanistan
By PETER BAKER and DEXTER FILKINS The New York Times September 1, 2009
WASHINGTON — A new report by the top commander in Afghanistan detailing the deteriorating situation there confronts President Obama with the politically perilous decision of whether to deepen American involvement in the eight-year-old war amid shrinking public support at home.
The classified assessment submitted Monday by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who took over American and NATO forces in Afghanistan in June, did not request additional American troops, American officials said, but they added that it effectively laid the groundwork for such a request in coming weeks.
While details of the report remained secret, the revised strategy articulated by General McChrystal in recent public comments would invest the United States more extensively in Afghanistan than it has been since American forces helped topple the Taliban government following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Taking a page from the 2007 strategy shift in Iraq, he has emphasized protecting civilians over just engaging insurgents.
For Mr. Obama, who already ordered an additional 21,000 troops to Afghanistan this year, the prospect of a still larger deployment would test his commitment to a war he did not launch even as it grows more violent by the month.
He already faces growing discontent among his liberal base, not only over the war but also over national security policy, health care, gay rights and other issues.
An expanded American footprint would also increase Mr. Obama’s entanglement with an Afghan government widely viewed as corrupt and illegitimate. Multiplying allegations of fraud in the Aug. 20 presidential election have left Washington with little hope for a credible partner in the war once the results are final.
The latest tally, with nearly half of the polling stations counted, showed President Hamid Karzai leading with 45.9 percent against 33.3 percent for his main opponent, Abdullah Abdullah, Reuters reported.
But the White House left open the possibility that Mr. Obama would send more troops. “There’s broad agreement that for many years, our effort in Afghanistan has been under-resourced politically, militarily and economically,” Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said Monday. He went on to use the words “under-resourced” and “under-resource” six more times during his daily briefing.
The report comes after a sharp escalation of violence in Afghanistan, where more American troops died in August than in any month since the beginning of the war.
The military announced Monday that two American soldiers died in separate attacks involving homemade bombs, bringing the total killed last month to 51, according to the Web site icasualties.org. The number of such attacks has nearly quadrupled since 2007, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“The situation in Afghanistan is serious, but success is achievable and demands a revised implementation strategy, commitment and resolve, and increased unity of effort,” General McChrystal said in a statement after sending his report to Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of all Middle East forces.
A military official said General Petraeus immediately endorsed its findings and forwarded it on Monday to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who will review it before sending it to the White House.
The report coincides with an effort by the Obama administration to develop a series of benchmarks, or metrics, to measure progress in Afghanistan, much as was done in Iraq. Congress has insisted on evidence of improvement to justify the additional troops, financial investment and civilian reconstruction teams already committed by Mr. Obama.
Mr. Gates said Monday that despite the “gloom and doom” that has characterized recent discussion, Afghanistan today is a “mixed picture.”
He said he would consider any troop requests in the coming weeks, but told Bloomberg News that he was concerned about “the implications of significant additional forces in terms of the foreign footprint in Afghanistan, whether the Afghans will see this as us becoming more of an occupier or their partner, and how do you differentiate those.”
Shortly after taking office Mr. Obama ordered 17,000 more combat troops and 4,000 more trainers to Afghanistan, and once they all arrive the American force there will number 68,000. As the NATO commander, General McChrystal also has 40,000 additional foreign forces available to him, but some of their home governments have placed restrictions on how they can be used.
General McChrystal wants a large expansion of Afghan security forces and an acceleration of their training, according to American commanders. The Afghan government currently has about 134,000 police officers and 82,000 soldiers, although many of them are poorly equipped and have little logistical support.
Under the strategy described by General McChrystal and other commanders in recent weeks, the overriding goal of American and NATO forces would not be so much to kill Taliban insurgents as to make ordinary Afghans feel secure, and thus isolate the insurgents. That means using force less and focusing on economic development and good governance.
General McChrystal also intends to try to unify the effort of American allies like Britain, Canada, Germany and France, and possibly to ask them to contribute more troops, money and training.
With polls showing falling support for the Afghan war, critics in Congress have grown increasingly vocal in calling for withdrawal.
Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts, returned from Afghanistan last week and said that despite the capable Americans now there, he was pessimistic about the chances of success and did not even know how to define it.
“I have this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that we’re getting sucked into an endless war here,” he said in an interview.
Some Afghanistan specialists said Mr. Obama might have to swallow his own doubts and defy his base. “I think he’s going to have to tough it out,” said James Dobbins, a former American envoy to Afghanistan. “The downside of a policy of disengagement and what would happen for now would be more severe both for the president and for the country.” Mr. Obama has said that deciding to send the additional troops was the hardest decision he has made during his young presidency. On Sunday, just before ending his vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, he visited briefly at the Cape Cod Air Station with the family of a 21-year-old Marine who was killed in Afghanistan in July.
Mr. Obama had met the Marine, Cpl. Nicholas Xiarhos, who was born in Hyannis, Mass., in February when he visited Camp Lejeune, N.C., to announce his plan to withdraw combat forces from Iraq. He told a story then of two Marines who stood in the path of a suicide bomber’s truck and stopped it from entering a Marine outpost in Ramadi, Iraq, losing their own lives but saving dozens of their colleagues.
One of those saved was Corporal Xiarhos. He later shipped out to Afghanistan, where he was killed in action in July.
Peter Baker reported from Washington, and Dexter Filkins from Kabul, Afghanistan. Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting from Washington.
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Afghanistan welcomes civilian focus of US review
Tue Sep 1, 6:15 am ET
KABUL (AFP) – The Afghan government on Tuesday welcomed the civilian focus in a blueprint compiled by a top US general calling for a revised strategy in the eight-year war against Taliban insurgents.
General Stanley McChrystal, who commands US and NATO troops in Afghanistan, on Monday submitted a long-awaited review, calling for a revised approach to reverse the "serious" situation eight years after the US-led invasion.
Afghanistan is bogged down in controversy over presidential elections. President Hamid Karzai is leading a painstaking vote count but the polls have been clouded in allegations of massive fraud.
"General McChrsytal has presented his initial briefing to the president," Karzai spokesman Humayun Hamidzada told a news conference.
"The key part and most important part of the strategy is that it is focusing on protection of civilians," said the spokesman.
"That is exactly what the president has been asking for this, for quite some time," he added.
Hamidzada withheld further comment, saying the Afghan government was studying the review and was in discussion with its allies.
The United States has for months called for new thinking in Afghanistan to counter record numbers of attacks since the 2001 US-led invasion ousted the Taliban regime. The Pentagon dismissed McChrystal's predecessor in May.
"The situation in Afghanistan is serious but success is achievable and demands a revised implementation strategy, commitment and resolve, and increased unity of effort," McChrystal said in a statement.
The general has not yet called for more frontline troops. But a second analysis, due to be presented to President Barack Obama in late September, is likely to call for more boots on the ground, a diplomat in Kabul said.
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Clinton told of security failings in Afghanistan
By Richard Lardner, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON – Guards hired by the State Department to protect diplomats and staff at the U.S. embassy in Afghanistan live and work in a "Lord of the Flies" environment in which they're subjected to hazing and other inappropriate behavior by supervisors, a government oversight group charged Tuesday.
In a 10-page letter to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Project on Government Oversight contended the situation has led to a breakdown in morale and leadership, compromising security at the embassy in Kabul where nearly 1,000 U.S. diplomats, staff and Afghan nationals work.
The group is urging Clinton to launch an investigation of the contract with ArmorGroup North America. It also recommends that she ask the Pentagon to provide "immediate military supervision" of the private security force at the embassy.
The oversight group's findings are based on interviews with ArmorGroup guards, documents, photographs and e-mails.
One e-mail from a guard describes lurid conditions at Camp Sullivan, the guards' quarters a few miles from the embassy. The message depicted scenes of abuse including guards and supervisors urinating on people and "threats and intimidation from those leaders participating in this activity."
Multiple guards say these conditions have created a "climate of fear and coercion." Those who refuse to participate are often ridiculed, humiliated or even fired, they contended.
The group's investigation found sleep-deprived guards regularly logging 14-hour days, language barriers that impair critical communications, and a failure by the State Department to hold the contractor accountable.
Wackenhut Services, ArmorGroup's parent company, had no immediate comment on the allegations. The State Department also had no immediate comment.
The State Department has been aware of ArmorGroup's shortcomings, the letter says, but hasn't done enough to correct the problems.
It cites a July 2007 warning from the department to ArmorGroup that detailed more than a dozen performance deficiencies, including too few guards and armored vehicles. Another "cure notice" was sent less than a year later, raising other problems and criticizing the contractor for failing to fix the prior ones.
In July 2008, however, the department extended the contract for another year, according to the notice. More problems surfaced and more warning notices followed. Yet at a congressional hearing on the contract in June, State Department officials said the prior shortcomings had been remedied and security at the embassy is effective.
The contract was renewed again through 2010.
Nearly two-thirds of the embassy guards are Gurkhas from Nepal and northern India who don't speak adequate English, a situation that creates communications breakdowns, the group says. Pantomime is often used to convey orders and instructions.
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WANTED: ‘HUGGY-BEAR’ TALIBAN FOR BROWN’S AFGHAN ESCAPE
By Arthur Kent, Skyreporter.com
August 30, 2009 - Prior to this past weekend, British troops in Afghanistan could be forgiven for nursing a suspicion that their civilian masters are dissembling, incompetent pretenders to Winston Churchill’s brand of wartime leadership.
Then Gordon Brown paid his surprise visit to Helmand province - and emphatically put the matter to rest. As a statesman, he is delusional and quick with double talk, both qualities well suited for a NATO leader forced to put a brave face on disaster.
With the wreckage of the Afghan presidential election smouldering on the horizon, the Prime Minister proffered not one but two preposterous claims about the prospects of improvement in Britain’s fortunes of war.
First, Brown looked his battle-weary squaddies in the eyes and told them that the floundering project to build the Afghan National Army was capable of adding 50,000 additional troops over the coming year, a necessary precursor to the withdrawal of international forces.
By all accounts, he said this with a straight face, despite knowing full well that after an investment of more than $16 billion over seven years, the U.S.-led ANA project has yet to field its first legion of 50,000 combat-ready Afghan soldiers.
In truth, the ANA’s numbers have been inflated so extravagantly for so long by Western officials that no reliable estimate of the army’s size exists (please see Afghan Army At Grave Risk, Nov. 2007, on page 9 of Recent Stories; and Crunch Time from April of this year on page 3).
The second of Brown’s weekend fairy tales came courtesy of his mandarins, safe and sound at home in their Whitehall offices, and eager to convince the British public that moves are afoot to defang the Taliban by inviting them to tea.
“A large part of the Taliban are not really committed to their agenda,” the Times quotes one official as saying: “they are just fighting for tactical reasons and can be brought back into mainstream life.”
The functionary fails to mention that for many years the Kabul government has offered amnesty for Taliban commanders and fighters through its reconciliation program, but with only modest results.
The contention that uncommitted, “moderate” Talibs make up a strategically significant portion of Mullah Omar’s guerrilla force might just as well be founded on the hope that scores of black-turbaned Paddington Bears will one day emerge from darkest Baluchistan, armed only with instructions from their Pakistan Army sponsors to let bygones be bygones, and make peace.
Neither Brown nor his ministers appear to have noticed that the Taliban are winning in Afghanistan. It's not amnesty they crave. It's victory.
The reasons why are as clear as the lines on Gordon Brown’s worried brow. The U.S.-led NATO mission remains hostage to Bush-era thinking, with the Obama administration still relying upon the same failed advisors, carpet-baggers and Afghan-American “experts” who have done so much, over the past seven years, to distort the West’s initiatives.
The country’s civilian population, the Afghan people, survey the dwindling authority of their would-be international saviours, and they despair. The foreigners seem incapable of seeing things as they really are.
Faced with failure, foreign leaders, the most famous politicians in the world, are ready and willing to lie, and not only to Afghans but to their own people, their own soldiers.
All this might prompt Afghans to wonder: who stuffs the West's ballot boxes, to send abroad such faithless fools...
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White House Doesn't Expect Resource Decision On Afghanistan For 'Several Weeks'
WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- President Barack Obama will read the military's report on Afghanistan while he vacations later this week at Camp David, but the White House says any decisions on whether to allocate new resources to the eight-year war won't come for "several weeks."
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the report by Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, is a classified update on where the war stands rather than a request for additional resources. That sort of request will come "later on," Gibbs said.
"The president has been dealing with and making decisions about, and getting updates on, developments in Afghanistan every day," Gibbs said. "He's in regular contact with commanders on the ground" and other advisers.
"He will look at the report, I assume, at some point pretty early in his visit to Camp David," he added. "I'm told we don't expect resource decisions or requests for several weeks."
Obama leaves for Camp David on Wednesday.
-By Henry J. Pulizzi, Dow Jones Newswires;
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Next phase in Afghanistan may require more troops
By Anne Gearan, Ap National Security Writer
WASHINGTON – More troops and a new strategy for using them are emerging as critical components to the 8-year-old effort by U.S. and NATO forces to defeat the Taliban and secure Afghanistan.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, acknowledging bright spots but also "gloom and doom" in a new assessment of the war, said Monday the Obama administration would look closely at requests for resources.
Asking for more troops is not part of the classified assessment delivered by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, according to officials. However, he is expected to ask for more troops in a separate request in a few weeks, two NATO officials told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. They were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
McChrystal's assessment is expected to offer a blunt appraisal of the Taliban's increasing tactical prowess and diminishing popular support in Afghanistan for both the foreign-led war effort and the fragile, corruption-riddled central government.
"The situation in Afghanistan is serious," McChrystal said Monday, and success "demands a revised implementation strategy, commitment and resolve, and increased unity of effort."
Gates told reporters traveling with him to Fort Worth, Texas, "We have been very explicit that Gen. McChrystal should be forthright in telling us what he needs." A Pentagon spokesman said Gates had not yet seen McChrystal's recommendations, which were being reviewed and commented upon by Gen. David Petraeus and others at U.S. Central Command.
Although President Barack Obama committed 21,000 new American forces to Afghanistan this year, officials are bracing for a request for even more. Obama would then face a buildup of troops there just as troop commitments in Iraq are easing or the risk losing the war he argued the U.S. had neglected.
Neither the White House nor Congress would enjoy the prospect of widening the war after eight years and millions of dollars in development money. Violence is escalating: August became the deadliest month of the war with at least 47 U.S. troop deaths.
U.S. and NATO commanders have said they do not have sufficient troops and support to expand the fight against a resilient and well-organized Taliban insurgency. But Gates noted his oft-repeated worry about placing too many forces in Afghanistan, a strategy that failed for the Soviet Union in the 1980s.
"I think there are larger issues," Gates said. "We will have to look at the availability of forces; we will have to look at costs. There are a lot of different things we will have to look at."
In Brussels, NATO spokesman James Appathurai said the report also would be examined by NATO's political and military leadership. He stressed it was an assessment by the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, "not a change of strategy."
McChrystal's report recommends focusing the U.S. and NATO counterinsurgency efforts on the Afghan population and less on militants, one of the NATO officials in Afghanistan said.
Last week, McChrystal said troops "must change the way that we think, act and operate" in newly released counterinsurgency guidance. McChrystal hopes to instill a new approach in troops to make the safety of villagers the top priority.
Gates requested the report as a gut check following Obama's announcement of a pared-down counterinsurgency strategy and the rare wartime firing of a top general last spring. McChrystal was sent to Afghanistan this summer to oversee the addition of 17,000 U.S. combat forces, part of a record U.S. commitment of 68,000 by the end of this year.
Underscoring a sluggishness in the war effort, a so-called civilian surge ordered by Obama shortly after he took office appears to be moving slowly. Fewer than one-quarter of the extra civilians expected to provide expertise in law, agriculture, engineering and other areas deemed vital to stabilizing Afghanistan are in place.
At that pace, according to military and political leaders, the U.S. risks losing a critical opportunity to boost the war effort.
Administration officials heading the civilian buildup insist the program is on pace but acknowledge they have sprawling logistics issues. Between 90 and 100 of the approximately 450 extra civilians expected to be dispatched to Afghanistan by the end of this year have already arrived, officials say. That includes 56 sent in advance of the Aug. 20 presidential elections to staff hybrid civil-military teams working with Afghans at the local and provincial levels on development and governance.
Most of the rest of the team is to arrive in October and November. They are mainly from the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Agriculture Department.
___
Associated Press writers Robert Burns and Lara Jakes in Washington, Jason Straziuso in Kabul and Slobodan Lekic in Brussels contributed to this report.
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How Crime Pays for the Taliban
By Aryn Baker Time Magazine / Kunduz Monday, Sep. 07, 2009
To understand why America and its allies are losing the war in Afghanistan, consider the story behind one deadly attack. On July 6, in the northern Afghan province of Kunduz, a powerful improvised explosive device, or IED, detonated under the wheels of a U.S. humvee. Four soldiers died, as did their translator and a bystander. The makeshift bomb was assembled with goods from the local bazaar. The man who placed it was probably paid the going rate of $750, according to government officials, or more if he captured video proof of dead soldiers. And though the local Taliban covered his expenses and fees, the cash very likely came from money donated by the international community to rebuild Afghanistan's roads, bridges, clinics and schools.
Just a week before the explosion, Hajji Lala Jan, a local businessman subcontracted by a local firm working for the German government — aid agency GTZ to build a road in Kunduz, handed some $15,000 in cash to a Taliban middleman to ensure that his project wouldn't be attacked, according to local officials — though Jan himself denies it. The Taliban cash flow has many sources, and it's impossible to say if German taxpayer dollars directly paid for that IED. Andreas Clausing, country director for GTZ, says such payoffs are "impossible. It is forbidden in our contracts, and we have very strict monitoring." Nevertheless, it is likely that a substantial amount of aid money from many countries — including the U.S. — has made its way, directly or indirectly, into the Taliban's coffers. "Here we have internationals and Afghans turning a blind eye to the fact that we are paying off the very Taliban that we claim to be fighting," says an adviser to the Afghan Ministry of Interior. "It becomes a self-sustaining war, a self-licking ice cream."
That war has become the most pressing overseas challenge facing the Obama Administration, which has already increased the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan by 20,000 and is receiving pleas from top commanders to send even more. Barely a week after Afghans went to the polls to vote for a President, the results are tied up in accusations of fraud flying between the two leading candidates, President Hamid Karzai and former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah. It will be several weeks before an official result is announced. But the political wrangling in Kabul is a sideshow to the increasingly lethal and effective campaign being waged by the Taliban. Drugs, contributions from private donors and — more and more — payoffs from local businessmen ensure that the insurgency stays robust. A Western official estimates that the Taliban is making more than it is spending, "and I don't want to even think about where the rest of that money is going." And as long as the money continues to flow, the war will go on.
Up to now, most explanations of the Taliban's funding have focused on its control of Afghanistan's poppy fields, which provide the raw material for heroin. Last month the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency released a report estimating that the Taliban receives about $70 million a year from the drug trade. But drugs aren't the whole story. "The Taliban obtains revenue from a variety of sources, including extortion of funds from both legitimate and unlawful activity," says David Cohen, the Treasury's assistant secretary for terrorist financing. Major General Michael Flynn, senior military intelligence official at NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan stresses Mafia-like activities such as extortion and kidnapping for ransom. "I would say that there is more money going into the pockets of local leaders [of the insurgency] from criminal activities than there is from narcotics money," he says.
It's important to remember that the Afghan insurgency is not a cohesive movement but rather a loose affiliation of groups united by a common goal: the expulsion of foreign troops. Provincial rebel leaders are left largely to make their own plans and find their own funding. Drug money is more likely to go to national leaders of the insurgency, like Mullah Omar, who provide guidance and training for local groups. Local commanders, on the other hand, "absolutely raise their own funds through criminal activities to pay for food, IEDs, weapons and salaries," says Flynn. The billions of dollars spent on reconstruction projects are far too tempting a target to pass up. As a result, the Taliban, once an organization of seminary students seeking to establish a caliphate, is embracing criminal elements that feed on insecurity for financial gain. Together with poor governance, ineffective policing and a weak justice system, the nexus between the Taliban and crime is becoming dangerously entrenched in Afghan society. "The Taliban are acting like a broad network of criminal gangs that enables them to utilize different sources of income," says Ahmad Nader Nadery of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.
Afghans are learning the hard way how difficult it is to deal with this level of criminality. The day after the American soldiers died in Kunduz, Jan's construction site was hit. A bulldozer and 12 trucks were torched and two of the drivers caught by the Taliban and held for ransom. Jan, 72, with closely cropped hair, a thick white beard and a string of amber prayer beads, claims he was targeted in retaliation for not paying off the Taliban, even though the provincial governor and district governor say he did. Not that Jan would have refused — he says the Taliban never asked. "If the Taliban had asked for $100,000, I would have gladly paid them," says Jan. "This equipment was worth $230,000." What probably happened, says Abdul Wahid Omerkhil, district governor of Char Dara, where the attack took place, is that Jan paid off the wrong people. "It usually happens like that. You pay one group and you don't pay the other, and they will burn you."
Supping with the Devil
The situation in Char Dara, just 18 miles (about 30 km) from the provincial capital, Kunduz, has gotten so bad that Omerkhil doesn't even spend nights there. Taliban members openly walk the streets and demand usher, a religious tithe, in exchange for adjudicating disputes. From Char Dara, the Taliban is expanding throughout Kunduz. The Taliban's success in the province is attributable to the fact that it can raise money there. In the spring, Mullah Omar dispatched a Taliban "shadow governor" to Kunduz along with a handful of Uzbek, Chechen and Arab fighters, with the intent of threatening the transit of NATO supplies to Kabul. The arrival of Mullah Salam, the Taliban governor, coincided with the return of a local man, Shirin Agha, who had fled to Pakistan after he got into a gunfight at a wedding. While the commanders work independently, they share common tactics, demanding usher, kidnapping for ransom and taking cuts of construction projects. Sitting in the dilapidated foyer of his mansion, Mohammed Omer, the provincial governor of Kunduz, marvels at the scale of the two Taliban leaders' rackets. By his estimate, Salam and Agha amassed at least $100,000 in a month through kidnappings for ransom and protection payments from contractors, who in turn had been paid by international donors. "The problem is that the people here are demanding a school or a road or a bridge, and the foreigners want to help," Omer says. "If we don't build, the people complain, but if we do, this problem arises. Either way, the Taliban benefits." A foreign official in Kunduz who asked not to be identified says, "No one is going to come save these construction companies. The Taliban know that the international community is concerned about security, but they also know it wants to pursue development as much as possible. So extortion is the easiest crime."
It's not just the big foreign-aid projects that get hit. Local businesses are victims too. In Kandahar, says a businessman who asked for anonymity out of fear of Taliban retribution, even the smallest shops pay a "business license" to the Taliban. In his company, which builds towers for mobile-phone transmitters, he estimates that 20% to 30% of total costs go to protection payments. The going rate to protect a transmitter tower runs about $2,000 a month, he says. "You have no choice but to pay these guys. You don't want to do it, but there is no government in these areas, no security, so you have to do what you can to protect your business."
That analysis is confirmed by Sargon Heinrich, a Kabul-based U.S. businessman in construction and service industries. Heinrich says some 16% of his gross revenue goes to "facilitation fees," mostly to protect shipments of valuable equipment coming from the border. "That is all revenue that will ultimately be shared by the Taliban." As an American, Heinrich is troubled by the implication that he may be funding the insurgency. "All of this could be seen as material support for enemy forces," he muses. "But you have to weigh that against everything that is being done in that project. Are you aiding and abetting the enemy if you have to pay to get a school built? It's the cost of doing business here." In fact, protection payments are so widespread that one contractor I interviewed responded incredulously to questions about how the system worked. "You must be the only person in Afghanistan who doesn't know this is going on," he said.
Taking the Long View
U.S. and Afghan government officials certainly know about the protection rackets. Afghan Deputy Minister of Public Works Mohammad Rasooli Wali freely admits that the contractors he has hired to help build the multibillion-dollar ring road around Afghanistan — funded by the World Bank, USAID and other nations' development programs — probably pay off the Taliban to protect their sites and equipment. For his part, Colonel Thomas O'Donovan, the departing head of the Army Corps of Engineers in Afghanistan, which is responsible for about $4 billion worth of U.S. government contracts a year, admits that there is little the Corps can do to stop subcontractors from paying the Taliban. "If we catch them, then they are done. But how do you catch them? It's not like the Taliban give receipts."
So what can be done? Cohen, at Treasury, says an interagency task force has recently been convened on the issue of funding extremists, hoping this will help "protect the critically important work of humanitarian agencies in the region." Flynn, who came to ISAF two months ago with General Stanley McChrystal, the organization's new U.S. commander, thinks the old laissez-faire attitude toward protection money has got to change. "This is happening on battlefields across Afghanistan," he says, "and we have to fix it. Because if we can't fix that, then we can't tell the government of Afghanistan to get its act together." Hanif Atmar, Afghanistan's Minister of the Interior, says increased financing, particularly through extortion, is emboldening the enemy and admits that part of the fault lies with his government. "Yes, I blame [contractors and construction companies] for the fact that they are paying these insurgents, but at the same time, I sympathize with them because they are not doing it out of their own accord but because they are forced to. It is our responsibility as the government of Afghanistan and the international community to provide a secure environment for them to work. And so far, we have not been able to do so." (Read TIME's interview with McChrystal.)
That's in part because some Afghan officials think cracking down on protection rackets would be too difficult and costly, when an easier solution could be found in more development. Deputy Minister Wali says, "If the contractors pay the Taliban — well, that is only for a year, and the road is good for many years. And that brings security." Once the road is completed, he argues, it brings hospitals, police, schools and education. "And once the people know what the peace in the area is like, they will leave their guns and do some agriculture."
But that argument hasn't been borne out elsewhere. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, for example, has become so entrenched in the cocaine trade that it is now difficult to isolate the true ideologues from the criminals that keep the movement alive. The adviser to the Afghan Ministry of the Interior says the costs of enabling the Taliban's protection racket outweigh the benefits of any reconstruction that might come out of it. "It both prolongs the war and feeds criminality, which in turn turns more people against the government." His solution is to encourage local participation. "If you want a school, then make the locals build the school. You want a road, bring in local labor. It might be more convenient to pay off the Taliban, and it might be faster. But the community will protect what the community has built."
Such an approach would take time to bear fruit. The first step would be to shield local populations from the Taliban's threats — mission impossible without more Afghan and Western boots on the ground. Omerkhil, the beleaguered district governor from Char Dara, says there are only 27 police in his district of 80,000 residents "and 3,000 Taliban. The alternative to paying the Taliban is easy. If we had more soldiers, more police and more checkpoints, then I can guarantee you that the Taliban wouldn't be able to do anything."
In the end, only a thriving — and legal — local economy will turn off the Taliban's faucet. "If you have people making more money in a criminal organization than they can [make] working for the government or in the private sector," says a U.S. Treasury official involved in the issue, "it is an indication that we need to do a lot more to create a viable Afghan economy." Correct — and sadly, not something likely to be put right anytime soon.
— With reporting by Shah Mahmood Barakzai / Kabul
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Afghan policy showing cracks
McClatchy Newspapers By Nancy A. Youssef Tuesday, September 01, 2009
WASHINGTON - The prospect that U.S. Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal may ask for as many as 45,000 more American troops in Afghanistan is fueling growing tension within President Barack Obama's administration over the U.S. commitment to the war there.
Yesterday, Gen. McChrystal sent his assessment of the Afghanistan situation to the Pentagon, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the U.S. Central Command and NATO. While the assessment didn't include a request for more troops, senior military officials said they expect Gen. McChrystal later in September to seek between 21,000 and 45,000 more. There are now 62,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
But administration officials said that amid rising violence and casualties, polls show a majority of Americans now think the war in Afghanistan isn't worth fighting. With tough battles ahead on health care, the budget and other issues, Vice President Joseph R. Biden and other officials are increasingly anxious about how the American public would respond to sending more troops.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to talk to the media, said Mr. Biden has argued that without sustained support from the American people, the United States cannot make the long-term commitment that would be needed to stabilize Afghanistan and dismantle al-Qaida. Mr. Biden's office declined to comment.
"I think they [the Obama administration] thought this would be more popular and easier," a senior Pentagon official said. "We are not getting a Bush-like commitment to this war."
Yesterday's assessment initially was to include troop recommendations, but political concerns prompted White House and Pentagon officials to agree that those recommendations would come later, advisers to Gen. McChrystal said. Although the White House took a hands-off approach toward Afghanistan earlier this summer, Pentagon officials said they are now getting more questions about how many troops might be needed, and for how long.
Some White House officials said the administration feels that it was pressured to send the additional 17,500 combat troops and 4,000 trainers earlier this year, before the administration was comfortable with its plan for Afghanistan, because of the country's election in August.
Mr. Obama now feels that Gen. McChrystal and his superior, Army Gen. David Petraeus, head of the Central Command, are pressuring him to commit still more troops to Afghanistan, a senior military official said. The official said retired Marine Gen. James Jones, Mr. Obama's national security adviser, told Gen. McChrystal last month not to ask for more troops, but the general still indicated in interviews that he may need more.
Gen. McChrystal's new assessment is the fifth one ordered since Mr. Obama's inauguration. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said no details of the assessment would be released. Other officials called it a "political hot potato."
Advisers to Gen. McChrystal, who spoke to McClatchy Newspapers on condition of anonymity because of the matter's sensitivity, said the document is a little more than 10 pages long and broadly spells out the general's assessment of conditions on the ground. "It says that this could get much worse unless we invest ourselves in this now," one adviser said. "Then it says, 'This is what we propose to do.' "
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs yesterday said the Obama administration inherited an under-resourced war in Afghanistan, but he stopped short of promising more troops.
Administration officials said the White House is planning a series of "quiet discussions" among top advisers over the next six weeks or so about the way ahead. "What the president is going to want to do is review the report and then discuss and talk with all of those that have equities in it to get their viewpoints and to ensure that each and every person is heard on this, and that's what the president intends to do," Mr. Gibbs said yesterday.
Gen. McChrystal's latest assessment calls for redistributing troops to focus more on protecting population centers and less on chasing Taliban fighters. It also says it will take several years to build a more professional and capable Afghan security force, without saying how large that force should be.
The assessment also calls for more U.S. government civilians to be sent to Afghanistan, and for streamlining the military's command structure, saying too much bureaucracy is making it difficult for commanders to make decisions on the ground.
"The situation in Afghanistan is serious, but success is achievable and demands a revised implementation strategy, commitment and resolve, and increased unity of effort," Gen. McChrystal said in a statement yesterday.
Since Mr. Obama's inauguration, when the war was hailed as a just cause, the administration has been bombarded by signs of a deteriorating situation. The deaths this year of 304 U.S. and NATO forces, including 179 Americans, makes 2009 the deadliest year for both U.S. and NATO forces since the war began eight years ago -- and there are still four months to go until 2010.
A Washington Post-ABC News poll in August found that, for the first time since the war began, a majority of Americans don't think the war is worth fighting.
Pentagon officials said White House officials have told them that they fear that Gen. McChrystal's expected request for more troops won't be his last. The additional troops are "only a down payment on what would be required to turn things around, and everyone knows that," said another senior military official, who said that's true in part because estimates of what the Afghan forces can do -- and when they will be fully capable of handling security threats -- are being downgraded.
Meanwhile, U.S. military commanders in Kabul feel the political clock ticking, saying they think they have no more than 18 months to show some progress -- even as most agree that they don't have enough troops. Success could mean as little as achieving a plateau in the levels of violence, two military officials told McClatchy Newspapers.
Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said discussion of what the Pentagon is proposing and a White House response is premature: "We are not there yet. Let's see what Gen. McChrystal comes back and asks for."
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Group: US Embassy Security in Kabul Risky
Security Guards Overworked, Sleep-Deprived and Subject To Humiliating Hazing, Including Being Urinated On, Watchdog Says
(CBS/AP) A private security company hired by the U.S. State Department to protect diplomats and staff at the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan provides shoddy security and fosters a "Lord of the Flies environment" in which subordinates are subjected to hazing and inappropriate behavior by supervisors, a government oversight group alleged Tuesday.
In a 10-page letter to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Project on Government Oversight contended the situation has led to a breakdown in morale and leadership, compromising security at the embassy in Kabul where nearly 1,000 U.S. diplomats, staff and Afghan nationals work.
The group is urging Clinton to begin an investigation of the contract with ArmorGroup North America. It also recommends that she ask the Pentagon to provide "immediate military supervision" of the private security force at the embassy.
The oversight group's findings are based on interviews with ArmorGroup guards, documents, photographs and e-mails.
One e-mail from a guard describes lurid conditions at Camp Sullivan, the guards' quarters a few miles from the embassy. The message depicted scenes of abuse including guards and supervisors "peeing on people, eating potato chips out of [buttock] cracks, vodka shots out of [buttock] cracks (there is video of that one), broken doors after drnken [sic] brawls, threats and intimidation from those leaders participating in this activity."
Multiple guards say these conditions have created a "climate of fear and coercion." Those who refuse to participate are often ridiculed, humiliated or even fired, they contended.
The group's investigation found sleep-deprived guards regularly logging 14-hour days, language barriers that impair critical communications, and a failure by the State Department to hold the contractor accountable.
Nearly two-thirds of the embassy guards are Gurkhas from Nepal and northern India who speak little English, a situation that creates communications breakdowns, the group says. Pantomime is often used to convey orders and instructions.
"One guard described the situation as so dire that if he were to say to many of the Gurkhas, 'There is a terrorist standing behind you,' those Gurkhas would answer 'Thank you sir, and good morning,'" the group's letter said.
The group also alleges that on at least one occasion, company supervisors brought prostitutes into Camp Sullivan.
Wackenhut Services, ArmorGroup's parent company, had no immediate comment on the allegations. The State Department also had no immediate comment.
The State Department has been aware of ArmorGroup's shortcomings, the letter says, but has done too little to correct the problems.
It cites a July 2007 warning from the department to ArmorGroup that detailed more than a dozen performance deficiencies, including too few guards and armored vehicles. Another "cure notice" was sent less than a year later, raising other problems and criticizing the contractor for failing to fix the prior ones.
In July 2008, however, the department extended the contract for another year, according to the notice. More problems surfaced and more warning notices followed. Yet at a congressional hearing on the contract in June, State Department officials said the prior shortcomings had been remedied and security at the embassy is effective.
The contract was renewed again through 2010.
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Did the Pentagon Blacklist Journalists in Afghanistan?
By Jason Motlagh Time Magazine / Kabul Tuesday, Sep. 01, 2009
Journalists covering the Afghan war rely heavily on coalition forces to gain access to a hardscrabble backcountry populated by Taliban militants. So the reaction was far from muted when the news broke last week that the Defense Department was paying a controversial private firm to profile reporters seeking to accompany — or "embed" — with troops. Reporters quickly complained that it was tantamount to building a blacklist and that the U.S. military was deliberately working to sideline journalists critical of its mission.
Stars and Stripes, the independent, Pentagon-funded newspaper, reported that the Department of Defense had hired the Rendon Group to assess whether the prior work of reporters asking to be embeeded was "positive," "negative" or "neutral." The newspaper highlighted one journalist profile that said its purpose was to "gauge the expected sentiment of [the reporter's] work while on an embed mission in Afghanistan." Military officials in Afghanistan quickly downplayed the charges, explaining that it was not an attempt to rate reporters or news outlets but rather to gain background information to better equip officers for interviews and to help public affairs officers gauge likely areas of interest. Rendon said the same in a statement. Access has never been denied based on previous reporting, they insisted. Nevertheless, Rendon's contract will be terminated as of Sept. 1.
However, journalists who have had frustrating experiences trying to gain access suspect that the profiling may have played a part. A freelance TV producer for Al-Jazeera who asked to remain anonymous, says he applied for four different embeds with U.S. forces in early February. After multiple delays over the course of several months, three of the requests were cancelled. The fourth was finally approved a half a year later, but only when he bypassed military public affairs and directly contacted the officer in charge of the unit he wished to embed with. According to WHO, the Rendon Group was originally hired in 2001 to track the reporting of the Doha-based network, which has been a fierce critic of U.S. policy in Iraq and Afghanistan and accused of bias by U.S. officials. Although he has never seen his profile, the producer suspects he was "blacklisted" based on his affiliation.
He has yet to see his background profile. But I have seen mine. I recently applied to embed with U.S. Special Forces to cover a new initiative to raise and train civilian militias in Taliban strongholds. After waiting for more than a month for a response, I was accidentally copied on an e-mail sent by the public affairs department to the presiding officer who would give or deny approval. A color-coded pie chart showed that 47% of my stories were deemed "negative," 47% "neutral" and 6% "positive." In a section titled "Key Takeaway Points," it was mentioned that my stories have been lengthy, with plenty of context and sources. It was added, however, that, "most notably, he tends to quote experts" from a British think tank "which has been critical of the coalition mission and the Afghan government." A day after the e-mail — which included the Rendon analysis — was sent to the officer, my application was rejected without explanation.
A U.S. military spokesperson in Afghanistan, Lt.Comm. Christine Sidenstricker, acknowledged that public affairs officers in "a couple of instances" had been found to have interfered with embed applications and were "corrected immediately." To her knowledge, she says, this has never happened in Afghanistan. "A cursory review of Afghan coverage completely disproves" the notion that it's a policy, she says, pointing out that reporters who are deeply critical of U.S. forces have been allowed to embed multiple times. The Rendon Group's media analysis, she went on, was part of a broader one-year, $1.5 million contract to ease some of the workload borne by coalition forces in the country — "perfectly normal" in a wartime context.
Several journalists were less troubled by the Pentagon's vetting process than its choice of the Rendon Group, which was also instrumental in forming the Iraqi National Congress, a CIA-funded opposition group that went on to provide the Bush administration with bogus information on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction that was the groundwork for the 2003 invasion. Journalist Nir Rosen (who reported for TIME in Iraq) blogged that there "should be a tension between the media and the government. We are not on the same team." He praised an Army colonel for allowing him to embed despite a Rendon assessment that was highly critical of his reporting. Another journalist, P.J. Tobia, who has embedded with U.S. forces in Afghanistan and also obtained his profile, called the profiles "creepy" in a blogpost. But he was most troubled, he said, by Rendon claims that such reports did not really exist.
This article was reported with a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
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China hopes Afghanistan can resume peace, stability at an early date
BEIJING, Sept. 1 (Xinhua) -- China on Tuesday expressed its hope that Afghanistan could take the path of peace and stability at an early date as the vote-counting of the Afghan presidential election is underway.
"As a neighbor and friend of Afghanistan, we sincerely hope that it will take the path of peace, stability and development at an early date," said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu at a regular press conference.
Jiang made the remarks in response to a question on the Afghan presidential election, the second presidential election in the post-Taliban country, which was held on Aug. 20 amid tight security as the Taliban insurgents vowed to derail it.
Incumbent President Hamid Karzai was leading after early vote counting, but it would take a couple of weeks before the final result could be announced because of allegations of fraud in the elections and the restless situation in the country.
"We have noticed that the Afghan presidential election is being held peacefully and successfully, for which China feels gratified," said Jiang.
"The election falls into the internal affairs of Afghanistan, and China respects the choice of the Afghan people," Jiang said.
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IT'S TIME TO LEAVE AFGHANISTAN
September 1, 2009 New York Post
'YESTERDAY," reads the e-mail from Allen, a Marine in Afghanistan, "I gave blood because a Marine, while out on patrol, stepped on a [mine's] pressure plate and lost both legs." Then "another Marine with a bullet wound to the head was brought in. Both Marines died this morning."
"I'm sorry about the drama," writes Allen, an enthusiastic infantryman willing to die "so that each of you may grow old." He says: "I put everything in God's hands." And: "Semper Fi!"
Allen and others of America's finest are also in Washington's hands. This city should keep faith with them by rapidly reversing the trajectory of America's involvement in Afghanistan, where, says the Dutch commander of coalition forces in a southern province, walking through the region is "like walking through the Old Testament."
US strategy -- protecting the population -- is increasingly troop-intensive while Americans are increasingly impatient about "deteriorating" (says Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) conditions. The war already is nearly 50 percent longer than the combined US involvements in two world wars, and NATO assistance is reluctant and often risible.
US strategy is "clear, hold and build." Clear? Taliban forces can evaporate and then return, confident that US forces will forever be too few to hold gains. Hence nation-building would be impossible even if we knew how, and even if Afghanistan were not the second-worst place to try: The Brookings Institution ranks Somalia as the only nation with a weaker state.
Military historian Max Hastings says Kabul controls only about a third of the country ("control" is an elastic concept) and " 'our' Afghans may prove no more viable than were 'our' Vietnamese, the Saigon regime." Just 4,000 Marines are contesting control of Helmand province, which is the size of West Virginia. The New York Times reports a Helmand official saying he has only "police officers who steal and a small group of Afghan soldiers who say they are here for 'vacation.' "
Afghanistan's $23 billion GDP is the size of Boise's. Counterinsurgency doctrine teaches, not very helpfully, that development depends on security, and that security depends on development. Three-quarters of Afghanistan's poppy production for opium comes from Helmand. In what should be called Operation Sisyphus, US officials are urging farmers to grow other crops. Endive, perhaps?
Even though violence exploded across Iraq after, and partly because of, three elections, Afghanistan's recent elections were called "crucial." To what? They came, they went, they altered no fundamentals, all of which militate against American "success," whatever that might mean.
Creation of an effective central government? Afghanistan has never had one. US Ambassador Karl Eikenberry hopes for a "renewal of trust" of the Afghan people in the government, but The Economist describes President Hamid Karzai's government as so "inept, corrupt and predatory" that people sometimes yearn for restoration of the warlords, "who were less venal and less brutal than Mr. Karzai's lot."
Adm. Mullen speaks of combating Afghanistan's "culture of poverty." But that took decades in just a few square miles of the South Bronx.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal, US commander in Afghanistan, thinks jobs programs and local government services might entice many "accidental guerrillas" to leave the Taliban. But before launching New Deal 2.0 in Afghanistan, the Obama administration should ask itself: If US forces are there to prevent re-establishment of al Qaeda bases -- evidently there are none now -- must there be nation-building invasions of Somalia, Yemen and other sovereignty vacuums?
US forces are being increased by 21,000 to 68,000, bringing the coalition total to 110,000. About 9,000 are from Britain, where support for the war is waning. Counterinsurgency theory concerning the time and the ratio of forces required to protect the population indicates that, nationwide, Afghanistan would need hundreds of thousands of coalition troops, perhaps for a decade or more. That is inconceivable.
So, instead, forces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent special-forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters.
Genius, said de Gaulle, recalling Bismarck's decision to halt German forces short of Paris in 1870, sometimes consists of knowing when to stop. Genius is not required to recognize that in Afghanistan, when means now, before more American valor, such as Allen's, is squandered.
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Afghanistan: A new plan is needed
Telegraph.co.uk 01 Sep 2009
Telegraph View: The commander of US and Nato troops has likened his force to a bull charging a matador (the Taliban) and being weakened with every sword thrust. Something must be done.
The metaphor chosen by General Stanley McChrystal to describe America's plight in Afghanistan is both graphic and depressing. The commander of US and Nato troops likened his force to a bull charging a matador (the Taliban) and being weakened with every sword thrust. He also warned that the Allied strategy was not working, because areas cleared of insurgents were not then held; meanwhile, the Afghan people were undergoing a "crisis of confidence" because their lives were not being made better after eight years of fighting.
It is a bleak assessment, and will no doubt pave the way for a request for even more soldiers to be deployed, in addition to the extra 30,000 President Obama has already sent in. The general said that while the situation was serious, success was achievable, but only if there was "increased unity of effort" – a lightly coded reproof to those Nato members, notably France and Germany, that have failed to pull their weight. The general's strategic approach is sound. As in Iraq, he wants local forces to take the lead in the fight against the insurgency, but warns that it will be three years before the Afghan army can manage that, even longer for the Afghan police. It is going to be a long haul.
Alongside the security effort, the notion of negotiating with the more malleable Taliban leaders is beginning to gain traction. David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, has raised it with Hillary Clinton, and Downing Street was pushing the idea during Gordon Brown's weekend visit to British forces. An accommodation is probably inevitable if order is to be established, though in a land run by tribal warlords, it will not be easily achieved. Meanwhile, with public opinion in this country and the US turning against the war, General McChrystal may not have as much time as he would like to achieve his objectives.
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Afghanistan Commander's Report Submitted, But Secret
By Al Pessin VOA News The Pentagon 31 August 2009
The U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, has delivered his eagerly-awaited assessment to his bosses in Washington and Brussels, but the document is being kept secret. Pentagon officials say it will be followed by international consultations and possibly requests for more U.S. and international forces.
According to a NATO release, General McChrystal writes that "the situation in Afghanistan is serious, but success is achievable." The general is quoted as saying success will require "a revised implementation strategy," as well as commitment, resolve, and increased unity of effort. But that is all that has been made public.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he has not yet seen the assessment, but told reporters what he expects it to contain.
"I think that his assessment, without having read it, I suspect is going to point to the challenges that remain before us in Afghanistan. I think it will also point to areas where we can do better and can make improvements in our strategy and tactics," he said.
Some civilian advisers invited to Afghanistan to help General McChrystal prepare his assessment have said he needs more troops to put down a resurgent Taliban and establish security at least in Afghan population centers. Some analyses of the current situation have been fairly dire, including one by the top U.S. military officer, Admiral Mike Mullen, who has said security in Afghanistan is "serious and deteriorating." But Secretary Gates says he expects a balanced assessment from General McChrystal.
"While there is a lot of gloom and doom going around, I think that General McChrystal's assessment will be a realistic one and set forth the challenges we have in front of us. And at the same time, I think we have some assets in place and some developments that hold promise," said the secretary of defense.
Gates noted he has been concerned about sending too many foreign troops to Afghanistan and potentially alienating its people. But he says McChrystal can ask for more troops if he thinks he needs them. Still the secretary he acknowledged it would be difficult to send more U.S. troops to Afghanistan in the short term, and expressed concern about the cost of an increased commitment.
"We have been very explicit that General McChrystal should be forthright in telling us what he needs in order to accomplish the mission that he has been given. And we will look at his assessment and then we will look at the resource recommendations that he makes," he added.
Secretary Gates also said there have been some positive developments in Afghanistan, including the recent election and the arrival of more U.S. and international troops.
Pentagon Spokesman Bryan Whitman says there are no plans to make General McChrystal's report public, calling it "a confidential military assessment."
Whitman says any request for additional forces will come only after high-level international consultations.
"I am told it does not include specific recommendations or requests for additional forces or funding, that only after the president and NATO leaders have had discussions related to implementation will there be resourcing options that could be presented or considered at that point," he said.
Whitman says this assessment is designed to provide an implementation plan for the new strategy President Barack Obama announced in March, which calls for a regional approach and a focus on ensuring Afghanistan does not again become a base for international terrorism, as it was before the September 11 attacks in 2001. The president also approved an increase of more than 20,000 U.S. troops, most of whom have already arrived.
Any request from General McChrystal would be in addition to the authorized total of 68,000 U.S. troops and the current contingent of 37,000 troops from NATO and other partner countries.
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Civilians Killed and Wounded by Taleban Mines
Rebels make Helmand a sea of landmines, targeting military and civilians.
Institute for War & Peace Reporting By Mohammad Ilyas Dayee in Helmand (ARR No. 334, 01-Sep-09)
“I hate the world now,” said Ismail, standing outside the emergency hospital in Lashkar Gah. “My wife has been killed. I wish that Mullah Omar’s wife would also die in this type of explosion.”
Gulana, Ismail’s wife of just three days, along with her mother and two of her brothers, hit a land mine on election day, August 20. They were bringing their mother from their native village of Zarghon, in Nad Ali district, to the hospital in Lashkar Gah for treatment of a gunshot wound to the chest. All were killed. Three neighbours who were with them also died in the blast.
This is the new face of the war in Helmand, the volatile and violent province in southern Afghanistan that has become the testing ground for the new United States military policy. In early July, 4,000 marines, part of the new contingent of troops approved by President Barack Obama to turn the war around, began a large-scale military offensive called Operation Khanjar (Dagger Thrust), aimed at the southern Helmand river valley. The British, who have been fighting in Helmand for the past three years, were at the time engaged in Operation Panther’s Claw, targeting northern Helmand.
Squeezed out of their normal haunts, the Taleban have retaliated by planting thousands of mines and other “improvised explosive devices”, IEDs, all over the province, causing numerous casualties to both military and civilian populations. Due in large part to the increase in these homemade devices, August was the deadliest month ever for US troops in Afghanistan, with 51 killed.
“We have changed our tactics,” said Taleban spokesman Qari Yusuf Ahmadi. “The mujahedin are now being told to plant mines, conduct guerrilla warfare, and increase suicide bombings.”
The switch signals a loss of face and fighting spirit, said a former Helmand police officer, who did not want to be named.
“The Taleban have lost their morale,” he said. “They can only challenge the foreign forces with these mines. Helmand has become the home of land mines. Many civilians will be killed as well as the military.”
Brigadier General Larry Nicholson, who heads the marines in Helmand, told the media that the Taleban had salted the terrain with IEDs. Speaking to reporters in Nawzad district right after the foreign forces gained control of it last month, General Nicholson acknowledged that progress had been slowed because of the explosives.
“If we start clearing the mines from Nawzad right now it will take us eight months to get them all,” he said. “If the Taleban put their efforts into reconstruction rather than making devices like these, Helmand would be great by now.”
Many of the new crop of IEDs are homemade bombs put together from wooden plates and springs, say experts. They may be crude, but they are nevertheless deadly.
“Most of the damage caused by these mines will be to civilians,” said Helmand governor Gulab Mangal. “The military are taking mines out of the land like birds scooping up fish from the water.”
In Nawa, just south of the capital Lashkar Gah, more than 100 civilians have been killed in the past two months, according to Afghan officials.
“Every day people are losing loved ones,” said Hajji Torkhan, a former provincial council member from Nawa.
He called on the Taleban to stop targeting civilians, and asked the foreign troops to help the civilian population.
“We need a comprehensive plan for de-mining Nawa district,” said Torkhan. “The foreign forces should patrol early in the morning, before civilians go out. They have mine detection devices. They can clear the area.”
Nafas Khan, the district chief of police, told IWPR that mines and IEDs were the greatest danger to civilians and the military in Nawa.
“The Taleban have been weakened by 60 percent,” he said. “But they have become much stronger and more sophisticated in planting mines. We get reports every single day about these things.”
To the south of Nawa lies Garmsir, a large district that is also experiencing a surge in IEDs. Last week a family of 21 was wiped out when their vehicle hit a mine.
“This is the Taleban, the enemies of the people,” said Daoud Ahmady, spokesman for Helmand’s governor. He at first insisted that only five people were killed, not 21, and that they were all women and children. His version, however, was later contradicted by Helmand’s chief of police, who confirmed the higher figure.
The mines are causing quite a few problems for the Taleban themselves. According to a Taleban fighter in Marja district, who did not want to be named, many of those who originally laid the mines have either been killed or left the area.
“Our Pakistani friends gave a lot of help and training to the Taleban in Marja,” he said. “They planted mines all over the place. But then they got killed or were driven back to Pakistan, so now nobody knows where all the mines are.”
In Greshk, to the north of Lashkar Gah, the son of a local Taleban commander was killed when he drove over a mine laid by his father’s comrades-in-arms.
“They only found one of his hands,” said Mohammad Islam, a resident of the area. “It was Mullah Qudous’s son, and he drove over a mine his father had planted on a bridge.”
The residents of Nad Ali now call their district “mine alley” and say the roads are empty.
“Nobody walks on the roads, and we don’t let out children go outside,” said Zainullah Stanekzai, a journalist from Nad Ali.
But on August 25, three children under nine years old were killed in Nahr-e-Saraj district. They had found a mine and were tossing it around like a football. All three were brothers.
“My sons!” sobbed Noor Ahmad. “They thought it was a ball.”
Sardar Wali Haqqani, an official at the Italian-funded Emergency Hospital in Lashkar Gah, showed a reporter his hands, stained with blood from transferring the bodies to the emergency room.
“These kids were playing with it,” he said in disgust. “With a mine the Taleban had laid for the foreign forces just the night before. The wind had exposed the mine. Now three kids are dead, and four others injured.”
Ayub Khan, the deputy police chief in Helmand, admits that the mines have made life tough for the ordinary people and the officials in the province.
“The Taleban have closed all the roads with mines, and they keep themselves inside a belt of mines, so that the Afghan and foreign forces cannot get to them easily,” he said. “They want to show that they are strong. But we have the time and the space for this. We will progress, and we will get rid of the Taleban.”
Mohammad Ilyas Dayee is an IWPR staff reporter in Helmand.
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Taliban mutilated me: Afghan voter
The Age September 1, 2009
An Afghan man says Taliban militants cut off his nose and both ears as he tried to vote in the August 20 presidential election.
"I was on my way to a polling station when Taliban stopped me and searched me. They found my voter registration card," Lal Mohammad said from his hospital bed in Kabul on Monday.
He said they cut off his nose and ears before beating him unconscious with a weapon.
"I regret that I went to vote," Mohammad said, crying and trying to hide his disfigured face.
"What is the benefit of voting to me?"
The attack was the third confirmed report of the Taliban mutilating people who sought to cast ballots in the electoral contest.
Militants had warned Afghans not to vote and to stay away from the polls on election day.
The attack on Mohammad occurred in a rural community in Daykundi, a mountainous region of central Afghanistan, he said.
Because of limited medical facilities in his region, the father-of-eight made the long journey to Kabul for treatment.
The Taliban also cut off the index fingers of two Afghans after they cast ballots in southern Afghanistan, said Nader Nadery, head of the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan.
Voters were asked to dip their index fingers in purple ink to prevent multiple voting. Before the election, rumours spread the Taliban would cut off inked fingers.
A Taliban spokesman had said militants would not carry out such attacks, but the movement is a loose coalition of anti-government forces.
At least 26 Afghan civilians and security forces died in dozens of militant attacks on election day, discouraging many from voting.
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