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Flaws overshadow Afghan outcome
By David Loyn BBC News, Kabul, Afghanistan Saturday, 12 September 2009
With more than 90% of the votes counted in the Afghan election, President Hamid Karzai has secured more than 50% of the poll, and can expect to remain in power without facing a second round of voting.
US tries to force Afghanistan election deal
American officials are making frantic efforts to force President Hamid Karzai into a unity government with his rival Dr Abdullah Abdullah, as the West tries to stave off looming political disaster following Afghanistan's flawed vote last month.
By Ben Farmer in Kabul, Leonard Doyle in Washington and Nick Meo 12 Sep 2009 Daily Telegraph (UK)
One official in Kabul described "turmoil" behind the scenes, with Western diplomats and Afghan politicians trying to work out a power-sharing deal against Mr Karzai's wishes.
Afghanistan's Karzai Holds Firm Lead in Disputed Vote
By VOA News 12 September 2009
Afghan election officials say President Hamid Karzai holds a firm lead in the country's disputed election, according to a nearly complete vote tally announced Saturday.
Afghans want resolution of elections
By Bilal Sarwary BBC News, on the Jalalabad - Kabul highway Saturday, 12 September 2009
It's a sunny summer morning at a busy bus station in Jalalabad, the capital of the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar.
The Afghan Electoral Fix
The Wall Street Journal 09/11/2009
A positive outcome from the vote mess is still possible.
Afghanistan's messy presidential election and messier aftermath adds the prospect of political instability to the country's well-known security problems. Critics on both the left and right are citing the election's problems
FACTBOX-Security developments in Afghanistan, Sept 12
12 Sep 2009 15:47:39 GMT
KABUL, Sept 11 (Reuters) - Following are security developments reported in Afghanistan as of 1545 GMT on Saturday:
Taliban Leaders Mock U.S. 9/11 Legacy From Pakistan Havens
By Arthur Kent, Skyreporter.com
Sept. 11, 2009 - On the eighth anniversary of 9/11, the West’s effort to rid southwest Asia of the menace of terrorism is collapsing in a surge of bloodshed and corruption on a truly damning scale.
Eight years after 9/11, Taliban roils 80 percent of Afghanistan
The hijacking of a NATO supply truck and Stephen Farrell's kidnapping have focused attention on rising insecurity in Afghanistan's north, strikingly illustrated on a new map.
Kabul must set own goals, be held to them
Kansas City Star By JAMIE METZEL and CHRISTINE FAIR 12 Sept 2009
Afghanistan's presidential election has demonstrated that the Afghan people yearn for more accountable leadership. It is no less clear that this aspiration is far from being met, and that the country's poor governance
Afghanistan: Questions, answers on war, US plans
By Anne Gearan, Ap National Security Writer – Sat Sep 12, 10:51 am ET
WASHINGTON – The link between Afghanistan and al-Qaida has dimmed in memory in the eight years since the Sept. 11 attacks. Osama bin Laden remains at large. The fighting grinds on.
David Miliband looks to Afghanistan unity government
Times Online By Philip Webster 09/11/2009
David Miliband hinted today that the West is hoping that a government of national unity emerges from the discredited Afghan presidential elections.
Construction on first nursing school begins in N Afghanistan
KABUL, Sept. 12 (Xinhua) -- Construction on Afghanistan's first nursing school has begun in Faizabad, capital of the northern Badakhshan province with the financial support of the United States, a local official said Saturday.
Senator Calls for More Afghan Forces, Not US Troops
By Ravi Khanna VOA News Washington 12 September 2009
President Obama is facing growing dissent within his own party on plans to commit more troops to the war in Afghanistan, even as American commanders say the situation on the ground has deteriorated.
Afghanistan conflict not stopping terrorism, say almost half of Britons
Telegraph.co.uk - UK News 12 Sep 2009
Almost half the country believes the war in Afghanistan is doing nothing to reduce the threat of terrorism on Britain's streets, according to a poll.
Pentagon plans troops to target roadside Afghanistan bombs
From Barbara Starr CNN Pentagon Correspondent
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Defense Secretary Robert Gates is expected to approve sending thousands of additional forces to Afghanistan to deal with the growing threat from roadside bombs, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said Friday.
Spate of Attacks Across Afghanistan Kills Dozens
By VOA News 12 September 2009
More than forty civilians, police and militants have been killed since Friday night in a spate of violence across Afghanistan.
Pakistan Kills 22 Militants in Khyber Region
By VOA News 12 September 2009
A paramilitary group in Pakistan's Khyber region says Pakistani forces have killed 22 insurgents near the Afghan border.
US 'risks Afghan Soviet failure'
By Jonathan Marcus BBC diplomatic correspondent, Geneva Friday, 11 September 2009
A US foreign policy veteran has warned the West risks replicating the the Soviet Union's failure in Afghanistan without a fundamental change in policy.
More Civilian Deaths Unless U.S.-NATO Peace Keep
Commentary by Melek Zimmer-Zahine* IPS-Inter Press Service
KABUL, Sep 11 (IPS) - Each month since U.S. President Barack Obama has taken office, Afghanistan has seen a growing number of civilian and military deaths - a spiral of violence which has served to destabilise a nation already struggling to recover from its previous three decades of war.
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Flaws overshadow Afghan outcome
By David Loyn BBC News, Kabul, Afghanistan Saturday, 12 September 2009
With more than 90% of the votes counted in the Afghan election, President Hamid Karzai has secured more than 50% of the poll, and can expect to remain in power without facing a second round of voting.
But thousands of allegations of fraud are still being investigated amid growing international concern, particularly among those nations whose troops are currently fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.
And questions are being asked about how the such a flawed result was able to happen.
The system had an inbuilt potential for fraud as the Independent Election Commission was responsible for all three of the processes in the election - registering voters, running the poll and carrying out the count.
Registration problems
Eight years after the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan is still a long way from having a national ID card system, or any other agreed way of registering citizens.
Millions of dollars have been spent on pilot schemes, but none has been adopted amid political infighting both within the international community and between Afghan ministries.
So the Election Commission started afresh to build an electoral register in October last year.
They did not carry out any biometric tests such as iris scans or fingerprint checks - although these are foolproof and can be cost-effective.
Afghanistan pioneered iris recognition in the field in 2002 in order to process hundreds of thousands of returning refugees, but this knowledge was not built on, and the Election Commission registered voters by asking them to turn up in person.
An outside body that looked into the process - the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan - found widespread irregularity in the process.
Violations included the registration of underage voters, registration of people from a list who did not attend in person, and lack of impartiality.
For example, in Lashkar Gah, the main headquarters of the British army in Helmand province, a local teacher was alleged to have had undue influence over who was registered.
In the remote and poor central province of Oruzgan warlords were seen to control the registration process.
Manipulating votes
This made the manipulation of the voting process far easier to do.
Irregularities witnessed by observers on polling day included ballot boxes that were already full as the polls opened, a higher number of votes than voters registered, and districts where there were an even number of votes, usually 500, in each ballot box.
But the evidence that suggested to losing candidates that the count itself was not impartial came when it emerged that votes had been counted from polling stations that were known to have been closed on 20 August - for security or other reasons.
That is what prompted the leading challenger Abdullah Abdullah to criticise the counting process in a strongly worded interview for the BBC on Thursday, in which he said that the Independent Election Commission was not independent, and that it was being manipulated to keep a "mafia-type, narco state" in power.
"As long as it takes," he said, it is important that the "election is not decided by fraud."
The Independent Election Commission is investigating more than 700 complaints. Some of these refer to just one polling station, but others cross entire districts.
Meanwhile, the Electoral Complaints Commission, an oversight body with a majority of internationally appointed members, has ordered an audit of the whole election.
It wants a recount where there was a 100% turnout or more than 95% of votes for one candidate. This could take up to two months.
But in a sign of growing tension between the Afghan-led Independent Election Commission, and the international-led Electoral Complaints Commission, the order was rejected when initially sent earlier in the week, in a row over translation.
The Complaints Commission has widespread powers and has since flexed its muscles further, ordering that votes should be annulled from more than 70 polling stations in Ghazni, Paktika and Kandahar.
This is a dreadful outcome for a country facing a worsening insurgency.
International interest
A reliable independent observer, ICOS, assessed this week that the Taliban now have a presence in more than 80% of the country, up from 54% two years ago.
The international forces who are trying to secure stability have little appetite for another election, and opinion polls in Europe and the US show the public are losing patience for the war.
The outcome of this election is that President Karzai remains in power for now, with his authority substantially weakened, tainted by claims of corruption - and facing a strong challenge over his legitimacy, particularly in the Tajik heartland of the northeast, the headquarters of the northern alliance forces that drove the Taliban from power with US assistance in 2001.
And he faces a particular problem in Balkh and Jawzjan in the north, where the ex-warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostam campaigned for him in return for favours that President Karzai may not be strong enough to deliver.
As the recount begins, in a country where people still follow the lead of tribal elders, a very high margin for one candidate may not imply fraud, but it is at least an indicator worth examining.
The one politician to defy the tribal vote-banks was Ramazan Basherdost, the only candidate other than Karzai or Abdullah to win a significant number of votes.
He campaigned on the single platform of anti-corruption, and with no party machine, came a creditable third - signalling that there are many people in Afghanistan who are prepared to hope for honesty and vote against the divisions of the past.
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US tries to force Afghanistan election deal
American officials are making frantic efforts to force President Hamid Karzai into a unity government with his rival Dr Abdullah Abdullah, as the West tries to stave off looming political disaster following Afghanistan's flawed vote last month.
By Ben Farmer in Kabul, Leonard Doyle in Washington and Nick Meo 12 Sep 2009 Daily Telegraph (UK)
One official in Kabul described "turmoil" behind the scenes, with Western diplomats and Afghan politicians trying to work out a power-sharing deal against Mr Karzai's wishes.
The US ambassador to Kabul, Karl Eikenberry, had a "stormy meeting" with the president last week, sources in Washington have told The Sunday Telegraph.
Mr Eikenberry urged the Afghan leader to hold off claiming an outright win until all the votes have been counted and verified. Declaring victory could have wrecked the US strategy.
"Don't declare victory," warned the ambassador, on the instructions of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Since then the Afghan president has refused to meet American officials.
Diplomats are attempting to turn the crisis into an opportunity by forcing Mr Karzai to accept new allies, broadening the Afghan government, and perhaps persuading him to accept a diminished role for the presidency.
The election has left Mr Karzai in a strong position, having apparently won enough votes in the poll on August 20 to take him over the 50 per cent threshold needed for outright victory. But his western backers are infuriated that a huge number of his votes appear to be have been suspect - up to half a million in total could be investigated for fraud, according to figures circulating privately in US government circles.
Already 200,000 suspect ballot papers have been excluded from the count by the Afghan government's Independent Electoral Commission (IEC). Furious behind the scenes arguments have raged for the last week over which other contested votes to "quarantine", repeatedly delaying an announcement of a provisional full result.
A genuinely independent Electoral Complaints Commission, run by the united Nations, must then pronounce on the validity of the outcome.
After the latest partial result announced on Saturday, Mr Karzai had won 54.3 per cent of the vote, and his closest rival Abdullah Abdullah was well behind on 28.1 per cent. A further seven per cent of votes have yet to be counted, although these include the 200,000 that have already been set aside.
As of Saturday night, of 5,545,000 valid votes Mr Karzai had won 3,009,559 against Dr Abdullah's 1,558,591, the IEC announced.
Were Mr Karzai to fail to pass the 50 per cent threshold there would be an automatic run-off vote between him and Dr Abdullah, allowing in effect a re-run of the election. But although some diplomats had hoped for this it now appears unlikely - and in any case, with winter approaching it would be beset by serious logistical problems.
"There are no good options on the table at the moment," said one Western official who is close to the election process. "In Kabul at the moment foreigners and Afghans alike are becoming more fearful about the growing political crisis.
"Everybody thinks it is time to sit down and do a deal between Karzai and the Northerners. The Americans are putting a lot of pressure on."
The Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, appeared to back such a plan last week when he suggested that a "credible" future administration in Kabul would have to reflect the high levels of support won by former foreign minister Dr Abdullah in the poll.
But Dr Abdullah and Mr Karzai, former allies who parted company in 2006, no longer even attempt to disguise their hatred for each other. Their enmity has grown during the election campaign, and since the vote Dr Abdullah has explicitly ruled out joining a Karzai government.
Intense diplomatic pressure is now being put on Dr Abdullah and his backers so that they will eventually cut a deal, although observers think he will wait until the last possible minute to extract the best terms.
If a deal cannot be worked out there are fears that angry supporters of Dr Abdullah could take to the streets to protest against Mr Karzai stealing the election.
Vote rigging by Mr Karzai's supporters has been so audacious that Afghans and diplomats have been equally surprised.
The UN-backed election watchdog has fallen behind in sifting through more than 740 serious claims of ballot-stuffing and "ghost" polling stations and election officials are struggling to deal with the vast number of fraudulent votes.
America has been careful not to take sides in public for or against President Karzai, but US officials have made little secret of their wish to see his wings clipped. A key part of American hopes is that the president will accept reformist ministers who it is hoped can transform the fortunes of his government, widely regarded as corrupt and ineffective.
If he defies American advice and attempts to form a government without Dr Abdullah, however, the fear is that Mr Karzai will appoint his warlord allies to fill ministerial roles.
Instead of being chastened by the tight electoral race, the president himself would emerge more impervious to advice - and thus difficult for the West to influence.
The US is to offer President Karzai the carrot of more aid and support to keep his ailing government going. But if he defies Washington, President Barack Obama's administration will threaten to switch its focus from nation-building to a more straightforward hunt for terrorists.
There was a reminder of the US military commitment on Saturday when it was revealed that defence secretary Robert Gates is expected to dispatch another 3,000 troops to Afghanistan to increase security against roadside bombs. This is separate to the expected request for a large increase in force numbers from Gen Stanley McChrystal, the top US commander on the ground.
Afghans have been demoralised by the outcome of the election. "The international community should not recognise this, it is a joke," said Ajmal Zazai, a tribal leader from the east of Afghanistan. "They are watching as Karzai wrecks this country."
Abdul Wahab, a 34-year-old driver, said: "Before the election, I was very happy it would bring change.
"We have seen this government for seven years and even with the help of so much money from the donors they haven't done anything."
But three days after he cast his vote for Abdullah Abdullah, Mr Karzai's closest rival, Afghan media began to report blatant cheating by the president's supporters.
"It's very obvious what will happen if Mr Karzai wins again," the father of one said angrily at his home in northern Kabul. "It's going to be like the past seven years. It's like we are walking in the dark, we don't see anything and we won't have anything in the future."
The president, once the darling of the west, has repeatedly outsmarted his detractors. Nine months ago Mr Karzai was irritably yelling at aides as he sat besieged in his gloomy palace, the Arg.
His friend George W Bush was leaving office and a new team was taking over - Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Richard Holbrooke, all of whom had been privately and publicly critical of the Afghan ruler during the US presidential election campaign.
There were strong suspicions that Mr Karzai's former supporters in London and Washington were clearly searching for a new horse to back. What followed has been grudgingly accepted by his opponents as a series of masterstrokes.
When opponents claimed he was outstaying his constitutional term by holding elections in August, he called their bluff and threatened a snap poll in April, wrong-footing them. His opponents fell into disarray, then imploded under the weight of their warring egos.
Using the alliance-building skills which first made him so valuable to the West, he secured block votes from a series of ethnic strongmen - including such distasteful figures as the exiled Uzbek militia leader General Abdul Rashid Dostum.
Long before polling day he ensured that nearly every governor, police chief, district official or election commission employee was loyal to him. His reward came on August 20 when he was repaid with ballot boxes stuffed with votes.
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Afghanistan's Karzai Holds Firm Lead in Disputed Vote
By VOA News 12 September 2009
Afghan election officials say President Hamid Karzai holds a firm lead in the country's disputed election, according to a nearly complete vote tally announced Saturday.
Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission says, with 93 percent of the results tallied, Mr. Karzai holds a 54 percent lead, more than the 50 percent needed to avoid a runoff.
His main challenger, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah has 28 percent of the vote. But Dr. Abdullah and other candidates are disputing the results.
The results will not be final until a different, U.N.-backed Electoral Complaints Commission investigates allegations of widespread fraud .
United Nations Spokesman Aleem Siddique in Kabul tells VOA it is too soon to judge the outcome of the election, because there have been more than 2,000 complaints about the August 20 vote.
If the Complaints Commission throws out enough votes, it could bring Mr. Karzai below the 50 percent threshold.
Thursday, the Complaints Commission excluded ballots from 51 polling sites in Kandahar, 27 in Ghazni and five in Paktika. Those areas showed strong support for incumbent President Karzai.
Friday, the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, said people should not "jump to conclusions" before the investigations are complete. But he also said drawing out the process of vote counting over months could lead to instability in the country.
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Afghans want resolution of elections
By Bilal Sarwary BBC News, on the Jalalabad - Kabul highway Saturday, 12 September 2009
It's a sunny summer morning at a busy bus station in Jalalabad, the capital of the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar.
The bus linking the city with the Afghan capital of Kabul is about to depart.
In his husky voice, Lal Mohammad, the driver, makes the final announcement.
"The bus will leave in five minutes. Those who wish to go to Kabul get on now," he says authoritatively.
Jalalabad is renowned throughout Afghanistan for its fertile soil and the chaotic nature of its traffic.
"It takes forever in this city. Look at the lousy traffic police," Mohammad vents his frustration as he struggles to cope with the scorching summer heat.
The nauseating smell of diesel fumes mixed with human sweat is overpowering as Mohammad takes a turn and stops the vehicle in the middle of the road.
Quick search
It's Darunta, the last gate of Jalalabad.
A police officer boards the bus here and politely asks the passengers to disembark.
His men then undertake a quick search. The luggage hull, seats, floor and even the bonnet are scanned for weapons and opium.
Mohammad soon gets the nod from the officer to proceed.
As the bus roars out of Jalalabad towards Kabul, Mohammad switches on his radio.
"The election commission says it is investigating all the allegations of vote rigging and ballot stuffing in the 20 August presidential elections," says the newsreader.
"Let us hope that they will resolve this issue peacefully," says my co-passenger Ahmad Khan, a resident from Mohammand Dara district on the border with Pakistan.
"We need to have the results soon, so the new president could appoint ministers and governors," said Ali, a doctor from Jalalabad.
The chit-chat soon takes the form of a heated debate centred around President Hamid Karzai's perceived failures and achievements.
'Good person'
"Karzai is a good president, speaks foreign languages but he has failed because of his people," said Haji Sayedo Khan.
"He is of course a good person but he made empty promises," said Qadir Khan from Achin. "Don't grow poppy and I will build roads for you, remove corruption and we will not search your house, etc."
As we drive on the Jalalabad-Kabul road, posters could be seen on the walls urging Afghans to report insurgents and "destructive elements".
Like any other part of this country, security on this road remains a major concern.
"I have been driving for a long time," said Mohammad.
"When this road was asphalted, I was so happy that I couldn't sleep that night. It would take two hours instead of six to drive to Kabul; I kept thinking the whole night.
"But see what the Taliban and criminals are now doing - attacking fuel tankers and robbing passengers."
"We need security before anything else," says Ajmal Wasify, a local trader. "If we have security on this road, people will trust the government and the services it provides."
As the scenic Hindu Kush mountains appear in the distance, Mohammad switches on Pashto music, and one by one, the passengers are serenaded into a state of silent awe.
Suspicion
The spell is broken when the bus comes to a sudden halt on a narrow road flanked by towering peaks and jutting shards of rock.
Nearby, soldiers from the Afghan National Army are keeping a close eye on the road from within their Humvees.
Their faces show an intense suspicion - a result of months of relentless violence.
Only recently, several Isaf tankers and fuel-transportation convoys were attacked by armed Taliban fighters in this valley.
A soldier boards the bus, ordering the passengers to disembark immediately - this is the last in a series of security checkpoints along the route.
"Our army is serious and not corrupt, they just do their job," says Mohammad as he guns the engine and begins steering the bus towards its final destination.
"Corruption destroys a country like cancer destroys a body," an elderly passenger shouts from the back.
"We want the next president and government not to let this cancer destroy our country and our bodies," announces Bahadur Khan from the eastern Kunar province.
Khan is on his way to Kabul to settle the case of his son who was killed by a local commander in Sarkano district.
"The killer of my son works for the government. I don't know how Karzai still appoints people like him."
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The Afghan Electoral Fix
The Wall Street Journal 09/11/2009
A positive outcome from the vote mess is still possible.
Afghanistan's messy presidential election and messier aftermath adds the prospect of political instability to the country's well-known security problems. Critics on both the left and right are citing the election's problems as evidence of inevitable failure. This conclusion is premature.
The August 20 elections were indeed flawed. International observers and Afghanistan's own monitors have documented fraud, ballot stuffing and voter intimidation on behalf of President Hamid Karzai. The fraud is blatant and symptomatic of the Karzai administration's tolerance of corruption during its seven-plus years in office. The Electoral Complaints Commission, a U.N.-sponsored agency, yesterday disqualified votes from 83 polling stations, a process that could deny Mr. Karzai the majority an incumbent needs to avoid a run-off. The country's own Independent Electoral Commission earlier this week gave Mr. Karzai 54% of the preliminary count.
The potential for trouble is obvious. Mr. Karzai or his supporters could refuse to accept a second round of voting and try to force their man in. Abdullah Abdullah, his closest challenger, could respond by unleashing his armed Tajik supporters who distrust Mr. Karzai and his Pashtun ethnic kin, the largest minority group.
But those are worst-case hypotheticals. The reality on the ground is that Afghanistan's institutions and political actors are responding appropriately to a large political problem. Mr. Karzai has heeded American advice not to declare victory. It would be helpful if he would acknowledge and repudiate the fraud perpetrated on his behalf. Mr. Abdullah has urged his supporters to let the electoral agencies finish their work. They've done so, staying off the streets.
Patience would be good advice for Afghanistan's Western patrons too. They should let the post-election process run its course, disqualifying ballots and recounting votes as necessary; and they shouldn't shy from holding a run-off if necessary. But this all needs to happen expeditiously, ideally in the next month or two. A winter election in Afghanistan would be difficult. An extended power vacuum in the capital would play into the hands of a resurgent Taliban.
What matters most is producing an outcome that Afghan voters themselves can accept. Mr. Karzai would find governing this ethnically divided country difficult without a legitimate mandate. Mr. Abdullah is a former senior official in the Northern Alliance that toppled the Pashtun-led Taliban with U.S. help in 2001. These north-south fissures broke the country apart in civil war in the last decade, and if allowed to flare would be a Taliban dream come true.
One compromise might involve striking a deal with Mr. Abdullah that would bring him back into a Karzai government. The U.S. can nudge and mediate without picking sides. The last thing Washington should do is undermine President Karzai in a way that would make it hard for him to govern if he does win.
A primary goal of the new Obama strategy, as it was of the Bush team, is to strengthen the Afghan state and military so that each can stand on its own. If both the Afghan and international institutions continue to do their job properly now and the politicians respect their verdict on the election, an outcome that strengthens Afghan democracy is still within reach.
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FACTBOX-Security developments in Afghanistan, Sept 12
12 Sep 2009 15:47:39 GMT
KABUL, Sept 11 (Reuters) - Following are security developments reported in Afghanistan as of 1545 GMT on Saturday:
WESTERN AFGHANISTAN - Three U.S. service members were killed by a roadside bomb attack in western Afghanistan, a press officer for U.S. and NATO-led troops said.
EASTERN AFGHANISTAN - Two U.S. service members were killed by a roadside bomb in the east of the country, the NATO-led force said in a statement.
FARAH - Seven Afghan soldiers were killed in a lengthy gunbattle in Farah province in the west of the country, said Brigadier General Mohammad Khawary, an Afghan Army commander in the region. He said 10 Afghan troops were wounded, and many Taliban were killed.
FARAH - Three civilians were killed in Farah province in the west when a rocket struck their house, the province's governor, Rohul Amin, said.
KANDAHAR CITY - Two suicide bombers attempted to enter a detention centre run by the National Directorate of Security in Kandahar City in the south of the country, said Abdullah Ahmed Sherzad, head of criminal investigations at Kandahar police. The two bombers were shot dead. One detonated his explosives, killing a guard at the gate and a child nearby.
URUZGAN - A roadside bomb in Uruzgan province in the south struck two passenger cars on Friday, killing 14 civilians, the Interior Ministry said on Saturday. Provincial police chief Juma Gul Hemat put the death toll at 12.
KANDAHAR - A roadside bomb in Kandahar province killed six civilians, the Interior Ministry and provincial governor said.
KUNDUZ - Fighters attacked a police post, killing seven policemen including the commander at the checkpoint in Kunduz province in the north, in a battle that ran from the middle of the night into morning, provincial governor Mohammad Omar said. Two other policemen were missing and feared captured.
NANGARHAR - Fighters killed four policemen in an attack on a patrol in Nangarhar province in the east of the country, provincial government spokesman Ahmad Zia Abdulzai said.
KUNAR - Six guards from a local security firm were killed when fighters attacked their office in eastern Kunar province, provincial governor Fazlullah Wahidi said.
KUNDUZ - NATO-led forces said they had raided compounds in the province overnight, where they "killed a number of militants". Provincial governor Mohammad Omar said Western forces had killed at least 12 fighters there.
(Compiled by Peter Graff) (For more Reuters coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan, see: http://www.reuters.com/news/globalcoverage/afghanistanpakistan)
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Taliban Leaders Mock U.S. 9/11 Legacy From Pakistan Havens
By Arthur Kent, Skyreporter.com
Sept. 11, 2009 - On the eighth anniversary of 9/11, the West’s effort to rid southwest Asia of the menace of terrorism is collapsing in a surge of bloodshed and corruption on a truly damning scale.
One fact stands shamefully above all others.
Today the least worried combatants in all of Afghanistan and Pakistan, the warlords who enjoy an untroubled sleep each night and by day dispatch killing force with virtually no fear of retaliation, are Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar and his leadership council, safe in the protective embrace of Pakistan’s military in Baluchistan province.
The U.S.-led coalition of international forces in Afghanistan is unwilling to tackle this most pressing of objectives, even by political and diplomatic means. Yet until the zealots of Omar’s rump Taliban leadership feel the heat in Pakistan, there’s no prospect of easing the pace and ferocity of violence in Afghanistan.
Today in Kabul, no Afghan man, woman or child, nor even America’s top general, Stanley McCrystal, can be certain the next pair of eyes they meet will not belong to a suicide bomber or gunman, a random glance that will be their last sight on earth.
McCrystal’s new mantra, that U.S. strategy will shift to “protecting the Afghan people” is less credible than a box full of ballots from Paktika.
The good general seems oblivious to the most basic fact confronting him and his Western legions. The only way to protect Afghans is to end the war, and the only way to end the war is to put pressure, real pressure, directly upon the Taliban leadership where they live and command their fighters’ war effort: Pakistan.
Even this week’s conviction in Britain of three would-be airline bombers, who took their orders from Pakistan’s tribal areas, has done little to dent the dome of denial Western governments maintain over the dirty secret of Pakistan.
History tells us we should have learned from past mistakes. Here’s a story this reporter filed to the Calgary Herald on Oct. 28, 2001, some 47 days after the 9/11 attacks on America, and about two weeks before the forced exit of Mullah Omar’s regime from Kabul, along with Osama bin Laden’s Arab fighters and their foreign cohorts.
How little has changed, and not only with regard to the collateral killings of civilians by air strikes aimed at Taliban fighters.
The Arab fighters heard over the radio, and the Talibs – most fled to refuge in Pakistan. They have operated from those Pakistani havens for eight long years. As we see from today’s carnage in Afghanistan, no amount of official denial can alter that fact.
BAGRAM, Afghanistan Oct 28, 2001 - As the U.S. bombing campaign in Afghanistan enters its fourth week, the Bush administration’s bold promises of an intense, effective war against terrorism have been buried beneath the rubble of the homes of Afghan civilians and the ruins of the Americans’ political initiatives to undermine the Taliban.
Coalition nations such as Canada, recruited by Washington to support strategies formulated by U.S. war planners, have been transformed from long-standing providers of aid to the people of Afghanistan, into partners in a military adventure that more and more resembles previous disasters in this savage 23-year-old conflict.
Over the weekend, misdirected U.S. bombs killed ten civilians in Kabul and at least two villagers unlucky enough to be living here on the front line north of the capital, where Taliban troops are dug in within shouting distance of their Northern Alliance enemies.
While the Taliban remain defiant – there have been no significant defections on this front since the bombing began – Afghan families trapped by the fighting openly wonder who, exactly, the American-led coalition is out to punish for the September 11th terrorist attacks: the terrorists, or themselves.
Meanwhile, the secret political initiative launched by the Americans several weeks ago, backing the attempt by the former anti-Soviet resistance leader, Abdul Haq, to draw support among the dominant ethnic Pushtun tribes of the south away from the Taliban, ended shamefully in Haq’s capture and execution.
It’s more than just a setback in the clandestine war against the extremist regime and it’s al Qaeda confederates: the Haq initiative, sold to the Americans by Pakistani officials, caused the Bush administration to constrain its military cooperation with the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance.
Thus Abdul Haq’s death not only leaves Washington scrambling for another hopeful Pushtun political challenger, it leaves most of Afghanistan’s towns and cities and battlefields pretty much as they’ve been for the past three weeks. Dangerous places to be, especially for civilians, but still firmly in the hands of the Taliban.
Perversely, on Sunday, while families wept for the dead in Kabul and Bagram and in Abdul Haq’s home village near Jalalabad, there was laughter crackling over the radios from Taliban front line positions on the Kabul front.
The Herald spent the afternoon in the company of a group of young Northern Alliance militiamen near the shattered fuel dump at Bagram airport. There was much anticipation about the promised new intensity – and sharper aim – of U.S. warplanes. The day’s tally? One jet, one bomb, one possible hit on a Taliban tank, dug in to a ridge overlooking the battlefront.
“No good, no good,” the 19 year old commander of the group, Farhad, told me. He swept his arm across the scorched fields and crumbling buildings that make up the front: it’s a lot more territory than any one jet, or all the raids so far carried out here by the U.S., could soften up for a Northern Alliance offensive.
The boys shouldered their Kalashnikovs and went downstairs for tea. Farhad’s second in command, a grinning prankster named Zahir, reached for his walkie talkie.
“Ahmed, Ahmed, Ahmed,” he spoke happily in to the radio, as if he were calling a buddy to come over for a game of volleyball, a favourite on the front. A voice answered, they traded greetings.
“Taliban, Taliban,” one of the other Northern Alliance fighters whispered excitedly, and we spent the next fifteen minutes listening to Zahir poking fun over the radio at his old schoolfriend, Ahmed, who was reclining, in all likelihood, inside his own post, a Taliban bunker, just half a mile away.
Though this reporter’s Afghan language skills are extremely limited, Ahmed’s did not sound like the voice of a man on the verge of surrender. He laughed out loud at Zahir’s suggestion that as a good Muslim, he should shun the Taliban and Osama bin Laden and come right over to the Taliban side. They talked a while longer, wished each other a pleasant afternoon in the crossfire, and then, with a polite goodbye, signed off.
But someone else had been listening in: another voice came over the radio.
“Arab!” one of the Alliance boys spat. No one among us spoke Arabic, but soon the message from this foreign legionnaire of the Taliban trenches became clear. It was abusive and profane and aimed straight at the Northern Alliance militiamen, a counterattack for Zahir’s pitch to Ahmad to switch sides.
When the Arab laughed in to the radio, other voices laughed with him, lots of voices, lots of Talib ‘brothers.’ That seemed to disturb the Northern Alliance fighters for a moment, though they soon gave back as good as they were getting and laughed riotously at the Talibs.
I went outside and searched the sky. Nothing. No more winged avengers, no more bombs today for the Taliban on the Kabul front line. Hopefully, that would hold true, as well, for the many civilians living and working nearby.
The majority of the Afghan people, like people everywhere who long for peace and an end to terrorism, began by hoping, three weeks ago, for deliverance. Now they’d settle for a better aim from the United States and its allies. Week four will see if they get that wish, or if civilians, more than Taliban soldiers, will continue running scared.
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Eight years after 9/11, Taliban roils 80 percent of Afghanistan
The hijacking of a NATO supply truck and Stephen Farrell's kidnapping have focused attention on rising insecurity in Afghanistan's north, strikingly illustrated on a new map.
The Christian Science Monitor By Aunohita Mojumdar September 11, 2009
Kabul, Afghanistan - A retaliatory NATO airstrike that killed scores of civilians. The kidnapping of New York Times journalist Stephen Farrell. The deadly shooting of his Afghan translator and the death of a British soldier in a violent and controversial rescue operation days later.
The events of this week have drawn attention to the unraveling security in northern Afghanistan in a way months of the creeping insurgency had not.
Long considered one of the most stable and peaceful parts of the country, the northern provinces have seen rising violence as heavy insurgent activity has spread to 80 percent of the country – up from 54 percent two years ago. (See map.) Under increasing pressure in southern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan, militants who have long sought to extend their reach have turned their attention to the north, where NATO has established a second supply route in the wake of debilitating attacks on its southern pipeline.
"[Militants] have been trying to widen the ground for the insurgency in Afghanistan and now they have got momentum," says Waliullah Rahmani, executive director of the Kabul Center for Strategic Studies. "The militants are eager to target this route to prevent a smooth supply chain from northern Afghanistan."
Last week's airstrike targeted two fuel tankers headed to supply NATO troops in Kabul that had been hijacked by the Taliban. Up to 70 civilians who had gathered to siphon fuel from the trucks, which had become mired in mud in Kunduz Province, were killed in the strike.
Kunduz has seen a particular uptick in insurgent activity, says Thomas Ruttig, founder of the Afghan Analysts Network, which he attributes to pressure on insurgents in neighboring Pakistan. On Friday, Pakistan announced it had captured a senior Taliban leader, Muslim Khan.
"The IMU [Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan] have been pushed out of Waziristan and the north has Uzbek minorities," making the area hospitable for Uzbek militants, says Mr. Ruttig. While Kunduz itself does not border Uzbekistan, the neighboring province of Balkh borders Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan and could become the main supply route for NATO supplies if security continues to worsen in Kunduz province.
The map mentioned above also shows supply routes and the incremental increase in Taliban control of the country.
Frustrated Pashtuns sympathetic to Taliban
While the upsurge in violence is relatively recent, the conditions have been festering for some time, say Mr. Rahmani and Ruttig. The violence has been directly linked to districts with large Pashtun populations, whose grievances the government has long failed to address – making them sympathetic to the Taliban, who share their ethnicity and language.
"The districts which are turning violent are those which have had a very recent history of abuses against the Pashtuns. The government has allowed these conditions to go unaddressed and this is now being addressed by the population by giving shelter to the Taliban and other insurgents," says Prakhar Sharma, the head of research at the Center for Conflict and Peace Studies, an Afghan research organization.
Humanitarian groups concerned, but still operating
The growing insecurity is of particular concern to humanitarian and aid agencies which have been working in the more stable northern areas. Aid agencies like Oxfam, Care, and Save the Children have long argued that they are better able to deliver sustainable aid in these areas than in southern Afghanistan.
In fact many organizations have stopped working in the more insecure areas, not just because of the problems of access but also because of the conditions attached by donors who would like the development aid and humanitarian agencies to be used in pursuit of military goals. Aid groups felt that doing so would compromise their independence
While aid agencies approached by the Monitor said the growing insecurity had not stopped them from working in the north, they all expressed concern over the recent developments.
Ashley Jackson of Oxfam International says staff have had to change the way they work and pull back temporarily after the Kunduz bombing.
"So far we have not seen anything impacting on our work but we are definitely concerned," says Jennifer Rowell of Care. "We would like to make sure that the civil military guidelines are respected as are humanitarian laws and that we have access."
The militarization of aid has made it difficult for organizations like Care to engage in southern Afghanistan, says Ms. Rowell, and "we will have to be extra vigilant in the North."
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Kabul must set own goals, be held to them
Kansas City Star By JAMIE METZEL and CHRISTINE FAIR 12 Sept 2009
Afghanistan's presidential election has demonstrated that the Afghan people yearn for more accountable leadership. It is no less clear that this aspiration is far from being met, and that the country's poor governance is laying a dangerously weak foundation for international engagement.
The United States and its allies cannot succeed in Afghanistan unless the Afghan government itself succeeds. Despite Congress' appropriate calls to establish benchmarks for American progress in Afghanistan, too few people are calling for the Afghan government to articulate its goals for improving governance and accountability, and how it plans to meet them. Until it does and international support is conditioned on Afghan progress in realizing goals set by Afghans, the country's state institutions will continue to lose credibility. Meaningful success in Afghanistan will become elusive at any level of funding or international troop presence.
Many parts of the Afghan state are rotting from within. Corruption can be found at all levels. Many government officials, including members of President Hamid Karzai's own family, are alleged to be involved in trafficking narcotics, timber, gems and other illicit goods. Karzai's pardoning of drug traffickers with indirect ties to his re-election campaign also raised fundamental questions about his commitment to the rule of law.
Afghans themselves are not solely to blame for this state of affairs. The U.S. and the international community focused far too little on building a suitable structure of governance after the 2001 intervention. In the name of short-term expediency, too little was done to sack corrupt governors and police, or to counter involvement by top officials in the narcotics trade.
Official corruption is creating a situation in which many Afghans fear the rapaciousness of the government nearly as much as they dislike the Taliban, which can now credibly claim the ability to provide security and swift justice in the areas it controls, albeit at a very high price.
Afghans would prefer security under any regime other than the Taliban. Democracy and the rule of law could conceivably be an effective alternative to what the Taliban offers, but the government cannot credibly claim to provide either, not to mention basic services.
It would be tempting to follow the usual route by developing internationally generated goals and then engaging with Afghan leaders to explore how best to achieve them. Such a process will not succeed. Corruption can be addressed only if the Afghan government itself takes primary responsibility for addressing it.
The best way to help make Afghanistan's government more accountable to its people over the long term is by working to strengthen Afghan democracy, but this level of accountability is still far off — and Afghanistan desperately needs better governance now.
To foster accountability in the near term, the international community should call on the next Afghan administration to establish its own goals for good governance and lay out benchmarks to measure progress. If the international community believes that these goals are correct, assistance should continue to be provided as long as the benchmarks are being met. If they are not, assistance could be scaled back to avoid having international funds continue to support corrupt practices.
Afghanistan is a sovereign state, and its government has the authority do what it wants. But the international community is not obliged to finance official corruption. Internally generated reform is the only reform that can work, and it cannot occur if Afghan officials take international assistance for granted or see themselves as subordinate actors in their own reform process.
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Afghanistan: Questions, answers on war, US plans
By Anne Gearan, Ap National Security Writer – Sat Sep 12, 10:51 am ET
WASHINGTON – The link between Afghanistan and al-Qaida has dimmed in memory in the eight years since the Sept. 11 attacks. Osama bin Laden remains at large. The fighting grinds on.
President Barack Obama soon will decide whether to commit even more U.S. troops to a fight that his commanders say can be won, but only with a new strategy and battle plan.
Some questions and answers about the Afghanistan war, the U.S. strategy and the choices facing a president who already has doubled the number of Americans fighting in Afghanistan since taking office:
Q: Why is the United States still fighting in Afghanistan?
A: Obama, like former President George W. Bush before him, calls Afghanistan a vital bulwark against the spread of bin Laden's al-Qaida network. The actual war, however, pits allied forces against the potent remnants of the ousted Taliban, allied insurgents, criminal gangs and warlord networks.
Q: Why has the war gone on so long?
A: The war began a few weeks after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. U.S. and international forces quickly overran the Taliban government that had sheltered bin Laden and his network. Despite early military successes, the continued presence of U.S. forces and a heavy commitment by the NATO alliance, the Taliban regrouped. After the Iraq war began in 2003, Afghanistan became the No. 2 priority for U.S. troops. The Taliban-led insurgency hardened in 2006 and 2007, but NATO refused to greatly expand its fighting force despite U.S. pressure. By 2008, the insurgency controlled significant territory and the war stalemated.
Q: What role does the U.S. play?
A: The United States is the largest contributor to an international coalition fighting in a dirt-poor country with rudimentary infrastructure and a weak central government beset by corruption. Obama's strategy emphasizes nonmilitary support for Afghanistan and the protection of Afghan civilians brutalized by the Taliban and drug lords.
Q: Why can't an alliance of rich countries with powerful armies finish off an irregular force of insurgents?
A: The Taliban-led insurgency has proved resilient and cunning, and Afghanistan is a bad place to fight a war. Distances are vast, roads are few. There are unforgiving mountains and the weather is bitterly cold for months. The Taliban are less of an army than a religious and cultural movement, with some public support in a conservative tribal society. The insurgents recruit, co-opt and pay off locals. They hide among civilians and use classic guerrilla ambush tactics. Above all, the insurgents know the terrain, customs and language of a country notoriously inhospitable to foreign invaders.
Q: If the war is supposed to be about al-Qaida, why aren't we fighting them?
A: They moved. Bin Laden and other senior al-Qaida leaders are presumed to be hiding across the border in Pakistan, in a mountainous region where the U.S.-supported government in Islamabad has little control. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, said Friday he sees no signs of a major al-Qaida presence in the country but the group maintains close links to insurgents. The U.S. strategy is predicated on the notion that al-Qaida would return if insurgents prevail.
Q: So why don't we go after al-Qaida in Pakistan instead?
A: Because U.S. and allied hands are tied. Pakistan doesn't want that kind of war, and Pakistan is a sovereign country. The population is overwhelmingly opposed to any U.S. military presence on its soil, and analysts say the fragile civilian-led government would crumble if it was seen as endorsing a cross-border war. The CIA is in charge of hunting terror cells in Pakistan, targeting them with missile-equipped airborne drones. The Islamabad government is presumed to tolerate the arrangement in private while condemning U.S. airstrikes in public.
Q: How much longer will the Afghan war continue?
A: Military and outside analysts generally say the war could only be won with tens of thousands more forces — both foreign and Afghan — and a sustained campaign lasting perhaps two to four more years. After that, Afghanistan would look more like a charity case and less like a war, but Afghanistan probably would still be unable to fully protect and govern itself for a decade.
Q: Does that mean the U.S. is committed in Afghanistan for years to come?
A: Not necessarily. The Obama administration has been vague about how long it expects to stay, but Democrats in Congress could hasten a U.S. exit. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., has called for a timeline and other leading Democrats are demanding more accountability from the Afghan government. On Friday, Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., warned that the U.S. has "lost the initiative" against insurgents and called for a shift in the U.S. mission.
Q: What are Obama's military options?
A: Obama approved 21,000 additional U.S. forces this year as part of a revamped counterinsurgency strategy, and McChrystal is expected to soon ask for more. Commanders on the ground say they need more forces, but it's unclear how many would be foreign and how many Afghan. Obama could hold the U.S. force size at 68,000. On the other hand, he could expand and realign U.S. forces, adding several thousand more trainers as a low-end option or sign off on a bold proposal for tens of thousands of more combat troops.
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David Miliband looks to Afghanistan unity government
Times Online By Philip Webster 09/11/2009
David Miliband hinted today that the West is hoping that a government of national unity emerges from the discredited Afghan presidential elections.
For the first time the Foreign Secretary suggested that both President Karzai and his main challenger, Dr Abdullah Abdullah, represented the views of Afghan voters.
His remarks suggested that the Government believes a "consensus administration" is a preferable alternative to the solution now backed by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats of the elections being run again.
Mr Miliband declared, however, that Britain would not be party to a "whitewash".
Neither Britain nor America is expected to call openly for a national unity government in Kabul, which would be seen as a direct interference in the Afghan democratic process.
But in their conversation yesterday Gordon Brown and Barack Obama both referred to the need for the parties there to achieve consensus on issues such as security and the economy. Officials admit that may best be achieved by a unity government.
In a BBC radio interview, Mr Miliband said that “free and fair” was not a description he would use about last month's presidential election and he held back from recognising any candidate as the winner.
Preliminary results issued in Afghanistan earlier this week suggested that incumbent president Hamid Karzai achieved the 50-per cent threshold required to avoid a second round ballot, but they have been denounced as rigged by Dr Abdullah, Mr Karzai's former foreign minister.
Mr Miliband suggested today that a “credible” future administration in Kabul would have to reflect the high levels of support won by Dr Abdullah.
He was speaking after reports cast fresh doubt on the reported results of voting in a town at the centre of a military offensive this summer in which 10 British soldiers died. One of the stated aims of Operation Panther's Claw was to make fair elections possible in areas of Helmand province previously held by the Taleban, including the town of Babaji.
But the BBC reported that recounts have been ordered in three of Babaji's polling stations where President Karzai recorded a vote share of more than 96 per cent.
Some 4,300 votes were counted in the town's four polling stations, but an unnamed United Nations-appointed observer told the BBC that no more than 15 people voted at the station he attended, with Taleban shelling going on nearby.
“I estimate about half the people in that area would have voted for President Karzai, but no more than that - certainly nowhere near 100 per cent,” said the observer.
Mr Miliband told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: “We have been careful not to make any claims about the election until all the aspects are fully investigated. We will not be party to any whitewash in respect of this election. It is vital that there is a credible result that comes out of these elections.”
He added: “I think the new government can be a legitimate and credible expression of the will of the Afghan people.
“We never use the phrase 'free and fair elections' because that is not really appropriate. Millions of people came out to vote. Their votes need to be properly recorded and acknowledged and their votes need to decide the shape of the new Afghan government.”
Mr Miliband said it was clear from the elections that President Karzai and Dr Abdullah between them represent “the vast majority of Afghan voters”, adding: “It is their ideas and their reforms that need to help shape the future of Afghanistan and a credible government needs to show that.”
He added that the UN-appointed Electoral Complaints Commission was showing itself to be a “strong” watchdog.
“If President Karzai is adduced by the Electoral Complaints Commission to have reached the 50-per cent threshold, he will be elected president,” he said.
“If he doesn't, there will have to be a second round. Whatever the result, it is clear that opinion in Afghanistan is divided. Millions of people came out for President Karzai, but millions also came out for Dr Abdullah.
“For us in Britain, the absolute key is that the new government is, first, credible and also has a clear programme in the three areas that will decide the future of Afghanistan - its security forces, its ability to achieve political reconciliation and its ability to build the economy, above all in agriculture.”
The Foreign Secretary acknowledged that one of the goals of Panther's Claw was to permit polling in Helmand province, but insisted that the operation would have taken place even if there was no election being held.
“It was vital for the elections that the Panther's Claw operation went ahead, but it would have needed to go ahead anyway to help secure Helmand province,” he said.
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Construction on first nursing school begins in N Afghanistan
KABUL, Sept. 12 (Xinhua) -- Construction on Afghanistan's first nursing school has begun in Faizabad, capital of the northern Badakhshan province with the financial support of the United States, a local official said Saturday.
"This essential project bears 1 million U.S. dollars provided by the United States," Abdul Maroof Rasikh, spokesman of provincial administration told Xinhua.
U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Ekinberry laid the foundation stone of the project at a ceremony on Friday, he added.
The war-torn and post-Taliban Afghanistan mostly relied on foreign aids as the international community has hugely contributed over the past eight years to help rebuild this country's infrastructures.
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Senator Calls for More Afghan Forces, Not US Troops
By Ravi Khanna VOA News Washington 12 September 2009
President Obama is facing growing dissent within his own party on plans to commit more troops to the war in Afghanistan, even as American commanders say the situation on the ground has deteriorated.
By all accounts, the Taliban insurgency has made serious gains recently across Afghanistan.
On Friday, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin, told the Senate that no new US troops should be deployed to Afghanistan until the US speeds up training of Afghanistan's army.
He said there should be a surge in the number of Afghan troops. "Our support of their surge will show our commitment to the success of mission that is clearly in our national security interests, without creating a bigger US military foot print that provides propaganda fodder for the Taliban," he said.
He also said US equipment no longer needed in Iraq should be made available to Afghan forces.
Levin just returned from Afghanistan's Helmand province. Speaking to reporters on Friday, he said Afghan leaders want the ability to fight the Taliban themselves. "They hate the Taliban, they have lived under the rule of the Taliban. The main reason we are there is to help them succeed in their efforts," he said.
President Obama has called Afghanistan a war of necessity.
Sixty-eight thousand US troops are already on the ground or will be there by the end of this year.
Recently, US Commander General Stanley McChrystal delivered a report to President Obama describing the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. It is unclear if the report asks for more troops. The administration is expected to decide within weeks whether to deploy additional US forces.
On the eve of the September 11 anniversary, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also expressed doubts about sending more Americans to war. "I don't think there is a great deal of support for sending more troops to Afghanistan, in the country or the Congress," she said.
On Thursday, a new report by a London policy institute said Taliban activity has spread to 80 percent of Afghanistan, with one or more attacks per week.
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Afghanistan conflict not stopping terrorism, say almost half of Britons
Telegraph.co.uk - UK News 12 Sep 2009
Almost half the country believes the war in Afghanistan is doing nothing to reduce the threat of terrorism on Britain's streets, according to a poll.
On the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks in the US, 49 per cent of people interviewed in a Populus survey for ITV News said military operations in Afghanistan were not reducing the terror threat in the UK.
A further 27 per cent said the war was reducing the threat of terrorism but did not justify the loss of UK service personnel, with just 17 per cent saying that Britain's continuing military presence in the country makes a terrorist attack less likely and goes some way to justifying British military deaths.
The poll suggests a growing lack of support for the war in Afghanistan following a bloody summer which has seen the British military death toll since the start of operations in October 2001 rise to 213.
Gordon Brown's official spokesman said the Prime Minister had used a speech last week to set out Britain's objectives in Afghanistan and would continue to emphasise the importance of operations to Britain's security.
''We continue to communicate that and get people to understand that this comes back to the overriding issue as we all know of ensuring that the streets of the UK are safer as a result,'' the spokesman said.
Populus interviewed a random sample of 1,005 adults by telephone between September 4 and September 6. Interviews were conducted across the country and results were weighted to be representative of all adults.
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Pentagon plans troops to target roadside Afghanistan bombs
From Barbara Starr CNN Pentagon Correspondent
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Defense Secretary Robert Gates is expected to approve sending thousands of additional forces to Afghanistan to deal with the growing threat from roadside bombs, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said Friday.
Over the past two weeks, Gates has concluded that there are not enough forces or equipment in Afghanistan to protect U.S. troops from the threat of roadside bombs, Morrell said.
The secretary, he said, wants to send these forces "as soon as possible."
Morrell said the deployment would be separate from any that might be requested by Gen. Stanley McChrystal.
The plan could send nearly 3,000 troops, another U.S. military official familiar with the proposal said.
He said Pentagon planners have already identified some of the units that would be sent. This official asked not to be identified because no final decision has been announced.
Plans have been in place to set the U.S. troop level in Afghanistan at 68,000 since earlier this year, when President Obama approved an additional 21,000 troops.
The decision comes at a sensitive time politically. In the last few days, two key Democrats have questioned sending additional troops.
"I don't think there's a great deal of support for sending more troops to Afghanistan in the country or in Congress," Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-California, told reporters Thursday.
On Friday, Sen. Carl Levin, the head of the Senate Armed Services Committee who has recently returned from Afghanistan, said the emphasis should be on training and increasing the size of the Afghanistan army before considering more U.S. forces.
"Our primary goal should be to strengthen the Afghan army and the police, to provide the necessary training and equipment and also to see if we can't reintegrate some of the lower-level Taliban people, who are the young people who aren't the religious zealots but are being taken advantage of by the leaders," Levin, D-Michigan, told MSNBC.
Gates himself has been a vocal opponent of expanding the U.S. presence for fear that the forces would be seen as occupiers by the Afghan population.
But last week, he softened that position, saying McChrystal had made a persuasive argument that the concern should not be on the size of the forces but on their conduct.
Morrell said the proposal may not raise total U.S. troop strength above 68,000, because some of the units already scheduled to go could be sent not fully staffed or others already there could be sent home.
Still, "the secretary has already determined this is a requirement that needs to be fulfilled," Morrell said. "The forces there now require more IED protection."
The troops would specialize in route clearance, explosive ordnance disposal, medical treatment and intelligence-gathering, Morrell said. "We owe this to the troops already committed to the fight," he said.
Since 2007, the number of roadside bombs in Afghanistan has jumped 350 percent, according to the Defense Department. Though many are found before they detonate, the number of troops killed has increased by more than 400 percent and the number wounded is up more 700 percent over the last two years.
One U.S. military source told CNN that the Taliban's capacity to manufacture bombs, train attackers and target U.S. troops has grown over the past year.
On September 8 near Kandahar, troops seized five tons of ammonium nitrate, more than twice the amount used in the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in 1995.
On August 27, C-4 plastic explosives were found in Herat by Afghan troops.
Afghanistan's rugged terrain and dirt roads make it easy to quickly hide roadside bombs.
"You have disturbed earth all the time," said Gen. Montgomery Meigs, former head of the Department of Defense's IED Task Force. "Especially close to villages and close to intersections -- that just makes the seeing and finding, even by soldiers' eyes, a lot more complicated."
The Taliban have proven adept at adjusting their strategy as circumstances change. Seeing that troops were routinely stopping ahead of culverts to search for bombs that could be hidden under the roads, insurgents have started placing the bombs ahead of the culverts.
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Spate of Attacks Across Afghanistan Kills Dozens
By VOA News 12 September 2009
More than forty civilians, police and militants have been killed since Friday night in a spate of violence across Afghanistan.
The toll adds to what is already the deadliest year of the war.
In the largest civilian incident, the Interior Ministry said a roadside bomb killed 14 civilians in the southern province of Uruzgan.
Officials say at least eight more people, including children, were killed by two roadside bombs in Khost and Kandahar, in the south and east, respectively.
In an overnight raid in northern Kunduz province, Afghan officials say coalition and Afghan soldiers killed at least 11 militants.
And provincial officials say militants killed 11 policemen and six private security guards in three separate attacks in the east of the country.
The latest attacks show the increasing reach of the Taliban, who had mostly been confined to the south and east after the 2001 U.S. invasion.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP, AP and Reuters.
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Pakistan Kills 22 Militants in Khyber Region
By VOA News 12 September 2009
A paramilitary group in Pakistan's Khyber region says Pakistani forces have killed 22 insurgents near the Afghan border.
The Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force, also said Saturday that helicopters destroyed three militant hideouts.
The attacks came a day after Pakistan's military arrested the chief Taliban spokesman, Muslim Khan, in the Swat Valley along with four other Taliban leaders. The army says the five militants were taken into custody during a security operation near Mingora, the main town in the Swat Valley.
The detentions are the first major arrests since the government launched a military offensive in April to regain control of the region.
An official military statement said the militants were being questioned and troops were conducting raids based on information obtained from the men.
The arrests are a blow to Taliban insurgents in Pakistan.
Last month, chief commander Baitullah Mehsud was killed in a suspected U.S. missile attack on his hideout near the Afghan border.
Some information for this report was provided by AP and Reuters.
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US 'risks Afghan Soviet failure'
By Jonathan Marcus BBC diplomatic correspondent, Geneva Friday, 11 September 2009
A US foreign policy veteran has warned the West risks replicating the the Soviet Union's failure in Afghanistan without a fundamental change in policy.
Zbigniew Brzezinski said military engagement in the country was reaching levels similar to the Soviet invasion.
Mr Brzezinski, a former national security adviser, was speaking at a global strategy conference in Geneva.
In his balance sheet of President Obama's foreign policy, Mr Brzezinski placed himself as a critical friend.
On Afghanistan, he recognised that there had already been a significant shift away from some of the grander - and by implication, unrealisable - objectives of the Bush years.
But Mr Brzezinski - who helped Barack Obama develop his own foreign policy positions during his presidential campaign - insisted further change was still needed.
And he had a stark warning - not just for the Obama's administration, but for the West as a whole.
"In my view, we in fact are running the risk of replicating, obviously unintentionally, what happened to the Soviets," he said during the conference, organised by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.
"We went into Afghanistan almost eight years ago, and we overthrew the Taliban with 300 soldiers," he said.
"Eight years later, we are beginning to move to a level of military force which is beginning to approximate the Soviet engagement and already our top generals are saying we are not winning militarily."
Mr Brzezinski welcomed the proposal from the French, German and British governments for an international conference to set clear goals.
But he stressed that in Afghanistan, just as with Middle East peace-making and the Iran nuclear dossier, time was running out.
Mr Obama's agenda was crowded, he said.
And he added there was a huge risk that this new president's performance on the international stage might not match the scale of his global ambitions.
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More Civilian Deaths Unless U.S.-NATO Peace Keep
Commentary by Melek Zimmer-Zahine* IPS-Inter Press Service
KABUL, Sep 11 (IPS) - Each month since U.S. President Barack Obama has taken office, Afghanistan has seen a growing number of civilian and military deaths - a spiral of violence which has served to destabilise a nation already struggling to recover from its previous three decades of war.
Nearly a decade after 9/11 (the World Trade Center bombings in New York), international military operations in Afghanistan are no longer about preventing Afghanistan from becoming another safe haven for al Qaeda but about their own survival.
Every student of counter insurgency knows that when force protection becomes a priority over winning over the local population, you might as well pack up your bags and go home.
This past week in highlights just how much Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) - U.S. combat operation - and NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) missions are lost in this country.
The badly coordinated operation in Kunduz which resulted in so many civilian deaths (Sep. 2) and subsequent rift between NATO and OEF commanders, the U.S. military raid on a Swedish Committee hospital (Sep. 7); and somehow related, the abhorrent behaviour of U.S Embassy security contractors (established by an independent probe report).
Major intelligence agencies announced more than a year ago that al Qaeda’s leadership and organisational apparatus have shifted to East Africa and Pakistan.
Nearly every terrorist attack on U.S. interests or its allies since Sep. 11, 2001, such as Riyadh, Madrid, London and Istanbul, were initiated and coordinated not from Afghanistan but from cells within the heart of Europe or Pakistan.
And, the message that al Qaeda will return if the international community allows the Taliban to take over Afghanistan is a misrepresentation of the facts, a fear tactic by politicians in Washington and Brussels (NATO headquarters) meant to buy the time needed for a face-saving withdrawal?
Tragically, by misrepresenting both the al Qaeda and Taliban threat, such a face-saving withdrawal will be a distant accomplishment and at the cost of many more civilians, a growing number of foreign soldiers and at the risk of further destabilising Afghanistan during an already sensitive and potentially volatile election.
Indeed the Taliban are a threat but the threat is only as big as the West makes them. Trying to defeat them militarily is like throwing fuel on a fire.
The Taliban were a problem for the vast majority of Afghans before 9/11 and they will continue to be a problem for Afghanistan unless a locally driven solution is given the political and public space to grow.
Currently, this space is dominated by both the NATO and OEF missions.
As with any extreme and violent social problem, the solution to the Taliban can only come from deep within Afghan society. Though the comparison is not entirely accurate, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK - a white supremacist group) violated and terrorised African Americans, Jews and other minorities in the United States for more than 50 years.
It wasn’t until Americans themselves decided to organise socially, politically and legally that the KKK’s power was suppressed.
Imagine if a foreign military attempted to solve the KKK problem for America?
In the case of Afghanistan, a foreign dominated effort to eliminate the Taliban is not only a reality but a violation of every Afghans sovereign right to deal with a complex, domestic problem
If the friends of Afghanistan truly want to prevent the Taliban from gaining more ground and becoming another safe haven for al Qaeda, then the best thing they can do is pressure Pakistan to continue their fight against extremism and within Afghanistan to take a step back and allow Afghans the room to organise themselves and seize the political and Public space to deal with all three elements of the Taliban, the Haqanni Network, Hiz-b-Islami and local Taliban through a partnership of grassroots and national efforts.
The vast majority of Afghans, even those who have been affected by international combat operations, say that a complete withdrawal of international forces is not the solution and would further destabilise the country but that a fundamental shift is needed in how OEF and NATO operates in this country.
As one illiterate cook from Hazarijat said to me recently, "I was really happy when Western forces first came to Afghanistan but the way they have handled themselves has been unfortunate. Still, if they leave things could be worse."
The question for the politicians who manage the OEF and NATO missions in Washington and around the world shouldn’t be "how can we reduce the incidents of civilian casualties in Afghanistan" but how can we make a fundamental shift from our combat mission to one of robust peacekeeping, ANA (Afghan army) and ANP (Afghan police) training and better coordinated less wasteful assistance from their donor agencies.
There is already a debate in Germany and Britain about the role that their militaries should be playing in Afghanistan and in the world.
This same debate needs to start in earnest among the U.S. public, their representatives in Congress, the Obama Administration and by the Pentagon and it should start with the question, "how can America and its Allies expect Afghanistan to become a peaceful, productive member of the global community in the midst of what is now their own nearly decade-old foreign military action in this country?"
(*Melek Zimmer-Zahine is a co-founder of The Killid Group. IPS and Killid, an independent Afghan media, have been partners since 2004.)
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