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Afghan election panel changed fraud rules after voting was over
By Hal Bernton and Jonathan S. Landay McClatchy Newspapers Sat Sep 12, 5:43 pm ET
KABUL, Afghanistan — After it determined that excluding questionable ballots in Afghanistan's August presidential election would force President Hamid Karzai into a runoff, the country's Independent Election
Vote fraud hard to pin down in Afghanistan
by Charlotte Mcdonald-gibson – Sun Sep 13, 6:53 am ET
KABUL (AFP) – The allegations in Afghanistan's post-election fray come thick and fast: intimidation, ballot box stuffing, suspiciously high turnout, incredible numbers of votes for one candidate at polling stations.
Afghan election body rejects British FM's remarks: report
KABUL, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Afghanistan's election body has rejected the remarks of British Foreign Secretary David Miliband on the recently held Afghan presidential election as "premature," a local newspaper reported Sunday.
Pressure grows in Afghanistan for Hamid Karzai to strike a deal
More results show president above crucial 50% of vote, but UN-backed electoral commission orders growing number of recounts
Declan Walsh in Islamabad The Observer, Sunday 13 September 2009
Five US soldiers were among dozens killed in a wave of violence in Afghanistan as pressure grew on President Hamid Karzai last night to strike a power-sharing deal with his rival, Abdullah Abdullah.
Afghan challenger warns of unrest over poll fraud
Times of London Jerome Starkey in Kabul and Christina Lamb in Washington 13 Sept 2009
Afghanistan's opposition leader Dr Abdullah Abdullah warned yesterday that he might not be able to restrain angry supporters from taking to the streets as it emerged that more than one in five votes cast in last month's election were fraudulent.
US govt extends Afghanistan prison rights: report
Sun Sep 13, 12:58 am ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The administration of US President Barack Obama plans to issue new guidelines designed to give prisoners at a US detention center in Afghanistan more ability to challenge their custody, The New York Times reported late Saturday.
US plans Afghan prisoner overhaul
Sunday, 13 September 2009 BBC News
The US is preparing to apply new rules that will allow prisoners being held in Afghanistan to challenge their detention, US defence officials say.
3 US troops among 50 killed in Afghanistan
By RAHIM FAIEZ and NOOR KHAN The Associated Press
KABUL (AP) – About 50 civilians, security forces and militants were killed in violence around Afghanistan, including a bomb that left 14 Afghan travelers dead in one of the country's most dangerous regions.
Report: Germany ponders Afghanistan strategy
By Associated Press Sunday, September 13, 2009
BERLIN — Germany’s Foreign Ministry advocates preparing the ground over the next four years for a withdrawal from Afghanistan, with police and army training being stepped up, according to a report Sunday.
German foreign minister wants Afghanistan pullout by 2013
Deutsche Welle
Frank-Walter Steinmeier, foreign minister and Chancellor Merkel’s challenger in upcoming elections, has proposed a schedule to exit Afghanistan by 2013, handing over control to a well-trained Afghan police force.
US could shift Afghanistan focus towards eastern provinces
Senior military officials said to believe Taliban's ability to find sanctuary across border with Pakistan has made move essential
Simon Tisdall guardian.co.uk, Sunday 13 September 2009 15.30 BST
The primary focus of the US war strategy in Afghanistan could shift towards the eastern provinces bordering Pakistan and away from the south of the country, where British forces are heavily engaged, under a plan being finalised by commanders.
Cholera outbreaks in 10 Afghan provinces: health ministry
KABUL, Sept 13, 2009 (AFP) - Afghanistan has reported outbreaks of potentially lethal cholera in 10 provinces across the impoverished country, the health ministry said Sunday.
Attack on civilians an inhuman act: Karzai
KABUL, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai said the terrorist attack against civilians that left 14 people dead in the southern Uruzgan province was an inhuman act and strongly condemned it, a press release issued by his office said here Sunday.
NATO attack on tankers killed 30 civilians: probe
September 13, 2009
KABUL (AFP) – Thirty Afghan civilians and 69 Taliban were killed in a NATO air strike on fuel trucks in the north of the country early this month, a government-appointed investigator told AFP on Sunday.
Afghan media, civil rights organizations demand probe for local journalist murder
KABUL, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Members of Afghan Civil Rights Organizations in a joint press conference with Media and Journalists associations on Sunday strongly condemned the killing of New York Times reporter Sultan Mohammad Munadi,
Afghan lower house calls on gov't to punish those behind journalist murder
KABUL, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Wolesi Jirga, or the Lower House of Afghanistan's parliament, has strongly condemned the killing of journalist Sultan Ahmad Munadi and called on the government to thoroughly investigate it, a local newspaper reported Sunday.
Bulked up military presence boosting Canadian efforts in Afghanistan
Sun Sep 13, 6:08 AM By The Canadian Press
MA'SUM GHAR, Afghanistan - The head of the Canadian forces says soldiers in the Kandahar area have gone from being run ragged to being firmly in control.
AP Interview: Russian envoy to Afghanistan advises NATO: more troops will hurt war on Taliban
By: DOUGLAS BIRCH Associated Press 09/12/09 12:40 AM PDT
KABUL — Russia's ambassador to Afghanistan has some advice for top NATO commanders fighting the Taliban based on the Soviet Union's bitter experience battling Islamist insurgents here in the 1980s: Don't bring more troops.
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Afghan election panel changed fraud rules after voting was over
By Hal Bernton and Jonathan S. Landay McClatchy Newspapers Sat Sep 12, 5:43 pm ET
KABUL, Afghanistan — After it determined that excluding questionable ballots in Afghanistan's August presidential election would force President Hamid Karzai into a runoff, the country's Independent Election Commission voted to allow to them be counted, commission and Western officials told McClatchy .
The Sept. 7 vote, which was detailed in commission documents reviewed by McClatchy , abandoned the tough standards to detect fraud that the panel had approved unanimously only 10 days earlier. This allowed hundreds of thousands of questionable votes to be included in the results, according to a commission official.
On Sept. 8 , the day after the vote, the commission announced a new tally that boosted Karzai's count from about 47 percent to 54 percent of the vote — enough for him to avoid a runoff and claim a second five-year term if the margin receives a final certification.
The decision to change the rules after the voting for Karzai's benefit has further strained relations between the United States and Karzai, who did not yield to pressure from the Obama administration to get the commission to reconsider the decision. The pressure included a call from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton the day after the vote, said a knowledgeable Western official.
Like other Westerners and Afghans who spoke to McClatchy , the official requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly.
The effort to rig the election for Karzai comes atop evidence of widespread fraud at polling places and in the vote counting. This compounds the difficulties that President Barack Obama faces in defining America's goals and strategy in Afghanistan amid rising casualties and declining public and political support for the U.S.-led war there.
The United States and its European allies had hoped that the election, which the U.S. administration initially hailed as a success, would produce a stable government as part of a new U.S.-led strategy aimed at sapping support for the Taliban -led insurgency.
Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal , the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan , is expected to ask later this month for between 5,000 and 45,000 additional U.S. troops, but a focal point of his counterinsurgency plan has been training more Afghan troops — who serve a president whose re-election campaign is enmeshed in fraud allegations.
Karzai's closest challenger and the former foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah , has repeatedly charged that the commission has colluded in "state-engineered fraud" to rig the election for Karzai.
In some polling stations, more people voted than were thought to have been registered. In others, 100 percent of the votes went to Karzai, and the tallies were in rounded numbers, such as 500, a statistical improbability.
The Sept. 7 decision raises questions about the autonomy of the Independent Election Commission , whose seven members were appointed by Karzai. Five commissioners voted to relax the anti-fraud standards, one dissented and one was absent, according to the commission documents reviewed by McClatchy .
As fraud allegations mounted, the election commission on Aug. 29 unanimously adopted six standards by which votes could be judged for fraud.
These standards included an examination of all voting sites that registered unusually high turnouts of 600 people or more. They also called for excluding votes when more than 90 percent from one site went to a single candidate, according to the commission documents obtained by McClatchy .
During the first week of September, an analysis of the results indicated that applying the standards would prevent Karzai from getting the more than 50 percent margin required to avoid a runoff against Abdullah, according to Western officials and a commission official.
"On those days, they (the commissioners) were in a panic, a hurry," said the commission official. "They realized if those votes were not included, it would go to a runoff."
Two Western officials confirmed that account.
Then, on Sept. 7 , the vote was taken to relax the standards.
The commission's decision has intensified a tug-of-war with a separate election complaints panel, three of whose members are Westerners appointed by the United Nations .
A day after the vote, the Election Complaints Commission cited "clear and convincing evidence of fraud" and ordered the Independent Election Commission to conduct a wide-ranging audit and recount of polling stations.
The complaints commission also annulled some votes. In coming weeks, the panel will review hundreds of fraud allegations with its own investigative team. At the same time, it will be monitoring the Independent Election Commission's audit and recount.
More than 20 percent of the votes cast on Aug. 20 could be subject to investigation, according to Western officials.
Abdullah still hopes to win and has said he will not recognize the results until all the fraudulent votes are investigated.
A Karzai campaign adviser, Moen Maraystal, said that he expects the final tally will be above 50 percent, and there will be no runoff. If the count falls below 50 percent, he said that would likely reflect Western interference, which the Afghan people wouldn't accept.
It now appears that the final vote count won't be certified for weeks, and that the fraud allegations may weaken the legitimacy of the next president.
(Bernton reports for The Seattle Times)
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Vote fraud hard to pin down in Afghanistan
by Charlotte Mcdonald-gibson – Sun Sep 13, 6:53 am ET
KABUL (AFP) – The allegations in Afghanistan's post-election fray come thick and fast: intimidation, ballot box stuffing, suspiciously high turnout, incredible numbers of votes for one candidate at polling stations.
Contenders hoping to unseat President Hamid Karzai are crying foul but in a nation where democracy is only five years old, decisions are traditionally made collectively and only 30 percent of people can read, fraud is never clear cut.
"What is fraud where we come from is not fraud here," said one Western official who asked not to be named.
Afghans have lived through civil war and have been governed by an absolute monarch, a Soviet-backed communist regime and religious Taliban extremists -- but only have experience of one democratically-elected leader, Karzai.
With ballots in from most of the polling stations in August elections, Karzai looks set to win a second term -- with 54.3 percent of the count so far -- but it could be weeks before claims of electoral fraud are resolved.
Nader Nadery of the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan, said fledgling democracy must not be used to excuse fraud and urged thorough audits into all allegations, even if it means dragging the process out still further.
"It does make it complicated but we should not make that an excuse -- because there is illiteracy, because there is less knowledge about democracy, then we should ignore it," he told AFP.
Most Afghans live in rigid hierarchical societies in rural areas, loyal first to their ethnic group then to their local tribe, where elders have immense power to guide the decisions -- and votes -- of the people they are responsible for.
In the village of Hashim in eastern Paktya province, labourer Jawar Khan said that ahead of the elections, calls were made over the loudspeakers at the mosque urging people to vote for Karzai.
"The votes in our village were more than 20,000, I think out of them only 300 would be cast for others," he said.
"I think no one has a problem giving their vote to Karzai. We have tribal agreement -- when tribal elders request anything we cannot avoid it."
Ahead of the elections, Karzai deftly plotted on Afghanistan's political and ethnic chessboard, wooing influential kingmakers across the country and thus securing the votes of their flocks.
The ECC has ordered the audit and recount at polling stations where more than 95 percent of ballots were cast for one candidate.
Nadery said that block votes instructed by a tribal leader could account for some of those cases and would not therefore be fraudulent, but added that each claim must be investigated as ballot-stuffing or intimidation could be to blame.
"It is a violation of the process if one can find that there was pressure exerted by the elders," he said.
The threat of Taliban attacks is also believed to have kept turnout to just 30-35 percent, creating more complexities.
Haji Sarwar of Wasi Mohammad village in Ghazni province, said people in his village had gathered early to vote but warnings that militants were approaching sent them fleeing.
"The voters all escaped and the ballot boxes were also taken to a safe place in a mosque. The people in the village decided that two elders take all the votes of people and cast them into the ballot boxes," he told AFP.
Further compounding the problem is the woeful education in the fifth poorest country in the world. Two-thirds of people would not be able to read the names on the ballot paper. Among women, illiteracy soars to more than 85 percent.
Gulu Jan, from Langar Khail village of Ajristan district in Ghazni province, said elders had decided who people should vote for in both the presidential and provincial council elections and cast votes for them.
"They helped us and spared all the women the trouble of going and voting," he said. "It is difficult to vote. The women and most of the men are not literate, and they cannot vote."
The key, election observers say, is finding out where the fraud was on a large scale, intentional and could therefore affect the outcome of the vote.
"It is the second cycle of elections in Afghanistan," said UN spokesman Adrian Edwards.
"Typically if you look at any country, the second cycle is the most problematic. We are still dealing with those problems. The bodies set up for this have a great deal of work to do."
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Afghan election body rejects British FM's remarks: report
KABUL, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Afghanistan's election body has rejected the remarks of British Foreign Secretary David Miliband on the recently held Afghan presidential election as "premature," a local newspaper reported Sunday.
"The remarks of British Foreign Secretary on Afghanistan's election is a premature judgment," daily Arman-e-Millie reported.
Miliband, according to the newspaper, has said that Britain is concerned over fraud in Afghan election.
Afghanistan's second presidential election in the post-Taliban country was held amid tight security on August 20.
President Hamid Karzai's rivals, including his main challenger Abdullah Abdullah, have filed more than 2,000 complaints with the electoral complaints commission (ECC). ECC officials said dozens of these complaints can sway the election's result.
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Pressure grows in Afghanistan for Hamid Karzai to strike a deal
More results show president above crucial 50% of vote, but UN-backed electoral commission orders growing number of recounts
Declan Walsh in Islamabad The Observer, Sunday 13 September 2009
Five US soldiers were among dozens killed in a wave of violence in Afghanistan as pressure grew on President Hamid Karzai last night to strike a power-sharing deal with his rival, Abdullah Abdullah. It came after the country's election commission failed to declare a winner in the hotly disputed presidential poll. The decision has coincided with a surge of violent unrest, with officials saying yesterday that 50 Afghan civilians, security force members and Taliban fighters were killed in different attacks across the country, including a bomb that left 14 Afghan travellers dead. The American soldiers died in two roadside bomb attacks.
The deepening crisis increases the stakes for Washington and London, where public opinion is hostile to an ever more bloody war in support of a flawed and corruption-prone political process.
More than three weeks have passed since Afghans voted for a new president, but the chaotic count has been marred by allegations of widespread irregularities including phantom polling stations and stuffed ballot boxes. Most appear to favour Karzai. Yesterday the election commission announced a sliver of fresh results that suggest Karzai is on course to win. With 93% of votes counted the incumbent has 54% support versus 28% for Abdullah, his former foreign minister.
But the UN-backed electoral complaints commission, which adjudicates on disputes, has disqualified votes from 83 polling stations and ordered a recount in parts of three provinces thought to be favourable to Karzai. Votes from 600 stations have been quarantined.
If Karzai's share of the vote dips below 50%, a run-off vote will be necessary. The UN stressed that the contest was not over. "There are no winners in this election yet," said spokesman Aleem Siddique.
But western officials privately admit that a run-off vote is well nigh impossible at this stage. The fraud investigations could take weeks and the bitter winter is approaching, making it impossible to hold a fresh poll until the spring. That places Afghanistan in a perilous political limbo as violence spreads across the country.
In the absence of an undisputed winner, western allies are likely to ratchet up pressure on Karzai and Abdullah to strike a deal for a coalition or national unity government in the coming weeks. But so far both candidates have maintained hardline positions.
Karzai has rebuffed American pressure over the vote, and in a punchy interview told Le Figaro he would never be an "American puppet". Abdullah has largely stayed his hand, hoping international pressure will force a compromise. If that fails he could mobilise street protests in Kabul or render northern Afghanistan, where his ethnic Tajik support base is concentrated, ungovernable by Kabul. Officials have warned that in such circumstances Karzai would not be allowed through the Salang Pass, the mountain tunnel that connects Kabul to the northern areas. "There's a risk the country would fracture, not in a noticeable way, but in terms of Karzai's ability to exercise power in the north," said the official.
The turmoil comes against a backdrop of weakening public resolve among western allies. The human cost of the British commitment was underscored by the death of Corporal John Harrison in an operation to rescue kidnapped journalist Stephen Farrell last week.
In the US, Democratic politicians are hesitant to commit the extra troops requested by their generals. On Friday the chairman of the Senate armed services committee, Carl Levin, warned the US had "lost the initiative" and called for a shift in strategy.
Russia's outspoken ambassador to Kabul has waded into the debate, warning Washington to avoid the mistakes made by Soviet forces in the 1980s. At the peak of the Soviet occupation in 1987 Moscow had 140,000 troops in Afghanistan. Two years later it was forced into a humiliating retreat.
Today violence in Afghanistan has reached its worst level in eight years despite a record deployment of more than 100,000 foreign troops. One western official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that in the worst case scenario, events could spin dangerously out of control.
"A situation could arise where Karzai is left to rely on the NDS [intelligence service] and the power of patronage to break any opposition, while Abdullah and his friends use every tool to oust an illegitimate government.
"That leaves western troops with a problem: what do they do, and who is the enemy?"
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Afghan challenger warns of unrest over poll fraud
Times of London Jerome Starkey in Kabul and Christina Lamb in Washington 13 Sept 2009
Afghanistan's opposition leader Dr Abdullah Abdullah warned yesterday that he might not be able to restrain angry supporters from taking to the streets as it emerged that more than one in five votes cast in last month's election were fraudulent.
“I have urged them strongly not to do that,” he told The Sunday Times as his followers called for demonstrations. “They are aware of the fragility of the situation.”
He added: “If you are asking for a guarantee, 100%, will you be able to control everyone in this country, the answer is no, n ... o.”
Even before the August 20 poll, Abdullah's supporters were predicting Iran-style protests “with Kalashnikovs” if President Hamid Karzai won in the first round, insisting he could do so only by cheating.
With 92.8% of ballots counted, Karzai is ahead with 54.3% of the vote, enough to avoid a second-round run-off if confirmed when the count is completed. It is remarkably close to the 55% he secured in the 2004 election, although there is widespread disillusionment with his government.
The Election Complaints Commission, sponsored by the United Nations, has been swamped by allegations of vote rigging at 2,804 polling stations. There are claims of police intimidation, bribery and ballot-box stuffing. At least 726 of the allegations are deemed serious enough to sway the outcome and the inquiry could take months.
Abdullah, who is in second place with 28.1% of the vote, insisted that the only fair outcome would be a second round of voting.
“We're talking about big, big fraud,” he said.
The international community is desperate to encourage Karzai and his two main challengers to form a national unity government and avert violent protests.
The Sunday Times has obtained a report by monitors from the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, completed yesterday, which said 1,253,806 votes — 23% of the total counted so far — could be fraudulent.
According to the analysis, if all these votes were cancelled then Abdullah's share would increase by almost 4 percentage points to 32.03%. Karzai's share would drop by 6.62 points to 47.48%, triggering a second round. The share of Ramazan Bashardost, the third-placed candidate, would rise to 10.7%.
The scale of the fraud is a huge embarrassment for western governments already facing questions from their own voters about soldiers' deaths in Afghanistan. Five American troops died yesterday.
Lieutenant-General Karl Eikenberry, the US ambassador, last week warned Karzai against declaring victory prematurely. But Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy to the region, has ruled out a rerun.
UN officials point out that the prospect of a second round grows slimmer as the results are delayed, because the onset of winter means much of the country will soon be inaccessible.
It appears some of Holbrooke's staff were initially involved in leaking the reports of election fraud, seeing it as a chance to clip Karzai's wings. They believed that an unconvincing victory would give the West leverage to persuade the president not to dismiss reformist ministers and replace them with warlords with whom he had made electoral deals.
However, as the political tensions threaten to spiral out of control, Washington is now trying to play down the problem.
“It is an achievement elections went ahead at all,” said one US official last week.
Asked what legitimacy a future Karzai government would have, the official said: “We're not there to support the Afghan government. We're there to disrupt, dismantle and demolish Al-Qaeda.”
Within the British government there is considerable unease at the idea of sending soldiers to die on behalf of a fraudulently elected administration.
“We will not be party to any whitewash in respect of this election,” said David Miliband, the foreign secretary. “It is vital there is a credible result.”
Whitehall is pushing for a unity government as the only way out. One Foreign Office official admitted that neither Karzai nor Abdullah was “making the right noises”, however.
Karzai officials claim that Abdullah has asked for 12 ministries as the price of his support, but yesterday he denied that he was about to make a deal.
“I will not surrender to fraud,” he said. “A coalition with a fraudulent regime? I won't find myself in such a system. Those who voted for me wanted change.”
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US govt extends Afghanistan prison rights: report
Sun Sep 13, 12:58 am ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The administration of US President Barack Obama plans to issue new guidelines designed to give prisoners at a US detention center in Afghanistan more ability to challenge their custody, The New York Times reported late Saturday.
Citing unnamed Pentagon officials, the newspaper said the new guidelines would assign a US military official to each of the roughly 600 detainees at the US-run prison at the Bagram Air Base north of Kabul.
These officials would not be lawyers but could for the first time gather witnesses and evidence on behalf of the detainees to challenge their detention in proceedings before a military-appointed review board, the report said.
Some of the detainees have already been held at Bagram for six years, the paper noted. But unlike the prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba, these detainees have had no access to lawyers, no right to hear the allegations against them and only rudimentary reviews of their status as "enemy combatants."
The changes are expected to be announced this week after an obligatory congressional review, The Times said.
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US plans Afghan prisoner overhaul
Sunday, 13 September 2009 BBC News
The US is preparing to apply new rules that will allow prisoners being held in Afghanistan to challenge their detention, US defence officials say.
The administration of US President Barack Obama will assign all prisoners, who are held at the Bagram air base, a US official to handle their case.
The prisoners will be given the chance to go before review boards.
Mr Obama has pledged to review former US detention policies and vowed to close the Guantanamo Bay jail in Cuba.
Prisoner protests
The new plans have yet to be formally announced.
But defence officials quoted in US media say that for the first time inmates at Bagram, north of Kabul, will be able to submit evidence and summon witnesses to aid their defence.
There are about 600 prisoners at the US military-run base.
They will be represented by US officials, assigned by the military but who are not lawyers, who can gather evidence on their behalf and prepare cases to go before new Detainee Review Boards.
A US defence official told Associated Press news agency that the system would be similar to the one used in Iraq to reduce prisoner populations.
The New York Times quoted another official as saying: "We don't want to hold anyone we don't have to hold. It's just about doing the right thing."
The US military has maintained that those held at Bagram are being held in a war zone and their legal rights are affected accordingly.
However, a US judge in April ruled that several Bagram prisoners had the right to challenge their detention in the US - a ruling the government has appealed.
Prisoners in Bagram have been protesting since July over their legal and humanitarian situation by refusing to leave cells or meet family members and Red Cross officials.
The Obama administration has been reviewing what it regards as the harsher detention methods of the George W Bush government.
On taking office President Obama directed that the US detention centre in Guantanamo Bay should close within a year. He has also stopped the CIA from using secret prisons.
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3 US troops among 50 killed in Afghanistan
By RAHIM FAIEZ and NOOR KHAN The Associated Press
KABUL (AP) – About 50 civilians, security forces and militants were killed in violence around Afghanistan, including a bomb that left 14 Afghan travelers dead in one of the country's most dangerous regions. Another roadside bomb killed three American soldiers in the east.
The attacks Friday and Saturday reached a broad swath of the country, demonstrating the spread of the Taliban insurgency, which had been largely confined to the country's south and east in the years after the 2001 U.S. invasion. Half of those killed in the most recent attacks were civilians, who often find themselves caught in the grinding war between the Taliban and U.S. and NATO forces.
Bombs caused most of Saturday's casualties – including homemade blasts in the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar and a neighboring province that together killed 20 civilians. U.S. military officials said a roadside bomb in eastern Afghanistan killed the three Americans, but released no other details.
But Taliban militants also staged ambushes and suicide attacks – and came under attack themselves.
Coalition and Afghan forces Saturday killed 11 militants during an overnight raid in northern Kunduz province, said Abdul Razaq Yaqoubi, the provincial police chief.
The operation targeted Taliban fighters who helped foreign fighters and suicide bombers infiltrate the region, said Capt. Elizabeth Mathias, a U.S. military spokeswoman.
She said "a number" of militants were killed after the forces exchanged fire. Roadside bomb-making material, ammunition and rocket-propelled grenades were found at the compound, she said.
The raid did not appear to be connected with the kidnapping of a New York Times reporter and his Afghan colleague in the province this month, officials said.
British commandos freed the Western reporter last week but the Afghan and a commando died in the operation.
The abductions followed a NATO airstrike on two stolen fuel tankers that appeared to have killed some civilians, officials said. Officials estimated about 70 people died in the strike.
Civilian casualties have dogged the U.S. and NATO mission in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion, and have been repeatedly criticized by the Afghan government.
In Kabul, the capital, an American service member and an Afghan police officer got into an argument because the American was drinking water in front of the Afghan police, who are not eating or drinking during the day because of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, said the district chief, Abdul Baqi Zemari.
The police officer shot the American and seriously wounded him, while other American troops responded and seriously wounded the police officer, Zemari said.
Lt. Robert Carr, a U.S. military spokesman, confirmed an incident between Afghan police officers and a U.S. police mentoring team. He could not provide information on the conditions of the two men.
Authorities reported a string of deadly militant attacks in the south and east.
In Kandahar, two suicide bombers on a motorbike tried to attack an office of the country's intelligence agency Saturday. Officers and the bombers traded gunfire. One bomber blew himself up and killed an intelligence officer, while the other bomber's explosives went off but didn't kill anyone, said Kandahar deputy provincial police Chief Fazel Hamid Sherzad.
Also in Kandahar, six civilians were killed by a homemade bomb Friday in Maiwand district, said district police Chief Bashir Hamad.
In neighboring Uruzgan province, 14 civilians were killed Friday when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb in Churra district, the Interior Ministry said.
Roadside bombs planted by militants are usually aimed at NATO or Afghan troops, but hundreds of civilians have been killed by them.
A Taliban ambush, meanwhile, killed six private security guards working for a construction company in the eastern province of Kunar on Saturday, said Gen. Khalilullah Ziayi, the provincial police chief. Ten guards were wounded, he said.
Also in the east, a suspected militant rocket attack killed three civilians in Sabari district of Khost, said Wazir Pacha, spokesman for the provincial police chief.
Four police were killed in Nangarhar late Friday when militants attacked a border police checkpoint, said Ahmad Zia Abdulzai, spokesman for the governor.
In eastern Paktika province, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives in Bermel district. Only the bomber died, the Interior Ministry said.
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Associated Press writer Noor Khan in Kandahar contributed to this report.
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Report: Germany ponders Afghanistan strategy
By Associated Press Sunday, September 13, 2009
BERLIN — Germany’s Foreign Ministry advocates preparing the ground over the next four years for a withdrawal from Afghanistan, with police and army training being stepped up, according to a report Sunday.
The report in the weekly Der Spiegel came two weeks before German elections in which Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier is the center-left challenger to Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Germany’s unpopular mission in Afghanistan, where it has more than 4,200 troops, has been put in the spotlight by a German-ordered Sept. 4 airstrike near Kunduz in which civilians appear to have died.
Merkel last week joined the French and British leaders in calling for a new international conference on Afghanistan, hoping to accelerate and improve training of local forces and lay out a timetable in which Afghans can take back full control of the country.
A paper drawn up by the Foreign Ministry says the conference should "not satisfy itself with vague targets," Der Spiegel reported.
It added that that, during Germany’s next four-year parliamentary term, "the foundations for the withdrawal from Afghanistan" should be laid, the report added — though it mentioned no actual withdrawal date.
In a preview of an interview with Steinmeier, the weekly Super Illu quoted him Sunday as echoing the call for the foundations for a withdrawal to be laid by 2013.
However, he added that it is "certainly not advisable to announce to terrorist forces when, to the exact year, there will no longer be any international soldiers in Afghanistan."
Der Spiegel reported that the strategy would involve extra police officers being trained in the volatile northern Kunduz region and the number of Germans training the Afghan army being increased.
It said the paper calls for a German base in Faizabad to be turned into a "training center for security forces and civilian administration" by 2011, and advocates support for a "reintegration fund" that would allow Taliban supporters to return to mainstream society.
The Foreign Ministry confirmed the existence of an internal strategy paper drawn up for Steinmeier on perspectives for a successful conclusion of the German mission, but would not comment on its contents or those of Der Spiegel’s report.
Both Merkel and Steinmeier say they won’t accept "premature judgments" on the strike.
Only one of the five parties in Germany’s parliament, the opposition Left Party, advocates withdrawing now from Afghanistan.
One of its leaders, Gregor Gysi, argued that the conflict there is encouraging rather than fighting terrorism — "so the withdrawal from Afghanistan should be decided on immediately."
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German foreign minister wants Afghanistan pullout by 2013
Deutsche Welle
Frank-Walter Steinmeier, foreign minister and Chancellor Merkel’s challenger in upcoming elections, has proposed a schedule to exit Afghanistan by 2013, handing over control to a well-trained Afghan police force.
"We went to and have stayed in Afghanistan to prevent terrorist attacks, including against ourselves," Steinmeier told Super Illu magazine. "But we don't want to stay forever. The aim, over the course of the next parliamentary period, is to lay the foundations for a withdrawal."
The foreign minister refused, however, to give a definite deadline for when the soldiers are to be out. "It wouldn't be prudent to inform terrorist forces of the precise year in which the last foreign soldier will have left Afghanistan," he said.
The announcement is a move that could win Steinmeier votes in the upcoming September 27 elections when he'll be running as the Social Democratic candidate against incumbent German Chancellor Angela Merkel of the conservative Christian Democrats.
The German foreign minister said the timeline of the withdrawal would depend on the capabilities of the local Afghan forces. Talks are needed "to determine how long we and other international soldiers will have to stay and how many more Afghan soldiers and policemen have to be trained to take full charge of security."
Afghanistan is back on the election agenda
German Chancellor Angela Merkel herself on Saturday touched upon an early German withdrawal from Afghanistan.
"In association with our partners, we want to hammer out a strategy allowing for the transfer of responsibility to Afghanistan over five years," Merkel said in an interview published in Saturday's edition of the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.
On Sunday night, Merkel and Steinmeier are to face each other in a televised debate which may help to determine the outcome of the September 27 election.
Polls show that around 60 percent of voters want an end to Germany's participation in the NATO mission. All of Germany's major parties, other than the far-left Left party, have so far backed the deployment of German troops in northern Afghanistan.
Karzai commission confirms 30 civilian deaths
A controversial airstrike called by German troops in Afghanistan earlier this month that killed scores of people has brought the issue back into the election campaign.
On Sunday, a commission set up by Afghan President Hamid Karzai said that a total of 30 civilians and 69 Taliban were killed in the airstrike. But Mohamadulla Batai of the commission added that the responsibility for the tragedy remained with the Taliban and defended the German officer who ordered the airstrike.
"Not only the German troops would have ordered the airstrikes," Batai said. "All of the international and national forces would have acted likewise. If these fuel trucks had remained in the hands of enemies, they would have used them for terrorist purposes."
Germany, Britain and France last week called for an international conference on Afghanistan to be held by the end of the year to set new goals for the NATO mission in the country.
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US could shift Afghanistan focus towards eastern provinces
Senior military officials said to believe Taliban's ability to find sanctuary across border with Pakistan has made move essential
Simon Tisdall guardian.co.uk, Sunday 13 September 2009 15.30 BST
The primary focus of the US war strategy in Afghanistan could shift towards the eastern provinces bordering Pakistan and away from the south of the country, where British forces are heavily engaged, under a plan being finalised by commanders.
Senior military officials are said to believe the Afghan Taliban's ability to find sanctuary and support across the porous border with Pakistan ‑ plus the suspected presence in the lawless tribal Waziristan area of al-Qaida leaders including Osama bin Laden ‑ has made a bigger effort in the east essential if the insurgency is to be defeated.
Any move by General Stanley McChrystal, the US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, to concentrate firepower and resources away from Helmand, in the south, could be resisted by British commanders leading an increasingly lethal struggle with insurgents there.
Additional US military pressure along the eastern border would also cause concern in Pakistan, where US aerial drone attacks on al-Qaida and Taliban targets in Waziristan and the Pakistani army's US-driven spring offensive against Pakistani Taliban in Swat are blamed for growing instability.
Asked whether Pakistan was being urged by Washington to launch more Swat-style offensives on its side of the border, a senior Pakistani official insisted Islamabad, not the Americans, would decide.
"Waziristan is sovereign Pakistani territory," the official said. "We will decide what happens there, and when it happens."
Fighting along the Pakistani side of the border appears to be spreading.
Reports today said Pakistani helicopter gunships had killed 22 militants and destroyed three hideouts in attacks in the Khyber region, which abuts Peshawar. Around 150 insurgents are thought to have died in the area over recent weeks.
US officials, speaking during a recent visit by Barack Obama's special representative in the region, Richard Holbrooke, said particular attention should be paid to Jalaluddin Haqqani and other insurgent leaders in eastern Afghanistan's mountains.
According to an account in the Washington Post, Major General Curtis Scaparrotti, US commander of forces in the east, said Haqqani "is the central threat" in the area and "he's expanded that reach".
Other commanders said Haqqani ‑ whose forces were formerly most active in Afghanistan's Khost province ‑ had been advancing as far south as Paktia and Paktika provinces.
This month, McChrystal presented the broad outline of his Afghanistan strategic review to Obama, placing greater importance on the need to protect Afghan civilians and increase security as a means of encouraging political and economic development.
But the specifics of the new strategy, including the location and number of expected additional troops deployments, are still being debated.
McChrystal, who took charge in June, is said to have questioned whether the fight in the south is as crucial to defeating the insurgency as the British government has always maintained.
Reports from Washington indicate that he could ask for up to 45,000 additional troops, which would take the number of US forces well above 100,000.
US forces in the east currently total around 7,000 after McChrystal's predecessor, General David McKiernan, doubled their number. Some of the 21,000 extra troops sent to Afghanistan by Obama earlier this year also reinforced the British in the south.
The new strategy faces problems at home as well as in Afghanistan. Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat speaker of the US House of Representatives and a key Obama ally, said at the weekend that she saw little support in Congress or the country for an escalation in Afghanistan.
Holbrooke, whose remit includes both Afghanistan and Pakistan, has dealt with the two countries as one connected problem since taking up his post earlier this year, to the annoyance of officials in Islamabad. He has also clashed with the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, over the conduct of last month's still undecided presidential election.
In a move linked to the new US emphasis on winning over the Afghan population, the Obama administration will issue guidelines intended to give prisoners at the US-run Bagram detention centre greater latitude in challenging their detention, the New York Times reported today.
The newspaper said each of the approximately 600 detainees would be assigned a US military official who would have the authority to look for evidence, including witnesses and classified material, for any detainee challenging his detention. A military-appointed review board would hear the challenges.
Bagram detainees ‑ some of whom have been held for more than five years ‑ currently have no access to lawyers or the right to hear the accusations against them.
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Cholera outbreaks in 10 Afghan provinces: health ministry
KABUL, Sept 13, 2009 (AFP) - Afghanistan has reported outbreaks of potentially lethal cholera in 10 provinces across the impoverished country, the health ministry said Sunday.
The ministry "has so far recorded 673 cases countrywide" of the highly contagious disease in almost a third of the country's 34 provinces, including in the capital Kabul. No deaths have been reported.
"All outbreaks are under control and no active one is reported as of today, September 13," a ministry statement said.
It said staff had been deployed to outbreak areas and medication was being provided to try to prevent the spread of the disease, which thrives where sanitation is poor and can spread rapidly.
Afghanistan's health system has been battered by decades of civil war, and facilities remain poor across the fifth poorest country in the world.
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Attack on civilians an inhuman act: Karzai
KABUL, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai said the terrorist attack against civilians that left 14 people dead in the southern Uruzgan province was an inhuman act and strongly condemned it, a press release issued by his office said here Sunday.
"President Karzai called the attack, in the Holy Month of Ramazan when every Muslim is fasting for the sake of Allah, an attempt against all human and Islamic values," the press release added.
Roadside bombing hit a minibus in Chori district of Uruzgan province on Saturday, leaving 14 civilians dead and two others injured.
The president, in addition to expressing sympathy and condolence to the families of the victims, said that such brutal and coward actions can not deter Afghans' determination for progress and development.
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NATO attack on tankers killed 30 civilians: probe
September 13, 2009
KABUL (AFP) – Thirty Afghan civilians and 69 Taliban were killed in a NATO air strike on fuel trucks in the north of the country early this month, a government-appointed investigator told AFP on Sunday.
"Thirty civilians were martyred and nine were wounded," said Mohamadullah Bataj, one of four investigators on a team appointed by President Hamid Karzai to investigate the incident in Kunduz province on September 4.
"Sixty-nine of the Taliban were killed -- armed and unarmed."
Bataj said that 49 armed and 20 unarmed Taliban were killed. He said 11 militants were wounded in the strike, which came as anger over civilian deaths simmered in war-torn Afghanistan.
The NATO-led coalition has acknowledged that civilians were killed or injured in the strike, but has yet to release details of its own parallel investigation.
The strike was reportedly ordered by a German commander after Taliban militants hijacked two fuel trucks on a NATO supply route from Tajikistan.
When one of the trucks stalled in a river, the Taliban called on villagers to syphon away the fuel and civilians were gathered round the vehicles when the the bombs stuck, witnesses have said.
There are about 100,000 NATO and US-led troops stationed in Afghanistan, helping the government fight a Taliban insurgency that is at its most deadly since the 2001 US-led invasion toppled the hardline regime of the day.
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Afghan media, civil rights organizations demand probe for local journalist murder
KABUL, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Members of Afghan Civil Rights Organizations in a joint press conference with Media and Journalists associations on Sunday strongly condemned the killing of New York Times reporter Sultan Mohammad Munadi, demanding Afghan President Hamid Karzai probe and bringing to justice those behind the killing.
"We urgently demand from the president of Afghanistan to conduct serious and through investigation to identify the perpetrators of this inhuman act," Najiba Hayobi, a member of Civil and Human Rights Organization said.
She added that the investigation must cover all circumstances including the role of internal and international organizations in the committed murder, particularly, the role of British forces conducting the rescue operation.
Hayobi said that the investigations should be lead to bringing the perpetrators of the crime to justice
Munadi and his foreign colleague Stephen Farrell went to northern Kunduz province last weekend to cover the aftermath of air strikes on two oil tankers hijacked by Taliban but kidnapped by the outfit.
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Afghan lower house calls on gov't to punish those behind journalist murder
KABUL, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Wolesi Jirga, or the Lower House of Afghanistan's parliament, has strongly condemned the killing of journalist Sultan Ahmad Munadi and called on the government to thoroughly investigate it, a local newspaper reported Sunday.
"Amanullah Paiman, the deputy to Wolesi Jirga on Saturday described the murder of Munadi as a mystery and demanded thorough investigation into the case," according to Sunday's report on daily Rah-e-Nejat.
Worked as reporter for New York Times, Munadi and his British colleague Stephen Farrell were kidnapped by Taliban in Kunduz province days ago.
However, NATO forces launched a rescue operation last Wednesday, during which Munadi was killed and his colleague, the British national Farrell, was set free.
Wolesi Jirga, according to Rah-e-Nejat, also called on the Afghan government to bring to justice all those behind the murder of Munadi.
Earlier, Afghan journalists associations strongly condemned the murder of Munadi and called for early arrest and punishment of the culprits.
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Bulked up military presence boosting Canadian efforts in Afghanistan
Sun Sep 13, 6:08 AM By The Canadian Press
MA'SUM GHAR, Afghanistan - The head of the Canadian forces says soldiers in the Kandahar area have gone from being run ragged to being firmly in control.
U.S. President Barack Obama committed 21,000 new American forces to Afghanistan this year - part of a record U.S. commitment of 68,000 by the end of this year. Chief of Defence Staff Walt Natynczyk says Canada has been going it largely alone in the region and the reinforcements couldn't come at a better time.
Natynczyk says three years ago the area was being patrolled by a single battallion and today there are eight battalions along with a brigade from the Afghan National Army.
Natynczyk says the Taliban is only successful when the civilian population is unhappy.
He says the Taliban just represent destruction and want to retain power at any cost by hiding behind a "veil of extreme fundamentalism."
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AP Interview: Russian envoy to Afghanistan advises NATO: more troops will hurt war on Taliban
By: DOUGLAS BIRCH Associated Press 09/12/09 12:40 AM PDT
KABUL — Russia's ambassador to Afghanistan has some advice for top NATO commanders fighting the Taliban based on the Soviet Union's bitter experience battling Islamist insurgents here in the 1980s: Don't bring more troops.
"The more troops you bring the more troubles you will have here," Zamir Kabulov, a blunt-spoken veteran diplomat, told The Associated Press in an interview.
In 2002, he noted, there were roughly 5,000 U.S. soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and the Taliban controlled just a small corner of the country's southeast.
"Now we have Taliban fighting in the peaceful Kunduz and Baghlan (provinces) with your (NATO's) 100,000 troops," he said this week, sitting on a couch in the Russian Embassy in Kabul. "And if this trend is the rule, if you bring here 200,000 soldiers, all of Afghanistan will be under the Taliban."
Kabulov served as a Soviet diplomat in Afghanistan from 1983 to 1987, during the height of the Kremlin's 10-year Afghan war, when Soviet troop levels peaked at 140,000.
The Soviet war here, which is estimated to have cost the lives of 14,500 Soviet soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Afghans, ended in 1989 in a humiliating withdrawal.
Kabulov has little sympathy for the U.S. or NATO. He said the U.S. and its allies are competing with Russia for influence in the energy-rich region.
But the 55-year-old envoy speaks from experience, and NATO leaders have sought his advice.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the new top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, asked Kabulov a number of "precise" questions about the Soviet war at a diplomatic function last month, the Russian envoy said.
McChrystal is supervising the expansion of U.S. combat forces to 68,000 and is likely to soon request thousands of more troops. Forty-one other NATO countries have another 35,000 troops here.
Air Force Lt. Col. Tadd Sholtis, a public affairs officer assigned to the NATO commander's staff, said: "Gen. McChrystal is a voracious student of Afghan history and welcomes any opportunity to learn from people with experience in Afghanistan or perspectives on our situation here. That certainly includes the Russians."
While Kabulov called raising troop levels a mistake, he said he approved of McChrystal's overall strategy, which includes holding and clearing Taliban areas, training more Afghan security forces and better-coordinated intelligence efforts.
But he said the NATO commander faces daunting challenges.
"Gen. McChrystal is trying to do his best to make this mission a success and to reduce the number of casualties of his soldiers, which is very noble and normal," Kabulov said. "But I'm afraid at this stage it will be very difficult for him to change the direction" of the war.
The Soviet war here was by most accounts a brutal one, with Soviet forces mounting indiscriminate attacks on civilians. But in Kabulov's view, the war effort was successful overall, though crippled in the end by the decline and fall of the Soviet Union.
The U.S. and NATO, he said, made the same fundamental mistake the Kremlin made after its December 1979 invasion, when Soviet special forces killed President Hafizullah Amin and Moscow replaced Amin's Communist regime with another judged more loyal.
"We should have left Afghanistan as soon as possible after the job had been done," Kabulov said. "It should not have taken more than six months. Same as you. You came and you stayed. And all the problems have started."
In some ways, Kabulov, named ambassador to Afghanistan by then President Vladimir Putin in 2004, is an unlikely figure to be advising NATO.
The New York Times said in October 2008 that he served covertly as the KGB's Kabul resident, or top officer, during the Soviet war. But when asked about this, Kabulov insisted he was just a diplomat.
"My career was quite transparent and well known," he said. His only role in Afghanistan during the Soviet war, he said, was as the embassy's second secretary, serving as press attache, from 1983 to 1987.
While NATO has made some of the same mistakes the Soviets made in Afghanistan, in some ways the Kremlin was more successful, Kabulov said.
The Soviets, he asserted, were better than NATO at providing security in major cities and along main highways. And he said the Soviets completed more major construction and development projects.
The Soviet government bankrolled those efforts out of its own pocket, he said, in contrast to the U.S. and its Western allies, which have made what amount to charity appeals at donor conferences.
"We never arranged international conferences with high pledges of dozens of billions of dollars which never came to this country," he said.
And Kabulov said the Soviets trained and employed Afghans, rather than importing highly paid and, in his view, pampered foreign contractors. When it comes to Westerners, he said, "guards also need guards."
Afghanistan, a resource-poor, landlocked country of mountainous deserts, has long played a pivotal role in Moscow's dealings with the West.
In the 19th century, Russian and British spies and diplomats competed for access to markets here in what was known as "The Great Game." During the 1980s Afghanistan became the principal battlefield of the Cold War, as the U.S. covertly supported Muslim resistance groups fighting the Soviets.
Today, Kabulov said, Afghanistan remains a strategic prize because of its location near the gas and oil fields of Iran, the Caspian Sea, Central Asia and the Persian Gulf.
Russia has a major stake in NATO's success in Afghanistan, Kabulov said. If the alliance withdraws before Afghanistan is stabilized, he said, the aftershocks could weaken Moscow's allies throughout former Soviet Central Asia.
But the Kremlin has bitterly opposed NATO's expansion into former Eastern bloc and former Soviet countries, and has accused the alliance of trying to encircle and weaken Russia.
Kabulov said Russia has questions about NATO's intentions in Afghanistan, which he said lies outside of the alliance's "political domain." He suggested that Moscow is concerned that NATO is building permanent bases in the region.
"We agreed and supported the United States and later on NATO operation in Afghanistan under the slogan of counterterrorism" after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S., he said.
"And we believed that this agenda is a genuine one and there is no other hidden agendas. But we are watching carefully what is going on here with the expansion of NATO's military infrastructure in all of Afghanistan."
From Russia's perspective, Kabulov said, NATO should accomplish its goals in Afghanistan and quickly leave.
"We want NATO to successfully and as soon as possible complete its task and to say goodbye and to go back to their own geographical and political domain," he said. "But before their departure they should help establish a real, independent, strong, prosperous, peaceful Afghanistan with self-sustainable government."
NATO's Sholtis said the purpose of the alliance's presence in Afghanistan is "not some kind of imperial project," but an effort to stabilize the country.
"U.S. and NATO officials have been clear that we have no long-term interest in a military presence in Afghanistan," he said.
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