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Taliban blast kills Afghan deputy chief of intel
By Rahim Faiez, Associated Press Writer – Wed Sep 2, 4:38 am ET
KABUL – An explosion ripped through a crowd of government officials attending the inauguration of a mosque east of Kabul on Wednesday, killing Afghanistan's deputy chief of intelligence in what the Taliban said was a targeted attack.
Suicide bomber kills 23 in east Afghanistan attack
By Rafiq Sherzad
MEHTAR LAM, Afghanistan (Reuters) – A suicide bomber killed at least 23 people, including the country's deputy head of intelligence, in an attack near a mosque in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, officials said.
Afghanistan vote fraud overshadows Paris meeting
PARIS (AFP) – Top envoys for Afghanistan gathered in Paris on Wednesday to chart a way forward after claims of massive fraud cast a pall over the presidential election and threatened to set back peace efforts.
Holbrooke, 26 world envoys figure out next steps in Afghanistan after troubled elections
ANGELA CHARLTON Associated Press Writer
PARIS (AP) — Richard Holbrooke and 26 other international envoys face a touchy task in meetings Wednesday in Paris: how to rescue their costly effort to rebuild Afghanistan, after elections marred by alleged fraud and amid mounting bloodshed.
Karzai extends lead in Afghan election with 47 pct
AP via Yahoo! News
KABUL – Afghanistan's election commission says President Hamid Karzai is moving closer to the 50 percent threshold that would allow him to avoid a run-off in the country's presidential election.
Tribal Leaders Say Karzai’s Team Forged 23,900 Votes
By DEXTER FILKINS The New York Times September 2, 2009
KABUL, Afghanistan — Just a week before this country’s presidential election, the leaders of a southern Afghan tribe called Bariz gathered to make a bold decision: they would abandon the incumbent and local favorite,
Afghans Brace for Unrest Over Vote Tally
Tensions on Rise Between Factions -- And With U.S.
By Pamela Constable Washington Post Foreign Service Wednesday, September 2, 2009
KABUL, Sept. 1 -- As vote tallies keep dribbling out from Afghanistan's Aug. 20 presidential election, it appears increasingly likely that President Hamid Karzai will reach the 50 percent plus one vote that he needs to win reelection.
NATO committed to Afghanistan regardless of poll worries-NATO
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO will remain committed to Afghanistan and must step up its effort there regardless of the outcome of contested presidential elections, the alliance's secretary-general said on Wednesday.
First the votes, now the complaints pile up in Afghanistan
More than 2,000 accounts of fraud and intimidation have poured into a U.N.-backed electoral panel. As the vote tally slowly advances, sorting out the allegations becomes more crucial.
By Laura King Los Angeles Times September 2, 2009
Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan - In a low-slung building tucked behind concrete blast barriers on the edge of the Afghan capital, the plain brown envelopes are opened one by one, and the complaint forms
IEC Ready for Second Round Afghan Vote
Hamid Haidari Quqnoos September 2, 2009
The Afghan Independent Election Commission has indicated its preparadness for second-round presidential polling, if needed
It is time for Karzai to step down
Allegations of corruption, maladministration and electoral fraud have damaged the Afghan president's regime beyond repair
Amin Saikal guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 2 September 2009 16.00 BST
It is time for President Hamid Karzai to bow out gracefully, even if he is declared as the winner of last month's election. His regime is tainted by allegations of corruption, maladministration and electoral fraud
Taliban Surprising U.S. Forces With Improved Tactics
Obama Facing Major Strategy Decisions
By Karen DeYoung Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, September 2, 2009
The Taliban has become a much more potent adversary in Afghanistan by improving its own tactics and finding gaps in the U.S. military playbook, according to senior American military officials who acknowledged
After the Bombing: Feeling Vulnerable in Kandahar
By Anuj Chopra / time.com Kandahar Wednesday, Sep. 02, 2009
This volatile city in southern Afghanistan, known as the spiritual birthplace of the Taliban, isn't unfamiliar with the staccato rattle of gunfire and the thunder of explosions. But last week's bomb attack
Report Details Misbehavior by Kabul Embassy Guards
Contractors Called 'Lewd and Deviant'
By Ann Scott Tyson Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Private security contractors who guard the U.S. Embassy in Kabul have engaged in lewd behavior and hazed subordinates, demoralizing the undermanned force and posing a "significant threat" to security at a time
U.N. Sees Afghan Drug Cartels Emerging
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. The New York Times September 2, 2009
KABUL, Afghanistan — Though the Afghan opium harvest has declined for the second consecutive year, a new United Nations report says, there is growing evidence that some Afghan insurgent forces are becoming “narco-cartels”
Opium Cultivation In Afghanistan Down Sharply, Report Says
By Joshua Partlow Washington Post Foreign Service Wednesday, September 2, 2009
KABUL, Sept. 1 -- Cultivation in Afghanistan of opium, the nation's most lucrative cash crop and a major funding source for the Taliban, has fallen sharply this year in large part because an excess supply of the drug has
Some facts about Afghanistan's opium crop
Reuters via Yahoo! UK & Ireland News - Sep 02 12:09 AM
Opium cultivation in Afghanistan fell by 22 percent this year and prices for the drug tumbled causing farmers to switch to other crops, the United Nations said on Wednesday. Skip related content
Contractors Outnumber U.S. Troops in Afghanistan
By JAMES GLANZ September 2, 2009 The New York Times
Civilian contractors working for the Pentagon in Afghanistan not only outnumber the uniformed troops, according to a report by a Congressional research group, but also form the highest ratio of contractors to military
Russia Seeks Role in Afghan War Planning as NATO Deaths Climb
By James G. Neuger
Sept. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Russia is seeking a role in planning NATO’s war in Afghanistan two decades after Soviet forces were ejected from the country.
Poll: Most Americans oppose more troops for Afghanistan
By Steven Thomma, Mcclatchy Newspapers – Tue Sep 1, 7:13 pm ET
WASHINGTON — A majority of Americans think the country isn't winning the war in Afghanistan , and an even larger majority opposes sending more troops in an effort to turn things around, according to a new McClatchy / Ipsos poll.
Prominent Conservative Calls for Afghanistan Pullout
By Daniel Luban IPS-Inter Press Service
WASHINGTON, Sep 1 (IPS) - A prominent right-wing political pundit has called for the U.S. to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan, the latest sign of a growing disenchantment with the war in the U.S.
Obama to Receive McChrystal Report Wednesday
By Michael A. Fletcher The Washington Post
President Obama will receive the report assessing the war in Afghanistan from his top commander there on Wednesday, and will take it with him to Camp David as he continues his vacation over the extended Labor Day weekend.
Civilians killed and wounded by Taleban mines
Source: Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) 01 Sep 2009
Rebels make Helmand a sea of landmines, targeting military and civilians.
By Mohammad Ilyas Dayee in Helmand (ARR No. 334, 01-Sep-09)
"I hate the world now," said Ismail, standing outside the emergency hospital in Lashkar Gah. "My wife has been killed. I wish that Mullah Omar's wife would also die in this type of explosion."
UNHCR helps hundred of homeless returnees in arid wastes of northern Afghanistan
02 Sep 2009 15:07:50 GMT
MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan, September 2 (UNHCR) – The UN refugee agency has set up a special tented camp in a desolate and arid region of northern Afghanistan to accommodate hundreds of long-term
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Taliban blast kills Afghan deputy chief of intel
By Rahim Faiez, Associated Press Writer – Wed Sep 2, 4:38 am ET
KABUL – An explosion ripped through a crowd of government officials attending the inauguration of a mosque east of Kabul on Wednesday, killing Afghanistan's deputy chief of intelligence in what the Taliban said was a targeted attack.
The blast destroyed several government vehicles, including one used by Abdullah Laghmani, the deputy chief of Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security. The provincial governor's spokesman, Sayed Ahmad Safi, confirmed that Laghmani was killed.
A Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, said a suicide bomber targeted Laghmani.
The killing strikes at the heart of Afghanistan's intelligence service and underscores the Taliban's increasing ability to carry off complex and targeted attacks.
The National Directorate of Security is headed by an ethnic Tajik, and the killing of Laghmani, a Pashtun, could further exacerbate ethnic tensions as the country sorts out the results of the Aug. 20 presidential election. With about half the results in, President Hamid Karzai, an ethnic Pashtun, leads Abdullah Abdullah, who is half Pashtun and half Tajik but is seen as a Tajik candidate.
The blast in Laghman province killed several government officials and wounded many civilians, said a government official who said he could not be identified because death tolls had not been made public. The blast shook the city of Mehterlam, 60 miles (100 kilometers) east of Kabul, and U.S. troops responded to the scene.
Officials and dozens of civilians had gathered in Mehterlam to inaugurate a mosque when the explosion occurred, Safi said. He described the blast as "big."
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Suicide bomber kills 23 in east Afghanistan attack
By Rafiq Sherzad
MEHTAR LAM, Afghanistan (Reuters) – A suicide bomber killed at least 23 people, including the country's deputy head of intelligence, in an attack near a mosque in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, officials said.
Abdullah Laghmani, the deputy head of the powerful National Directorate for Security, was one of the highest-ranking security officials in President Hamid Karzai's government to be killed. The attack was also one of the biggest this year.
A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said the Islamist group had sent a suicide bomber to carry out the attack.
Sayed Ahmad Safi, spokesman for the governor of Laghman province, put the death toll at 23. He said two senior provincial officials had been killed along with Laghmani.
The bomber struck near a mosque in the provincial capital Mehtar Lam in mountains about 100 km (60 miles) east of Kabul.
A Reuters witness in the town saw a pickup truck carrying wounded people covered in blood. Eight ambulances left the scene, headed toward Jalalabad, the nearest major city.
A police source said Laghman governor Lutfullah Mashal had been wounded but Mashal's spokesman could not confirm the claim.
Violence in Afghanistan this year had already reached its highest level since the Taliban were ousted by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in 2001 and escalated further after U.S. and British troops launched major operations in Helmand province in mid-year.
The operations were the first under U.S. President Barack Obama's new regional strategy to defeat the Taliban and its Islamist allies and stabilize Afghanistan, with Washington sending tens of thousands of extra troops this year.
The commander of the 103,000-strong U.S. and NATO force said this week that the situation was serious and deteriorating and the existing military strategy needed to be changed.
OPIUM CULTIVATION, PRICES FALL
In rare good news, the United Nations reported that land under opium poppy cultivation had fallen by nearly a quarter this year. The biggest fall was in southern Helmand, Afghanistan's most violent province.
Afghanistan produces 90 percent of the opium used to make heroin in the world. Political leaders and military commanders believe the illegal trade funds the insurgency, fuels corruption and undermines the government they are fighting to support.
Prices for opium have tumbled, persuading farmers to switch to other crops, and 800,000 fewer Afghans now work in the trade, the U.N. report said. Drugs now make up just 4 percent of Afghanistan's economy, down from 27 percent in 2002, it said.
LIMBO
Afghan politics have been in limbo since an August 20 presidential election, with partial results putting Karzai in the lead but not by enough to avoid a second-round run-off against his main rival, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah.
Abdullah accuses the authorities of stuffing ballots on a massive scale, especially in the southern Pashtun-based heartland of Karzai's support where turn-out on election day was crippled by Taliban violence and threats of reprisals.
New partial election results were due later on Wednesday.
Addressing a group of supporters in Kabul on Wednesday, Abdullah stressed his resolve to challenge what he described as "massive and widespread fraud."
"Our approach will be peaceful," he told supporters who had come to Kabul from the northeastern Takhar province. "But our approach will be decisive and honest."
Most ballots in the south have yet to be tallied. The result in the south could put Karzai over the top with the outright majority he needs to avoid a second round run-off.
An independent election fraud watchdog has the power to exclude suspicious ballots and says it is investigating almost 600 cases of fraud serious enough to effect the outcome.
(Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi, Sayed Salahuddin and Jonathon Burch in KABUL; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Paul Tait)
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Afghanistan vote fraud overshadows Paris meeting
PARIS (AFP) – Top envoys for Afghanistan gathered in Paris on Wednesday to chart a way forward after claims of massive fraud cast a pall over the presidential election and threatened to set back peace efforts.
US special representative Richard Holbrooke joined counterparts from 26 countries and organisations for talks on Afghanistan's future after the August 20 vote was mired in allegations of ballot-stuffing and voter intimidation.
Afghanistan's election commission is investigating more than 2,500 complaints of irregularities, while preliminary results of the vote are expected to be announced by Monday.
With ballots from nearly half the polling stations announced, President Hamid Karzai was leading his main rival Abdullah Abdullah, but he was still short of the majority needed to avoid a run-off.
The meeting comes two days after the US and NATO commander in Afghanistan presented a gloomy assessment of the war to date calling for a shift in strategy in the nearly eight-year campaign to defeat the Taliban.
Already, 2009 has been a record-breaking year for the number of foreign soldiers killed in Afghanistan and questions are being asked over the fate of billions of dollars in international aid poured into the country.
Washington's relations with Karzai have grown increasingly strained while public opinion in the US and Europe has turned cold over what is seen as an ill-defined Afghan campaign.
Ahead of the meeting, Holbrooke took pains to insist that Washington was neutral in the campaign and that allegations of ballot fraud would be addressed.
"The United States totally respects the process. We don't have a candidate," Holbrooke told RFI radio.
"The United States and the international community will work with whoever is elected president of Afghanistan and if President Karzai is re-elected, that's fine.
"I know him well and I admire his achievements," Holbrooke said. "And of course, we are prepared to work with him as we are with other candidates if that is the result of the election."
The Afghan vote could lead to a runoff, amid reports that Holbrooke had pushed Karzai to agree to a second round of voting against ex-foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah during a recent tense meeting.
Holbrooke said the United States "did not take a position in favour of a runoff. We took a position in favour of the process. We took a position in favour of the Afghan people themselves."
Some observers believe a runoff would give the election greater legitimacy, defuse the threat of post-election violence and make it easier for the West to line up behind the elected president.
The quandary over the tainted elections comes as President Barack Obama is making a push for new thinking on Afghanistan, which is now at the centre of the US administration's foreign policy.
General Stanley McChrystal, who assumed command of NATO and US forces in June, urged in his review an expansion of Afghan security forces and a revamped counter-insurgency strategy to reverse "serious" setbacks.
There are about 100,000 foreign troops -- around two thirds of them American -- deployed in Afghanistan on a mission to fight the insurgency, which has reached its deadliest level since the 2001 US-led invasion.
Obama ordered an extra 21,000 troops to Afghanistan earlier this year.
Also taking part in the talks were British envoy Sherard Cowper-Coles, Germany's Bernd Muetzelburg, Thierry Mariani from France and United Nations special envoy for Afghanistan Kai Eide.
A news conference was scheduled for 4:00 pm (1400 GMT).
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Holbrooke, 26 world envoys figure out next steps in Afghanistan after troubled elections
ANGELA CHARLTON Associated Press Writer
PARIS (AP) — Richard Holbrooke and 26 other international envoys face a touchy task in meetings Wednesday in Paris: how to rescue their costly effort to rebuild Afghanistan, after elections marred by alleged fraud and amid mounting bloodshed.
Holbrooke, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, joins counterparts from Britain, Germany, Russia, China, Japan and other countries for talks about how to deal with ballot-stuffing charges tarnishing Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the man who once embodied the world's hope for the country and its democracy.
The allegations, along with low turnout in the violent south, could strip the election of legitimacy and prove a big embarrassment to the United States and other countries that have staked their Afghan policies on support for a credible government to combat the Taliban, corruption and the country's huge drug trade.
In Brussels, NATO's Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the alliance would remain committed to Afghanistan regardless of the outcome of the vote, adding it was up to the Afghan people to judge whether the electoral process was legitimate.
"Whatever happens, and I hope final results will be credible, we must remember we don't have 60,000 troops in Afghanistan simply for the elections," Fogh Rasmussen told reporters on Tuesday.
"We shouldn't forget that we have successfully kept Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for terrorists," he said.
The Paris meeting will aim to try to "unify positions" after the Afghan presidential elections Aug. 20 and push to hand more responsibility for the country's security and development to Afghans, according to the French host, Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner.
The talks come as an explosion Wednesday east of Kabul ripped through a crowd of government officials inaugurating a mosque, killing the country's deputy intelligence chief and 22 others.
Afghans bristled at the foreign envoys' meeting in faraway Paris, even as the final ballots are still being counted.
"This is not good for foreigners to make any commitment about an important issue such as the election in Afghanistan," said Mohammad Qasim Akhgir, political analyst and chief editor of newspaper 8-AM. "I wish this meeting could be held inside Afghanistan, so we as Afghans could find a solution for our problems."
Vote tallies released Monday based on almost half of the voting stations showed Karzai leading with 45.8 percent, ahead of challenger Abdullah Abdullah with 33.2 percent. Karzai needs 50 percent to avoid a runoff.
Accusations of voter intimidation and large-scale ballot-stuffing have poured into the Electoral Complaint Commission, which must investigate before final results can be announced.
Abdullah raised the stakes Wednesday with new accusations suggesting the Independent Election Commission was cooperating in the alleged fraud.
In the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif on Wednesday, an official with Abdullah's campaign warned that his supporters could take to the streets if there is a perception that fraud is being overlooked.
"Dr. Abdullah is meeting with foreign embassies and regional partners to try to find a solution," said Zalmai Younosi, the campaign chief for six provinces. "After that, if there is no result, then it is protest and violence."
Such warnings illustrate the quandary for the international community.
Holbrooke has played a key role in managing the election fallout, but he and many other international officials have refrained from taking a public stance so far.
"The election results are still being counted, it's a process very much like there is in the United States, France and other democracies. That process is still unrolling, let's see what happens," he said on France-24 television.
The election dilemma comes as rising U.S. and NATO casualties are undermining support for the war in some countries with forces in Afghanistan. August was the deadliest month of the war for U.S. forces — at least 49 deaths. Another died Tuesday, just one day into September. President Barack Obama committed 21,000 new American forces to Afghanistan this year, bringing the total U.S. commitment to 68,000 by the end of the year. A record 100,000 U.S. and NATO troops are stationed in Afghanistan.
The envoys in Paris are expected to look at what their troops and money are doing in Afghanistan. Wednesday's meeting is the latest in a series since Paris hosted a donors conference for Afghanistan a year ago that garnered pledges of more than $21 billion.
The top U.N. official in Afghanistan says the international community has wasted years in Afghanistan by not coordinating efforts.
"The piecemeal approach is not going to get results," said Kai Eide, who is taking part in Wednesday's talks. Foreign governments tend to fund small, relatively easy projects rather than major missions such as overhauling the transport network.
The question of a possible second round of elections — reportedly supported by Holbrooke — is likely to come up at Wednesday's talks.
But a runoff would be costly and entail high security risks, and is looking "more and more improbable," said Karim Pakzad of the French Institute for International and Strategic Relations.
"We're in a paradoxical situation. Karzai is the product of the international community ... and now he is telling the Americans 'I'm the one who holds the cards,'" Pakzad said.
___
Associated Press reporters Jason Straziuso and Rahim Faiez in Kabul contributed to this report.
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Karzai extends lead in Afghan election with 47 pct
AP via Yahoo! News
KABUL – Afghanistan's election commission says President Hamid Karzai is moving closer to the 50 percent threshold that would allow him to avoid a run-off in the country's presidential election.
In results released Wednesday, Karzai has 47.3 percent of votes counted while top challenger Abdullah Abdullah has 32.6 percent. Karzai needs 50 percent to avoid a two-man runoff.
The commission is slowly releasing results from the Aug. 20 presidential vote, which was marred by hundreds of allegations of fraud.
The latest returns are based on votes from 60 percent of the country's voting stations.
Election results are not expected to be finalized until mid- or late September after officials investigate fraud allegations.
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Tribal Leaders Say Karzai’s Team Forged 23,900 Votes
By DEXTER FILKINS The New York Times September 2, 2009
KABUL, Afghanistan — Just a week before this country’s presidential election, the leaders of a southern Afghan tribe called Bariz gathered to make a bold decision: they would abandon the incumbent and local favorite, Hamid Karzai, and endorse his challenger, Abdullah Abdullah.
Mr. Abdullah flew to the southern city of Kandahar to receive the tribe’s endorsement. The leaders of the tribe, who live in a district called Shorabak, prepared to deliver a local landslide.
But it never happened, the tribal leaders said.
Instead, aides to Mr. Karzai’s brother Ahmed Wali — the leader of the Kandahar provincial council and the most powerful man in southern Afghanistan — detained the governor of Shorabak, Delaga Bariz, and shut down all of the district’s 45 polling sites on election day. The ballot boxes were taken to Shorabak’s district headquarters, where, Mr. Bariz and other tribal leaders said, local police officers stuffed them with thousands of ballots.
At the end of the day, 23,900 ballots were shipped to Kabul, Mr. Bariz said, with every one marked for President Karzai.
“Not a single person in Shorabak District cast a ballot — not a single person,” Mr. Bariz said in an interview here in the capital, where he and a group of tribal elders came to file a complaint. “Mr. Karzai’s people stuffed all the ballot boxes.”
The accusations by Mr. Bariz, and several other tribal leaders from Shorabak, are the most serious allegations so far that have been publicized against Mr. Karzai’s electoral machine, which faces a deluge of fraud complaints from around the country.
The Afghan Electoral Complaints Commission said Tuesday that the number of complaints about vote stealing and other forms of fraud had reached 2,615.
Mr. Karzai’s campaign is accused of forging ballots, stealing votes and preventing people from going to the polls.
In Kandahar Province, where Mr. Karzai’s family is in control, allegations of a type similar to those made in Shorabak have been made in many of the province’s 17 districts. Early election returns show that Mr. Karzai has managed to capture nearly 48,000 votes, compared with only 3,000 for Mr. Abdullah, his nearest challenger.
Slightly less than half of all ballots have been counted. Mr. Karzai leads with about 46 percent of the vote, compared with 33 percent for Mr. Abdullah.
Mr. Karzai and his aides deny any sort of fraud, and they have hunkered down in the presidential palace to await the final results. But the allegations are casting a cloud over his re-election campaign, raising the prospect that even if he wins his presidency could be seriously tainted.
At the same time, the allegations are increasing the pressure on American officials to ensure that the accusations of fraud are properly investigated. An election widely perceived as having been stolen could deal a serious setback to the Obama administration, which has committed itself to prevailing here in the nearly eight-year-old war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
Allegations like those described by Mr. Bariz are throwing the basic integrity of the election into question. Much of the story told by Mr. Bariz and the other tribal elders was impossible to verify. But it appeared credible. All three men spoke in great detail. And all of them were willing to be publicly named and to have their photographs taken.
As recently as 10 months ago, Mr. Bariz said, he had considered himself an ally of President Karzai. He had been nominated by a group of Bariz elders to be the governor of the Shorabak District, a desolate stretch of sand and scrub that sits on the country’s southwestern border with Pakistan. Mr. Bariz’s nomination was ratified by Tooryalai Wesa, the governor of Kandahar Province, who was appointed by President Karzai.
But as election day neared, Mr. Bariz and other leaders in his tribe said they could not bring themselves to support Mr. Karzai for another five-year term. The reason, he said, was that Mr. Karzai’s government had done so little good.
“There are no clinics, no schools, no roads, no water dams — nothing,” Mr. Bariz said. “We decided to support someone who would unify the country.” The leaders of the Bariz tribe picked Mr. Abdullah, a former foreign minister.
In theory, the decision by the elders sealed Mr. Abdullah’s victory in Shorabak: nearly everyone in Shorabak belongs to the Bariz tribe. As is common in many such societies, tribal leaders in Afghanistan often negotiate with politicians to deliver the votes of their tribe.
Mr. Abdullah’s campaign manager in southern Afghanistan, Esmatullah, who like many Afghans uses only one name, said the candidate met a large group of Bariz tribal elders in Kandahar on Aug. 12 to receive their endorsement. It was a joyous affair, Mr. Esmatullah said, for which even women turned out. But not everyone who wanted to come to the endorsement ceremony was able to make it.
“The police were blocking the roads,” Mr. Esmatullah said.
The next day, Mr. Bariz said, officials in Kandahar were furious. One of Kandahar’s senior officials, Mohammed Anas, ordered Mr. Bariz not to return to his home in Shorabak. Mr. Anas said he had no choice.
“When I asked him why he wouldn’t let me go home, he said, ‘Because your whole tribe is going to vote for Dr. Abdullah,’ ” Mr. Bariz said.
Mr. Bariz did not speak to Ahmed Wali Karzai, the president’s younger brother, only to more junior officials like Mr. Anas. But few decisions of any import are believed to be taken in Kandahar without the approval of Ahmed Wali Karzai. On the streets, his nickname is “The King of the South.” Last year, for instance, Ahmed Wali Karzai was widely seen as having replaced the governor, Rahmatullah Raufi, when he fell out of favor.
Attempts to contact Ahmed Wali Karzai were unsuccessful.
When election day finally came, the ballots were never delivered to the polling centers in Shorabak, said two Bariz tribal leaders who were charged with overseeing the sites. Instead of going to the polling places, all the ballots and ballot boxes were delivered to the district government’s headquarters. That place, the tribal leaders said, had been commandeered by the Afghan Border Police.
“The ballots were never delivered,” said Abdul Quyoum, a farmer from the village of Karaze, where one of the polling sites was supposed to be. “I waited all day.”
Mr. Quyoum was one of two tribal elders from Shorabak who traveled to Kabul with Mr. Bariz. The other was Fazul Mohammed, who told a nearly identical story.
When the ballots were not delivered to the polling site, Mr. Mohammed said, he walked to the district government headquarters to see what was wrong. The building, he said, was being guarded by officers of the Afghan Border Police. As an election official, Mr. Mohammed said, he was allowed to go inside.
“The border police were stuffing the ballots, hundreds of them, into the boxes,” he said. “And there were other people who were counting the ballots and keeping the records.”
Mr. Mohammed said he protested but was told to leave. Later, he said, he was told that a total of 23,900 ballots had been filled out, all in Mr. Karzai’s name.
“Dr. Abdullah did not receive a single vote,” he said.
Mr. Bariz, the governor, said he had not returned to Shorabak.
“I don’t think I am going to be governor much longer,” he said.
Sangar Rahimi contributed to this report from Kabul.
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Afghans Brace for Unrest Over Vote Tally
Tensions on Rise Between Factions -- And With U.S.
By Pamela Constable Washington Post Foreign Service Wednesday, September 2, 2009
KABUL, Sept. 1 -- As vote tallies keep dribbling out from Afghanistan's Aug. 20 presidential election, it appears increasingly likely that President Hamid Karzai will reach the 50 percent plus one vote that he needs to win reelection.
But what will happen after that is far from clear, and tension and suspicion have mounted as the vote count drags on amid widening charges of electoral fraud. Afghans are confused, jittery and bracing for street violence -- or at least a protracted period of political polarization and drift.
Legally, the internationally led Electoral Complaints Commission will have the last word on whether the fraud was extensive enough to change the results, but its investigations could go on for weeks after the official tally is announced. That leaves open the possibility of a delayed runoff between Karzai and his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, or even nullification of the election.
"I think it's clear Karzai has won, but that doesn't resolve the crisis we are facing," said Haroun Mir, director of Afghanistan's Center for Research and Policy Studies. "The ultimate goal here is to stabilize the country and defeat the Taliban. If we don't come out of this election with a legitimate and strong government, it could have a major impact on both Afghanistan and on the entire NATO effort here."
Karzai's lead over Abdullah, his former foreign minister, has widened slowly but steadily. On Monday, with nearly half the votes counted, the Afghan election commission said Karzai was ahead by about 46 to 32 percent. But Abdullah has alleged "massive state engineering" of the vote and vowed he will not accept a flawed Karzai victory as legitimate.
Both major candidates have publicly urged their supporters to await the official results, which are expected in about two weeks. But behind the scenes, reports have circulated of threats of violence by the opposition and high-pressure tactics by government officials, alternating with rumors of power-sharing deals between Karzai and Abdullah.
The atmosphere of fraud and strong-arm behavior surrounding the election has also heightened tensions between Kabul and Washington, just as U.S. officials are scrambling to justify their military commitments here and find new strategies to salvage the faltering and expensive war against Taliban insurgents.
American officials have expressed rare public dismay at Karzai's electoral courtship of controversial former warlords. Karzai's aides, in turn, portrayed his recent meeting with the U.S. special envoy to the region, Richard C. Holbrooke, as an imperious political lecture from Washington. If Karzai remains in power, it is unclear whether he will seek to mend fences with Washington or continue his populist demonizing of the West.
Despite the domestic and international concerns about an illegitimate election, the complaints commission is also under pressure to somehow address the fraud problem without forcing a second election. Many Afghans and outside observers say a runoff would be costly, stressful and just as vulnerable to fraud and insurgent attacks as the Aug. 20 poll. A flawed single election that lets the country get back to normal, they argue, would be the lesser evil.
"Would a second round clear the air and have more legitimacy? That's a question mark," said one U.N. official here, speaking on the condition of anonymity. He said it might be wiser for Afghans to forge a "consensus of governance, if not government," rather than force another electoral exercise in the middle of a guerrilla war.
But neither Karzai nor Abdullah appears inclined to reach out. Both represent ethnic groups that are bitter longtime rivals with large emotional and economic stakes in the outcome. Both have formed alliances with powerful figures who have demanded significant concessions in exchange for their support.
Abdullah has said several times that he will "defend the Afghan people's vote," while some of his supporters, including experienced militia fighters, have vowed to take to the streets if he is declared the loser. Karzai, in turn, has enlisted the electoral backing of several former militia leaders accused of rights abuses and drug trafficking.
Grant Kippen, the low-key Canadian elections expert who heads the Electoral Complaints Commission, has attempted to stay above the partisan fray as his staff sorts through more than 2,000 fraud complaints. He has said that several hundred are serious enough to potentially affect the results and that he will take as much time as is necessary to investigate them properly, regardless of the rising public tension and pressure for a final outcome.
But a certain amount of discretion and subjectivity is involved in both the vote tally and the fraud detection process, one foreign elections expert said. In addition to the formal complaints investigated by Kippen's panel, he said, polling results that "smell funny," such as a box full of genuine-looking ballots that favor one candidate by 600 votes to 1, can either be "set aside" by the election commission or added to the count.
Kippen's findings could be political dynamite if they show that, as many observers suspect, much of the fraud was committed on Karzai's behalf in the southern region that is his ethnic Pashtun heartland, and where insurgent violence kept hundreds of thousands of people from voting.
Such a finding would raise the prospect of a president being reelected with a slim and questionable mandate from his own supporters and facing the hostility of an opposition convinced that he stole the election.
"There are warlords on both sides of this divide, and we cannot afford to be drawn into another ethnic conflict over this election," said Mir, the policy analyst. "This needs to be a time of reaching out to the opposition, not exacting vengeance. Otherwise, the only beneficiaries will be the Taliban."
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NATO committed to Afghanistan regardless of poll worries-NATO
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO will remain committed to Afghanistan and must step up its effort there regardless of the outcome of contested presidential elections, the alliance's secretary-general said on Wednesday.
Anders Fogh Rasmussen said it was for Afghans to judge whether the elections could be considered credible.
"Obviously we need a legitimate government in Afghanistan. I really hope the elections and the whole election process will be considered credible by the Afghan people," he told a news conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels.
However, he added: "We need to keep this election in perspective. Whatever happens, and I hope the final results will be credible, we must remember that we don't have 60,000 troops in Afghanistan simply for elections.
"Credible elections are one of the many important parts of that but we should not forget that we have successfully kept Afghanistan from becoming once again a safe haven for terrorism and we will continue to do so," he said.
He reiterated his call for NATO allies to step up training efforts for Afghan forces, which the alliance hopes will eventually take over security duties from the big foreign military presence in the country.
Incumbent Afghan President Hamid Karzai's main rival Abdullah Abdullah has accused Karzai's government of stuffing ballot boxes on a massive scale and has lodged hundreds of allegations of fraud in the Aug. 20 ballot.
With about half of votes tallied so far, partial results show Karzai maintaining a lead over Abdullah, although still without the outright majority needed to avoid a potentially destabilising run-off in October. Final results are due later this month.
Rasmussen said that while it was too early to make final judgements on allegations of fraud and levels of turnout, from a security point of view the elections had been a success, with voting taking place in more than 95 percent of polling stations and with only two percent of voting sites attacked.
The election was a major test for Karzai after eight years in power and of the West's strategy to defeat the Taliban and stabilise Afghanistan in the face of recent gains by insurgents.
An independent fraud watchdog, the Election Complaints Commission, is investigating almost 2,500 allegations of abuse, including 567 it says are serious enough to affect the outcome.
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First the votes, now the complaints pile up in Afghanistan
More than 2,000 accounts of fraud and intimidation have poured into a U.N.-backed electoral panel. As the vote tally slowly advances, sorting out the allegations becomes more crucial.
By Laura King Los Angeles Times September 2, 2009
Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan - In a low-slung building tucked behind concrete blast barriers on the edge of the Afghan capital, the plain brown envelopes are opened one by one, and the complaint forms inside smoothed out and scrutinized by weary-eyed workers.
One handwritten account tells of a gunman turning up at a polling place. Another describes a candidate brazenly handing out cash bribes. Yet another reports a ballot box filled with votes only moments after the start of polling.
Nearly two weeks after Afghanistan's troubled presidential election, the task of sorting out allegations of fraud and intimidation has swelled. More than 2,000 complaints have poured into the Electoral Complaints Commission, a U.N.-backed body given the responsibility of determining the validity of claims of election misconduct. As the vote tally slowly advances, that task becomes more and more crucial.
With nearly half the vote counted, President Hamid Karzai was polling around 46%. That falls short of the absolute majority he would need to avoid a runoff with his principal rival, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, but has him within striking distance of his goal.
If the total count puts Karzai over the top, many fear an explosion of violence by followers of Abdullah, who has repeatedly stated that the only way Karzai could win the election outright would be by having committed massive fraud.
Ironically, the whole point of the election -- only the country's second-ever direct presidential vote -- was to boost the legitimacy of the Afghan government, whoever wound up heading it. Instead, it appears that the next leader may assume office under a cloud of popular suspicion.
All the major candidates in a field of more than two dozen have lodged complaints against others, though the Karzai-Abdullah race has been the most bitterly contested. Some employ dramatic methods: One presidential hopeful, Mirwais Yassini, came personally to the complaints office and dumped bags of what he said were doctored ballots.
"Whichever one they say has won -- how can I believe it?" said Ishtiaq Mohammed, a bicycle mechanic in Kabul, the capital. "Maybe we will have to do this thing all over again. And it was so hard the first time."
A turnout figure has not yet been disclosed. Millions of Afghans braved Taliban threats and attacks to come to the polls. However, violence or the fear of it kept many people at home, particularly in Afghanistan's south, where fighting is fiercest between insurgents and Western troops.
The vote-counting process has been not only contentious, but agonizingly slow. Some districts are so remote that ballots had to be delivered to polling places by donkey convoys and helicopters; that process had to be reversed once the votes were cast.
An additional complication is that Ramadan, when observant Muslims fast from dawn to dusk, began just after election day. As in much of the Islamic world, the holy month is not especially conducive to a brisk pace of work. During Ramadan, the workday is shorter, and those who are fasting fight sleepiness and hunger while on the job.
On a recent day in the Electoral Complaints Commission processing center, where work ends by 3 p.m., some Afghans manning "triage" tables, where complaints deemed the most urgent are sorted, stifled yawns and rubbed their eyes as the hot afternoon wore on.
The commission had initially hoped to adjudicate all complaints by Sept. 17, with a runoff -- if there is one -- to be held two weeks after the vote tally was certified. But officials caution that this is only a target date, not a legal deadline, and have pledged that as much time as necessary will be devoted to the task.
At least 700 of the complaints received by the commission are classified as Category A, serious enough in scope and nature to have the potential to alter the election's outcome. Investigators have fanned out to the provinces to review claims viewed as credible, though their efforts are hampered by security concerns.
One investigator, speaking on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to talk about her work and out of concern for her own safety, said Taliban members in one disputed southern district had warned that anyone caught there on election business would be fair game for abduction and possible execution.
"I'm happy I voted, but I'm not sure now that it did any good," said Seema Humayoun, a Kabul resident who voted at her neighborhood mosque though some family members urged her to stay home because there had been a suicide bombing nearby a few days earlier.
"It will be very, very sad," she said, "if it all was for nothing."
laura.king@latimes.com
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IEC Ready for Second Round Afghan Vote
Hamid Haidari Quqnoos September 2, 2009
The Afghan Independent Election Commission has indicated its preparadness for second-round presidential polling, if needed
An IEC spokesman, Noor Mohammad Noor, said on Tuesday that the outcome of last month's election is not decided yet and it is too soon to confirm a run-off, as thousands of fraud allegations challenge the transparency of the first-round vote.
Incumbent Hamid Karzai and his closest challenger Abdullah Abdullah are in the lead of the partial preliminary vote count. The IEC on Monday announced that that 47.8 percent of the polling stations have been tallied so far, placing President Karzai in the lead with 45.8 percent and Abdullah second with 33.2.
Incumbent Karzai is still short of the necessary votes to avoid a two-man runoff.
Some Afghan experts say that the margin between Karzai and Abdullah indicates a possible runoff which, if needed, will be held in October.
Nearly 2,500 complaints have been submitted to the Electoral Complaint Commission (ECC), including 567 allegations of serious abuse that may affect the outcome of the Aug 20 Presidential Election.
The UN and Afghan Parliament have urged the ECC to seriously probe the complaints in order to satisfy all involved parties.
Abdullah, a former foreign minister, has warned observers to not recognise the outcome of the election if cheating becomes the deciding factor.
Abdullah said massive rigging occurred on Election Day. To avoid a run-off, a candidate must win more than 50 percent of the vote.
The IEC is expected to announce the final official results in 16 September. In the event that the election steps in for a second round, it would be held in October.
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It is time for Karzai to step down
Allegations of corruption, maladministration and electoral fraud have damaged the Afghan president's regime beyond repair
Amin Saikal guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 2 September 2009 16.00 BST
It is time for President Hamid Karzai to bow out gracefully, even if he is declared as the winner of last month's election. His regime is tainted by allegations of corruption, maladministration and electoral fraud to the extent that he is no longer capable of leading Afghanistan for another term with an acceptable degree of legitimacy.
Karzai assumed power nearly eight years ago, with more national and international support than any previous Afghan ruler had enjoyed. The Afghan people had suffered from 24 years of warfare, bloodshed and devastation: the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, followed by internecine conflict among various Afghan warring groups and the Pakistan-backed medievalist Islamic rule of the Taliban in the 1990s. A majority of them desperately yearned for a constructive and effective national leader. The US-led intervention in response to the 11 September 2001 al-Qaida attacks on the US, resulting in the toppling of the Taliban regime and the instalment of an internationally backed administration under Karzai, provided a unique opportunity. The US and its allies invested very heavily in the new Afghan leader with an expectation that he would prove instrumental in working with them to generate the necessary conditions for democracy, stability and security – enabling the Afghans to rebuild their lives and their country.
Karzai has confounded the expectations. He has failed to open a new chapter in Afghan history in order to put the country on a stable course of change and development. Instead of discarding old political norms and practices, which had traditionally marred Afghanistan's political evolution, he has reinforced them as a basis for ensuring his position. He has presided over the politics of patronage, based on nepotism, corruption and political favouritism. He has behaved, more or less, like a traditional tribal head rather than a forward-looking national leader. In the process, he has not been able to maintain the support of either his own ethnic Pashtun cluster, which forms some 42% of the Afghan population and to which the Taliban belong, or the non-Pashtun ethnic groups in the country. Meanwhile, he has increasingly been at odds with the very international forces, especially the US and the UK, which have so far safeguarded his limited rule over Kabul and a few other parts of the country.
He won the presidential election of 2004 – the first of its kind in Afghan history – with 55% of the vote, based on a voter turnout of 70%. He could have used this popular mandate to build a clean, credible and functional administration and promote the causes of institutionalisation of politics rather than personalisation of politics, which had traditionally marred Afghanistan. Merit has figured little in his filling of key governmental positions. Family, tribal, ethnic and factional connections have been the order of the day. He has made no noticeable effort to generate a constructive working relationship between the executive and the parliament, and has done whatever it takes to manipulate the legislature and judiciary in support of his dysfunctional leadership and administration.
To win the 2009 presidential election, he has shown no moral qualms about engaging in opportunistic actions and stitching up alliances with unsavoury figures. His signing, shortly before the election, of a bill to empower Shia'ite men to refuse their wives food if they failed to have sex with them four nights a week was purely for electoral purposes. It was designed to please a particular Shia leader, Sheikh Mohammad Asif Mohseni, and to entice his supporters, who constitute a proportion of Afghanistan's 15 to 20% Shia population, to vote for him. Similarly, his alliances with a number of notorious warlords, such as a former defence minister, Mohammad Fahim, an Uzbek leader, Rashid Dostum, and a Pashtun strongman, and now governor of the eastern province of Nangarhar, Gul Agha Shirzai, have all been made for a similar reason. These men, together with some members of Karzai's family, have been high on the lists of the international community for alleged corrupt practices and human rights violations. Yet Karzai has been willing to incur widespread criticisms in order to have them on his side.
While there is no evidence that Karzai had a direct hand in rigging last month's election, there is plenty of evidence that intimidation, multiple voting and ballot box stuffing on the part of Karzai's supporters were widespread – something that has now been confirmed by many international observers. A premature claim of victory by Karzai's campaign chief, barely before any votes had been counted, gave an early indication that Karzai was in deep trouble in winning the election in the first round. The claim was made to cover up as quickly as possible Karzai's disadvantage arising from the very low voter turnout in general (less than 40%), and substantially so in the southern provinces where Karzai had hoped to do well among the Pashtun voters but could not – largely due to the Taliban's threats.
It is not surprising that the US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, reportedly raised the election irregularities with Karzai shortly after the poll, but only to be rebuffed at the cost of a further downturn in Karzai's relations with the Obama Administration.
The Karzai leadership has proved to be very ineffective for a majority of the Afghan people and the international community, especially the US. Karzai will carve a better place for himself in history if he now leaves the field on his own accord, and allows a new leader and administration to take over. The change will not solve Afghanistan's daunting problems in the short run, but it may help the processes of the country's stabilisation and reconstruction in the long run.
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Taliban Surprising U.S. Forces With Improved Tactics
Obama Facing Major Strategy Decisions
By Karen DeYoung Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, September 2, 2009
The Taliban has become a much more potent adversary in Afghanistan by improving its own tactics and finding gaps in the U.S. military playbook, according to senior American military officials who acknowledged that the enemy's resurgence this year has taken them by surprise.
U.S. rules of engagement restricting the use of air power and aggressive action against civilians have also opened new space for the insurgents, officials said. Western development projects, such as new roads, schools and police stations, have provided fresh targets for Taliban roadside bombs and suicide attacks. The inability of rising numbers of American troops to protect Afghan citizens has increased resentment of the Western presence and the corrupt Afghan government that cooperates with it, the officials said.
As President Obama faces crucial decisions on his war strategy and declining public support at home, administration and defense officials are studying the reasons why the Taliban appears, for the moment at least, to be winning.
In the spring, Obama outlined a broad new direction for the war that he said his predecessor had starved of attention and resources. He changed the military leadership on the ground, asked Congress for additional money and authorized more manpower. The administration has said that it expects the strategy -- still barely off the ground -- to show results in a year to 18 months.
But many U.S. officials and their allies feel that they are in a race against time and the determination of a battle-hardened enemy that has learned from its own mistakes and those of U.S. and NATO forces over nearly eight years of combat. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the new U.S. commander in Afghanistan, gave Obama an assessment this week of what he described as a "serious" situation.
"The point is that the Taliban, who have had a very clear aim and means from the very beginning, have been able slowly and steadily to get better at what they're doing," said a European official whose country's troops are fighting alongside U.S. forces. More U.S. and NATO troops have been killed in 2009 than in any year since the war began in late 2001; U.S. deaths in August reached an all-time monthly high of 47.
Although McChrystal's report has not been publicly released, officials said it calls for further significant strategic revisions. In the coming weeks, Obama will weigh the merits of McChrystal's recommendations and decide whether to provide whatever additional troops are necessary to implement them.
About a dozen military officials in Washington and at regional command headquarters here and abroad discussed Taliban capabilities and battlefield trends on the condition of anonymity. Most expressed optimism that with time the U.S. strategy could prevail, but said that the Taliban has gained psychological, as well as actual, ground.
"There are periods when an enemy does well and seems better trained and fights harder," one senior defense official said. "The number one indicator we have out there now is that they think they're winning. That creates an attitude, a positive outlook, and a willingness to sacrifice."
The positive outlook has a basis in fact, the official said, as areas of Taliban influence have expanded. "They have enough of the landscape that they control to be able to train more and in closer proximity to where they're fighting. And the people [living] there actually believe the Taliban can do something."
U.S. military officials differ on the extent of Taliban success and the reasons for it. Senior U.S. commanders in eastern Afghanistan, where insurgent leader Jalaluddin Haqqani's network is dominant, said that the sophistication of the insurgents' attacks had increased markedly, beginning with bloody battles along the Pakistani border last summer. To many of the Americans, it appeared as if the insurgents had attended something akin to the U.S. Army's Ranger school, which teaches soldiers how to fight in small groups in austere environments.
"In some cases . . . we started to see that enhanced form of attack," said one Army general who oversaw forces in Afghanistan until earlier in the summer. As attacks in the east have increased this year, some officers have speculated that the insurgents are getting more direct help from professional fighters from Arab and Central Asian countries. These embedded trainers, the officers said, play almost the same role as U.S. military training teams that live with and mentor Afghan government forces.
In recent months, the Taliban fighters have used mortars to force U.S. troops into defensive positions, where they are then hit with rocket-propelled grenades, rifles and machine guns. Insurgent units have learned to maintain "radio silence" as they move and to wet down the ground to prevent dusty recoil that would make them targets. They have "developed the ability to do some of the things that make up what you call a disciplined force," including treating casualties, the Army general said.
The insurgents have largely abandoned the large-unit attacks they used several years ago. "In 2005, Marines and Army units were having pretty decisive engagements" against massed Taliban fighters, another senior officer said, adding that "every time, we killed them in very large numbers." Small bases and checkpoints manned by Afghan national security forces have become preferred targets for the Taliban, he said, because they are "isolated and easy to kill," and the Afghan units are relatively easy to infiltrate for intelligence.
Remote areas where the Taliban has been fighting U.S. forces for years, such as the Korengal Valley near the border with Pakistan, "are a perfect lab to vet fighters and study U.S. tactics," said a Pentagon officer. The insurgents have learned to gauge the response times for U.S. artillery cannons, as well as fighter jets and helicopters. "They know exactly how long it takes before . . . they have to break contact and pull back," the officer said.
U.S. officers in southern Afghanistan, where thousands of Marines and British troops are fighting long-entrenched Taliban forces, attributed insurgent gains less to sophisticated tactics than to increased use of roadside bombs -- improvised explosive devices, or IEDs -- laid along U.S. convoy routes in the desert or roads built with foreign aid money.
"They do tend to play to the areas that they're strongest in, the hit-and-run tactics and the employment of IEDs," said Col. George Amland, deputy commander of the Marines in Helmand province.
The Taliban has also taken advantage of changes in U.S. air and artillery tactics, adopted to decrease civilian casualties that have alienated the population. U.S. airstrikes and culturally offensive night ground raids are authorized far more selectively than they were. The Taliban has also adjusted its own tactics, gathering in populated areas and increasing its night operations, and "the playing field is leveled," one U.S. officer said.
A number of officials and experts, within and outside the military, said that while the Taliban was able to regroup militarily while U.S. attention was diverted to Iraq, its widening influence has as much to do with Afghan government corruption, tensions among regional ethnic groups, lack of state service and justice in rural areas, and high rates of unemployment as it does with insurgent efforts.
Military officials expressed confidence in the evolving U.S. counterinsurgency strategy, but also concern about whether there is time to make it work. "I'm not one myself to believe it's a zero-sum game of winning and losing," said an official with long experience in Afghanistan.
"To the Taliban, winning is, in fact, not losing," he said. "They feel that over time, they will ultimately outlast the international community's attempt to stabilize Afghanistan. It's really a game of will to them."
Correspondents Pamela Constable, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Joshua Partlow and Greg Jaffe in Afghanistan contributed to this report.
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After the Bombing: Feeling Vulnerable in Kandahar
By Anuj Chopra / time.com Kandahar Wednesday, Sep. 02, 2009
This volatile city in southern Afghanistan, known as the spiritual birthplace of the Taliban, isn't unfamiliar with the staccato rattle of gunfire and the thunder of explosions. But last week's bomb attack — the deadliest in years — has deepened the anguish of war-weary Kandaharis living in the shadow of rising violence. A cluster of vehicle bombs ripped through a central area of Kandahar, killing 43 and injuring 65, nearly all of them civilians. The ear-piercing explosions sent shock waves through the city, smashing windows miles away from the bombing site and leaving broken shards of glass and mangled remains of cars strewn on the streets. Heaps of rubble and smoldering debris lay amid dozens of damaged buildings, now resembling more the ruins of an ancient civilization.
In the days before and after the country's landmark presidential elections on Aug. 20, Afghanistan has seen the highest level of civilian deaths since the Taliban was routed out of power in 2002. As uncertainty surrounds the final outcome of the presidential vote, fraught with low turnout and mounting accusations of election fraud, Afghan civilians are at a greater risk than ever of violent attacks, aid officials warn. "With the outcome of voting in Afghanistan unclear, the danger and insecurity facing millions of Afghans continues and in fact is higher now than ever," says Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International's Asia-Pacific director. "Antigovernment groups, including the Taliban, have demonstrated a systematic contempt for the safety of civilians by targeting Afghans who want to establish their future through ballots, not bullets."
Although the Taliban shrugged off responsibility for last week's bombing, coalition forces squarely lay the blame on them. Wary the high civilian deaths might stoke public outrage, the Taliban is trying to wriggle out of blame, says James Appathurai, NATO's spokesman in Brussels. "I have seen that the Taliban deny responsibility. They do not get to wash their hands of this," he said this week. The Taliban have gained control of vast swathes of Afghanistan's south and east over the past few years, prompting the U.S. to send an additional 21,000 troops to the country this year. With this supplication, there are now a total of 60,000 U.S. troops in the country to combat the resurgent Taliban. General Stanley McChrystal, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, has raised concerns about the Taliban's menacing encroachment into Kandahar. It is expected that he will inject 3,000 of the 21,000 reinforcements into the city, thereby doubling the number of coalition forces guarding the province.
But despite assurances of an Iraq-style troops surge, Kandaharis feel increasingly vulnerable. All through last week, people trapped beneath piles of debris were dug out by rescue officials. Azam Muhammed, a 25-year-old construction laborer, was rescued six hours after the blast. Just minutes after the muezzin's call to prayer was sounded, he was about to break his Ramadan fast when the explosion struck. Like scores of other victims, he was taken to the city's Mirwais Regional Hospital, where he lay in pain on a bed amid the smell of antiseptic. Gul Muhammed, his brother, who took him there, says Azam is one of the more fortunate victims. "He was pulled out of the debris alive," he says. "When I went looking for him, I found dead bodies and severed limbs scattered around the bombing site."
In recent months, the steep escalation in targeted and random killings has turned Kandahar, the largest city in the south, into a cauldron of violence. A drive through the dusty streets is a chronicle of Afghanistan's never-ending war. Buildings across the city are scarred by shrapnel and pocked with bullet holes. Concrete roads are riddled with gaping holes in the ground where improvised explosive devices (IEDs) have been laid. And blackened divots are visible where suicide bombers — or 'human IEDs,' in colloquial parlance — blew themselves up. The streets of Kandahar, once a thriving business hub, go empty at sundown as shops selling Persian carpets and gold signet rings pull down their shutters. Thin slivers of smoke are seen rising from the roadside iftar stalls selling kebabs, the only visible sign of life after dark. Those, too, fade away after a while.
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Report Details Misbehavior by Kabul Embassy Guards
Contractors Called 'Lewd and Deviant'
By Ann Scott Tyson Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Private security contractors who guard the U.S. Embassy in Kabul have engaged in lewd behavior and hazed subordinates, demoralizing the undermanned force and posing a "significant threat" to security at a time when the Taliban is intensifying attacks in the Afghan capital, according to an investigation released Tuesday by an independent watchdog group.
The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) launched the probe after more than a dozen security guards contacted the group to report misconduct and morale problems within the force of 450 guards who live at Camp Sullivan, a few miles from the embassy compound.
The report highlighted occasions when guards brought women believed to be prostitutes into Camp Sullivan and videotaped themselves drinking and partially undressed. It also outlined communications problems among the guards, many of whom don't speak English and have trouble understanding orders from their U.S. supervisors.
"The lewd and deviant behavior of approximately 30 supervisors and guards has resulted in complete distrust of leadership and a breakdown of the chain of command, compromising security," POGO said in a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton outlining the security violations.
The report recommends that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates immediately assign U.S. military personnel to supervise the guards. It also calls on the State Department to hold accountable diplomatic officials who failed to provide adequate oversight of the contract.
"These are very serious allegations, and we are treating them that way," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said. "The secretary and the department have made it clear that we will have zero tolerance for the type of conduct that is alleged in these documents.
The guards work for ArmorGroup North America, which has a $180 million annual contract with the State Department to protect the embassy and the 1,000 diplomats, staffers and Afghan nationals who work there. The State Department renewed the contract in July despite finding numerous performance deficiencies by ArmorGroup in recent years that were the subject of a Senate subcommittee hearing in June.
At the time, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State William Moser acknowledged "deficiencies" by the contractor but said "performance on the ground by ArmorGroup North America has been and is sound." Subcommittee Chairman Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) agreed to the renewal of ArmorGroup's contract, though she said she had reservations.
Susan Pitcher, a spokeswoman for Wackenhut Services, the Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., company that owns ArmorGroup, declined to comment on Tuesday's POGO report.
In one incident in May, the report says, more than a dozen guards took weapons, night vision goggles and other key equipment and engaged in an unauthorized "cowboy" mission in Kabul, leaving the embassy "largely night blind," POGO wrote in the letter to Clinton. The guards dressed in Afghan tunics and scarves in violation of contract rules, and hid in abandoned buildings in a reconnaissance mission that was not part of their training or duties. Later, two heads of the guard force, Werner Ilic and Jimmy Lemon, issued a "letter of recognition" praising the men for "conspicuous intrepidity" with the State Department logo on the letterhead.
"They were living out some sort of delusion," one of the whistleblower guards said in an interview with The Washington Post from Kabul. "It presented a huge opportunity for an international incident."
The guard, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he said he feared retribution, said, "It's insane here. If you didn't go along with the game plan you eventually were going to make a mistake and put yourself in a position" to be let go.
The report said supervisors held near-weekly parties in which they urinated on themselves and others, drank vodka poured off each other's exposed buttocks, fondled and kissed one another and gallivanted around virtually nude. Photos and video of the escapades were released with the POGO investigation.
Conduct of contractors providing security in Iraq and Afghanistan has been the subject of controversy and other investigations in recent years. The government relies heavily on such contractors for security and other needs.
A new Congressional Research Service report said that as of March, the Defense Department had more contract personnel than troops in Afghanistan.
The 52,300 uniformed U.S. military personnel and 68,200 contractors in Afghanistan at the time of the research "apparently represented the highest recorded percentage of contractors used by DOD in any conflict in the history of the United States," the report said.
About 16 percent of the contractors are involved in providing security, compared with about 10 percent in Iraq.
Although contractors provide many essential services, "they also pose management challenges in monitoring performance and preventing fraud," according to Steven Aftergood, who first disclosed the congressional report on his Secrecy News Web site Tuesday.
Staff writer Walter Pincus contributed to this report.
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U.N. Sees Afghan Drug Cartels Emerging
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. The New York Times September 2, 2009
KABUL, Afghanistan — Though the Afghan opium harvest has declined for the second consecutive year, a new United Nations report says, there is growing evidence that some Afghan insurgent forces are becoming “narco-cartels” — similar to anti-government guerrilla groups in Colombia — that view drug profits as more important than ideology.
Afghanistan’s multibillion-dollar illicit narcotics industry finances much of the country’s insurgency, and the influence of drug money is a major reason the Afghan government is considered among the most corrupt in the world.
Afghanistan’s production of opium, the raw material for heroin, declined by 10 percent this year, and the amount of land used to cultivate opium fell by 22 percent, according to a report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime that is to be formally released Wednesday.
The smaller harvest, largely attributed to market forces and heightened interdiction efforts, is a rare bit of good news for the United States and the coalition of Western governments whose troops and taxpayers are supporting what even American commanders describe as a deteriorating situation as the war approaches its ninth year.
But while United Nations officials suggested that some opium-trafficking guerrillas were now less focused on Taliban ideology, they also reported that perhaps more than 10,000 tons of illegal opium — worth billions of dollars and enough to satisfy at least two years of world demand — is now secretly stockpiled. They said they were concerned that part of this stockpile could be a “ticking bomb” in the hands of people who could use it to pay for “sinister scenarios.”
Opium is easily smuggled and stored and “is an ideal form of terrorist financing,” Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, said in an interview. “It’s a huge amount of money to have in the wrong hands.” He called on intelligence agencies to investigate the stockpiles.
American officials are also concerned that large stockpiles could bolster guerrilla war chests, despite recent military operations to curb the flow of drug money to the Taliban and other insurgent groups, a senior United States official said. The official, who did not wish to speak on the record, said that the stockpiles were believed to be in Afghanistan and that they were probably under the control of gangs that were principally involved in narcotics trafficking rather than directly controlled by “terror groups.”
But assuming the opium can be smuggled out of the country, the official added, “the real issue is that regardless of what impact we have in the near term on production, distribution and other aspects of the narco network, this level of stockpiles means that funding resources will remain fairly even.”
American troops and Afghan officials in some southern regions where opium proliferates say that the insurgency there appears to be increasingly influenced by financial loyalties rather than ideological or jihadist allegiances, as guerrillas move from taxing and extracting protection money from traffickers to smuggling and refining opium themselves. Estimates of the insurgency’s annual revenue from drugs across Afghanistan vary widely, from $70 million to $500 million, according to a recent Congressional report.
“A marriage of convenience between insurgents and criminal groups is spawning narco-cartels in Afghanistan linked to the Taliban,” Mr. Costa said.
As in some nations, including Colombia and Myanmar, the agency said in a statement, “the drug trade in Afghanistan has gone from being a funding source for insurgency to becoming an end in itself.”
Afghanistan in recent years has produced 90 percent of the world’s opium.
United Nations officials said this year’s decline stemmed largely from a steep drop in the value of opium amid a huge supply glut; high prices last year for some other crops that caused farmers to switch; and more aggressive counternarcotics actions by Western and Afghan forces.
They said it was not clear whether the decline would continue, especially if the difference between prices for opium and other crops were to widen to previous levels. Just two years ago, for example, an acre of opium fetched 10 times as much as an acre of wheat, but that ratio has diminished to three to one.
“A market correction is going on while law enforcement has increased the pressure,” Mr. Costa said. “Now, military and economic forces are playing in the same direction.”
Actual production of opium declined to 6,900 metric tons this year from 7,700 metric tons last year.
The most striking decline was in Helmand Province, the dominant producer, where cultivation fell by one-third. In addition to market forces and more robust counternarcotics efforts, the United Nations cited efforts by Helmand’s governor, Gulab Mangal, and an American- and British-backed anti-poppy program in the province.
Mr. Costa said efforts by the United States and other NATO forces to take a more direct role were becoming a powerful deterrent. But he also appeared to be critical of the recently disclosed decision by the Pentagon to place 50 Afghan traffickers on a target list to be captured or killed. American officials have said the 50 are also tied to the Taliban.
“Drug lords should be brought to justice,” he said in a statement. “Not executed in violation of international law or pardoned for political expediency.”
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Opium Cultivation In Afghanistan Down Sharply, Report Says
By Joshua Partlow Washington Post Foreign Service Wednesday, September 2, 2009
KABUL, Sept. 1 -- Cultivation in Afghanistan of opium, the nation's most lucrative cash crop and a major funding source for the Taliban, has fallen sharply this year in large part because an excess supply of the drug has pushed down prices to a 10-year low, according to a U.N. report scheduled to be released Wednesday.
The Obama administration has changed course on its opium policy here, moving away from eradication efforts favored by the Bush administration that senior officials now say wasted millions of dollars. Instead, funding is being directed toward programs to persuade farmers to grow other crops. But more than those nascent efforts, U.N. officials said, the cause of the decline in opium cultivation this year was a deteriorating market for the drug.
"Overall, you could say we are now profiting from a fantastic market correction," said Jean-Luc Lemahieu, head of the Afghanistan office of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). "There is just too much supply around, so the attractiveness is diminishing."
The area under opium poppy cultivation fell this year by 22 percent, to 123,000 hectares, or about 304,000 acres, the second consecutive year of decline after a rapid growth of opium farming since the war began in 2001, according to the United Nations' 2009 Afghanistan Opium Survey. Twenty of the country's 34 provinces are considered poppy-free, two more than last year.
Much of the decline was in Helmand province, in the south, where U.S. Marines have launched an offensive against the Taliban. Helmand still accounts for nearly 60 percent of all opium grown in Afghanistan, and drug money continues to fuel the Taliban and the corruption that plagues the Afghan government.
Although the area under opium cultivation declined sharply, the drop in the production of the drug was less dramatic because farmers were able to extract more opium per poppy bulb. Driving both declines, officials said, is a drop in prices to levels not seen since the Taliban ruled Afghanistan from the late 1990s to late 2001. The report found a 40 percent drop in the total value of opium produced, down to $438 million, or 4 percent of Afghanistan's gross domestic product. This helped push more than 800,000 people out of the opium business.
"There's only so much the Taliban can store in the caves," Lemahieu said.
The amount of surplus opium still stashed in Afghanistan is staggering, officials said. The U.N. report said the world's annual demand for opium derivates such as heroin is not more than 5,000 tons, but the drug stockpiles in Afghanistan may be double that. And these stockpiles are durable, Lemahieu said, able to last in good condition for 10 to 15 years. In some areas along the border with Pakistan, opium is used as currency, he said.
The drug industry is so prevalent in places such as Helmand that coalition commanders there say it is often difficult to distinguish between Taliban members, drug traffickers and criminal gangs, all of which take part in the business.
Col. George Amland, deputy commander of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, which operates in Helmand, said that "all those people will coexist very happily as a partnership, while there is a level of chaos," but that his troops are attempting to interrupt and split the networks.
The U.N. report praised Afghan and NATO troops for destroying tons of chemicals, seeds, drugs and 27 labs this year, as well as for moving away from eradication as a policy.
"You've seen some pretty sizable operations down south in Helmand," said Col. Wayne Shanks, a U.S. military spokesman in Kabul. "Our presence there and our activities in the area may have contributed to some of those figures" of declining opium cultivation.
U.N. officials estimate that the Taliban collects at least $125 million a year from opium production, including by taxing farmers and levying "protection" fees for cargo trucks transiting its territory. There are also signs that the group is increasingly involved in the high-end value aspects of the business, including converting opium to heroin and trading in precursor chemicals, such as acetic anhydride. Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the UNODC, wrote in the report that there is "growing evidence" that "some anti-government elements in Afghanistan are turning into narco-cartels."
Still, officials said the Taliban is wary of compromising its Islamic ideology and placing in jeopardy funding sources from other Muslim countries by fully committing to the drug trade, Lemahieu said.
"Mullah [Mohammad] Omar is still the leader of the Taliban, and he is not a drug trafficker," Lemahieu said. "That ideological sharpness is so important for them. So you cannot compare them yet with the FARC," he said, referring to the Colombian guerrilla group heavily involved in cocaine trafficking.
The U.S. and British governments are rushing to develop programs before the planting season begins in October to encourage Afghan farmers to grow crops such as wheat and fruit instead of opium. The programs offer vouchers to buy cheap seeds and provide farm workers with infrastructure jobs. The U.N. report said a rural development program to employ farmers needs to be as ambitious as the military offensive.
"There is no need to bribe farmers to stay away from drugs: market forces are already doing this," the report said.
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Some facts about Afghanistan's opium crop
Reuters via Yahoo! UK & Ireland News - Sep 02 12:09 AM
Opium cultivation in Afghanistan fell by 22 percent this year and prices for the drug tumbled causing farmers to switch to other crops, the United Nations said on Wednesday. Skip related content
Despite the decrease, Afghanistan is still the world's leading producer of opium, which is processed into highly addictive heroin and smuggled abroad.
Here are some facts and figures about Afghanistan's opium crop.
* In 2009, Afghanistan cultivated 123,000 hectares of opium compared to 157,000 hectares in 2008, a 22 percent decrease. This year's crop still accounts for around 90 percent of the world's supply. Cultivation peaked in 2007 at 193,000 hectares.
* In 2009, 6,900 tonnes of opium were produced compared to 7,700 tonnes in 2008, a 10 percent drop. To put it into perspective, the 800 tonne decline this year is roughly double the amount produced in the "Golden Triangle," the major opium-producing region of Southeast Asia.
Production did not see as dramatic a decrease as cultivation this year due to record high yields -- an average of 56 kg per hectare, a 15 percent increase on 2008 -- caused by good weather and farmers concentrating their crops in fertile and irrigated lowlands. Afghanistan's opium yields are on average more than five times higher per hectare than in the Golden Triangle.
* The number of poppy free provinces -- those that cultivate less than 100 hectares -- rose from 18 provinces in 2008 to 20 provinces this year, out of a total 34 provinces in the country. Ninety-nine percent of cultivation in 2009 was concentrated in seven provinces in the south and west, all insecure areas where the Taliban insurgency is strongest.
* Helmand, in Afghanistan's restive south, cultivates by far the most opium in the country. Despite a 33 percent decrease this year, 57 percent of the country's opium was still grown in Helmand, 69,833 hectares compared to 103,590 in 2008. Helmand cultivated three times more opium than Kandahar, the second biggest poppy growing province.
* The amount of opium Afghanistan produces every year far exceeds world demand for illicit opiates derived from the drug -- around 5,000 tonnes. High levels of production over the past few years have caused prices for opium to fall dramatically.
The average wholesale price for dry opium in 2009 was $64 per kg compared to $95 last year, a 33 percent drop.
* Lower prices mean opium farmers' gross income also decreased this year to $3,562 per hectare, a 24 percent decrease on 2008. In 2003, a farmer would earn on average $12,700 per hectare.
* The total wholesale value of Afghanistan's opium crop this year is $438 million compared to $730 million in 2008, a massive 40 percent drop. Afghanistan's opium industry now accounts for 4 percent of the country's GDP compared to 7 percent in 2008, 13 percent in 2007 and a record 27 percent in 2002.
* This year an estimated 1.6 million people in Afghanistan were involved in opium cultivation, down from 2.4 million in 2008, a 27 percent drop.
* The United Nations considers efforts to eradicate the crop to be a failure. Only 5,351 hectares of opium were eradicated in 2009 and 5,480 hectares last year, less than 4 percent of the amount planted. A total of 99 people involved in eradication were killed in the past two years.
* Although around 90 percent of the world's opium comes from Afghanistan, only 2 percent is seized within the country. In comparison, more than 20 percent of the world's supply of cocaine is seized in Colombia, the drug's main producer.
Source: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Afghanistan Opium Survey 2009 Summary Findings (www.unodc.org)
(Compiled by Jonathon Burch; Editing by Nick Macfie)
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Contractors Outnumber U.S. Troops in Afghanistan
By JAMES GLANZ September 2, 2009 The New York Times
Civilian contractors working for the Pentagon in Afghanistan not only outnumber the uniformed troops, according to a report by a Congressional research group, but also form the highest ratio of contractors to military personnel recorded in any war in the history of the United States.
On a superficial level, the shift means that most of those representing the United States in the war will be wearing the scruffy cargo pants, polo shirts, baseball caps and other casual accouterments favored by overseas contractors rather than the fatigues and flight suits of the military.
More fundamentally, the contractors who are a majority of the force in what has become the most important American enterprise abroad are subject to lines of authority that are less clear-cut than they are for their military colleagues.
What is clear, the report says, is that when contractors for the Pentagon or other agencies are not properly managed — as when civilian interrogators committed abuses at Abu Ghraib in Iraq or members of the security firm Blackwater shot and killed 17 Iraqi citizens in Baghdad — the American effort can be severely undermined.
As of March this year, contractors made up 57 percent of the Pentagon’s force in Afghanistan, and if the figure is averaged over the past two years, it is 65 percent, according to the report by the Congressional Research Service.
The contractors — many of them Afghans — handle a variety of jobs, including cooking for the troops, serving as interpreters and even providing security, the report says.
The report says the reliance on contractors has grown steadily, with just a small percentage of contractors serving the Pentagon in World War I, but then growing to nearly a third of the total force in the Korean War and about half in the Balkans and Iraq. The change, the report says, has gradually forced the American military to adapt to a far less regimented and, in many ways, less accountable force.
The growing dependence on contractors is partly because the military has lost some of its logistics and support capacity, especially since the end of the cold war, according to the report. Some of the contractors have skills in critical areas like languages and digital technologies that the military needs.
The issue of the role of contractors in war has been a subject of renewed debate in Washington in recent weeks with disclosures that the Central Intelligence Agency used the company formerly known as Blackwater to help with a covert program, now canceled, to assassinate leaders of Al Qaeda. Lawmakers have demanded to know why such work was outsourced.
The State Department also uses contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, although both the department and the C.I.A. have said they want to reduce their dependence on outside workers.
Responding to the Congressional research report, Frederick D. Barton, a senior adviser to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said it was highly questionable whether contractors brought the same commitment and willingness to take risks as the men and women of the military or the diplomatic services.
He also questioned whether using contractors was cost effective, saying that no one really knew whether having a force made up mainly of contractors whose salaries were often triple or quadruple those of a corresponding soldier or Marine was cheaper or more expensive for the American taxpayer.
With contractors focused on preserving profits and filing paperwork with government auditors, he said, “you grow the part of government that, probably, the taxpayers appreciate least.”
Congress appropriated at least $106 billion for Pentagon contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2003 through the first half of the 2008 fiscal year, the report says.
The report said the combined forces in Iraq and Afghanistan still had more uniformed military personnel than contractors over all: 242,657 contractors and about 282,000 troops as of March 31.
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Russia Seeks Role in Afghan War Planning as NATO Deaths Climb
By James G. Neuger
Sept. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Russia is seeking a role in planning NATO’s war in Afghanistan two decades after Soviet forces were ejected from the country.
As East-West ties improve under President Barack Obama, Russia wants to be involved in setting the political, military and intelligence strategy for the war against the Taliban, said Dmitry Rogozin, Russian ambassador to the alliance.
“We want to be inside,” Rogozin said, in English, in an interview in Brussels today. He spoke for the rest of the hour- long interview through a Russian translator.
Allied military planners are groping for a new strategy as casualties climb. The commander in Afghanistan, U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal, this week called the situation there “serious.” In what Obama calls a “war of necessity,” some 153 allied troops were killed in July and August, according to www.icasualties.org.
Wrangling between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his challengers over the Aug. 20 election has magnified concerns about the country’s stability.
Russia now lets the North Atlantic Treaty Organization use its territory to ship supplies to Afghanistan, saying it faces a more direct threat from terrorism there than the U.S. and its allies. President Dmitry Medvedev has said Russia is prepared to cooperate with the U.S. to bring order to Afghanistan, though officials have made clear that Russia won’t commit troops.
NATO planning sessions are restricted to countries taking part in missions.
Soviet Invasion
The invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and its failed 10-year occupation helped lead to the break-up of the Soviet Union. The U.S. shipped weapons to Islamic resistance fighters who later sowed the seeds of the al-Qaeda movement.
Rogozin said he broached Russia’s proposals to Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a former Danish prime minister who became NATO secretary general on Aug. 1. Rasmussen responded with an “approving nod” without delving into the detail, he said.
“It is in the interests of NATO to make Russia a permanent participant in all the discussions, professional discussions, closed discussions that are being held on Afghanistan in Brussels and Mons,” Rogozin said.
NATO’s civilian headquarters is in Brussels. The military command is based in Mons, in southern Belgium.
Rasmussen gave his account of that Aug. 11 encounter at a briefing today in Brussels, calling it a “a very successful, very fruitful and very useful meeting.” NATO is “reflecting on which further steps could be taken,” Rasmussen said.
‘Strategic Partnership’
In an Aug. 31 interview, Rasmussen called for a “strategic partnership” with NATO’s former Cold War adversary, seeking to soothe the strains that peaked with Russia’s 2008 war with Georgia, a would-be alliance member.
Some 62,000 U.S. and 35,000 allied troops are battling to defeat a comeback of the Taliban, the radical Islamic movement that ran Afghanistan and harbored al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden until it was ousted by the U.S. after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
Russia is saving the U.S. $1 billion annually by allowing its airspace to be used for 15 daily flights by American military cargo planes into Afghanistan, Rogozin said.
Russia wouldn’t close off its airspace if NATO bars it from the war-planning discussions, Rogozin said, refusing to envision “such dramatic scenarios.”
As part of a “new impetus” in NATO-Russia cooperation on Afghanistan, Rogozin also proposed a stepped up “dialogue of our intelligence agencies to break down terrorist and paramilitary networks, to localize their actions and ultimately neutralize them.”
The two sides will take their next steps when Rasmussen meets Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in New York during the annual session of the United Nations General Assembly. Rogozin said he hoped Rasmussen will visit Moscow by the end of the year.
To contact the reporter on this story: James G. Neuger in Brussels at jneuger@bloomberg.net
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Poll: Most Americans oppose more troops for Afghanistan
By Steven Thomma, Mcclatchy Newspapers – Tue Sep 1, 7:13 pm ET
WASHINGTON — A majority of Americans think the country isn't winning the war in Afghanistan , and an even larger majority opposes sending more troops in an effort to turn things around, according to a new McClatchy / Ipsos poll.
The survey found that 54 percent of Americans think the U.S. isn't winning the war, while 29 percent think it is winning. Another 17 percent weren't sure or had no opinion.
At the same time, 56 percent oppose sending any more combat troops to Afghanistan , while 35 percent support sending more troops. Another 9 percent had no opinion or weren't sure.
The skepticism about the war and the opposition to sending more troops underscore the political dilemma that President Barack Obama faces as he heads to a Camp David retreat Wednesday with a copy of a new report on Afghanistan that urges a new strategy for the war there. Senior Pentagon officials are expected to request as many as 45,000 additional American troops in a separate report later this month.
Obama has long pledged to do what's necessary in Afghanistan to defeat al Qaida terrorists there, politically portraying it as a just war against those who attacked the U.S. in 2001 while lambasting the war in Iraq as a mistake and a distraction.
He faces growing pressure, however, from some within his party — and from the broader public, according to the poll — to limit or even reduce the American commitment to a war that they think isn't being won. Senior Pentagon officials have told McClatchy that they've detected White House hesitance to commit more troops.
Afghanistan isn't Obama's only political challenge. The McClatchy / Ipsos poll found continuing opposition to Democratic health care proposals — 45 percent opposed and 40 percent supporting — and served as another reminder to Obama that he needs to find a way to reframe the debate if he's to win public and congressional support for a health care overhaul.
It's Afghanistan , however, that's rapidly turning into a major test, as violence there escalates.
Despite Obama's commitment of 17,500 more combat troops and 4,000 more trainers — the U.S. now has 62,000 troops there and with 6,000 more on their way — the security situation has only worsened.
Last month, 51 U.S. troops were killed, making 2009 the deadliest year of the eight-year war for both U.S. and NATO forces — with four months still to go.
Skepticism runs deep, and cuts across demographic lines.
It rises with age, for example, with 45 percent of those who're 18-34 saying the country's not winning, rising to 57 percent of who're 35-54, and hitting 61 percent of those who're 55 and older. One possible reason: Older Americans remember Vietnam .
The belief, or fear, that the U.S. isn't winning also rises with income — 51 percent of those making less than $25,000 , 55 percent of those who make between $25,000 and $50,000 , and 61 percent of those who make more than $50,000 .
People living in the Northeast are most likely to think that the war isn't being won; people in the South are the most likely to think it is being won. Even in the South, however, there are more skeptics than there are believers, by a margin of 48 percent to 34 percent.
Blacks were the most optimistic, with 35 percent saying the war is being won and 45 percent saying it isn't being won.
Politically, Democrats were the most pessimistic and Republicans were the most optimistic. Again, though, there were more skeptics, even among Republicans, by a margin of 53 percent to 35 percent.
Opposition to sending more troops also cuts across almost all lines, with the deepest opposition coming from women, young people, those making less money, people with less than a high school education, Hispanics and independents, followed closely by Democrats.
Only one group, Republicans, had a majority supporting the dispatch of more troops.
Women oppose sending more troops by the lopsided margin of 60-30, men by 52-40.
The biggest opposition to sending more combat troops comes from people who're 18-34 — those most likely to fight — and drops with age. Young adults oppose additional troops by a margin of 61-32; those who're 35-54 oppose it by 54-37; and those who're 55 and older were against it 53-36.
Similarly, those who make the least money were the most opposed, with those making less than $25,000 opposed by a margin of 70-27; those making $25,000-$50,000 opposed by a margin of 58-35; and those making more than $50,000 split, 45-45.
Geographically, the West was the most opposed to sending more troops, followed by the Northeast, South and Midwest.
Opposition to more troops was strongest among the least educated: 67-28 among those with less than a high school education and 49-38 among those with some college. The tide turned among the college educated, with 46 percent favoring more troops and 44 percent opposed.
Hispanics were the most opposed, 86-9, followed by non-Hispanic blacks, 78-15, and non-Hispanic whites, 49-42.
Politically, independents were the most opposed, 67-18, followed by Democrats, 66-27. Republicans favored sending more troops by a margin of 52-40.
( Nancy A. Youssef contributed to this article.)
METHODOLOGY
These are some of the findings of an Ipsos poll conducted Aug. 27-31 . For the survey, a nationally representative, randomly selected sample of 1,057 adults age 18 and older across the U.S. was interviewed by Ipsos . With a sample of this size, the results are considered accurate within 3.01 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, of what they would've been had the entire adult population in the U.S. been polled. All sample surveys and polls may be subject to other sources of error, including, but not limited to, coverage error and measurement error. These data were weighted to ensure that the sample's composition reflects that of the actual U.S. population according to census figures. Respondents had the option to be interviewed in English or Spanish.
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Prominent Conservative Calls for Afghanistan Pullout
By Daniel Luban IPS-Inter Press Service
WASHINGTON, Sep 1 (IPS) - A prominent right-wing political pundit has called for the U.S. to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan, the latest sign of a growing disenchantment with the war in the U.S.
Hawkish commentators have already assailed Washington Post columnist George F. Will for his Tuesday column, entitled "Time for the U.S. to Get Out of Afghanistan".
While a growing number of analysts have recently questioned the course of the war in Afghanistan, Will's column is especially notable in that it comes from a pillar of the Washington right-wing media establishment – making his call for a withdrawal difficult to dismiss as a product of liberal anti-war sentiment.
Support for the war among the U.S. public at large has also plummeted in recent months, with 51 percent of respondents believing the war is not worth fighting, according to an August Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Will's call for a U.S. pullout comes as the Barack Obama administration appears to be leaning toward a further escalation of the war effort.
On Monday, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, submitted a classified assessment of the war calling for a new strategy on the ground, according to media reports. McChrystal's report is widely seen as setting the stage for a further troop increase to supplement the 68,000 U.S. forces already in Afghanistan.
Will, on the other hand, called for the U.S. to "rapidly revers[e] the trajectory of America's involvement in Afghanistan" by substantially reducing force levels.
In place of an intensive nation-building effort that he labeled "impossible", Will proposed an alternate strategy: "America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent Special Forces units" to attack al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
He quoted estimates that the Afghan government controls only a third of its country's territory, and mocked efforts to eradicate Afghanistan's opium trade as "Operation Sisyphus", after the figure from Greek mythology eternally condemned to a futile effort to push a boulder up a hill.
Predictably, Will's call for withdrawal provoked immediate and fierce attacks from neo-conservatives and other right-wing hawks.
"It is a column that could have been written in Japanese aboard the USS Missouri," wrote former George W. Bush administration official Peter Wehner on the website of Commentary magazine – a reference to the Japanese surrender that ended World War II.
Wehner called Will a "defeatist" who "sound[s] more like Michael Moore than Henry Kissinger".
William Kristol, the neo-conservative editor of the Weekly Standard, accused Will of "urging retreat, and accepting defeat".
And Frederick Kagan, a military historian at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) who is a leading proponent of a "surge" of U.S. troops into Afghanistan, called Will's column "reprehensible".
To be sure, Will's is far from the only prominent voice questioning the wisdom of an escalated and open-ended nation-building effort in Afghanistan.
On Friday, for instance, U.S. senator Russ Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, called on Obama to set a timeline for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.
But hawks have sought to portray all war sceptics as being, like Feingold, liberal and dovish. Opposition to the war, its supporters argue, is almost exclusively a left-wing phenomenon that is opposed by both the centre and the right.
"Conservatives support a president they generally distrust because they think it important the country win the war in Afghanistan," Kristol wrote in the Weekly Standard in August. "As for today's liberals: They just don't want America to win wars, do they? They're ready, willing, and able to see America lose in Afghanistan."
Will's turn against the war, coming on the heels of the recent poll results showing that a majority of U.S. citizens oppose it, is a reminder that discontent over Afghanistan is not restricted to the left.
In fact, Will's narrower conception of the U.S. national interest and scepticism about ambitious nation-building efforts has traditionally been more prevalent on the right than the left, at least until the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks.
Then-presidential candidate George W. Bush famously attacked opponent Al Gore in the 2000 presidential debates for "using our troops as nation-builders".
In the wake of the Sep. 11 attacks, these strands of conservative foreign policy doctrine were marginalised, as neo-conservatism – an unabashedly interventionist tendency calling for the U.S. to exercise "benevolent global hegemony" – became ascendant on the right.
But the Iraq war – which the Bush administration ultimately came to justify as an exercise in democracy promotion – undoubtedly did much to sour both the public and the foreign policy establishment on armed nation-building efforts.
Will, who initially supported the Iraq war, called it "perhaps the worst foreign policy debacle in the nation's history".
And while there are few signs that neo-conservatism is close to being unseated as the dominant foreign policy doctrine within the Republican Party, an increasing number of conservatives have come forward to question the war in Afghanistan.
Harvard University professor Rory Stewart, who recently announced plans to run for Parliament in the U.K. on the Conservative Party ticket, published a widely-discussed July article in the London Review of Books that expressed deep skepticism about the entire war effort and called nation-building efforts in Afghanistan "impossible".
Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Haass, who served in the administrations of both George H.W. and George W. Bush, recently suggested in the New York Times that Afghanistan is a "war of choice" rather than a war of necessity.
Haass suggested that the Obama administration consider alternate policies up to and including full withdrawal from Afghanistan, although he stopped short of endorsing them outright.
Obama now faces a series of difficult decisions – faced on the one hand by hawks calling for more troops and more resources, and on the other hand by declining support for the war among the public at large.
The Aug. 20 Afghan presidential elections, which were marred by widespread allegations of fraud, have done nothing to increase public confidence.
Incumbent President Hamid Karzai has led in the preliminary vote counts released so far, although not by enough to avoid a runoff with challenger Abdullah Abdullah.
Still, few in Washington have high expectations for either candidate's ability to govern or to serve as an effective partner in the fight against the Taliban.
Top U.S. officials have called on skeptics to give McChrystal 12 to 18 months to implement his new strategy and demonstrate progress.
But as the controversy over Will's column indicates, there appears to be little patience in the U.S. for a costly and extended war effort. In Washington, the political clock is ticking.
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Obama to Receive McChrystal Report Wednesday
By Michael A. Fletcher The Washington Post
President Obama will receive the report assessing the war in Afghanistan from his top commander there on Wednesday, and will take it with him to Camp David as he continues his vacation over the extended Labor Day weekend.
Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who commands both U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan and authored the report, calls the situation there "serious" but salvageable. The assessment is widely seen as the first step toward a likely request for more troops, money and other resources for the war.
The situation in Afghanistan poses a political conundrum for the president, who is caught between his liberal base, which is increasingly skeptical about the war, and his commanders, who want more resources to win it.
Speaking at a gaggle with reporters on Tuesday, Gibbs said that the president will take "some form" of the report with him to Camp David. But Gibbs stressed that the assessment was in effect a continuation of a daily conversation that Obama has with his commanders in Afghanistan and would not be the sole factor in any coming decisions about troop levels.
"This is not a one-report, one-event kind of thing," Gibbs said.
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Civilians killed and wounded by Taleban mines
Source: Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) 01 Sep 2009
Rebels make Helmand a sea of landmines, targeting military and civilians.
By Mohammad Ilyas Dayee in Helmand (ARR No. 334, 01-Sep-09)
"I hate the world now," said Ismail, standing outside the emergency hospital in Lashkar Gah. "My wife has been killed. I wish that Mullah Omar's wife would also die in this type of explosion."
Gulana, Ismail's wife of just three days, along with her mother and two of her brothers, hit a land mine on election day, August 20. They were bringing their mother from their native village of Zarghon, in Nad Ali district, to the hospital in Lashkar Gah for treatment of a gunshot wound to the chest. All were killed. Three neighbours who were with them also died in the blast.
This is the new face of the war in Helmand, the volatile and violent province in southern Afghanistan that has become the testing ground for the new United States military policy. In early July, 4,000 marines, part of the new contingent of troops approved by President Barack Obama to turn the war around, began a large-scale military offensive called Operation Khanjar (Dagger Thrust), aimed at the southern Helmand river valley. The British, who have been fighting in Helmand for the past three years, were at the time engaged in Operation Panther's Claw, targeting northern Helmand.
Squeezed out of their normal haunts, the Taleban have retaliated by planting thousands of mines and other "improvised explosive devices", IEDs, all over the province, causing numerous casualties to both military and civilian populations. Due in large part to the increase in these homemade devices, August was the deadliest month ever for US troops in Afghanistan, with 51 killed.
"We have changed our tactics," said Taleban spokesman Qari Yusuf Ahmadi. "The mujahedin are now being told to plant mines, conduct guerrilla warfare, and increase suicide bombings."
The switch signals a loss of face and fighting spirit, said a former Helmand police officer, who did not want to be named.
"The Taleban have lost their morale," he said. "They can only challenge the foreign forces with these mines. Helmand has become the home of land mines. Many civilians will be killed as well as the military."
Brigadier General Larry Nicholson, who heads the marines in Helmand, told the media that the Taleban had salted the terrain with IEDs. Speaking to reporters in Nawzad district right after the foreign forces gained control of it last month, General Nicholson acknowledged that progress had been slowed because of the explosives.
"If we start clearing the mines from Nawzad right now it will take us eight months to get them all," he said. "If the Taleban put their efforts into reconstruction rather than making devices like these, Helmand would be great by now."
Many of the new crop of IEDs are homemade bombs put together from wooden plates and springs, say experts. They may be crude, but they are nevertheless deadly.
"Most of the damage caused by these mines will be to civilians," said Helmand governor Gulab Mangal. "The military are taking mines out of the land like birds scooping up fish from the water."
In Nawa, just south of the capital Lashkar Gah, more than 100 civilians have been killed in the past two months, according to Afghan officials.
"Every day people are losing loved ones," said Hajji Torkhan, a former provincial council member from Nawa.
He called on the Taleban to stop targeting civilians, and asked the foreign troops to help the civilian population.
"We need a comprehensive plan for de-mining Nawa district," said Torkhan. "The foreign forces should patrol early in the morning, before civilians go out. They have mine detection devices. They can clear the area."
Nafas Khan, the district chief of police, told IWPR that mines and IEDs were the greatest danger to civilians and the military in Nawa.
"The Taleban have been weakened by 60 percent," he said. "But they have become much stronger and more sophisticated in planting mines. We get reports every single day about these things."
To the south of Nawa lies Garmsir, a large district that is also experiencing a surge in IEDs. Last week a family of 21 was wiped out when their vehicle hit a mine.
"This is the Taleban, the enemies of the people," said Daoud Ahmady, spokesman for Helmand's governor. He at first insisted that only five people were killed, not 21, and that they were all women and children. His version, however, was later contradicted by Helmand's chief of police, who confirmed the higher figure.
The mines are causing quite a few problems for the Taleban themselves. According to a Taleban fighter in Marja district, who did not want to be named, many of those who originally laid the mines have either been killed or left the area.
"Our Pakistani friends gave a lot of help and training to the Taleban in Marja," he said. "They planted mines all over the place. But then they got killed or were driven back to Pakistan, so now nobody knows where all the mines are."
In Greshk, to the north of Lashkar Gah, the son of a local Taleban commander was killed when he drove over a mine laid by his father's comrades-in-arms.
"They only found one of his hands," said Mohammad Islam, a resident of the area. "It was Mullah Qudous's son, and he drove over a mine his father had planted on a bridge."
The residents of Nad Ali now call their district "mine alley" and say the roads are empty.
"Nobody walks on the roads, and we don't let out children go outside," said Zainullah Stanekzai, a journalist from Nad Ali.
But on August 25, three children under nine years old were killed in Nahr-e-Saraj district. They had found a mine and were tossing it around like a football. All three were brothers.
"My sons!" sobbed Noor Ahmad. "They thought it was a ball."
Sardar Wali Haqqani, an official at the Italian-funded Emergency Hospital in Lashkar Gah, showed a reporter his hands, stained with blood from transferring the bodies to the emergency room.
"These kids were playing with it," he said in disgust. "With a mine the Taleban had laid for the foreign forces just the night before. The wind had exposed the mine. Now three kids are dead, and four others injured."
Ayub Khan, the deputy police chief in Helmand, admits that the mines have made life tough for the ordinary people and the officials in the province.
"The Taleban have closed all the roads with mines, and they keep themselves inside a belt of mines, so that the Afghan and foreign forces cannot get to them easily," he said. "They want to show that they are strong. But we have the time and the space for this. We will progress, and we will get rid of the Taleban."
Mohammad Ilyas Dayee is an IWPR staff reporter in Helmand.
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UNHCR helps hundred of homeless returnees in arid wastes of northern Afghanistan
02 Sep 2009 15:07:50 GMT
MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan, September 2 (UNHCR) – The UN refugee agency has set up a special tented camp in a desolate and arid region of northern Afghanistan to accommodate hundreds of long-term Afghan refugees who have been returning to their homeland in recent weeks.
Some 650 refugees have repatriated from a camp in Iran over the past month and another 880 are expected to return by mid-September. Most are nomadic Kuchi people of Baloch ethnicity and many fled to Iran during the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
The returnees were transferred from Bardsir camp in south-east Iran's Kerman province to a temporary tented settlement set up by the UN refugee agency in the Sozma Qala district of northern Afghanistan's Sar-e-Pol province.
The returnees hailed from the area but their homes had either been destroyed or collapsed after years of neglect. The local authorities provided a strip of land to be used to shelter the returnees while UNHCR, its partners and local officials worked tirelessly under tough environmental, security and logistical conditions to set up the facility and bring in aid.
"Returning to this remote and desolate place, they [the refugees] are defying nature with their tireless determination to start anew," said Aurvasi Patel, head of UNHCR's office in Mazar-e-Sharif. "With winter fast approaching, reintegration of these families will be a major challenge."
"It has been a real challenge for us to erect a transit camp and provide basic [water, education and health] services in such a desolate area," said Alessandra Morelli, UNHCR's interim deputy representative in Afghanistan, adding that the operation had been a real team effort.
Other partners involved included the World Health Organization, the UN Children' Fund, the International Organization for Migration and the World Food Programme (WFP). The Italian government, meanwhile, funded an airlift of aid for the camp, including winter tents, kitchen sets and portable warehouses, which arrived in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif on Sunday.
Meanwhile, UNHCR is examining the longer term issues and challenges for the returning population, including housing, water and livelihoods needs. Under a cooperation agreement with the refugee agency, WFP will provide the returnees with food and income-generation opportunities through food for work projects.
"The settlement is a temporary solution to allow people to have a shelter while they are rebuilding their homes in nearby villages," UNHCR's Morelli explained. Many homes were destroyed by conflict, while others have suffered from years of neglect.
UNHCR is reviewing its country programme in light of the evolving situation in Afghanistan, which is witnessing an increasing trend of displacement. This includes returnees unable to return to their place of origin and in need of an emergency response.
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