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Obama reviews options in Afghanistan
By Adam Entous – Wed Sep 23, 7:53 am ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama has delayed a decision on sending more troops to Afghanistan because of doubts about its election and the legitimacy of its government, and is considering other options, officials said on Tuesday.
U.S. scrambling to come up with new Afghanistan plan?
By Barbara Starr CNN Pentagon Correspondent
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Obama administration's national security team is working on alternative strategies for the war in Afghanistan that may not require tens of thousands of additional U.S. troops, a senior U.S. official told CNN Wednesday.
ADB, UK $90m grants to help Afghanistan revive war-torn irrigation
Asian Development Bank (ADB) / September 23, 2009
MANILA, PHILIPPINES - The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and United Kingdom are extending grants of almost $90 million to help Afghanistan improve its ageing irrigation systems and provide flood protection,
Commander to send troop request for Afghanistan
By Pauline Jelinek And Lara Jakes, Associated Press Writer – Wed Sep 23, 12:47 pm ET
WASHINGTON – Reversing a previous decision, the Pentagon says the commander in Afghanistan will be sending his troop request to Washington by week's end.
Request for more U.S. troops in Afghanistan expected soon
By Barbara Starr CNN Pentagon Correspondent September 23, 2009
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan will send his request for more resources to combat the insurgency there in the next several days, according to a senior U.S. defense official familiar with the situation.
Canada appoints representative to Kandahar
Wed Sep 23, 11:17 am ET
OTTAWA (AFP) – Canada announced Wednesday the appointment of career diplomat Ben Rowswell as its senior civilian representative in southern Afghanistan, where Canadian troops are fighting insurgents.
Afghanistan Troop Increase Gets Support From U.K. Army Chief
Viola Gienger – Wed Sep 23, 12:00 am ET
Sept. 23 (Bloomberg) -- U.K. Army chief General David Richards spelled out the merits of sending more troops to Afghanistan as pressure built on President Barack Obama to deploy additional U.S. forces for the effort to defeat the Taliban.
AFGHANISTAN: BALKH GOVERNOR TRUMPETS SECURITY WARNING FOR NORTHERN AFGHANISTAN
Aunohita Mojumdar 9/23/09 Eurasianet
When Afghan President Hamid Karzai appointed General Atta Mohammad Noor as governor of the northern province of Balkh in 2004, the move seemed motivated by a presidential desire to curb the influence of Abdul Rashid Dostum
5 civilians killed, 7 injured in roadside bombing in Afghanistan
KABUL, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Five civilians were killed and seven others were injured as their bus run on a mine planted by militants in Afghanistan's western province of Farah, an official said on Wednesday.
Airstrike kills 21 Taliban militants in SW Afghanistan
KABUL, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Air raid carried out by international troops against Taliban militants on Wednesday claimed the lives of 21 militants in Nimroz province of southwestern Afghanistan, said the provincial governor Ghulam Dastgir Azad.
Taliban local commander killed in W Afghanistan
KABUL, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- A local Taliban commander Mullah Abdul Latif and his two comrades were killed Tuesday night in a clash with another group of the outfits in Herat province of western Afghanistan, the provincial police chief said Wednesday.
Taliban Widen Afghan Attacks From Base in Pakistan
By ERIC SCHMITT and MARK MAZZETTI The New York Times September 24, 2009
WASHINGTON — Senior Taliban leaders, showing a surprising level of sophistication and organization, are using their sanctuary in Pakistan to stoke a widening campaign of violence in northern and western Afghanistan,
Paper delayed publication of Afghanistan story
AP via Yahoo! News - Sep 22 10:08 PM
WASHINGTON – The Washington Post delayed publishing a story about a general's Afghanistan report after the Obama administration expressed concerns that it could put U.S. troops at risk, the newspaper said Tuesday.
US Amb. Rice says Afghanistan situation is complex
AP via Yahoo! News - Sep 23 4:19 AM
NEW YORK – U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice says the Obama administration's fresh assessment of American policy in Afghanistan is appropriate and necessary in light of an evolving and uncertain political landscape there.
U.S. rethinking strategy in Afghanistan
The Obama administration has ordered new evaluations as it reconsiders sending in more troops.
New York Times By PETER BAKER and ELISABETH BUMILLER September 22, 2009
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration has launched a sweeping reassessment of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, exploring alternatives to a major troop increase, officials said Tuesday.
Russia urges resumed eradication of Afghan poppies, a Bush policy critics say aided Taliban
DOUGLAS BIRCH Associated Press Writer September 23, 2009
MOSCOW (AP) — Russia is pressing the White House to resurrect the Bush-era policy of large-scale eradication of poppy fields in Afghanistan, an effort that critics say angered Afghan farmers and rallied support for the Taliban but did little to curb the cultivation of opium.
Crossfire Forces Wardak Farmers Off Land
Locals abandon orchards after getting caught up in fighting between US forces and insurgents.
Institute for War & Peace Reporting By Habiburahman Ibrahimi in Wardak (ARR No. 338, 23-Sep-09)
Khadi Khan, 26, stares sadly at what is left of his orchard. For 15 years he and his family nurtured and tended it. Now all that remains of their hard work, as well as their main source of income, are dead trees, broken by weapons and dried out from lack of water.
Commander to send troop request for Afghanistan
By Lara Jakes, Associated Press Writer – Wed Sep 23, 7:27 pm ET
WASHINGTON – The Pentagon sought Wednesday to march in step with the Obama administration's shifting war strategy as the White House considers using more counterterror strikes in Pakistan amid its doubts about adding troops in Afghanistan.
Evicted migrants sleeping rough
The Press Association September 23, 2009
(UKPA) – Afghan immigrants who fled their makeshift homes in "the Jungle" before it was raided by French police were still sleeping rough around the Port of Calais.
'Terror plot' Afghans denied bail
Tuesday, 22 September 2009 BBC News
Two Afghan-born men charged with lying to officials about a plot to launch attacks in America have been denied bail at court hearings in the US.
U.S. Afghan Campaign Plan Says Key Groups Back Taliban
By Gareth Porter IPS-Inter Press Service
WASHINGTON, Sep 22 (IPS) - The leak of the "initial assessment" of the war in Afghanistan by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top commander in the war, with its blunt warning that "[f]ailure to provide adequate resources"
Indian Minister Urges Afghan Political Settlement
The Wall Street Journal By JOE LAURIA SEPTEMBER 23, 2009
NEW YORK - India, one of the biggest investors in Afghanistan, believes there is no military solution to the conflict in that country and that NATO combat operations should give way to a political settlement with the Taliban, according to Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna.
Pakistani Officials Cite Gains in Anti-Insurgency Effort
By Ayaz Gul VOA News Islamabad 23 September 2009
Pakistan army says that its ongoing operations have severely dented the Taliban-led insurgency in the country's northwest. Military officials say the campaign is being gradually extended to what they consider the rebel stronghold
Little Afghan appetite for more voting
Tuesday, 22 September 2009 BBC News
The head of the commission investigating allegations of fraud in last month's Afghan presidential election says final results will not be known for another 10 to 14 days. Western governments want a thorough investigation
Soldier who lost leg heads back to Afghanistan
Marianne White, Canwest News Service Wednesday, September 23, 2009
QUEBEC -- Shortly after losing one of his legs while on duty in Afghanistan, Captain Simon Mailloux asked his major how good his chances were of getting back to the battlefront.
Britain, Italy and the Afghan Test
Wall Street Journal SEPTEMBER 22, 2009
Mr. Obama must lead if he wants NATO to follow.
Gordon Brown and Silvio Berlusconi may have more in common than either man cares to admit. The center-right Italian and the center-left Briton have both sent additional soldiers to Afghanistan
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Obama reviews options in Afghanistan
By Adam Entous – Wed Sep 23, 7:53 am ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama has delayed a decision on sending more troops to Afghanistan because of doubts about its election and the legitimacy of its government, and is considering other options, officials said on Tuesday.
President Barack Obama, under pressure for a swift decision on sending more troops to Afghanistan, has delayed action due to doubts about last month's election there and over the government in Kabul's legitimacy, officials said on Tuesday.
As a prominent Democrat lawmaker warned Obama not to repeat what he described as the Bush administration's "half-ass it and hope" policy, and Republicans accused him of foot-dragging, administration officials said there would be a thorough review of whether their six-month-old war strategy could still be effective.
They said the fraud-marred Afghan vote and its impact on public perception there would be a key to the review.
Even the best counterinsurgency strategy -- focused on winning over the Afghan population and sidelining the Taliban -- "cannot work" without a legitimate government in place, one White House official said, underscoring the intense debate about how to move forward.
The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, planned to submit a request for more soldiers shortly after completing his confidential assessment on the war on August 30.
But questions about Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his post-election standing have thrown that timetable off course, with the White House seeking a clearer strategic picture before considering the request, officials said. McChrystal completed his troop recommendations but has not transmitted them.
Some Pentagon insiders saw Obama's focus on the legitimacy of the Afghan government as little more than a cover for putting off a tough political decision to send more troops, increasingly unpopular within his own Democratic party.
"The election may not be perfect, but it is good enough?" one asked, adding that defeating the Taliban should be paramount.
At least one top Democrat broke ranks with other party leaders, warning Obama against half measures.
"The last administration allowed itself to be distracted from the fight forced on us in Afghanistan by the fight it chose in Iraq," Democratic chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Ike Skelton said in a letter. "I believe that this was a strategic mistake ... resulting in an approach of 'half-ass it and hope'... We cannot afford to continue that policy."
OPTIONS ON THE TABLE
As part of the review, the Obama administration is considering a range of options, from increasing U.S. force levels in Afghanistan to stepping up aerial attacks on Taliban and al Qaeda targets in Pakistan, or a combination of the two.
McChrystal warned in his assessment that the mission was likely to fail without additional troops. But Obama has described himself as a "skeptical audience" when it comes to the issue of sending more troops.
There are already more than 100,000 Western soldiers in Afghanistan battling an insurgency that has taken control of parts of the south and the east of the country.
McChrystal was expected to recommend sending at least 30,000 more, but officials said the White House's strategy rethink could force him to revise his request.
Karzai's apparent eagerness to ignore widespread allegations of election fraud, hurry through the process and claim victory has chilled already frosty relations with the Obama administration, officials said.
One U.S. defense official said the fallout from the election was "certainly a complicating factor" in the way of swift consideration of McChrystal's troop recommendations.
Officials said the main question being asked was whether the counterinsurgency strategy could still succeed if Karzai's government was not seen by the Afghan people as legitimate.
"I don't think so," one official said when asked that question. "Will the Afghan people accept the results of the election? We don't even know that yet."
Some Republicans suggested Obama was putting off the issue to keep his own Democratic party unified to pass a sweeping overhaul of healthcare, his top domestic policy priority.
Sen. John McCain, who lost the presidential race to Obama last year, said a decision on troops needed to be made urgently and said he was baffled by the idea that Obama would ask McChrystal to delay sending his recommendations.
McCain and fellow Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee called on the committee chairman, Democratic Senator Carl Levin, to schedule a public hearing and bring in McChrystal and General David Petraeus, another senior commander in Afghanistan, to testify.
(Additional reporting by Caren Bohan in New York, Golnar Motevalli in Kabul, Luke Baker in London and Susan Cornwell in Washington; Editing by Simon Denyer and Philip Barbara)
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U.S. scrambling to come up with new Afghanistan plan?
By Barbara Starr CNN Pentagon Correspondent
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Obama administration's national security team is working on alternative strategies for the war in Afghanistan that may not require tens of thousands of additional U.S. troops, a senior U.S. official told CNN Wednesday.
The official, who is familiar with the highly confidential discussions, said the national security team hopes to send its proposals to President Obama within three weeks.
The alternatives wouldn't necessarily involve sending the additional troops Gen. Stanley McChrystal is expected to say would be needed to carry out the counterinsurgency strategy the president announced in March.
Several sources told CNN that the assessment McChrystal sent to the administration a few weeks ago, which offered only the single plan for a full counterinsurgency effort, essentially gave the president no option other than to accept or reject it in full.
Officials privately describe the situation as messy, saying it puts the president "in a box."
In his assessment McChrystal, who commands U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, predicted that the mission there would fail without more troops, more resources, and a major new U.S. commitment after eight years of war. Watch President Obama discuss the war in Afghanistan with CNN's John King »
According to the senior U.S. official, one alternative being discussed inside the administration is to continue current military operations for the next year, but also to accelerate reconciliation with Taliban leaders and warlords. In addition, it would involve getting an agreement to base a significant U.S. military intelligence-gathering operation inside Afghanistan to keep watch for any re-emergence of al Qaeda.
The official described this proposal as a "hybrid" strategy. It would be somewhat short of the pure counterinsurgency that would involve a large number of troops focused on fighting the Taliban, plus efforts to rebuild the country and its economic system. But it would have more capability than a counterterrorism strategy, in which a limited number of troops would target only al Qaeda.
Despite public statements that the internal discussions are simply an effort to make sure the current strategy is the correct one, this official and others suggested that the debate reflects an urgent scramble to give the president new options in the wake of McChrystal's assessment.
This official also described a growing sense of urgency with each day that passes without a clear resolution to the Afghan presidential election. The question of the Afghan government's reconciling with Taliban leaders may depend in large part on a functioning Afghan leadership with at least a perceived legitimacy, he said.
The official also said that it's now expected McChrystal will come back to Washington sometime in the weeks ahead to speak to the president and other National Security Council members about the situation in Afghanistan.
McChrystal's request for more resources to combat the insurgency will be sent to Washington in the next several days, according to Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell. McChrystal previously had been told by the Obama administration to delay presenting that force recommendation until he was asked for it, but Defense Secretary Robert Gates will now take the request and keep it confidential until decisions on strategy are made.
Morrell confirmed that the request is more "analytical" in nature, not a detailed list of military units and pieces of equipment. It will be a recommendation about what resources are needed to carry out the counterinsurgency strategy of more troops and an extended commitment that McChrystal laid out in his assessment.
But the administration's request that a specific request for troops be delayed sparked controversy.
"What I really don't understand ... is why you would tell your general in the field not to send his recommendations for the troop levels that are needed in order to implement a strategy which, according to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was formulated last March," Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, said Tuesday.
"Any leader, I think, would want to get the maximum amount of information from your people you have given positions of responsibility."
In his assessment of the situation in Afghanistan, McChrystal warned that more troops would be needed within the next year or the war "will likely result in failure," according to a copy of the 66-page document obtained by The Washington Post.
"Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near term (next 12 months) -- while Afghan security capacity matures -- risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible," McChrystal said in the document.
On September 15, Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, told the Senate Armed Services Committee he wants a fully resourced counterinsurgency" in Afghanistan.
"A properly resourced counterinsurgency probably means more forces," Mullen said, but how those forces would be composed in terms of combat troops and trainers would be a matter for discussion.
"I have a sense of urgency about this," he said. "I worry a great deal the clock is moving very rapidly."
The United States now has about 62,000 troops in Afghanistan, and NATO and other allies have contributed about 35,000. The fighting has ramped up sharply in the past year as U.S. troops and the NATO-dominated coalition battle a resurgence of the Taliban, the al Qaeda-allied Islamic militia that ruled most of Afghanistan before the attacks.
Washington poured an additional 21,000 troops into Afghanistan to provide security for its recent presidential election, which was marred by allegations of fraud.
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ADB, UK $90m grants to help Afghanistan revive war-torn irrigation
Asian Development Bank (ADB) / September 23, 2009
MANILA, PHILIPPINES - The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and United Kingdom are extending grants of almost $90 million to help Afghanistan improve its ageing irrigation systems and provide flood protection, as part of a government plan to promote economic growth and reduce poverty.
The grant funds are being provided through the Water Resources Development Investment Program, a multitranche financing facility, which will provide $303.3 million over 10 years. The government has highlighted the importance and identified investments of $2.5 billion for irrigation and water management under its new Afghanistan National Development Strategy.
Agriculture provides a living for about two-thirds of all Afghans and generates about 50% of the country's gross domestic product. However, reliable production is largely dependent on quality irrigation, and the current infrastructure is in need of substantial rehabilitation with new infrastructure also needed. The country's prolonged civil conflict has also weakened institutions responsible for managing and developing irrigation and water resources.
"Thirty years of civil unrest has severely degraded water infrastructure and the capacity of the institutions that manage it, and the program will increase the productivity of irrigated agriculture through the rehabilitation and development of new infrastructure, capacity building and the strengthening of institutions," said Thomas Panella, Senior Water Resources Management Specialist, in ADB's Central and West Asia Department.
The first tranche of the financing facility will support infrastructure improvements in the Balkh River Basin and the Nangahar Valley, which contain areas of prime agricultural land. Funds will be used to establish and train river basin agency staff and water user associations, and to prepare a reform plan for the Nangahar Valley Development Authority, a state–run enterprise. Flood protection works along the Amu Darya River that borders Tajikistan, and is prone to severe flooding and erosion, will also be financed.
The first tranche work will upgrade irrigation infrastructure covering around 100,000 hectares in the north and east of the country, with some farmers expected to see their incomes rise by around 27%. Improved irrigation increases opportunities for high value added crop production and will help reduce the strong economic incentives to grow opium poppy.
ADB will provide 93% of the first tranche funding, and will administer a $3.3 million equivalent cofinancing grant from the Government of the United Kingdom to prepare a Helmand Basin Water Resources Master Plan. The Government of Afghanistan will supply $1 million equivalent, while participating farmers will make in-kind contributions of $1.9 million for operations and maintenance for a total investment cost of $92.8 million. The estimated project completion date for the full investment program is March 2019, and the Ministry of Finance is the executing agency.
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Commander to send troop request for Afghanistan
By Pauline Jelinek And Lara Jakes, Associated Press Writer – Wed Sep 23, 12:47 pm ET
WASHINGTON – Reversing a previous decision, the Pentagon says the commander in Afghanistan will be sending his troop request to Washington by week's end.
General Stanley McChrystal has prepared a report on how many more troops he needs for the counterinsurgency strategy laid out in March by President Barack Obama. But officials said on condition of anonymity this week that McChrystal had been told not to send the request in yet because the administration is reviewing the strategy.
Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said Wednesday that media accounts on the delay of the report were a distraction for McChrystal as he was trying to run the war. His report is to be sent to Defense Secretary Robert Gates this week and may have to be changed if war strategy is changed.
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Request for more U.S. troops in Afghanistan expected soon
By Barbara Starr CNN Pentagon Correspondent September 23, 2009
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan will send his request for more resources to combat the insurgency there in the next several days, according to a senior U.S. defense official familiar with the situation.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal "will make a recommendation about the total forces he thinks he needs," the official said Wednesday.
The Obama administration previously told McChrystal to delay presenting that force recommendation until he was asked for it, but the official said the request now will go forward because many of the technical issues have been worked out about submitting it to the administration and NATO.
It's widely expected, according to several officials, that the general will say that tens of thousands of additional forces are needed in Afghanistan. But the senior defense official said the recommendation McChrystal is submitting will be "analytical" rather than a detailed list of military units and pieces of equipment required.
It will be a recommendation about what resources are needed to carry out the counterinsurgency strategy the general laid out in an assessment submitted to the Obama administration weeks ago. In that report, McChrystal said more troops were required as well as a significant and lengthy commitment to fighting the growing insurgency.
But the delay ordered by the administration for a specific troop request has sparked controversy.
"What I really don't understand ... is why you would tell your general in the field not to send his recommendations for the troop levels that are needed in order to implement a strategy which, according to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was formulated last March," said Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, on Tuesday.
"Any leader, I think, would want to get the maximum amount of information from your people you have given positions of responsibility."
A senior U.S. military official confirmed the White House is reviewing the whole idea of the counterinsurgency strategy that President Obama approved in March. The official said that review is due to the rising violence in Afghanistan, the unresolved Afghan presidential election and the dire outlook presented by McChrystal.
In his assessment of the situation, McChrystal warned that more troops are needed within the next year or the war "will likely result in failure," according to a copy of the 66-page document that The Washington Post obtained.
"Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near term (next 12 months) -- while Afghan security capacity matures -- risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible," McChrystal said in the document.
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Canada appoints representative to Kandahar
Wed Sep 23, 11:17 am ET
OTTAWA (AFP) – Canada announced Wednesday the appointment of career diplomat Ben Rowswell as its senior civilian representative in southern Afghanistan, where Canadian troops are fighting insurgents.
Rowswell, a 16-year veteran of Canada's foreign service, assumed his new role at a ceremony at Kandahar Airfield, the government said.
He was previously deputy head of mission for Canada's embassy in Kabul, and served as Canada's representative in Iraq and as a UN contractor in Somalia.
Now reporting to Canada's ambassador in Afghanistan, he will serve as the principal liaison with provincial officials in Kandahar, non-governmental organizations and NATO forces.
As well, he is to provide strategic guidance to Canadian diplomats, development officers, police and corrections officials working with Canadian troops in Kandahar.
Canada has some 2,800 troops based in Kandahar as part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, routing insurgents.
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Afghanistan Troop Increase Gets Support From U.K. Army Chief
Viola Gienger – Wed Sep 23, 12:00 am ET
Sept. 23 (Bloomberg) -- U.K. Army chief General David Richards spelled out the merits of sending more troops to Afghanistan as pressure built on President Barack Obama to deploy additional U.S. forces for the effort to defeat the Taliban.
The British military may expand beyond the approximately 9,000 troops it has in Afghanistan, said Richards, who took over last month as chief of the general staff. The U.K. has the second-biggest contingent in Afghanistan, behind the 68,000 personnel the U.S. will have by the end of the year.
A troop increase is “prudent anticipation of what might be asked of us,â€
U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, has said the effort there risks failure without more troops. His assessment is under review by Obama, who said he’s reconsidering a counter-insurgency strategy he endorsed in March that emphasizes protecting civilians.
Americans are pessimistic about the war in Afghanistan, according to a Wall Street Journal-NBC news poll released on the newspaper’s Web site yesterday. Fifty-nine percent said they felt less confident that the war will reach a successful conclusion, and 51 percent opposed sending more U.S. troops. The poll of 1,005 adults was taken Sept. 17-20, the paper said.
McChrystal is awaiting instructions from officials in Washington and the Pentagon before submitting a specific recommendation for how many more troops he’ll need.
‘Waste No Time’
The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Missouri Democrat Ike Skelton, pressed Obama in a letter yesterday to “waste no time” and “give our commander in Afghanistan the resources” he needs.
“I believe that you set the right goal when you called for the defeat of al-Qaeda and for preventing their return to Afghanistan,” Skelton wrote. “We must succeed in order to continue to protect the American homeland and to preserve our leadership around the world.”
Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates are being pressured to send McChrystal to testify before Congress, as General David Petraeus did when he led the troop surge in Iraq. Republican lawmakers have called for McChrystal and Petraeus, who now leads the U.S. military in the Middle East and Central Asia, to testify.
Reid on McChrystal
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said “there’s some talk about having McChrystal come and testify.”
“We need to have meaningful consultation with the administration, including our military leaders, on the decisions that are before us,â€
Richards, who was a commander in Afghanistan before taking his current post, laid out the case for adding troops during his speech at the center, a policy group co-founded by Kurt Campbell and Michele Flournoy, now officials in the Obama administration.
Failure by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and its allies to bolster the force in Afghanistan risks increased allied casualties, more reliance on local troops before they’re prepared, and slower progress on reconstruction, development and governance, Richards told the audience.
The combination would result in a loss of the population’s confidence, prompting them to turn toward the enemy, he said.
‘Dominate’ the Terrain
“If you don’t have enough, you can’t dominate the human and physical terrain,” Richards said. In a speech in London last week, Richards cited the successful surge in Iraq as an example.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown is being urged to justify the presence of British troops in Afghanistan amid a rising death toll and reports of voting fraud in last month’s presidential election. As of Sept. 16, the defense ministry’s Web site listed 216 fatalities among British forces since operations began in October 2001. Polls show most Britons want their troops to return home.
Richards called winning in Afghanistan “vital to our domestic security.” Failure or withdrawal would return the Taliban to power and embolden extremists worldwide because it would be viewed as a defeat for the world’s most powerful military alliance, he said.
He dismissed doubts that the Taliban would welcome al-Qaeda back to the haven it used before the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. The connection between the two groups is just as strong today, he said.
“Historically, it happened,” Richards said. “We should not be naïve.”
Skelton agreed. While al-Qaeda is pursuing safe ground elsewhere, the Afghan-Pakistan border area provides “unique advantages” that made it “the epicenter of terrorism in the world,” Skelton said in his letter to Obama.
To contact the reporter on this story: Viola Gienger in Washington at vgienger@bloomberg.net .
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AFGHANISTAN: BALKH GOVERNOR TRUMPETS SECURITY WARNING FOR NORTHERN AFGHANISTAN
Aunohita Mojumdar 9/23/09 Eurasianet
When Afghan President Hamid Karzai appointed General Atta Mohammad Noor as governor of the northern province of Balkh in 2004, the move seemed motivated by a presidential desire to curb the influence of Abdul Rashid Dostum, then the most powerful warlord in Northern Afghanistan.
Now, the situation in the North is reversed: Dostum, as seen during the Afghan presidential election campaign, has developed into a Karzai proxy, while Atta is generally viewed as a force to be reckoned with in the North. Atta also has emerged as an outspoken critic of the Karzai administration. Underscoring the distance between the two, the Balkh governor is an unabashed backer of Karzai’s main presidential rival, Abdullah Abdullah.
Atta’s political shift doesn’t just reflect altered personal preferences, it is symbolic of some unsettling changes that have taken place in Northern Afghanistan of late, many of which have escaped the international community’s attention.
By far the most significant development has been the deterioration of security conditions. For years Northern Afghanistan was considered to be the safest, most stable part of the country. And under Atta - who is widely viewed as an able, if autocratic administrator -- the province began enjoying some benefits of low-level economic development, becoming one of the first provinces in Afghanistan to eradicate poppy cultivation.
In recent months, however, the tenuous gains achieved in Balkh have come under threat. While Balkh itself remains relatively peaceful, violence is on the rise in surrounding areas, especially in Kunduz Province.
In an interview with EurasiaNet at his office in Mazar-e-Sharif, Atta asserted that the central government has been slow to respond to growing threat. "I have been warning the central government and the international community for the past three years" he said. "There is insecurity in Kunduz, especially Chahar Dara, and in Baghlan. For three years I have been telling the government about the Taliban there but they don’t listen. It has spread to Bala Murghab [a district in Badghis province] and in Faryab. It is now a big problem for security. The government did not do anything."
Atta alleged that his domestic political opponents, especially supporters of the group Hizb e Islami, have been collaborating with the Taliban, making weapons available to the Islamic militants with the intention of weakening the governor’s hold in Balkh. "In Chahar Bolak, Chimtal and Sholgara they have provided weapons" Atta alleged.
While some independent security experts say they have not found evidence that could substantiate Atta’s claim, they all agree that the security situation in the North has deteriorated due to a combination of factors. Much of the recent violence in the North, some experts contend, is linked to revenge for past grievances. Specifically, Pashtuns who suffered reprisals at the hands of Tajik, Uzbek and other ethnically oriented militias following to 2001 collapse of Taliban rule are now seeking retribution.
Insurgents with the reconstituted Taliban, which over the past year has grown increasingly bold in carrying out operations inside Afghanistan, are finding that aggrieved members of the Pashtun community in the North are receptive to the militants’ message. Unlike in the South, where the anti-government insurgency is pitting Pashtun against Pashtun, the violence in the North is largely between Pashtuns and Tajiks, the predominant ethnic group in the region. Experts believe this inter-ethnic element makes the brewing violence in the North extremely destabilizing. "Local grievances [can] spiral upward indefinitely," said one analyst, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Non-Pashtun groups in the North are now growing increasingly disenchanted with the Afghan government’s and international community’s tendency to devote a disproportionate share of attention and resources to southern areas. Atta bemoaned the lack of investment in his province. Other local political leaders likewise caution that continued inattention could cause serious strategic consequences.
"The government should make some arrangement for economic help for the youth to prevent them from joining the anti-government groups," said Nasruddin Mohseni, a senior leader of Hizb e Wahadat e Islami, the party of the minority Shi’a Hazara community. Mohseni’s party supported Karzai in the election, mainly because party supremo, Karim Khalili, is a vice president. Even so, Mohseni described Atta as a "good governor."
The violence in the North is likely to escalate in the coming months as the region’s strategic importance for US and NATO forces grows. Pentagon planners are transforming the region into a major transport artery for the delivery of military supplies, shipped to Afghanistan via Central Asia. This so-called Northern Distribution Network has already attracted the attention of the Taliban. It seems likely that the supply line will come under intensifying attacks in the coming months, just as the main existing re-supply route via Pakistan has been subjected to repeated ambushes. One of the major transit arteries into Northern Afghanistan passes through Balkh Province, where a narrow gorge in the Kholm District could become a Taliban target.
As he confronts uncertainty in his own region, Atta is keeping his options open with Karzai. Of late, he has softened his criticism of the president on a personal level, even as he continues to lambaste administration policies. "I respect him," Atta said, referring to Karzai. "But there are weaknesses all around him, in his team. They have been unsuccessful in preventing corruption, they could not fight opium. ?They could not get the necessary support from the international community."
Senior figures in Afghanistan’s security establishment are said to be working on bringing about a rapprochement between Atta and Karzai. The ability of Northern Afghanistan to handle the upsurge in Taliban violence would be greatly enhanced if Atta and Karzai could terminate their feud. "No one burns bridges in Afghanistan" said a Western diplomat wryly. "It will depend on what is on offer."
Editor's Note: Aunohita Mojumdar is an Indian freelance journalist based in Kabul. She has reported on the South Asian region for the past 18 years.
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5 civilians killed, 7 injured in roadside bombing in Afghanistan
KABUL, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Five civilians were killed and seven others were injured as their bus run on a mine planted by militants in Afghanistan's western province of Farah, an official said on Wednesday.
"A mini bus, heading from Khashrod district to neighboring Ghor province, hit a mine in Gulistan district in Farah Tuesday, as a result five people including women and children were killed and seven others were injured," said Rohul Hamin, governor of Farah.
The incident occurred one day after the International Peace Day while Afghans were celebrating religious festival Eid ul-Fitr.
The governor blamed Taliban militants for planting the mine.
Often Taliban militants fighting Afghan government, planted mines on roads to target Afghan and international troops.
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Airstrike kills 21 Taliban militants in SW Afghanistan
KABUL, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Air raid carried out by international troops against Taliban militants on Wednesday claimed the lives of 21 militants in Nimroz province of southwestern Afghanistan, said the provincial governor Ghulam Dastgir Azad.
"It was around 1 p.m. (GMT 0830), acting upon intelligence information, the international forces pounded Taliban militants on three vehicles who were reportedly driving to attack border police checkpoints in Char Borgak area near Pakistan border," Azad told Xinhua.
There was no casualties on civilians because the incident occurred in a dessert zone, the official further said.
Taliban militants, whose regime was toppled in a U.S.-led invasion in late 2001, have yet to make comment.
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Taliban local commander killed in W Afghanistan
KABUL, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- A local Taliban commander Mullah Abdul Latif and his two comrades were killed Tuesday night in a clash with another group of the outfits in Herat province of western Afghanistan, the provincial police chief said Wednesday.
"Two group of Taliban encountered each others in Pashtun Zarghon district as they discorded on dividing money which were collected from local people, resultantly three militants were killed and four others sustained injuries," Police Chief Ismatullah Alizai said.
From the other side, Taliban commander Habib Mughol and his three men got wounded in the fire fight, Alizai added.
Pashtun Zarghon, a district of Herat province bordering Iran, has seen the escalation of violence in the past one year.
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Taliban Widen Afghan Attacks From Base in Pakistan
By ERIC SCHMITT and MARK MAZZETTI The New York Times September 24, 2009
WASHINGTON — Senior Taliban leaders, showing a surprising level of sophistication and organization, are using their sanctuary in Pakistan to stoke a widening campaign of violence in northern and western Afghanistan, senior American military and intelligence officials say.
The Taliban’s expansion into parts of Afghanistan that it once had little influence over comes as the Obama administration is struggling to settle on a new military strategy for Afghanistan, and as the White House renews its efforts to get Pakistan’s government to be more aggressive about killing or capturing Taliban leaders inside Pakistan.
American military and intelligence officials, who insisted on anonymity because they were discussing classified information, said the Taliban’s leadership council, led by Mullah Muhammad Omar and operating around the southern Pakistani city of Quetta, was directly responsible for a wave of violence in once relatively placid parts of northern and western Afghanistan. A recent string of attacks killed troops from Italy and Germany, pivotal American allies that are facing strong opposition to the Afghan war at home.
These assessments echo a recent report by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top military commander in Afghanistan, in portraying the Taliban as an increasingly sophisticated shadow government that sees itself on the cusp of victory in the war-ravaged nation.
General McChrystal’s report describes how Mullah Omar’s insurgency has appointed shadow governors in most provinces of Afghanistan, levies taxes, establishes Islamic courts there and conducts a formal review of its military campaign each winter.
American officials say they believe that the Taliban leadership in Pakistan still gets support from parts of the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s military spy service. The ISI has been the Taliban’s off-again-on-again benefactor for more than a decade, and some of its senior officials see Mullah Omar as a valuable asset should the United States leave Afghanistan and the Taliban regain power.
The issue of the Taliban leadership council, or shura, in Quetta is now at the top of the Obama administration’s agenda in its meetings with Pakistani officials.
At the same time, American officials face a frustrating paradox: the more the administration wrestles publicly with how substantial and lasting a military commitment to make to Afghanistan, the more the ISI is likely to strengthen bonds to the Taliban as Pakistan hedges its bets.
American officials have long complained that senior Taliban leaders operating from Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan Province, provide money, military supplies and strategic planning guidance to the Taliban in the south of Afghanistan, where most of the nearly 68,000 American forces are deployed.
But since NATO’s offensive into the Taliban-dominated south this spring, the insurgents have surprised American commanders by stepping up attacks against allied troops elsewhere in the country to throw NATO off balance and create the perception of spreading violence that neither the allied military nor the civilian Afghan government in Kabul can control.
“The Taliban is trying to create trouble elsewhere to alleviate pressure” in the south, said one senior American intelligence official. “They’ve outmaneuvered us time and time again.”
The issue has opened fresh rifts between the United States and Pakistan over how to combat the Taliban leadership council in Quetta. American officials have voiced new and unusually public criticism of Pakistan’s role in abetting the growing Afghan insurgency, reviving tensions that seemed to have eased after the two countries worked closely to track and kill Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, in an American missile strike in Pakistan’s tribal areas last month.
General McChrystal said in his assessment, which was made public on Monday, “Senior leaders of the major Afghan insurgent groups are based in Pakistan, are linked with Al Qaeda and other violent extremist groups,” and are reportedly aided by “some elements” of the ISI.
The United States ambassador to Pakistan, Anne W. Patterson, said in a recent interview with the McClatchy newspapers that the Pakistani government was “certainly reluctant to take action” against the leadership of the Afghan insurgency.
Pakistani officials take issue with that, adding that the United States overstates the threat posed by the Quetta shura, possibly because the American understanding of the situation is distorted by vague and self-serving intelligence provided by Afghanistan’s spy service.
A senior Pakistani official said that the United States had asked Pakistan in recent years to round up 10 Taliban leaders in Quetta. Of those 10, 6 were killed or captured by the Pakistanis, 2 were probably in Afghanistan and the remaining 2 presented no threat.
“Pakistan has said it’s willing to act when given actionable intelligence,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. “We have made substantial progress in the last year or so against the Quetta shura.”
Pakistani officials also said that a move against militant leaders in Quetta risked inciting public anger throughout Baluchistan, a region that has long had a tense relationship with Pakistan’s government in Islamabad.
Mullah Omar, a reclusive cleric, recently rallied his troops with a boastful message timed for the Muslim holiday of Id al-Fitr.
In the message, he taunted his American adversaries for ignoring the lessons of past military failures in Afghanistan, including the invasion of Alexander the Great’s army.
And he bragged that the Taliban had emerged as a nationalistic movement that “is approaching the edge of victory.”
A half-dozen American military, intelligence and diplomatic officials said in interviews that the Taliban leadership in Baluchistan, which abuts the portion of southern Afghanistan where most of the fighting is taking place, is increasing its strategic direction over the insurgency.
“The Taliban inner shura in Baluchistan is certainly trying to exercise greater command and control over the Taliban in Afghanistan,” said one American official in Afghanistan, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because his assessment involved classified intelligence.
The official said that Mullah Abdullah Zakir, a former inmate at the American military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who is now a top Taliban lieutenant, was involved in replacing Taliban shadow governors and commanders, as well as reorganizing the Taliban throughout the country. “The Quetta shura — you can’t knock on their clubhouse door,” a Western diplomat said. “It’s much more of an amorphous group that as best we can tell moves around. They go to Karachi, they go to Quetta, they go across the border.”
American officials grudgingly acknowledge the Taliban’s skill at using guerrilla-style attacks to manipulate public impressions of the insurgency. “We assess that the primary focus of attacks in northern provinces such as Kunduz is to create a perception that the insurgency is spreading like wildfire,” the American official in Afghanistan said. “But I think it’s more of an ‘information operations’ success than a substantive one of holding any territory.”
Another American intelligence official who follows Pakistan closely said the insurgents had sought to exploit allied countries’ political vulnerabilities, like elections in Germany on Sunday. “The Taliban have proven themselves capable of strategic planning,” the official said.
General McChrystal said in a telephone interview on Wednesday that he had been surprised by “the growth of the shadow government, the growth of its coercion and its growth into the north and west.”
Germany, which has suffered 33 combat deaths in Afghanistan, has remained committed to the Afghan mission, although it has placed strict limits on where its soldiers can serve, refusing to send them to the south.
But that commitment is now being hotly debated in the coming parliamentary elections, after an airstrike called in by a German commander this month. The NATO airstrike, directed at two tanker trucks carrying alliance fuel that had been hijacked by the Taliban, killed scores of people; the number of dead civilians remains unclear.
Other allies are also rethinking their presence in Afghanistan. A bomb that killed six Italian soldiers in Kabul last Thursday prompted Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy to declare that his nation had begun planning to “bring our young men home as soon as possible.” Italy has 3,100 troops in Afghanistan.
Sabrina Tavernise contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan.
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Paper delayed publication of Afghanistan story
AP via Yahoo! News - Sep 22 10:08 PM
WASHINGTON – The Washington Post delayed publishing a story about a general's Afghanistan report after the Obama administration expressed concerns that it could put U.S. troops at risk, the newspaper said Tuesday.
After two days of discussions between the Post and Defense Department officials, the newspaper published a story Monday that withheld some operational details from the report.
The formerly classified report by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, said that without additional forces, the war against insurgents there will end in failure.
Post veteran Bob Woodward told media reporter Howard Kurtz on Tuesday that administration officials strongly objected to publication of the report. After the discussion with Woodward, Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli and others at the Post, the Defense Department declassified 98 percent of the document.
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US Amb. Rice says Afghanistan situation is complex
AP via Yahoo! News - Sep 23 4:19 AM
NEW YORK – U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice says the Obama administration's fresh assessment of American policy in Afghanistan is appropriate and necessary in light of an evolving and uncertain political landscape there.
Interviewed Wednesday from the site of the U.N. General Assembly session, Rice said the overall strategy that President Barack Obama is pursuing remains unchanged: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat the al-Qaida terrorist network.
But in pursuing that goal, Rice told ABC's "Good Morning America" that U.S. policy "may have to be adjusted" to reflect the changing military, political and economic realities. She said it's "not that the U.S. is shifting" policy. Instead, Rice said decisions on any additional troops must be considered in light of the more complex situation after the disputed Aug. 20 presidential election.
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U.S. rethinking strategy in Afghanistan
The Obama administration has ordered new evaluations as it reconsiders sending in more troops.
New York Times By PETER BAKER and ELISABETH BUMILLER September 22, 2009
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration has launched a sweeping reassessment of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, exploring alternatives to a major troop increase, officials said Tuesday.
Options under consideration include a plan advocated by Vice President Joe Biden to scale back U.S. forces and focus more on rooting out Al-Qaida there and in Pakistan, the officials said. President Obama previously had rejected that idea.
Administration officials described the process as a wholesale reconsideration of a strategy the president announced just six months ago. Two new intelligence assessments are being conducted to evaluate Afghanistan and Pakistan, one official said.
The reassessment has been prompted by deteriorating conditions on the ground, the messy and still unsettled outcome of the Afghan elections and a dire report by Obama's new commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Aides said the president want to examine whether the strategy he outlined in March was still the best approach and whether it could work with the extra combat forces McChrystal wants.
In looking at other options, aides said Obama may just be testing assumptions -- and assuring liberals in his own party that he is not rushing into a further expansion of the war -- before ultimately agreeing to the anticipated troop request from McChrystal. But the review suggests the president is having second thoughts about how deeply to engage in an intractable eight-year conflict that is not going well.
Though Obama thinks a stable Afghanistan is central to the security of the United States, some advisers said he is also wary of becoming trapped in an overseas quagmire. Some Pentagon officials worry that he is having what they called "buyer's remorse" after ordering an extra 21,000 troops there within weeks of taking office before even settling on a strategy.
Obama met in the White house Situation Room with his top advisers on Sept. 13 to begin chewing through the situation, said officials involved in the debate. Among those on hand were Biden, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, James Jones, the national security adviser, and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
They reached no consensus, so three or four more such meetings are being scheduled.
Obama met in the White house Situation Room with his top advisers on Sept. 13 to begin chewing through the situation, said officials involved in the debate. Among those on hand were Biden, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, James Jones, the national security adviser, and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
They reached no consensus, so three or four more such meetings are being scheduled.
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Russia urges resumed eradication of Afghan poppies, a Bush policy critics say aided Taliban
DOUGLAS BIRCH Associated Press Writer September 23, 2009
MOSCOW (AP) — Russia is pressing the White House to resurrect the Bush-era policy of large-scale eradication of poppy fields in Afghanistan, an effort that critics say angered Afghan farmers and rallied support for the Taliban but did little to curb the cultivation of opium.
The Kremlin's counter-narcotics chief, Viktor P. Ivanov, said in an interview published in the daily Izvestia on Wednesday that the U.S. and Russia should work more closely together to stem the rising tide of heroin addiction and prevent extremist organizations from financing attacks with profits from the drug trade.
One of the chief strategies the U.S. and NATO are currently pursuing to curb the multibillion-dollar heroin trade in Afghanistan is to replace the cultivation of opium poppies with grain and fruit crops.
Ivanov said such measures were insufficient.
"It's not enough to offer alternative farming," Ivanov said, according to Izvestia. Instead, he told The New York Times this week, the Obama administration should use the kind of aerial spraying of herbicides the U.S. has employed against the illicit coca crop in Colombia. Cocaine is derived from coca.
"I would call on the United States to use defoliation from the air," Ivanov told the Times. He was on his way to the U.S. on Wednesday to meet with his counterparts there the following day.
Afghanistan provides more than 90 percent of the heroin consumed around the world. Russia and some other states in the former Soviet Union, which lie along Afghan drug smuggling routes, suffer from high addiction rates.
The Bush administration had long supported the manual eradication of opium poppy crops in Afghanistan. At one point, it tried to persuade President Hamid Karzai to accept aerial spraying as well and even transferred U.S. Ambassador William Wood from Bogota to Kabul because of his expertise in the issue.
But Karzai opposed aerial spraying on environmental grounds, preferring manual eradication efforts. The U.S., meanwhile, has become increasingly leery of destroying crops at all, fearing that the effort turns farmers into insurgents.
While the Afghan government continues its own manual crop eradication program, the Obama White House has all but abandoned the Bush administration's efforts to destroy Afghanistan's opium harvest.
Instead of eradication, the U.S. is now helping farmers plant alternate crops, destroying drug labs, trying to arrest major traffickers and interdicting shipments.
"Large-scale eradication efforts have not worked to reduce the funding to the Taliban," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Wednesday. He added that destroying crops has also driven farmers who have lost their livelihoods into the "hands of the insurgency."
A recent U.S. Senate report labeled the Afghan eradication program "an expensive failure," and special U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke called the practice "a waste of money."
Eradication efforts in 2007 and 2008 destroyed less than 4 percent of the annual crops, according to a U.N. report, which also called eradication a failure.
But Ivanov contends that aerial spraying would work.
At a July conference, Ivanov blamed the failure of the U.S. and NATO counter-narcotics operations on poor tactics, and urged aerial spraying.
"If they used such methods in Afghanistan, all poppy fields there will be completely eradicated in just one year," Ivanov predicted at the time.
That month Ivanov told the business daily Kommersant that the U.S. was reluctant to fight poppy cultivation more forcefully because, he claimed, Washington feared a backlash from powerful drug barons allegedly living in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
Some Western counter-narcotics officials have also urged the continuation of eradication programs, saying that even if such efforts destroy only a small fraction of the crop, they can discourage cultivation by raising the risk to farmers of planting poppies.
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Associated Press writer Desmond Butler in Washington contributed to this report.
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Crossfire Forces Wardak Farmers Off Land
Locals abandon orchards after getting caught up in fighting between US forces and insurgents.
Institute for War & Peace Reporting By Habiburahman Ibrahimi in Wardak (ARR No. 338, 23-Sep-09)
Khadi Khan, 26, stares sadly at what is left of his orchard. For 15 years he and his family nurtured and tended it. Now all that remains of their hard work, as well as their main source of income, are dead trees, broken by weapons and dried out from lack of water.
Khan’s orchard lies in an area that has become a battlefield for the American forces and Taleban over the last year. He and his family have fled to the other side of the village, where they live in the ruins of another house.
This is life in Salar village, in the Sayed Abad district of Wardak, a province only 35 kilometres south-west of Kabul. Until the security situation began to deteriorate several months ago, the province was considered a recreational area by many Kabul residents, who would escape the dust and heat of the city to picnic amid the green hills, plentiful streams and beautiful orchards of Wardak.
But the fighting that has all but taken over the south has moved further and further north. The Taleban have established frequent checkpoints, and forces loyal to Hezb-e-Islami, the Islamist party of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, have also deployed along the main roads. The Americans, too, have moved in, and the combination is an explosive one.
“Just one year ago, Wardak province was peaceful,” Khan said. “People could live and work normally. But after the Americans came about six months ago, the Taleban and Hezb-e-Islami came along as well. The Americans established checkpoints in different parts of the province and the insurgents started fighting against them. Things are getting worse by the day.”
Those whose lands are located near the American bases or Taleban checkpoints fear for their lives when they go to tend their orchards. Farms that are not destroyed by direct fighting are withering from neglect.
“The people have been caught in a trap,” Khan said bitterly. “They can be killed by the Americans or the governmental forces as well as by the Taleban.”
People are leaving en masse, he said. And it’s not just Sayed Abad district – farmers from Nerkh, Jalrez and Chak are also fleeing the fighting.
According to engineer Fazel Omar, director of the local department of agriculture, the exodus could do great economic damage to the area.
“The farmers of Wardak are facing many problems,” he said. “More than 50 per cent of the people here earn their living from these orchards. If things continue this way, they will have to leave, and this will result in great loss for Afghan agriculture.”
In Sultan Khel village, next to Salar, Sayed Rahman hired a labourer for his orchard five months ago. “One night he was out watering, but then the Americans started shooting at him. He ran away and now the orchard has completely dried up,” he said.
Rahman’s employee was lucky. Another labourer named Sayed Hassan lost his life when he was watering the trees. According to Alam Gul, the chairman of the local council in Sayed Abad district, there are also two other cases of villagers who were shot by American forces while they were watering their orchards at night.
“We get in trouble with both the government forces and the Taleban,” he said.
In most areas of Afghanistan, the water level drops in mid-summer and farmers are allocated specific hours for irrigating their lands. They have to follow the schedule, no matter the time, so many farmers find themselves watering their orchards in the middle of the night.
But both United States forces and insurgents are apt to be jumpy when they see someone out at odd hours, and several villagers have paid the price.
Shahedullah Shahed, spokesman for Wardak’s governor, agrees that farmers are in a precarious situation.
“We have received written complaints from Nerkh, Jalrez, Sayed Abad and Chak,” he told IWPR. “We have also discussed this problem with the US forces in Wardak.”
According to Shahed, the provincial government has agreed with the Americans that if a farmer has to water his lands at night, he should carry a lantern with him at all times to identify him as a non-combatant.
But this does not always help.
“I know that a farmer in Sayed Abad was shot even though he had a lantern,” he said. “The villagers came to me to complain. They had a meeting with the governor and he said he would work to prevent such attacks.”
But the residents of Wardak are not optimistic. NATO and Coalition forces have not had a good record of acknowledging civilian casualties over the past several years. A new policy recently put in place by NATO head General Stanley McChrystal has promised to make civilian protection the priority, but it will take some time to overcome the fear and distrust of the local population.
“The ruins you see over there are what is left of my forefather’s house,” said Khan, pointing to the other side of the road in Salar village. “It was the victim of the Russian slogan ‘housing, clothing and food’. So we built a new house and orchard here. But then came the Americans talking about democracy, freedom and security. The Russians and the Americans are both wolves; they just have different faces.”
In Logar, the province next to Wardak, the situation is similar. “Our orchards are ruled by the Americans and Afghan police during the day and by the Taleban during the night,” said Rahimullah, 29, from Pul-e Alam, the provincial capital. “We can neither irrigate our orchards nor collect our harvests.”
The main responsibility for the insecurity around the orchards lies with the Taleban, says Din Mohammad Darwish, the spokesperson of the governor of Logar. “Taleban fighters attack American and Afghan forces from the people’s houses and orchards. So the American and Afghan forces have to fire back in return,” he said.
That’s not true, says Taleban spokesman Zabihullah Mojahed. “Our fighters don’t attack foreigners from the people’s houses. However, if they see the enemy in the forest, they will attack him. But our fighters are from the villages so they know exactly who is who. On the other side the Americans and the Afghan military attack anybody with a light at night-time, because they fear even their own shadow,” he said
Gholam Shakhi doesn’t have any problems. His orchard in the village Aryab in Wardak is located far from the checkpoints of the Americans, government forces and the Taleban.
“My orchard bore a lot of fruit this year so I hope to collect a good harvest,” he said. He paused, and then chuckled, “But I do hope my orchard will not be infected with the disease called the Americans and the Taleban.”
Habiburahman Ibrahimi is a freelance reporter in Wardak.
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Commander to send troop request for Afghanistan
By Lara Jakes, Associated Press Writer – Wed Sep 23, 7:27 pm ET
WASHINGTON – The Pentagon sought Wednesday to march in step with the Obama administration's shifting war strategy as the White House considers using more counterterror strikes in Pakistan amid its doubts about adding troops in Afghanistan.
Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said the U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, would ask this week for additional American forces — a number that officials said could reach as high as 40,000 troops.
But Morrell said that request could be revised if the White House alters the military strategy it committed to six months ago. Morrell added that McChrystal's request will remain with Defense Secretary Robert Gates until the decision is made.
"There's a lot that's changed and a lot that needs to be analyzed," Morrell told reporters. "And I think it's only appropriate for the commander in chief and his national security team to discuss these developments and adjust, if necessary, accordingly."
Morrell maintained, as has the White House, that the Obama administration merely is taking a new look at how to best achieve its long-stated goal of defeating and dismantling al-Qaida, the terrorist group behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
In an interview with The New York Times, McChrystal denied that his assessment of resources needed in Afghanistan was causing a rift between the military and civilian leadership. "A policy debate is warranted," he said. "We should not have any ambiguities, as a nation or a coalition."
The second-guessing comes in wake of charges of widespread fraud in Afghanistan's elections last month, and questions of whether the administration's original counterinsurgency strategy can work in a country where the government lacks credibility.
"There is a commitment on everyone's part to work this complex issue as quickly as possible, but without rushing it," Morrell said. "It is far more important that we make sure the strategy we are pursuing is the correct one and the president and his team are comfortable with it."
Earlier this year, the Pentagon began ramping up the eight-year war in Afghanistan, targeting extremist Taliban leaders to make sure the nation does not become a safe haven for al-Qaida. But White House officials now are refocusing on Pakistan, where al-Qaida leaders are believed to be hiding, by potentially launching more missile strikes by unmanned spy planes and sending in more special operations forces.
Pakistan will not allow the United States to deploy a large-scale military troop buildup on its soil. However, its military and intelligence services are believed to have assisted the U.S. with airstrikes, even while the government publicly has condemned them.
A spokesman for the Pakistan Embassy in Washington, Nadeem Kiani, signaled that Islamabad is cool to the idea of letting the U.S. expand its CIA-led drone missions in Pakistan.
Generally, the U.S. shares the intelligence it gets from the spy planes with Pakistani leaders, but has resisted selling drones to the Pakistan for fear it could target its longtime enemy, India.
"Our position on this is well known: We would like to have this technology in our hands," Kiani said at the U.N. General Assembly in New York. That way, Kiani said, there would be no violation of Pakistan's sovereignty, "which is very dear to the Pakistani people."
On Capitol Hill, a leading Republican senator said he would support an increased focus on Pakistan, a strategy championed most prominently by Vice President Joe Biden. But Sen. Kit Bond, top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that focus could not come at the cost of the mission in Afghanistan and should not be seen as a substitute for deploying more U.S. troops.
Democrats and Republicans largely are split along party lines on whether more troops should be sent to Afghanistan.
"While denying al-Qaida and Taliban militants sanctuary in the border regions of Pakistan is critical, a counterterrorism-only approach focusing only on one part of this regional conflict will ultimately hand victory to the world's most violent and feared terrorists," said Bond, R-Mo.
Morrell would not discuss the prospects of a new counterterror strategy in Pakistan. For now, he said, targeting the Taliban in Afghanistan "is the strategy and remains the strategy."
U.S. officials in recent weeks have said the counterinsurgency strategy endorsed by Obama in March will require more combat troops, additional trainers for Afghan security forces, and increased intelligence and surveillance forces. It also will require more helicopters and other support and equipment.
A senior Republican lawmaker in Congress recently told The Associated Press that McChrystal's troop request is expected to be as high as 40,000. The lawmaker spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the issue more freely. Already, Obama has approved increasing the number of U.S. soldiers, sailors, pilots and Marines in Afghanistan to 68,000 by the end of this year.
The debate over the next step in the war has consumed leaders from Kabul to Brussels, where NATO is based, to Washington, where Morrell had to deny rumors that McChrystal would resign if he does not get additional troops as "just absurd, absolutely ridiculous." Gen. David Petraeus, the usually loquacious leader of U.S. Central Command that oversees operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, refused to discuss the matter.
"There are multiple-hour meetings scheduled for the weeks that lie ahead, and folks are seized with those and are working them very hard," Petraeus told a Marine Corps University forum at the National Press Club in Washington.
McChrystal is expected to lay out "force options" — a range of several troop numbers and what can be achieved with each. Officials familiar with the process said McChrystal also will advise his top pick among the choices.
"It is not your typical request for forces," Morrell said. "This is a more analytical look at the situation and what's needed and the risks associated with certain troop levels. And there's an ultimate recommendation."
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Associated Press writers Pauline Jelinek in Washington and Matthew Lee in New York contributed to this report.
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Evicted migrants sleeping rough
The Press Association September 23, 2009
(UKPA) – Afghan immigrants who fled their makeshift homes in "the Jungle" before it was raided by French police were still sleeping rough around the Port of Calais.
Their makeshift homes were razed to the ground on Tuesday as French authorities tried to stamp out human trafficking in the area.
The site was is now scene of desolation, with the homes of hundreds of people reduced to a few piles of rubbish.
But many of the immigrants had already left before police moved in, detaining just 278 people, almost half of whom said they were children.
Tents were dotted around scrubland next to the main motorway out of the French port where dozens of immigrants set on entering Britain were living.
Among them was Mohammad Mukhtari, 23, who fled the Jungle with his friend Ali, having heard about the French raid beforehand.
Mr Mukhtari moved from Afghanistan about nine months ago because he said he had "troubles" with the government and was forced to leave his wife and two daughters behind.
From his new location, sitting on an embankment, he said: "I'm really worried about my future and my life. I just want to make a new life for myself. I do not mind what country that's in. I just want to bring my children and my family with me."
The French government intends to send immigrants back to their European country of entry.
But the Afghan former shopkeeper said he did not want to go back. "I can't stay in France because my fingerprints are in Greece and in Finland, so now I don't know what to do."
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'Terror plot' Afghans denied bail
Tuesday, 22 September 2009 BBC News
Two Afghan-born men charged with lying to officials about a plot to launch attacks in America have been denied bail at court hearings in the US.
Najibullah Zazi, 24, and Ahmad Wais Afzali, 37, were arrested last week during a police operation to shut down a suspected terror plot.
Mr Zazi's father, Mohammed, 53, was also arrested, but has been bailed, on condition that he stays at home.
Najibullah Zazi has denied having any involvement with the alleged plot.
'Training camp'
Mr Zazi, an airport shuttle driver, and his father were arrested in their home city of Denver, while Mr Afzali was arrested in Queens, New York, where he is an imam at a mosque.
Mr Zazi, who was already under surveillance by US security officials, had recently returned from a trip to New York.
He was questioned for three days prior to his arrest on Saturday.
A legal resident of the US since 1999, Mr Zazi is alleged by government officials to have received explosives and weapons training at an al-Qaeda camp in Pakistan last year.
Investigators have also told the media that bomb-making instructions were found in Mr Zazi's house.
In a telephone interview with the Denver Post newspaper on Saturday, Najibullah Zazi denied media reports that he had admitted any link to al-Qaeda or involvement in terrorism.
"It's not true," Mr Zazi said. "I have nothing to hide. It's all media publications reporting whatever they want. They have been reporting all this nonsense."
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U.S. Afghan Campaign Plan Says Key Groups Back Taliban
By Gareth Porter IPS-Inter Press Service
WASHINGTON, Sep 22 (IPS) - The leak of the "initial assessment" of the war in Afghanistan by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top commander in the war, with its blunt warning that "[f]ailure to provide adequate resources" is likely to result in "mission failure", was part of an obvious effort to force the hand of a reluctant President Barack Obama to agree to a significant increase in U.S. troops.
The version of the classified McChrystal assessment published on the Washington Post website Monday has many redactions, indicating that it had been prepared especially for the purpose of leaking it the press.
What may be even more important about McChrystal's assessment, however, is that it presents a highly discouraging picture of the situation in Afghanistan – and that the Integrated Civilian-Military Campaign Plan for Afghanistan to which he had agreed just three weeks earlier was even more pessimistic than his "initial assessment".
The integrated campaign plan, signed by McChrystal and Ambassador Karl Eikenberry on Aug. 10, said that popular rejection of the Afghan government in the Pashtun region of the country is already so pronounced that "key groups" are supporting the Taliban as the only available alternative to a government they regard as abusive.
The integrated campaign plan is marked "Sensitive but Unclassified", and has not been released to the public, but a copy has been obtained by IPS.
Both documents acknowledge fundamental socio-political realities that raise serious questions about the feasibility of the counterinsurgency programme that McChrystal outlines in his assessment, but McChrystal's assessment altered or softened some central conclusions of the integrated campaign plan.
The most important difference between the two documents is their conclusion about how much popular support the insurgents have already gained. The McChrystal assessment suggests that the insurgents have been unable to obtain uncoerced popular support.
"Major insurgent groups use violence, coercion and intimidation against civilians to control the population," the assessment says. It concludes that "popular enthusiasm" for the Taliban and other insurgent groups "appears limited, as does their ability to spread beyond the Pashtun areas".
Pashtuns are by far the largest ethnic group in the country, with 40 to 45 percent of the population, and predominate across most of Afghanistan's territory, from the far west across the entire south to the east.
While denying popular support for the insurgency, however, McChrystal admits that some factors, such as "a natural aversion to foreign intervention" and tribal and ethnic identities that are reinforced by "historical grievances" have resulted in "elements of the population tolerating the insurgency and calling to push out foreigners".
The integrated campaign plan goes further, suggesting that the Taliban have gotten support because they are seen as the only feasible alternative to an abusive government. It notes that most Afghans reject the "Taliban ideology", but concludes, "Key groups have become nostalgic for the security and justice Taliban rule provided."
The two documents use different terms to describe the political failure of the Afghan government and its consequences. The McChrystal assessment refers to a popular "crisis of confidence" in the government. But the integrated campaign plan calls it a "crisis of legitimacy" and says the insurgents have "derived some legitimacy by appealing to ideological affinities and fears of 'foreign occupation' as well as in quick provision of local justice."
The two documents also differ on what progress can be expected in carrying out an ambitious agenda for change outlined in the integrated campaign plan.
McChrystal's assessment simply presents the broad strategy and the objectives that must be achieved in regard to providing security, increasing Afghan government security forces and reform of governance. It does not consider the risks or likelihood of failure in regard to any these objective.
The integrated campaign plan, however, does consider risks and the possibility of failure. It makes the identification of corrupt local officials and punishing them or changing their behaviour a priority objective, for example.
But it also warns that the Afghan government and its warlord allies in the provinces, who have no real interest in changing the status quo, may well be able to frustrate such efforts at reform. The plan even suggests Karzai might "replace several effective government officials with ineffective or corrupt individuals".
It raises the possibility that "dashed hopes" about reducing Afghan government corruption could create a "backlash" against the ISAF.
Another risk anticipated by the plan is that the Afghan elections of Aug. 20 would be "widely viewed as unfair" and would lead to "a political crisis and/or increased perception of GIRoA [Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan] illegitimacy". Reporting during the month since the election suggests that such an expectation was quite realistic.
Although it clearly pulls its punches on some key issues, the McChrystal assessment nevertheless contains some remarkably candid language for an official document – let alone one clearly intended to justify the escalation of the war.
McChrystal acknowledges the problem of warlords – referring to them as "local and regional power brokers" – who have autonomy from the government and in some cases hold positions in the Afghan National Security Forces, particularly the Afghan National Police.
He also refers to the fact that ISAF has "relationships" with the warlords, these "individuals", meaning that foreign military contingents have many contracts with them to provide security services and rely heavily on them for intelligence.
Those relationships, McChyrstal observes, "can be problematic". For one thing, he observes, the Afghan public perceives the ISAF as "complicit" in official Afghan abuses of power.
This degree of realism about the fundamental socio-political conditions bearing on the success or failure of a counterinsurgency war found in both the McChrystal assessment and the integrated campaign plan is highly unusual, if not unparalleled, in U.S. military policymaking. In this case, it apparently helped precipitate a crisis in U.S. Afghan policy.
Along with the blatantly fraudulent election run by President Hamid Karzai's regime and the sharp downturn in domestic U.S. political support for the war in Afghanistan, the fundamental obstacles to success discussed candidly in the two documents were part of the context of Obama's scepticism about McChrystal's troop request.
Thus they contributed to his decision to engage in what one senior administration official has called "a very, very serious review of all options", according to the report by Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Karen DeYoung in the Washington Post Monday.
*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006.
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Indian Minister Urges Afghan Political Settlement
The Wall Street Journal By JOE LAURIA SEPTEMBER 23, 2009
NEW YORK - India, one of the biggest investors in Afghanistan, believes there is no military solution to the conflict in that country and that NATO combat operations should give way to a political settlement with the Taliban, according to Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna.
"India doesn't believe that war can solve any problem and that applies to Afghanistan also," Mr. Krishna said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York. "I think there could be a political settlement. I think we should strive towards that."
Mr. Krishna's remarks come as the Pentagon has told its top commanders in Afghanistan to delay submitting a request for as many as 40,000 more troops as the Obama administration reassesses its strategy to fight a revived Taliban insurgency.
India has fought three wars against Pakistan and one against China since its independence in 1947. But Mr. Krishna, in the interview, questioned the efficacy of military action.
"If there are internal differences within Afghanistan I think the people of Afghanistan, the leaders of Afghanistan, will sort it out by themselves," Mr. Krishna said.
India is heavily invested in Afghanistan, particularly infrastructure projects such as roads, hospitals, schools and the new parliament building in Kabul. In all, Indian reconstruction aid totals $1.2 billion. Mr. Krishna said the investment was worth the risk despite the continued conflict.
"Afghanistan as a nation has to grow," he said. "They have come through a process of holding elections. Giving democracy a try, they have succeeded."
He downplayed the findings of electoral fraud, noting the U.S. election fracas in Florida in 2000. "It happens in every election, [that results are] questioned," Mr. Krishna said.
Mr. Krishna dismissed suggestions that India's growing involvement in Afghanistan is intended to encircle Pakistan, a fear prevalent in some circles in Pakistan. "I think that is a baseless allegation," he said.
But Mr. Krishna, a 77-year-old veteran of India's ruling Congress Party, charged that Pakistan's disruptive role in the Taliban insurgency continued.
He said that the military situation in Afghanistan was complicated by the ongoing aid for the Afghan Taliban provided by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. "They are a tandem," Mr. Krishna said. "They are still together."
Pakistan's military has been fighting the Taliban in Pakistan but Mr. Krishna claimed the government has been unable to break ties between the spy agency and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Mr. Krishna also said India felt "vindicated" after former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said recently that some U.S. anti-terrorism aid had been used to bolster traditional defenses against India.
"We have always been cautioning our friends, the United States, that please, please for heaven's sake make sure that the aid you are giving to Pakistan is not directed and misappropriated to be used against India, a friend of yours," the foreign minister said.
Terror on both the east and western borders of Pakistan will be atop the agenda when Mr. Krishna meets Pakistan's foreign secretary, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, on Saturday in New York. The terrorist attack that killed 166 people in Mumbai last November will be India's "focal point" of the talks, Mr. Krishna said.
The head of the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group alleged to be behind the attack, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, was placed under virtual house arrest Monday and prevented from leading prayers. He also faces a police complaint for allegedly soliciting funds for his banned purported charity.
Mr. Krishna said India wants more decisive action. "We want Saeed to be tried for his Mumbai attack," he said. "They are trying to camouflage the whole idea to suit themselves. India cannot be lulled into some kind of satisfaction that they are proceeding against them. We can see through the game."
Mr. Krishna said India would "appeal to our friends across the board to prevail on Pakistan to see the part of reason and bring to justice all those behind the attack on Mumbai."
He suggested that if India were attacked again it might not show the same restraint against Pakistan.
"I hope there won't be any attacks, but if there is an attack on India, India is fully prepared to meet [it]," he said.
—Matthew Rosenberg in New Delhi contributed to this article.
Write to Joe Lauria at newseditor@wsj.com
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Pakistani Officials Cite Gains in Anti-Insurgency Effort
By Ayaz Gul VOA News Islamabad 23 September 2009
Pakistan army says that its ongoing operations have severely dented the Taliban-led insurgency in the country's northwest. Military officials say the campaign is being gradually extended to what they consider the rebel stronghold - the border region of Waziristan. Senior army officials believe the advances against militants and close anti-terror coordination have helped improve the level of trust between Pakistan and the United States.
Military authorities in Pakistan believe that the gains the anti-insurgency campaign has made in the past few months, in and around the Swat valley, have weakened the Taliban militants and set the stage for ridding the country of them. They say the killing of nearly 2,000 militants, including key commanders, and arrest of some of the top Taliban leaders in the Swat offensive have helped bring down terrorist attacks in the country, in recent months.
Pakistan is under international pressure to launch a long-awaited ground offensive in the South Waziristan tribal region, that borders Afghanistan. American military commanders believe top al-Qaida leaders are hiding there and are using the territory for attacks on international troops on the Afghan side of the border.
The mountainous territory is considered a training ground for militants, under the leadership of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, which is an alliance of more than a dozen al-Qaida-linked groups. Fighters of the militant outfit are also believed to be involved in cross-border attacks in Afghanistan. However, the setbacks in Swat and the killing of the embattled groups' chief commander, Baitullah Mehsud, are believed to have dealt a major blows to the Taliban militants in Pakistan.
Army spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas tells VOA the military is now concentrating on the South Waziristan tribal region, calling it "the center of gravity of terrorist forces" in the country. But General Abbas warns that the Mehsud terrorist network is still intact and a heightened ground offensive could annoy tribesman and provoke a widespread uprising.
"We can afford to fight the militants in the area, but we cannot afford an uprising by the tribes in the area because we are not fighting the tribes," he said. "Waziristan is a different ball game altogether, a different environment. The terrain is very different. The people and the fighters are different. There is a huge presence of foreigners in the area, the foreign militants. At present we have sealed the area. The area is under siege," continued Abbas. "As you know, in any military operations, the effects of siege appear after some time. Now, we see that there is a lack of will [among militants] to fight. There are reports of some shortage of provisions. We have been targeting their training centers, their arms and ammunition dumps, their hideouts their strongholds. So, therefore, we are looking for the right time [for a major offensive] and this time will come hopefully soon."
General Abbas says there is a complete understanding between the Pakistani military and the NATO military commanders on how to deal with the militants in the Waziristan region.
It is widely believed, in and outside Pakistan, that the country's prime intelligence agency created most of the militant groups, for the government's purposes. Until the Swat operation was launched, the common perception was that army establishment was reluctant to go after the militants because of the past ties with these outfits. But spokesman General Abbas says the skepticism is misplaced and ignores the major human losses Pakistani military has suffered since joining the U.S-led anti-terror war, eight years ago.
"How can somebody imagine that a military who has lost over 1,800 officers and men in these operations in these areas, fighting against these militants, would allow services intelligence organization to hobnob with certain assets or certain terrorist groups whom the military is fighting against and the army chief would allow this services intelligence to take these kind of initiatives," added Abbas. "It does not make sense. The military is fighting. There are constraints. There are problems and we are going against our people in our area. Many of them have been misguided. So, when you apply excessive force in your own area against your own people, there are constraints and over reliance or over use of force sometime bounces back [backfires]."
The general says that, until recently, the Pakistani military was being held responsible for the cross-border attacks in Afghanistan and the military's capabilities were being questioned. But he says those doubts resulted from a lack of understanding of Pakistan's constraints in operating in the tribal areas.
"So, now with more exchanges at various levels, with more talks and more sharing of information, I think the understanding has improved a lot," said Abbas. "So, therefore, I would say that successful military operation has created an environment of better trust, better understanding."
General Abbas says the Pakistani military is determined to and is capable of defeating the insurgency. The spokesman says, although coordination and the level of trust between the Pakistani and U.S armies has considerable improved, Islamabad has yet to receive requisite tools from Washington to fight the anti-terror war.
"This is a very rugged terrain. It is a mountainous area, very treacherous. We require air mobility," he added. "We do require targeting through air like attack helicopters, which is very effective in mountainous terrain. We do require surveillance equipment, the night vision capabilities. All this would enhance the technical and the resource material capability of the military and that would allow us to be more efficient, more effective and that would save our own lives."
In their recent talks with American leaders, Pakistani officials have repeatedly urged Washington to give Islamabad the drone technology that the United States has used to take out several top al-Qaida and Taliban leaders in the country's tribal areas.
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Little Afghan appetite for more voting
Tuesday, 22 September 2009 BBC News
The head of the commission investigating allegations of fraud in last month's Afghan presidential election says final results will not be known for another 10 to 14 days. Western governments want a thorough investigation to ensure that whoever wins is seen as a credible victor. But it's not a view shared by ordinary Afghans - as Allan Little reports from Kabul.
It's hard to find Afghans with much enthusiasm for a second round presidential election run-off - or even for the drawn-out process of investigation into widespread allegations of electoral fraud.
Even supporters of the main challenger to President Hamid Karzai, Abdullah Abdullah, seem sceptical at best.
"Many people are poor here," Gul Ahmad, a 53-year-old bus driver, told me.
"A second round would cost a lot of money that should be spent on other things.
"I voted for Dr Abdullah but we should accept the election result now. Everybody should compromise in the interests of the nation."
Afghans know that elections here bring violence. They can also divide the country's main ethnic groups against each other.
Taliban intimidation, together with attacks on polling stations, meant that in much of Afghanistan it took real courage to vote last month. Few want to go through it all again.
Human rights activist Ozala Ashraf Nemat said she, too, was against a second round.
"Why would a second round be any different from the first?" she said.
"Why would it be more free or more fair? Who would guarantee it?
"People feel they have already voted. If there is a second round there will be a much lower turn-out."
The result of that, she added, could be even less credible than that of the first round.
"People are fed up with the delays," she says.
"They just want to get the election over with, they have families to feed - they want to get on with their lives."
Ozala's father, Khaliq Nemat, is an architect and urban planner. He's more worried still about the risks of a second round.
"It is not political ideas that divide the main candidates," he said.
"It is a question of their tribes. There will be intimidation. People will say 'vote for this person or I will burn your house down'.
"I fear that the side that loses could turn to weapons. It could come to civil war."
It is one of the holiest times of the year in the Islamic world. Eid marks the end of Ramadan, the month of fasting.
At the Wazir Akhbar Khan mosque in central Kabul, the Imam Mohamed Ayaz Niazi, appealed to the faithful to show restraint and patience while the fraud investigation takes place.
He too opposes a second round.
"You cannot expect to have a Western-style election in Afghanistan," he told me.
"The conditions here are not favourable to that. We should accept the results of the election even it is only a small achievement."
Western concerns
If there is public demand for a second round it is not coming from the Afghan public.
It is coming from outside the country. Foreign governments have to keep persuading their own populations that the effort they are putting into the war is worth it.
An election that is widely perceived to be flawed beyond redemption - stolen even - stokes scepticism in Western, not Afghan, public opinion.
And if public support in the West seeps away, it will make the war against the Taliban much harder to win.
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Soldier who lost leg heads back to Afghanistan
Marianne White, Canwest News Service Wednesday, September 23, 2009
QUEBEC -- Shortly after losing one of his legs while on duty in Afghanistan, Captain Simon Mailloux asked his major how good his chances were of getting back to the battlefront.
Nearly two years later, Capt. Mailloux is sporting a high-tech prosthetic leg and preparing to return to the war-torn country in November.
"Although there were some rough patches, my determination to go back never faltered," he said yesterday. "I want to finish the work we started."
The Quebec City native lost half of his left leg when the armoured vehicle he was commanding struck an improvised explosive device on Nov. 17, 2007. Two other soldiers - Corporal Nicolas Beauchamp and Private Michel Levesque - were killed in the blast. Capt. Mailloux had to undergo four surgeries but recovered surprisingly fast.
The 25-year-old is said to be the first soldier to return to Afghanistan after a major amputation. He credits good rehabilitation techniques and advanced prosthetic leg technology for being able to return to the war zone. The officer also hinted at a shift of policy on the part of the Canadian Forces.
"It was a decision from the higher command to say we're taking an injured soldier and we'll work with him," Capt. Mailloux said.
The soldier said he did not get preferential treatment and had to prove he could handle the rigours of redeploying to Afghanistan.
"I'm not as fast as I used to be, but I passed all the physical tests," he said, noting that with his prosthetic leg he walked 13 kilometres with a 27-kilogram load on his back in two hours and 22 minutes.
Capt. Mailloux started training with the military in July at the Valcartier garrison, near Quebec City. He spent the year before that getting back in shape while working as an aide-de-camp for Governor-General Michaëlle Jean at Rideau Hall.
"I had to get back in shape as a civilian first and then as a soldier," he said.
Capt. Mailloux might be the first amputee to return to Afghanistan, but he is convinced he will not be the last. "It's a personal decision every soldier has to make, but I know some soldiers are not far behind me."
Injured soldiers such as Master Corporal Jody Mitic - who lost both legs below the knee after stepping on a land mine in Afghanistan in 2007 - are training to return to combat duty. Cpl. Mitic ran a half-marathon in Ottawa last weekend, running on artificial legs.
When Capt. Mailloux lands in Afghanistan, he will not be going back to his old job. He is going to work at staff headquarters laying out field plans for long-term campaigns.
"It's going to be a big challenge but I have field experience and I know the villages in the Kandahar province. That is going to help me," he said.
Canwest News Service
By going back to Afghanistan, Capt. Mailloux hopes to encourage other amputees to persevere to achieve their goals. "I'm not better than anyone else, but if I can help some people to get up and do something, well great," said the soldier, who has been dubbed "Captain Courage" by some Quebec media.
"The guys are making fun of me with that, but I have to say it's flattering," he said.
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Britain, Italy and the Afghan Test
Wall Street Journal SEPTEMBER 22, 2009
Mr. Obama must lead if he wants NATO to follow.
Gordon Brown and Silvio Berlusconi may have more in common than either man cares to admit. The center-right Italian and the center-left Briton have both sent additional soldiers to Afghanistan, and both are now faced with mounting casualties. Both appear to be wondering whether international security carries too high a political price, and both are looking to Mr. Obama for leadership. Where they part company is that London so far seems ready to meet the challenge, while Rome goes wobbly.
Bolstered politically by a mounting clamor from Britain's left to withdraw, Liberal Democrat Edward Davey said on Sunday that it was "time to make tea with the Taliban" as his party urged a "radical change in Afghan strategy." Yet Mr. Brown still seems willing to fight for victory in the teeth of his own domestic troubles. Pending Gen. Stanley McChrystal's coming request for additional troops, London may deploy an extra 1,000 soldiers to join the 9,000 already there, according to a report in the Times of London.
Mr. Berlusconi has been far less committal. Amid a roiling sex scandal, slumping popularity, and an enfeebled economy, the Italian prime minister seems ready to give his critics at least some of what they want. After six Italian paratroopers were killed in Kabul last week, he has pushed for a "transition strategy" (today's code, also employed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, for withdrawal), saying Rome is "convinced it's best for everybody to get out soon."
In recent years, the Taliban has become increasingly combative in Britain and Italy's respective geographical remits in Afghanistan. That has put more of their soldiers in harm's way, but it has not altered the reasons those countries committed to the war in the first place. As Mr. Brown said earlier this month, "When the security of our country is at stake we cannot walk away."
Yet even the U.K. is now hedging its bets, as Mr. Obama becomes increasingly—and publicly—ambivalent about a war he only recently described as one of "necessity." On the question of additional troops, Downing Street's line is that the numbers are "under review," and Mr. Brown is stressing the goal of building up the Afghan army so that NATO's troops can come home.
The critical question here remains one of U.S. leadership. The surge in Iraq demonstrated that the combination of additional troops and better counterinsurgency tactics can yield large gains in security and political stability, both of which are critical in shifting the burdens of war to local forces. Mr. Obama has an opportunity to use his political capital to persuade his European allies to see the war in Afghanistan through to victory. But he cannot expect NATO to follow where he is increasingly unwilling to lead.
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