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NATO airstrike in Afghanistan kills up to 90
By Frank Jordans, Associated Press Writer
KUNDUZ, Afghanistan – An American jetfighter blasted two fuel tankers hijacked by the Taliban in northern Afghanistan on Friday, killing up to 90 people, including insurgents and dozens of civilians who had rushed to the scene to collect fuel, Afghan officials said.
Germany Says No Civilians Died in NATO Afghanistan Air Strike
By Andreas Cremer
Sept. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Germany’s Defense Ministry said that civilians were not among the dead after NATO warplanes carried out the most deadly attack yet in northern Afghanistan.
After Afghan strike, charred flesh and burning rage
Reuters via Yahoo! UK & Ireland News
The desperately poor Afghan villagers heard that the Taliban had abandoned loaded fuel tankers by the river and thought it was their lucky day. Hundreds ran to fill jugs of the valuable stuff. Skip related content
Afghan election results delayed by row over fraudulent votes
Senior Afghan election officials are locked in a row over how to disqualify fraudulent votes in a disagreement analysts said could determine the result.
By Ben Farmer in Kabul 04 Sep 2009 Daily Telegraph (UK)
The head of the Independent Election Commission (IEC) has asked staff to tally all ballot boxes, even if they appear blatantly rigged, international sources have confirmed.
Fraud endangers Afghan democracy
By Michael Semple September 2 2009 Financial Times
Two hundred years ago Mountstuart Elphinstone led the first British mission to the Afghan court. Drawing parallels with Scottish clans, Elphinstone was convinced that the Pashtun social system was inherently democratic.
Afghan Election Fraud Allegations Examined
NPR - Sep 03 1:38 PM
There have been widespread allegations of fraud in the Afghan presidential elections. Ambassador Tim Carney, who led the U.S. Interagency Electoral Support Team to help Afghan authorities produce
Karzai Brother Denies Election Accusations
By TAIMOOR SHAH September 4, 2009 The New York Times
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Ahmad Wali Karzai, the brother of President Hamid Karzai, rejected accusations on Friday that his aides had detained a tribal leader and closed polling stations in order to stuff ballot
Afghan election fraud row mounts
Thursday, 3 September 2009 17:56 UK BBC News
A row over alleged fraud in the Afghan presidential election has intensified, after a tribe in the south made the most serious claim so far.
Will the U.S. Settle for Karzai
TIME By Bobby Ghosh in Washington 09/04/2009
Despite repeated claims of neutrality in the Afghan elections, the Obama Administration is deeply concerned that a Hamid Karzai victory would compound the challenges the U.S. faces in that country.
Britain, US defend Afghanistan strategy
by Michael Thurston
LONDON (AFP) – Britain and the United States on Friday defended their strategy in Afghanistan amid mounting criticism over the rising death toll from war-weary voters.
Brown defends troop presence in Afghanistan
By Paisley Dodds, Associated Press Writer – Fri Sep 4, 11:16 am ET
LONDON – Prime Minister Gordon Brown defended Britain's military presence in Afghanistan on Friday — a major policy speech that came as a defense aide quit over the mission's strategy and a soldier was
Local officials key to success in Afghanistan, British PM says
LONDON, England (CNN) -- Success in Afghanistan will be measured by progress in training local military and police to take over their own security, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Friday.
Gates May Be Open To Troop Increase
Meanwhile, Army Says It Will Extend Some Afghan Tours
By Ann Scott Tyson Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, September 4, 2009
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates indicated Thursday that he is open to increasing the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, voicing a shift in his position as the administration ponders a military assessment
Military leaders: U.S. effort in Afghanistan just beginning
By Nancy A. Youssef, Mcclatchy Newspapers – Thu Sep 3, 7:54 pm ET
WASHINGTON — Top Pentagon leaders Thursday insisted that despite an expected request for more American troops in Afghanistan , the U.S. isn't engaged in nation building there and that although violence
French soldier killed in Afghanistan: Sarkozy
Fri Sep 4, 8:44 am ET
PARIS (AFP) – A French soldier was killed and nine others wounded when a booby trap exploded against their armoured personnel carrier as they carried out reconnaissance in Afghanistan, officials said on Friday.
Afghanistan Is Not 'Obama's War'
Republicans should never do to President Obama what many Democrats did to President Bush.
Wall Street Journal By DAN SENOR AND PETER WEHNER 4 Sept 2009
In his column for the Washington Post on Tuesday, the influential conservative George Will provided intellectual fodder for the campaign among some Republicans to hang the Afghanistan war around the Obama
US probing possible diversion of USAID money in Afghanistan to warlords, Taliban
Associated Press September 3, 2009 - 7:38 PM
WASHINGTON - The State Department said Thursday that an investigation has begun into whether U.S. development funding for Afghanistan is being diverted to local warlords and extremists following allegations
Eight Kabul Embassy Guards Fired in U.S. Hazing Probe (Update1)
By Janine Zacharia and Edward DeMarco
Sept. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Eight guards at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, have been fired and two have quit in connection with allegations of hazing by the security force, the diplomatic mission said in a statement.
US Official Reaffirms Need for Afghanistan Society Building
By Steve Herman VOA 04 September 2009
It has been about six months since the Obama Administration unveiled a new strategy boosting efforts to rebuild Afghan civil society. That is part of a comprehensive strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
McChrystal in the bull ring
The Economist 09/04/2009
Kabul - NATO is running out of time in Afghanistan
CALL it the “Matador Doctrine”: a beast charges pointlessly at the bullfighter’s cape, exhausting itself and suffering endless small wounds, until it succumbs to a weaker opponent. Stanley McChrystal, NATO’s commander in Afghanistan
Plans to boost Afghan troops sparks UK withdrawal possibility
Press Association via Independent (UK) Friday, 4 September 2009
Gordon Brown today paved the way for an earlier-than-expected withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan as he called for training of Afghan forces to be accelerated.
Clock Ticks for White House to Show Gains in Afghanistan
Wall Street Journal
Washington is about to become fixated on a number: the number of troops President Barack Obama wants to add in Afghanistan.
We can't give up on Afghanistan
Those opposed to the conflict must confront the idea that things will get worse if we withdraw
Sunny Hundal guardian.co.uk, Friday 4 September 2009
Following Eric Joyce's resignation, it's worth re-stating the case for staying in Afghanistan. It probably won't be the case that Gordon Brown makes later today, but it is a case nevertheless.
Best Left Alone for Democracy to Grow
By Melek Zimmer-Zahine* IPS-Inter Press Service
KABUL, Sep 4 (IPS) - If the numerous foreign diplomats, envoys and super envoys assigned to Afghanistan really want to help the country, the best thing they can do during these vote counting and election-fraud investigation
Taliban's Tank-Killing Bombs Came from U.S., Not Iran
By Gareth Porter IPS-Inter Press Service
WASHINGTON, Sep 3 (IPS) - In support of the official U.S. assertion that Iran is arming its sworn enemy, the Taliban, the head of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Dennis Blair,
The Same Old Mistake
New York Times By KIMBERLY MARTEN September 3, 2009
The U.S. and Afghan governments have announced a new policy to pay tribal militias to provide security in Afghanistan. This began as a measure to deter Taliban attacks during recent elections but is set to become permanent.
Spooks spill blood in the Hindu Kush
Asia Times By M K Bhadrakumar 09/03/2009
Like in a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel, the murder of Dr Abdullah Laghmani, the deputy head of the Afghan National Directorate of Security, could have been foretold. But the sheer brutality of his murder by a suicide
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NATO airstrike in Afghanistan kills up to 90
By Frank Jordans, Associated Press Writer
KUNDUZ, Afghanistan – An American jetfighter blasted two fuel tankers hijacked by the Taliban in northern Afghanistan on Friday, killing up to 90 people, including insurgents and dozens of civilians who had rushed to the scene to collect fuel, Afghan officials said.
Germany, which called in the 2:30 a.m. airstrike, said 50 fighters were killed and that no civilians were in the area at the time. Later, however, NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen acknowledged some civilians may have died.
The attack in northern Kunduz province is likely to intensify Afghan public anger over such casualties, which prompted NATO commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal last June to order curbs on airstrikes where civilians are at risk.
Violence has soared across much of the country since President Barack Obama ordered 21,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan this year, shifting the focus of the U.S.-led war on Islamic extremism from Iraq. Fifty-one U.S. troops died in Afghanistan in August, the deadliest month for American forces there since the U.S.-led invasion in late 2001.
Kunduz, a former Taliban stronghold, had been generally peaceful until insurgent attacks began rising earlier this year — perhaps an effort to control a profitable smuggling route from Tajikistan. Most of the fighting in Afghanistan this summer has been in the south and east, where U.S. and British forces operate. Germany has troops under NATO command in Kunduz and is responsible for the area.
The airstrike occurred a day after Defense Secretary Robert Gates signaled for the first time that he may be willing to send more troops after months of publicly resisting a significant increase — despite growing public opposition in the United States to the war.
A large number of civilian casualties could also stoke opposition in Germany to the Afghan mission ahead of the Sept. 27 German national elections. There are 4,050 German soldiers in Afghanistan, and polls show a majority of Germans oppose the mission.
Friday's airstrike came hours after the militants seized the tankers near the German base — possibly for a suicide attack against the base, according to German Deputy Defense Minister Thomas Kossendey.
German officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity as a matter of policy, said the strike took place 40 minutes after the commanders requested it and an unmanned surveillance aircraft determined no civilians were in the area. It was unclear whether civilians began to assemble during that time.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said the hijacked trucks were headed from Tajikistan to supply NATO forces in Kabul. When the hijackers tried to drive them across the Kunduz River, the vehicles became stuck in the mud and the insurgents opened valves to release fuel and lighten the loads, he said.
Villagers swarmed the trucks to collect the fuel despite warnings that they might be hit with an airstrike, Mujahid said, claiming no Taliban fighters died in the attack.
Abdul Moman Omar Khel, member of the Kunduz provincial council and a native of the village where the airstrike happened, said about 500 people from surrounding communities swarmed the trucks after the Taliban invited them to help themselves to the fuel.
"The Taliban called to the villagers, 'Come take free fuel,'" he said. "The people are so hungry and poor."
He said five people were killed from a single family, and a man he knows named Haji Gul Bhuddin lost three sons.
Kunduz Gov. Mohammad Omar said 90 people were killed, including a local Taliban commander and four Chechen fighters.
A senior Afghan police officer, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, said the dead included about 40 civilians.
The director of the Kunduz hospital, Humanyun Khmosh, said a dozen people, including a 10-year-old boy, were treated for severe burns.
Many of the bodies were burned beyond recognition, and villagers were burying some of those in a mass grave.
It was impossible to independently verify details because the attack occurred in an area where Taliban forces operate. Travel is risky, and the Germans refused to allow an Associated Press reporter to accompany them to the site.
Some 10 hours after the attack, German troops reached the scene at 12:30 p.m. and received fire from militants 40 minutes later, according to a Germany army statement. They returned the fire, the statement said.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has sharply criticized the U.S.-led command for allegedly using excessive force in the war against the Taliban, alienating the civilian population. Karzai repeated those charges in last month's still-unresolved presidential election and on Friday announced he was creating a panel to investigate the attack.
"Targeting civilians is unacceptable for us," he said.
The U.S. Embassy released a statement saying it was aware of reports of civilian casualties in Kunduz and that it awaits the results of a joint investigation by NATO and the Afghan government.
"We send our condolences to those families who lost loved ones," the statement said.
Last May, U.S. warplanes struck military targets in the western Farah province, killing an estimated 60 to 65 insurgents. The U.S. said 20 to 30 civilians also died in those attacks. The Afghan government said 140 civilians were killed.
___
Associated Press Writer Amir Shah in Kabul contributed to this report.
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Germany Says No Civilians Died in NATO Afghanistan Air Strike
By Andreas Cremer
Sept. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Germany’s Defense Ministry said that civilians were not among the dead after NATO warplanes carried out the most deadly attack yet in northern Afghanistan.
German commanders called in air support from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s ISAF force at about 2:30 a.m. local time today after Taliban insurgents seized two tanker trucks filled with fuel near the town of Kunduz, ministry spokesman Christian Dienst said.
More than 50 militants were killed, Dienst said. The attack left 60 people killed and dozens injured, Mohammadreza Yaghoubi, deputy chief of security for Kunduz, said in a phone interview. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen ordered an inquiry into the incident.
“According to the information available to us there have been no civilian casualties,” Dienst told reporters in Berlin. “Had civilians been present, the air strikes could not have been called in.”
The incident comes at a sensitive time for Germany, less than four weeks before Chancellor Angela Merkel contests national elections on Sept. 27. Oskar Lafontaine, co-leader of the opposition Left Party, said the attack underlined the need to withdraw German troops from Afghanistan.
‘Strengthens the Taliban’
“Every civilian victim of NATO and the German military’s war conduct further strengthens the Taliban and brings terror to our own country,” Lafontaine said in a statement.
Sixty-one percent of Germans want the country’s military involvement in Afghanistan to end, a Forsa poll of 1,000 people for Stern magazine showed in July. Thirty-three percent backed the mission.
Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Merkel’s Social Democratic Party election challenger, called for a German troop withdrawal in an interview with the Hanover-based Neue Presse newspaper conducted before today’s air strike. As chancellor, he would “push for working out a binding timetable with the new Afghan government for ending our engagement,” the newspaper cited Steinmeier as saying in the interview published today.
Germany, while the third-biggest contributor to NATO’s Afghan operations, has kept its 4,200 troops to reconstruction, aid and police training efforts in the relatively quieter north of the country, leaving the U.S., U.K. and Canada to bear much of the fight against Taliban insurgents in the south.
Germany’s provincial reconstruction team, based in Kunduz, called for airborne support after the two tanker trucks were intercepted by militants on their way to Kunduz and later got stuck in the mud, Dienst said. A local ISAF commander ordered the strikes, he said. Dienst refused to say which nations were involved in the air attack, citing confidentiality of NATO operations.
Security Deteriorating
“A military attack of this magnitude hasn’t occurred before in northern Afghanistan,” he said, adding that the incident underscores the deteriorating security conditions in and around Kunduz.
“Please understand, this is being investigated right now,” Deputy Foreign Minister Guenter Gloser said of the attack. “I cannot say anything about this,” he told reporters in Stockholm before a meeting of European Union foreign ministers.
Germany has stringent checks on army operations to prevent any recurrence of its militaristic past. When German Tornado jets join NATO-led air strikes against military targets in Yugoslavia in 1999, it was Germany’s first involvement in military combat since World War II. The Afghan mission must be reaffirmed by parliamentary vote every year.
“Election politicking mustn’t be allowed to set the timetable for the German army’s withdrawal from Afghanistan,” Eckart von Klaeden, foreign affairs spokesman for Merkel’s Christian Democrats, said in a statement.
To contact the reporter on this story: Andreas Cremer in Berlin at acremer@bloomberg.net
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After Afghan strike, charred flesh and burning rage
Reuters via Yahoo! UK & Ireland News
The desperately poor Afghan villagers heard that the Taliban had abandoned loaded fuel tankers by the river and thought it was their lucky day. Hundreds ran to fill jugs of the valuable stuff. Skip related content
Suddenly, a U.S. F-15 fighter jet roared over and opened fire. Mohammad Deen heard the explosion. When the flames died away by Friday morning, charred corpses were still strewn on the riverbank.
Afghan officials say as many as 90 people died in the strike, which NATO forces say was called in by German troops to target Taliban fighters who had hijacked two fuel trucks. Villagers could scarcely conceal their rage.
"It's a tragedy, and people are angry, very angry. The international community came here to help, but they are not helping anymore, they are only dropping bombs on us," said Deen.
Video footage filmed by Afghans at the scene the next morning showed piles of charred bodies lying by the river, beside chunks of twisted metal. The frame of one of the tanker trucks still smoldered.
In the nearby provincial capital Kunduz, dozens of villagers, some visibly angry, gathered at a small regional hospital, a crumbling concrete building abuzz with frantic activity as doctors treated more than a dozen injured.
Burn victims lay bandaged and groaning in the courtyard. Some waited to be airlifted to Kabul for more treatment with the help of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
ICRC spokeswoman Jessica Barry, part of a team trying to help evacuate some of the wounded, said it was impossible to know how many people had died.
One man, Wazir Gul, stood still as he watched his badly burnt brother, Mohammad, lying motionless under a white cotton sheet in the back of a battered pick-up truck near the hospital.
"He is so burnt and injured that he cannot move," Gul said.
Many said they too, did not know how many people had died, fearing many bodies may have been washed away by the river. Others did not know what the Taliban were doing in their area and what the fuel tanks were meant for.
One village elder said anger at the foreign troops was mixed with resentment towards the Taliban themselves, traditionally entrenched in the south but increasingly active in northern provinces like Kunduz.
"The Taliban stole that fuel for themselves," said Haji Amanullah, the elder. "They could not use it so they dumped it. It's not like they are helping any of us. We can only pick up things they abandon."
(Editing by Peter Graff)
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Afghan election results delayed by row over fraudulent votes
Senior Afghan election officials are locked in a row over how to disqualify fraudulent votes in a disagreement analysts said could determine the result.
By Ben Farmer in Kabul 04 Sep 2009 Daily Telegraph (UK)
The head of the Independent Election Commission (IEC) has asked staff to tally all ballot boxes, even if they appear blatantly rigged, international sources have confirmed.
Azizullah Ludin, who was appointed by President Hamid Karzai, has asked staff to reject safeguards which look for statistical discrepancies and instead shift the burden of investigating fraud to the country's separate complaints commission.
One international official said: "He wants to get rid of everything, all the safeguards, all the algorithms."
However, that would probably result in preliminary results from the August 20 polls showing a strong first round victory for Mr Karzai, which the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) would be hard-pressed to overturn even if it found reason to uphold complaints.
Large numbers of ballot boxes, particularly from the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand, are currently "quarantined" from the count because they have triggered statistical warnings.
Examples include ballot boxes containing votes exclusively for one candidate or carrying far more votes than there were registered voters.
International observers believe the ECC, where foreigners hold three of the five commissioner posts, would be seen as a foreign institution meddling in Afghan affairs if it cast out large numbers of votes for Mr Karzai.
The dispute is understood to be holding up the delivery of results.
The deadline for a preliminary result has been put back at least three days to September 7.
The deadline for a final certified result is currently September 21, but is predicted to slip back.
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Fraud endangers Afghan democracy
By Michael Semple September 2 2009 Financial Times
Two hundred years ago Mountstuart Elphinstone led the first British mission to the Afghan court. Drawing parallels with Scottish clans, Elphinstone was convinced that the Pashtun social system was inherently democratic. His description of the endemic corruption of Shah Shujah’s police and the scheming in his court were eerily similar to some contemporary experiences. But he was optimistic that the tribes could keep a check on the abuses of their rulers.
These tribes are not some relic of the past. They are part of the foundation of modern Afghanistan, and there is a strong case to be made that the country needs democracy, however contextualised, to bind these tribes and its myriad peoples, classes and factions, into a stable political system that can keep a check on the abuses of its modern rulers.
Unfortunately, those charged with nurturing Afghan democracy since the 2001 invasion have failed disastrously. The first round of the presidential election has offered as many examples of that stunning failure as one has stomach to observe.
The iconic election images are of officials methodically marking hundreds of ballot papers for President Hamid Karzai, before stuffing them in ballot boxes. Traditional Afghanistan, the tribal elders forever in search of state patronage, are this week telling of wads of cash received from government officials to cast votes for the incumbent. Plenty of the participants in the ballot-box stuffing exercise had video-enabled mobile phones, and you can see the result online.
Election officials are keeping a brave face. Diplomats buy time by reminding us that the electoral machinery is still in action. But claims that the vote was a success – “brave Afghans voted against the Taliban” – hark back to a fantasy that is not tenable in the YouTube age.
In supporting the post-invasion governance process we agreed to help Afghans rebuild political institutions, write a constitution and allocate power on the basis of national elections. The agreement also asked us to help hold a census. As a political officer with the United Nations in early 2002 I travelled round the Pashtun heartland of Paktika preparing for the Loya Jirga or grand tribal assembly. Tribesmen were unhappy with the number of seats they had been allocated in the jirga. But they agreed to participate, withholding their claim until the census could establish the true balance of population between Afghanistan’s provinces.
The trouble is that the census never happened, with the latest attempt abandoned last year. So the tribes of Paktika invented their own population statistics and registered hundreds of thousands of bogus voters. They did this on a grand scale for the parliamentary elections in 2005, when it was glossed over. But it is different in a presidential election. Bending the rules to allow mass voting fraud in the south, as well as being undemocratic, disenfranchises the north.
Herein lies the problem of fantasy, democracy and insurgency. We have been kidding ourselves about the state of the Afghan institutions we helped to build up. At every step in the preparation of these elections, those responsible failed to act on the lessons of previous polls.
National elections were supposed to help bind the country, legitimise government and allocate power. With Pashtuns at just over 40 per cent of the population, only a cross-ethnic alliance can hope to win a presidential election. But the process whereby such a coalition claims victory has to be somewhat credible as a reflection of voter intentions. Instead, we have had the spectacle of government ministers, district administrators, electoral officials and purchased tribal elders stuffing ballot boxes to engineer the victory of one alliance over another.
As the whole country has now got wind of the mass fraud, only those immersed in the fantasy of “reasonably free and fair” could hope that a majority out of this mess would confer any legitimacy on a government.
In the short run, Mr Karzai will play hard ball, arguing that only he can unite the country. Abdullah Abdullah, his closest rival, will keep his supporters in line as long as there is hope that international pressure will push the election to a second round. Richard Holbrooke, the US special representative, will try to come up with some formula to avert an outright political crisis. A second round might be a way forward, if safeguards can be developed to avert a repeat of the first-round farce.
If we do manage to struggle on, with western ambitions in Afghanistan scaled down to counter-terrorism plus state building-lite, we will still need to support Afghan democracy.
We should help Afghans invest in a professional, regional administrative service – a properly managed cadre to fill the 350-odd district administrator positions on which real Afghan governance is based. Fair-dealing by the lowest tier of administrators would help reconnect people to the state, as well as giving some hope of credible future elections. At the national level, parliament needs to be taken seriously and enabled to provide a check on the executive. A proper constitutional court is needed to deal with issues such as presidents exceeding their tenure. At some stage the census has to be taken. If there is to be any future for elections, there is an urgent need for a clamp down on electoral fraud, with examples made of some of those responsible for the worst abuse.
In principle all of these initiatives are worthwhile and doable. But just pretending, once again, that it was not that bad, and trying to press on with a winner elected through fraud, will leave an Afghan government too weak either to defeat the Taliban or to negotiate with them. Neither the Afghan population nor western electorates are going to tolerate much more investment in failure.
The writer is a former UN political officer to Afghanistan and deputy EU special representative to the country
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Afghan Election Fraud Allegations Examined
NPR - Sep 03 1:38 PM
There have been widespread allegations of fraud in the Afghan presidential elections. Ambassador Tim Carney, who led the U.S. Interagency Electoral Support Team to help Afghan authorities produce a credible election process, says the allegations of fraud are credible, but the process will ultimately winnow the fraud out.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.
NOAH ADAMS, host:
And I'm Noah Adams.
In the latest vote counting in Afghanistan, an incumbent President Hamid Karzai appears to have a slight lead over his main rival Abdullah Abdullah, the former foreign minister. There have been the widespread allegations of fraud since last month's vote, calling the presidential race into question.
Ambassador Tim Carney leads the U.S. Interagency Election(ph) Support Team in Afghanistan. He has just returned from Kabul. He joins us today from Montpellier, France. You were there for many months. When you see this happening, are you shaking your head saying, gosh, what happened? What else could we have done?
Ambassador TIM CARNEY (U.S. Interagency Electoral Support Team): Well, what I'm looking at here is the process, because, exceptionally, unlike the elections of five years ago for the president and four years ago for the parliament, these elections this time are totally under Afghan lead. Now, there was plenty of fraud in the parliamentary elections of 2005. Some 700 polling stations had their results annulled because of aspects of fraud. So the Afghan authorities understood from the track record what was possible, and they have taken a very large number of measures to deal with this.
ADAMS: Let me ask you a very specific question about what could've happened. And we're hearing a lot about the participation of women. Women, in many cases, being afraid to go to the polls, voting by proxy without an ID card because a photo ID is considered anathema to many in that culture. How will the people who are working on this reconstruct the women's vote in many of these places?
Amb. CARNEY: Well, the complication is very large when you look specifically at women. And then when you add the additional dimension, a very large scale potential fraud using false cards - voter registration cards - that were issued in women's names, you then run the risk of seeing whole polling centers taken over by those who are in collusion with the - I think overzealous is the charitable word - to describe some of the supporters of those for whom the votes are being stolen and the ballot boxes being stuffed.
It's a very complicated mix of cultural norms as you've just identified. But the fact is you have to dip your finger in ink. So an individual can only vote once. And that is the same for men and for women. So, women can only vote once, but you might get underage women voting. That's not a huge statistical problem.
ADAMS: You have worked in this capacity in many countries, many contested elections. Do you have this sort of secret worry about this one that the fraud could be so widespread and so confusing that the election would have to be annulled in some way?
Amb. CARNEY: I think probably the best answer to that is to look at the process to note that the Independent Election Commission has quarantined hundreds of results at this point. And that there is a follow-on process to adjudicate electoral complaints - even before the Independent Election Commission can certify the results. Yes, there is no doubt that allegations of fraud are credible. That doesn't mean that the process won't ultimately winnow the fraud out and produce a result that - and remember - this is the only test that the result be acceptable and viewed as legitimate by Afghans.
ADAMS: How do you measure that?
Amb. CARNEY: Only Afghans can measure it.
ADAMS: Ambassador Tim Carney, head of the Interagency Electoral Support Team in Afghanistan talking with us today from France. Thank you, Mr. Ambassador.
Amb. CARNEY: You're welcome. Glad to do it.
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Karzai Brother Denies Election Accusations
By TAIMOOR SHAH September 4, 2009 The New York Times
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Ahmad Wali Karzai, the brother of President Hamid Karzai, rejected accusations on Friday that his aides had detained a tribal leader and closed polling stations in order to stuff ballot boxes in his brother’s favor during recent presidential elections.
The allegations were made by the district chief of Shorabak, Delaga Bariz, and other elders from his tribe in an interview.
Ahmad Wali Karzai is the head of the provincial council of Kandahar and was also running for reelection to the post in elections held Aug. 20. Speaking at a news briefing in his home city of Kandahar, he said that his accusers had accepted money to campaign from the presidential challenger Abdullah Abdullah, and that they concocted a story when they failed to bring in the votes they promised.
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Afghan election fraud row mounts
Thursday, 3 September 2009 17:56 UK BBC News
A row over alleged fraud in the Afghan presidential election has intensified, after a tribe in the south made the most serious claim so far.
The leader of Kandahar's Bareez tribe says that nearly 30,000 votes were cast fraudulently for President Hamid Karzai instead of a challenger.
Mr Karzai's brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, who heads the Kandahar provincial council, called the claims "baseless".
The Electoral Complaints Commission is probing more than 2,000 fraud claims.
The claims could undermine the legitimacy of the election, which Afghanistan's Western allies see as crucial in their campaign against the Taliban.
Full investigation
Speaking to Daud Qarizadah of the BBC's Persian television service, the Bareez tribal leader, Haji Mohammed Bareez, said that ballot boxes from one district were "stuffed" with fraudulent votes in favour of Mr Karzai.
The tribe believes it has been deprived of its votes and wants a full investigation by the complaints commission, which has the power to discount the votes if they are proved invalid.
The tribe decided before the election that it was dissatisfied with the performance of Hamid Karzai and announced it would back Abdullah Abdullah, the former foreign minister and main challenger.
On election day it says its district polling stations were shut down and the ballot boxes brought to district headquarters in Kandahar where they were stuffed with votes in favour of Hamid Karzai.
Mr Bareez said: "Nobody participated in the polling from Shorabak district. No ballot box was brought here. They themselves filled the boxes with ballot papers. As I know 29,823 ballots went into the boxes from this district."
He said the accusation could be proved with a simple investigation of voter cards and ballot papers.
Ahmed Wali Karzai strongly denied the allegations of fraud.
He told the BBC: "The accusation is baseless and if anyone has any complaints regarding this problem, they should get in touch with the complaints office. I will be more than happy to answer questions."
He said the opposition was making the claims because it had lost the election and was trying to undermine the electoral process.
Haji Mohammed Bareez said that Ahmed Wali Karzai was a powerful figure in Kandahar and his tribe may face threats in the future.
The Karzai camp says most of the allegations lodged with the complaints commission are against Mr Abdullah - a claim he denies.
Mr Abdullah has accused the government and the Independent Election Commission of colluding on fraud.
"With the cooperation of the Election Commission a massive fraud has taken place," he said.
Fraud played down
Because the complaints commission has so many irregularities to investigate - 600 of them serious - our correspondent says final results of the presidential election may not be known until the end of September.
A result is scheduled for 17 September but fraud allegations must be cleared before it is made official.
With ballots from 60.3% of polling stations tallied, Mr Karzai has 1,744,428 votes to 1,201,838 for Mr Abdullah, representing a lead of 47.3% to 32.6%.
A candidate needs 50% of the votes to avoid a run-off.
Western powers have played down concerns over fraud although they have stressed a fair outcome is vital.
US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke said at a meeting on Afghanistan in Paris on Wednesday that irregularities were normal in any democracy.
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Will the U.S. Settle for Karzai
TIME By Bobby Ghosh in Washington 09/04/2009
Despite repeated claims of neutrality in the Afghan elections, the Obama Administration is deeply concerned that a Hamid Karzai victory would compound the challenges the U.S. faces in that country. Having made no secret of its dissatisfaction with Karzai's performance as President, the White House may now have to deal with an ally who feels slighted and scorned - and who has little incentive to go along with U.S. goals in Afghanistan.
Karzai's fall from Washington's grace has been spectacular. He was feted as an Afghan Mandela by the Bush Administration and enjoyed unparalleled access to the White House. Bush and Karzai routinely chatted in videoconferences. Obama, however, has treated the Afghan leader like spoiled fruit.
An early portent of the change came during the presidential campaign last year, when Joe Biden visited Karzai in Kabul. The two men got into a verbal duel over questions of corruption in the Afghan government; Biden stormed out in the middle of dinner. In a society where decorum is paramount, this was deeply humiliating for Karzai - especially since word quickly got to the press.
After Obama's Inauguration, things got worse. Officials in the new Administration made no secret of their contempt for Karzai, whom they viewed as spineless and inefficient, too tolerant of drug smugglers. Allegations that some members of his family were in the drug trade didn't help. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has described Karzai's administration as a "narco-state." And last week, another meeting with a visiting American - special envoy Richard Holbrooke - descended into angry words.
For all their protestations of neutrality, U.S. officials would be relieved if Karzai is defeated in the election: his closest rival, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, would represent a fresh start. But it's looking increasingly likely that Karzai will squeak by to victory: on Wednesday, he had 47% of the votes counted and seemed on course to get the 50% he needs to prevent a runoff.
That sets the stage for tense relations between Washington and Kabul, a complication the Obama Administration doesn't need as it grapples with the Afghanistan problem. The most immediate flash point will come in a matter of days, when the election results are officially announced. Getting Abdullah to accept defeat will be hard: there have been widespread allegations of fraud. If the former Foreign Minister contests the results in the street - in the manner of Iran's Mir-Hossein Mousavi - that could set off an ethnic conflict between Karzai's Pashtun base and his rival's Tajik following (Abdullah's father is Pashtun, his mother Tajik). "The challenge is to ensure that the election doesn't end up dividing the country," says a U.S. official familiar with Afghan policy.
If Abdullah does go quietly, the Obama Administration will need to get Karzai to clean up his act. "We need to turn the clock back - take Karzai back to where he was in 2003-'04," says the U.S. official. That was before the Afghan leader had made questionable deals with warlords and tribal chieftains and looked the other way as drug smugglers grew ever more powerful.
Karzai, however, may be in no mood to go back. If he wins the election, it will be in no small part because those very warlords and chieftains delivered big blocks of votes. If anything, he will be even more indebted to them. And he is unlikely to have forgotten his repeated humiliation by U.S. officials. That's not to say Karzai will be outright hostile to the U.S. He needs American troops and aid. "What other recourse does he have - he has no other allies," says Ashley Tellis, a South Asia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "If the U.S. checks out, Karzai doesn't survive."
But Afghanistan experts worry that Karzai will be passive-aggressive: not openly opposing the U.S. but deliberately dragging his heels when it comes to cleaning up corruption and reforming his administration. U.S. officials say rampant corruption has contributed to the resurgence of the Taliban in the past two years. "If Karzai continues down the same path, it will be hard to fight the insurgency," says Tellis.
The solution favored by the White House is to pressure Karzai into installing a powerful second in command: a Prime Minister who would run the government's day-to-day functions. Abdullah himself is a possible candidate, as is another presidential contender, former World Bank official Ashraf Ghani, who is Pashtun. Both men have clean reputations and some administrative experience, although it is far from clear that they have the political skills to navigate Afghanistan's multiethnic society.
In any case, will Karzai be amenable to such a deal? "He understands that continued support from the West is contingent on some accommodation," says Jason Campbell, an Afghanistan expert at the Brookings Institution. "He can see some benefit in having someone like Ghani - it helps with his credibility in the West."
But first Karzai will need to be mollified that he is no longer in the doghouse with Obama. Perhaps the White House could send Biden to kiss and make up?
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Britain, US defend Afghanistan strategy
by Michael Thurston
LONDON (AFP) – Britain and the United States on Friday defended their strategy in Afghanistan amid mounting criticism over the rising death toll from war-weary voters.
But a keynote speech by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was clouded by the resignation of a ministerial aide in protest at London's stance in Afghanistan, where 212 British soldiers have been killed in the campaign.
In Washington, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates insisted on Thursday that the war was not "slipping through the administration's fingers," but admitted: "There is a limited time for us to show that this is working."
"We are mindful of that, we understand the concerns of many Americans in that area but we think that we now have the resources and the right approach to start making some headway," Gates told reporters.
The bloodshed mounted Friday as up to 90 people were killed in a NATO air strike on two fuel tankers hijacked by Taliban insurgents, while a French soldier was killed and nine others wounded in a bomb attack on their convoy.
In London, Brown pledged that Britain would not walk away from Afghanistan when its own security was at stake.
"People ask what success in Afghanistan would look like. The answer is that we will have succeeded when our troops are coming home because the Afghans are doing the job themselves," he told the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS).
His message came after the resignation late Thursday of Eric Joyce, a parliamentary aide to Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth, who warned there were problems in Afghanistan "which need fixing with the greatest urgency."
Joyce, a lawmaker and former army major, also criticised NATO allies in Afghanistan, saying many of them "do far too little," leaving Britain to shoulder more of the combat role.
He called for more "geopolitical return from the United States for our efforts," adding: "For many, Britain fights; Germany pays; France calculates; Italy avoids."
After a fraud-tainted first round last month which has left much-criticised Afghan President Hamid Karzai edging towards re-election, Joyce also urged better communication of London's rationale for war.
"I do not think the British people will support the physical risk to our servicemen and women unless they can be given confidence that Afghanistan?s government has been properly elected," he said.
Brown has faced growing questions over the Afghanistan mission amid a surge in British troop deaths which has sparked a row over whether soldiers have adequate resources to combat the Taliban extremists.
"When the security of our country is at stake we cannot walk away," Brown told the IISS think-tank.
Speaking after Brown, Ainsworth insisted Britain would maintain its forces in Afghanistan as long as it feels necessary.
"We are not going to set an artificial deadline... it would be ridiculous to say that this operation will go on for a set period of time," he said.
The comments came after officials said Thursday two more soldiers were killed in southern Afghanistan, taking the British toll to 212 since 2001 when a US-led invasion ousted the hardline Taliban regime.
US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Michael Mullen stressed that "there is a sense of urgency" and "time is not on our side" in Afghanistan -- but he rejected some commentators' suggestions that US troops withdraw now.
"There's no way to defeat Al-Qaeda, which is the mission, with just that approach, you can't do it remotely, you can't do it offshore," Mullen said. "I certainly don't think it's time to leave."
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Brown defends troop presence in Afghanistan
By Paisley Dodds, Associated Press Writer – Fri Sep 4, 11:16 am ET
LONDON – Prime Minister Gordon Brown defended Britain's military presence in Afghanistan on Friday — a major policy speech that came as a defense aide quit over the mission's strategy and a soldier was court-martialed for refusing to return to the war-torn country.
NATO, meanwhile, used an air strike to blast two fuel tankers hijacked by the Taliban in northern Afghanistan, killing up to 90 people — dozens of whom were civilians.
Brown said insurgents in Afghanistan and Pakistan still presented major terrorist threats.
"Each time I have to ask myself if we are doing the right thing by being in Afghanistan. Each time I have to ask myself if we can justify sending our young men and women to fight for this cause," Brown said in a keynote speech to the think tank Institute of Strategic Studies. "And my answer has always been yes."
American and British opinion polls have shown waning support since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan began in 2001. Some 730 U.S. troops have been killed, while 212 British soldiers have died. Brown said casualties had risen recently, due in part to the Taliban's increased use of improvised explosive devices.
Brown's speech came at an awkward time for his leadership after being criticized for failing to give clear answers on Afghanistan and other policy issues.
Defense aide Eric Joyce, a former army officer and Labour Party member, resigned Thursday on the eve of Brown's speech. He criticized the government for failing to justify the war to voters and urged Brown to specify when the some 9,000 British troops would be withdrawn.
"I do not think the public will accept for much longer that our losses can be justified by simply referring to the risk of greater terrorism on our streets," Joyce said in his resignation letter. "We also need to make it clear that our commitment in Afghanistan is high but time limited."
Although Brown gave no details of an exit strategy, he said British troops needed to speed up the Afghan army's training.
"In the spring, NATO announced that we would support the expansion of the Afghan army from 80,000 to 134,000 by November 2011," Brown said.
He said that by November 2010 a third of British troops would be teaming up with Afghan forces and that the U.K. government would provide an extra 20 million pounds ($32 million) to help stabilize the volatile Helmand province, including police and judicial training.
Britain faces a general election next year, and Afghanistan is likely to be a divisive issue for both Brown's Labour Party and the Conservatives, who are favored to win.
As more troops die, criticism has also turned to a perceived lack of equipment for soldiers. Earlier this summer, Mark Malloch-Brown, an outgoing British foreign minister, said that forces in Afghanistan needed more helicopters, directly contradicting Brown, who said the military had what it needed and spending per soldier had more than doubled since 2006.
Brown said Friday that by next spring, Britain will have doubled the number of helicopters for troops.
Spain said Friday it will consider sending more troops to Afghanistan. It currently has about 1,200 soldiers there.
Meanwhile, more than 1,000 British soldiers have gone absent without leave, or AWOL, since the Afghanistan conflict began in 2001.
Lance Corp. Joe Glenton appeared before a preliminary court-martial hearing on Friday.
The 27-year-old went AWOL in 2007 instead of serving his second tour of duty with the Royal Logistic Corps in Afghanistan. He handed himself in after being absent for more than two years and traveling in Asia and Australia.
After his return, Glenton wrote to Brown, saying that the Afghanistan mission would fail.
"The war in Afghanistan is not reducing the terrorist risk. Far from improving Afghan lives it is bringing death and devastation to their country," he wrote.
Charges of bringing the army into disrepute by criticizing the conflict were dropped against Glenton on Friday.
"The army tried to gag me, but this means I can continue to speak out and it means other soldiers can voice their feelings and their opinions," he said.
Glenton is to appear at another hearing on Nov. 2 for the desertion charge. If convicted, he faces up to two years in prison.
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Local officials key to success in Afghanistan, British PM says
LONDON, England (CNN) -- Success in Afghanistan will be measured by progress in training local military and police to take over their own security, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Friday.
"We will have succeeded when our troops are coming home because the Afghans are doing the job themselves," he said in a speech defending Britain's strategy in Afghanistan.
In the past four months, more than 50 British service members have been killed in Afghanistan -- 42 of them since the start of July. The four months have been some of the most fatal for British troops in Afghanistan, leading to increased questions about the United Kingdom's role in the country.
Brown's speech came a day after Eric Joyce, a ministerial aide to Defense Secretary Bob Ainsworth, resigned, saying the government needs to start winding down its war effort in Afghanistan.
Joyce, who is also a member of Parliament, complained that Britain is "punching above our weight" in Afghanistan, with many of its allies doing "far too little."
In his speech Friday, Brown called on all members of the coalition in Afghanistan to play their part and share the burden of protecting the country.
"This remains, above all, an international mission," he said.
It is important that Britain and the 41 other coalition members continue the fight in Afghanistan because otherwise the area will descend into a base for terrorist groups, he said.
"If the insurgency succeeds in Afghanistan, al Qaeda and other terrorist groups will once again be able to use it as a sanctuary to train, plan, and launch attacks on Britain and the rest of the world," Brown said.
"The advice I receive from the security agencies is clear: The sustained pressure on al Qaeda in Pakistan, combined with military action in Afghanistan, is having a suppressive effect on al Qaeda's ability to operate effectively in the region."
Training local staff to start taking on their own security responsibilities remains the ultimate goal of Britain's efforts in Afghanistan, Brown said.
"The Afghan army and police are not yet ready to take on the Taliban purely by themselves," he said. "That is why the international coalition must maintain its military presence.
"I believe that most people in Britain must accept this, but I know they are concerned about how long international forces, and British forces in particular, will have to stay."
The prime minister announced new funding, equipment, and forces for the country to help ensure success.
The funding includes 20 million pounds ($32.7 million) just for Helmand province, for stabilization and security, including police training and "basic justice."
Britain is sending an extra 200 specialist forces to Afghanistan to help counter improvised explosive devices, or roadside bombs, which are a major threat to security and result in many of the casualties among coalition troops, Brown said.
Those 200 troops will not only find and defuse the bombs, but also will try to identify and target those who lay them, he said.
Another 20 mine-protected patrol vehicles also will be going into service in Afghanistan, he said.
Military pay also is increasing -- more than doubling, the prime minister said -- from around 180,000 pounds ($294,000) per soldier to 390,000 pounds ($637,000).
"So be in no doubt," Brown said. "We are giving our service men and women the additional resources they need to keep themselves safe, to fight and succeed in their operations, and to bring security to Afghanistan."
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Gates May Be Open To Troop Increase
Meanwhile, Army Says It Will Extend Some Afghan Tours
By Ann Scott Tyson Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, September 4, 2009
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates indicated Thursday that he is open to increasing the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, voicing a shift in his position as the administration ponders a military assessment expected to lead to a formal request for additional forces.
Gates, in a briefing at the Pentagon, also defended the U.S. mission in Afghanistan, rebutting suggestions that it is time to pull out. His remarks came just hours before the Army announced that it will extend the tours of about 3,000 soldiers in Afghanistan for between two weeks and two months amid an intensifying Taliban insurgency.
Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, submitted a key assessment of the war this week. Gates said the assessment, which President Obama and top military officers are reviewing, had altered his long-standing concern about creating an oversized U.S. "footprint" in Afghanistan.
"I take seriously General McChrystal's point that the size . . . of the footprint depends . . . in significant measure . . . on the nature of the footprint and the behavior of those troops and their attitudes and their interactions with the Afghans," Gates said.
"If they interact with the Afghans in a way that gives confidence to the Afghans that we're their partners and their allies, then the risks that I have been concerned about about the footprint becoming too big . . . is mitigated." In particular, Gates cited efforts by McChrystal to distribute U.S. troops to better protect the population and reduce civilian casualties.
Gates also rebuffed as "unrealistic" arguments that the administration should narrow the mission to one of counterterrorism in Afghanistan and along the Pakistani border. Instead, he said that uprooting terrorist groups requires a more holistic campaign to shore up internal security -- the type of effort McChrystal and other top U.S. military leaders envision.
"Even if you want to focus on counterterrorism, you cannot do that successfully without local law enforcement, without internal security, without intelligence," he said.
The number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan is already set to roughly double this year, to 68,000, including about 21,000 new troops that Obama ordered to deploy.
In recent months, Gates has warned repeatedly against deploying too many troops, saying the local population would reject them as an occupation force, much as Afghans opposed the 110,000 Soviet troops stationed in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Now, however, it is widely anticipated that McChrystal will follow up his assessment soon with a request for several thousand more U.S. troops and other resources needed to implement a full-fledged counterinsurgency strategy aimed at bolstering Afghan local governance, as well as at improving the economy and security. The request is expected to focus on troops needed to accelerate and expand the training and mentoring of the Afghan army and police forces so that they can gradually take on security responsibilities.
Officials said Gen. David H. Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, has endorsed the assessment.
Both Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said any troop request for Afghanistan would be weighed against other demands on U.S. forces, including in Iraq.
"We have lots of troops in Iraq, and there are challenges and tension between those two theaters in terms of troop distribution," Mullen said at the Pentagon news conference.
Mullen has emphasized that he directed McChrystal to scrutinize the U.S. force in Afghanistan and send home any service members, such as support troops, who may not be vital to the war effort. Some Pentagon officials have said that McChrystal is seeking such reductions -- which could number in the thousands -- to offset an increase in combat forces, but Mullen told The Washington Post in an interview last week that he did not expect any large "windfall" in the form of troop reductions.
On Thursday, the Army announced that it is extending the tours of two units in Afghanistan to maintain continuity of the force there and allow follow-on units more time to prepare. The headquarters of the 82nd Airborne Division based at Fort Bragg, N.C., with a few hundred soldiers, will be extended for 50 days, the Army said, while the 3rd Combat Aviation Brigade based at Fort Stewart, Ga., with about 2,700 soldiers, will remain for an additional two weeks.
An Army statement suggested that the extension is intended to advance a plan by McChrystal to take advantage of the expertise in Afghanistan of units such as the 82nd Airborne Division and 101st Airborne Division, which have both deployed there frequently. The goal is to maximize the continuity and experience of military units serving in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. James D. Thurman, the Army's operations chief, said in a statement.
Gates insisted Thursday that Obama's new strategy for Afghanistan can succeed if given time, even as he acknowledged deteriorating security in the country and waning public support at home.
"I don't believe that the war is slipping through the administration's fingers," he said. "I absolutely do not think it is time to get out of Afghanistan."
Staff writer Karen DeYoung contributed to this report.
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Military leaders: U.S. effort in Afghanistan just beginning
By Nancy A. Youssef, Mcclatchy Newspapers – Thu Sep 3, 7:54 pm ET
WASHINGTON — Top Pentagon leaders Thursday insisted that despite an expected request for more American troops in Afghanistan , the U.S. isn't engaged in nation building there and that although violence is increasing, the military effort there is "only now beginning."
In a news conference Thursday at the Pentagon , Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Michael Mullen , the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, responded to mounting criticism that the Obama administration can't define success in Afghanistan .
Critics charge that the administration's effort to build a stable and secure nation are unachievable because of rampant corruption in the Afghan central government, a disjointed coalition force structure, a resurgent Taliban and the absence of cooperation from neighboring Pakistan .
Gates, in response to a question, said the war is "not slipping through the administration's fingers."
Instead, the secretary, who earlier this year fired Army Gen. David McKiernan , the Afghanistan commander, and replaced him with Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal , said he thinks that the U.S. policy in Afghanistan is clear and on the right track.
Gates said he'd read McChrystal's 60-day assessment of the situation in Afghanistan and plans to "informally forward" his recommendations to President Barack Obama next week. McChrystal is expected to ask for as many as 45,000 more troops in a separate report later this month.
Earlier this year, the administration agreed to send another 17,500 troops and 4,000 trainers to Afghanistan ; so far all but 8,000 have arrived. There currently are 62,000 U.S. troops and 39,000 coalition troops in Afghanistan .
Gates and Mullen acknowledged, however, that public support for the war is waning. With four months to go, 2009 already is the deadliest year of the war. At least 308 U.S. troops have been killed this year, and a McClatchy / Ipsos poll released this week found that 54 percent of Americans don't think the U.S. military is winning in Afghanistan .
Gates and Mullen Thursday pleaded for more time.
"The fact that Americans would be tired of having their sons and daughters at risk and in battle is not surprising," Gates said. "I think what is important is for us to be able to show, over the months to come, that the president's strategy is succeeding. We understand the concerns on the part of many Americans in this area, and — but we think that we now have the resources and the right approach to begin making some headway in turning around a situation that, as many have indicated, has been deteriorating."
Mullen and Gates responded to critics who fear that the war in Afghanistan is becoming a quagmire and that the U.S. military shouldn't engage in nation building, particularly in a country with such weak infrastructure and no history of a viable central government.
In addition, Afghanistan's Aug. 20 presidential election, which the administration initially hailed as a success, appears to be headed toward a run-off. U.S. commanders in Kabul fear that widespread charges of fraud and vote rigging and uncertainty about who'll be the next president could lead to more violence.
Although no one had compared Afghanistan to Vietnam , Mullen reminded reporters that, "I am a Vietnam veteran" and said, "We have a mission that we're doing the best we possibly can to carry out."
In an apparent attempt to argue that America's security is at stake in Afghanistan , Gates said that before the Sept. 11, 2001 , attacks, the Taliban not only provided al Qaida refuge, but also "cooperated and collaborated" with the terrorist group. Because of that, he said, the U.S. must ensure that a stable government exists in Afghanistan so the Taliban — and ultimately al Qaida — can't return.
Although no one asked Gates whether the U.S. was engaged in nation building in Afghanistan , he said that the U.S. effort to train Afghan security forces and support local governance isn't that.
"It seems to me that we're in Afghanistan less for nation building than we are for giving Afghanistan the capacity to oppose al Qaida ; to oppose the use of their territory by other violent extremists," Gates said.
On Thursday, Gates finessed his position on whether the U.S. footprint could become too large. Until now, he's fretted about sending more than 100,000 troops to Afghanistan — roughly the number the Soviet Union had during its war in Afghanistan — out of fear that the U.S. and its allies would appear to be another occupying force.
According to Pentagon figures, there currently are 101,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan .
On Thursday, Gates said the number isn't as important as how the troops conduct themselves.
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French soldier killed in Afghanistan: Sarkozy
Fri Sep 4, 8:44 am ET
PARIS (AFP) – A French soldier was killed and nine others wounded when a booby trap exploded against their armoured personnel carrier as they carried out reconnaissance in Afghanistan, officials said on Friday.
Several soldiers were "seriously wounded" in the blast in the Showki region north of the Afghan capital Kabul, President Nicolas Sarkozy said in a statement in which he expressed condolences to the victims' families.
France has some 2,900 troops in the NATO-led international coalition battling Taliban guerrillas and attempting to train Afghanistan's national security forces to take the lead in the eight-year-old conflict.
According to Sarkozy, the soldiers were members of the 3rd Marine Infantry Regiment, which is based in the port of Vannes in Brittany. They were attacked in an area between the coalition bases in Nijrab and Bagram.
"The president ... strongly condemned this blind violence and expressed France's determination to continue to work to re-establish peace and development in Afghanistan," a statement said.
France has now lost 30 soldiers in Afghanistan since 2001.
"An infantry section and some engineers, around 50 men, had gone to inspect a route to ensure the safety of a logistics convoy when the explosion took place," French military spokesman Admiral Christophe Prazuck said.
"The IED (improvised explosive device) hit one of the seven VAB armoured personnel carriers in the convoy. The nine wounded, four of them in a serious condition, were taken by helicopter to Bagram and Kabul," he said.
The year 2009 has already been a record-breaking year for foreign soldiers killed in Afghanistan since the US-led bid to oust the Taliban began following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
According to the independent Internet site icasualities.org, more than 300 coalition soldiers have lost their lives since the beginning of the year, up from 294 in 2008.
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Afghanistan Is Not 'Obama's War'
Republicans should never do to President Obama what many Democrats did to President Bush.
Wall Street Journal By DAN SENOR AND PETER WEHNER 4 Sept 2009
In his column for the Washington Post on Tuesday, the influential conservative George Will provided intellectual fodder for the campaign among some Republicans to hang the Afghanistan war around the Obama administration's neck. Washington, he wrote, should "keep faith" with our fighting men and women by "rapidly reversing the trajectory of America's involvement in Afghanistan." "Obama's war," a locution one is now beginning to hear from other conservatives, is an expression of discontent that has been smoldering beneath the surface for several months.
The weakening public support for continuing the counterinsurgency campaign is not surprising. In the midst of an economic crisis people are tempted to draw inward. Add to that a general war weariness in the U.S. and the fact that the Afghanistan war is not going well right now—violence in Afghanistan is already far worse this year than last—and you have the makings of an unpopular conflict.
But the case of conservative opposition to the war in Afghanistan—as well as increasingly in Iraq—is symptomatic of something larger: the long history of political parties out of power advancing a neo-isolationist outlook. For example, Democrats were vocal opponents of President Reagan's support for the Nicaraguan contras and the democratic government in El Salvador, the U.S. invasion of Grenada, the deployment of cruise and Pershing missiles in Europe, and the forceful stand against the Soviet Union generally.
Many Democrats were also uneasy with or outright hostile to the policies of President George H.W. Bush. That included strong criticisms of the U.S. liberation of Panama and widespread Democratic opposition to the first Gulf War, which only 10 Senate Democrats voted to authorize.
The tables were turned in the 1990s: Then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay called Kosovo "Clinton's war" and a majority of Senate Republicans voted against a bombing campaign, even after the Serbs had created half-a-million refugees in Kosovo and were on a path to destabilizing southern Europe. And, unlike today, this was not at a time of economic insecurity at home. Nor were we shouldering the military burden alone (18 other nations fought alongside us in the Balkans). Conservatives also argued that President Clinton's strikes against Saddam Hussein's Iraq in 1998 were meant to distract the nation's attention from the Monica Lewinsky scandal. In 2000, in a sharp rebuke of the Clinton administration's nation-building, Condoleezza Rice—then a top adviser to presidential candidate George W. Bush—said that the 82nd Airborne should not be walking kids to school.
In this decade, Democrats were fierce opponents of President Bush's Iraq policy, going so far as to declare the war lost and doing everything in their power to stop the surge—which turned out to be enormously successful—from going forward.
Our concern is that this tendency for the party out of (executive) power to pull back from America's international role and to undermine a president of the opposing party will gain strength when it comes to President Obama's policy on Afghanistan.
The president deserves credit for his commitment earlier this year to order an additional 17,000 troops for Afghanistan, as well as his decision to act on the recommendation of Gen. David Petraeus and Defense Secretary Robert Gates to replace the U.S. commander in Afghanistan with Gen. Stanley McChrystal.
These were tough and courageous decisions. The president's actions have clearly unsettled some members of his own party, who hoped he would begin to unwind America's commitment in Afghanistan. Mr. Obama not only ignored their counsel; he doubled down his commitment. There should therefore be no stronger advocates for Mr. Obama's Afghanistan strategy than the GOP.
The war in Afghanistan is a crucial part of America's broader struggle against militant Islam. If we were to fail in Afghanistan, it would have calamitous consequences for both Pakistan and American credibility. It would consign the people of Afghanistan to misery and hopelessness. And Afghanistan would once again become home to a lethal mix of terrorists and insurgents and a launching point for attacks against Western and U.S. interests. Neighboring governments—especially Pakistan's with its nuclear weapons—could quickly be destabilized and collapse.
Progress and eventual success in Afghanistan—which is difficult but doable—would, when combined with a similar outcome in Iraq, constitute a devastating blow against jihadists and help stabilize a vital and volatile region.
We also believe supporting the president's Afghanistan policy is politically smart for Republicans. For one thing, isolationist tendencies don't do well in American politics. Even in a war as unpopular as Vietnam, George McGovern's "Come Home, America" cry backfired badly. So has every attempt since then. There is no compelling evidence that the congressional GOP was politically well served in the 1990s by opposing intervention in the Balkans.
In addition, indifference or outright opposition to the war would smack of hypocrisy, given the Republican Party's strong (and we believe admirable) support for President Bush's post-9/11 policies, its robust support for America's democratic allies, and its opposition to rogue regimes that threaten American interests. Republicans should stand for engagement with, rather than isolation from, the world. Strongly supporting the president on Afghanistan would also be a sign of grace on the part of Republicans. We know all too well how damaging it was to American foreign policy to face an opposition that was driven by partisan fury against our commander in chief. Republicans should never do to President Obama what many Democrats did to President Bush.
Mr. Obama's policies shouldn't be immune from criticism; far from it. Responsible criticism is a necessary part of self-government. And we are particularly concerned about reports that retired Marine Gen. James Jones, Mr. Obama's national security adviser, told Gen. McChrystal earlier this summer not to ask for more troops and that the Obama White House is wary to offer what Gen. McChrystal says he will need to succeed.
We do believe, however, that Republicans should resist the reflex that all opposition parties have, which is to oppose the stands of a president of the other party because he is a member of the other party. In this instance, President Obama has acted in a way that advances America's national security interests and its deepest values. Republicans should say so. As things become even more difficult in Central Asia, it's important to keep bad political patterns we have seen before from re-emerging.
Mr. Senor is an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Wehner is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. They both served as officials in the administration of George W. Bush.
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US probing possible diversion of USAID money in Afghanistan to warlords, Taliban
Associated Press September 3, 2009 - 7:38 PM
WASHINGTON - The State Department said Thursday that an investigation has begun into whether U.S. development funding for Afghanistan is being diverted to local warlords and extremists following allegations that road and bridge contractors were paying "protection" money to the Taliban.
Spokesman P.J. Crowley said the U.S. Agency for International Development is looking into reports that some funds may be being going to the Taliban and others as part of a larger probe into other diversions of U.S. taxpayer dollars in Afghanistan. He stressed that no diversions have been confirmed.
"Obviously, we want to see the aid that is flowing into Afghanistan move towards constructively improving the security situation, the economic situation in Afghanistan," he told reporters. "Any diversion of funds for any reason makes it that much more difficult for us to achieve our objectives in Afghanistan."
His comments came in response to a question about a report in the Web-based publication Global Post that cited allegations that USAID money for road and bridge construction in Afghanistan was being siphoned off by contractors to pay members of the Taliban not to attack specific projects and workers.
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Eight Kabul Embassy Guards Fired in U.S. Hazing Probe (Update1)
By Janine Zacharia and Edward DeMarco
Sept. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Eight guards at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, have been fired and two have quit in connection with allegations of hazing by the security force, the diplomatic mission said in a statement.
The 10 guards were seen in “offensive” pictures released by a watchdog group that made the allegations this week, the U.S. said. They are leaving the country today.
In addition, the senior management team in Kabul for the security contractor, ArmorGroup North America, is being replaced immediately, the embassy statement said. ArmorGroup is owned by Wackenhut Services Inc., whose parent company is West Sussex, U.K.-based G4S Plc.
A spokeswoman for Wackenhut, Susan Pitcher, referred all questions to the State Department. “We’re fully cooperating with them in the investigation,” Pitcher said by telephone.
The embassy’s security office is interviewing every ArmorGroup guard and a team from the State Department inspector general’s office has arrived in Kabul to begin an investigation, the e-mailed statement said. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said 120 interviews had been conducted as of today.
Asked if the State Department might decide to terminate the contract once the investigation is complete, Kelly said, “that may be the end result of this.”
Oversight Group
The Project on Government Oversight, a Washington-based non-profit group that investigates misconduct and which documented the hazing in a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, welcomed the moves.
“POGO is pleased that the State Department has finally taken decisive steps to bring the Kabul security guard scandal under control,” the group’s executive director, Danielle Brian, said in a statement. Brian expressed concern that the dismissals may have included people caught in photographs who were “unwilling participants” in the events.
“We also want to hear that the supervisors who were responsible for this debacle are being held fully accountable and not simply allowed to resign and go to another contractor,” Brian added.
To contact the reporters on this story: Janine Zacharia in Washington at jzacharia@bloomberg.net; Edward DeMarco in Washington at edemarco1@bloomberg.net
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US Official Reaffirms Need for Afghanistan Society Building
By Steve Herman VOA 04 September 2009
It has been about six months since the Obama Administration unveiled a new strategy boosting efforts to rebuild Afghan civil society. That is part of a comprehensive strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. A top State Department official is acknowledging the need to show real progress soon.
A senior U.S. official acknowledges the clock is ticking on showing the effectiveness of America's multibillion dollar attempt to rebuild Afghanistan. The effort has been deemed a foreign policy priority of the Obama administration.
The Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources, Jack Lew, on a visit to India, spoke with a small group of Indian and American reporters in the capital. He told them it is critical to continue the effort to transfer skills and tools to Afghans so foreigners do not need to have a permanent presence there.
"It is a challenge after just a few months of implementation to be able to speak with confidence about when these things will occur," said Lew. "But the president has been clear, the Administration has been clear that there's a need for demonstrable progress on a short order."
The deputy secretary, who is the State Department's chief operating officer, adds that Congress and the administration itself will hold those responsible accountable to show a difference is being made in Afghanistan.
Programs underway include training the Afghan National Army and police, as well as building capacity in Afghan government ministries. President Obama, in late March, outlined a comprehensive plan to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaida in order to bring security to Afghanistan and to construct a civil infrastructure.
Lew says these efforts "address a direct threat to the United States." The deputy secretary is to visit Afghanistan next week. His trip comes at a critical time with the results of the country's presidential election still uncertain and worries a disputed outcome, due to allegations of widespread ballot box stuffing, could spark further civil violence.
The White House is now reviewing strategic recommendations made by the top U.S. military officer in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal. Details are confidential but they are believed to include the possibility of adding more troops to the already 60 thousand Americans in uniform deployed there in the eight-year old war.
This comes at a time when opinion polls show dropping support among Americans for the military effort in Afghanistan, where Afghan, American and NATO coalition forces together are fighting the Taliban.
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McChrystal in the bull ring
The Economist 09/04/2009
Kabul - NATO is running out of time in Afghanistan
CALL it the “Matador Doctrine”: a beast charges pointlessly at the bullfighter’s cape, exhausting itself and suffering endless small wounds, until it succumbs to a weaker opponent. Stanley McChrystal, NATO’s commander in Afghanistan, says his troops have been acting like a powerful but stupid bull lunging after insurgents; without a change of tactics NATO may yet have its ears cut off by the Taliban.
After nearly eight years of war, the allies’ weariness is showing. The latest opinion polls say the American public is gloomy about the fight in Afghanistan and increasingly resistant to sending more troops there. Parts of the Democratic Party, in particular, are hostile to the war and the White House is nervous. General McChrystal knows he has little time to turn things around.
On August 31st he submitted his long-awaited review to NATO leaders, saying “the situation in Afghanistan is serious, but success is achievable.” The assessment is confidential (and bleak, it is said) but the commander’s priorities are known, not least from a directive to his troops of five days earlier containing the bull-and-matador simile. They are: protect the Afghan population rather than kill or capture insurgents; build up Afghan forces; boost the legitimacy of the government in Kabul and improve the co-ordination of civilian aid. The Taliban and the Western-backed Afghan government are fighting for the allegiance of the Afghan people, says the general; the people will decide who wins.
Such ideas have been American orthodoxy on counter-insurgency for nearly three years, adopted successfully in Iraq and less successfully by previous commanders in Afghanistan. General McChrystal’s directive on the need for units to drive vehicles courteously is little different from the order issued by his sacked predecessor, General David McKiernan, and posted at NATO bases: “We can’t win if you drive recklessly.”
But if the theory is the same, the implementation may be different. General McChrystal has already sharply reduced the frequency of air strikes even as Western military casualties are at their highest since the fall of the Taliban. His report emphasises the “reintegration” of Taliban fighters—don’t call it “reconciliation”—to try to draw away as many as possible of those who fight for money or tribal honour rather than for religious ideology.
The general wants much closer “partnering” of Western troops with Afghan forces, from common headquarters to joint platoons. He calls for the accelerated training of Afghan forces, to nearly 220,000 soldiers and policemen by the end of next year, with the option of nearly doubling that number to 400,000 if, as is likely, security conditions do not improve. This week a Taliban suicide bomber killed the Afghan deputy intelligence chief, Abdullah Laghmani, and more than 20 others.
General McChrystal has not openly said what his entourage agrees on: to protect the population, NATO will need more troops than the 110,000 it will have by the end of the year after the reinforcements ordered by Barack Obama. A request for more may come in a second report later this month and will depend not just on military calculations, but on two political ones: will Afghans see a bigger NATO presence as an occupying force? Will voters in the West agree to sink more blood and treasure in the Hindu Kush?
On both counts the task would be greatly eased if the Afghan leader, President Hamid Karzai, were not so damaged by the ineffectiveness and corruption of his government. Last month’s presidential election was a chance to relaunch his leadership. But the claims of widespread ballot-rigging are tainting him further. Afghan officials have been flooded with more than 2,000 complaints of fraud. Mr Karzai’s main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister, has presented evidence of forged ballots, coercion and other irregularities. He urges his supporters to stay calm, but says he will accept neither defeat nor a unity government.
On September 2nd, with over 60% of stations reporting results, Mr Karzai had 47.3% of the vote against 32.6% for Mr Abdallah. This excludes most votes in the turbulent south, which diplomats think will carry Mr Karzai over the 50% mark to avoid a run-off. The president would no doubt then reward former warlords who supported him with jobs and spoils. Western officials seem glumly reconciled to another term for Mr Karzai. General McChrystal’s directive tells soldiers to “confront self-serving officials who monopolise wealth and power and abuse people’s trust”. Easier said than done.
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Plans to boost Afghan troops sparks UK withdrawal possibility
Press Association via Independent (UK) Friday, 4 September 2009
Gordon Brown today paved the way for an earlier-than-expected withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan as he called for training of Afghan forces to be accelerated.
The Prime Minister used a major policy speech to propose bringing forward a key Nato target to expand the Afghan army to 134,000 troops from 2011 to next year.
But he made no reference to last night's shock protest resignation of Labour MP Eric Joyce, who had been an aide to Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth.
Meanwhile, the bodies of Sergeant Stuart Millar, 40, and Private Kevin Elliott, 24, who were both killed in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan on Monday, were flown home today.
Addressing the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, Mr Brown insisted the military campaign was crucial to protect the public in this country and said the UK could not simply "walk away".
He did not set out a timetable for pulling out British troops, but suggested that transferring responsibility for security to the Afghans would allow the reduction of UK forces.
"I think the issue is how fast you can move on this. What we are saying today is that we are going to move faster," he said.
Nato announced in the spring that it would support the expansion of the Afghan army from 80,000 to 134,000 by November 2011.
Mr Brown said Britain would welcome a more ambitious target of achieving the goal of 134,000 by November 2010, which would require increasing the rate of training from 2,000 to 4,000 new troops per month.
To achieve this he proposed a shift from mentoring Afghan forces to partnering them, meaning that the bulk of British combat troops would eat, sleep and fight side-by-side with their Afghan counterparts.
He said: "If, as I say, Afghan forces can take more responsibility for the functions of security in the different parts of Afghanistan, and if perhaps we consider transfers of responsibility of government district by district or province by province, then it is possible to envisage that, as the number of Afghans taking responsibility grows and the quality of their leadership grows, we can reduce the numbers of our forces.
"That is the basis of our strategy and it is the basis of the American strategy as well. I can be time-specific about the build-up of Afghan forces that we are trying to achieve.
"When we see the quality of the effort, and when we are assured responsibility can be taken, that is the point at which we can say the need for British troops is a great deal less."
Last month the commander of British forces in Helmand said military control could be handed over to Afghan forces in parts of the province immediately.
Brigadier Tim Radford, commander of Task Force Helmand, suggested this could happen in the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, and to a lesser extent in Garmsir.
But Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said today it was "hard to believe" that training more Afghan forces would do the trick now after eight years of an "over-ambitious and under-resourced strategy".
He said: "We need a bolder change of strategy to turn things around. When it comes to Afghanistan, we need to do things properly or not at all."
Mr Joyce, a former Army major, resigned as Mr Ainsworth's parliamentary private secretary last night and launched a stinging attack on Government policy in Afghanistan.
He warned that the Government could no longer simply claim the conflict was a fight to combat terrorism, telling ITV News: "We have to be honest about what our commitment is.
"It's very high, and I don't think we can simply say the simple statement that we're preventing terrorism back in the UK.
"In many ways that's true but it's not enough of an explanation. People really need to know what would happen if we weren't there - would the Americans simply fill the gap?"
Mr Brown gave a flavour of the challenges faced by British troops in Afghanistan when he revealed that they have now found more than 1,000 improvised explosive devices (IEDs) during the current six-month tour.
A roadside bomb claimed the life of Lance Corporal Richard Brandon, 24, of the Corps of Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, in Helmand on Wednesday.
His fiancee, Emma-Jayne, today described the father of one and stepfather of two as "one in a million".
Hundreds of people turned out today to pay their respects to Sgt Millar, from Inverness, and Pte Elliott, from Dundee, both from The Black Watch, 3rd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland.
After a private chapel ceremony for their families at RAF Lyneham in Wiltshire, hearses carrying their Union Flag-draped coffins were driven in a memorial procession through the high street of nearby Wootton Bassett.
Among those lining the route was Colour Sergeant Gerry McQuade, 32, of the Royal Highland Fusiliers, 2nd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland, a close friend of Sgt Millar.
He said: "We all understand the consequences of operational tours, that in a worst case scenario someone could die, but when it's someone you know it does really hit home. It's upset me more than it has in the past."
Meanwhile, a British soldier facing court martial for refusing to fight in Afghanistan had charges of disobeying a lawful command dropped today.
Lance Corporal Joe Glenton, 27, of the Royal Logistic Corps, now faces one charge of desertion for refusing to return to Afghanistan.
It was also revealed today that the Ministry of Defence faces paying wounded troops an extra £150 million if it loses a controversial legal challenge to the compensation paid to two injured servicemen.
Shadow defence secretary Liam Fox described the Prime Minister's speech as "underwhelming and short on detail".
"What will happen to the 900 troops that we sent specifically for the elections?" asked Dr Fox.
"If we are to speed up the training of the Afghan National Army, how exactly will this be done? Will it require more British troops?
"When his defence chiefs advised this course a few months ago, why did he reject their advice?
"On the equipment front, we need to see more armoured vehicles delivered more quickly and we need to know how they are going to be transported given the lack of airlift capacity. Much more detail is required about the practicalities on both manning and equipment."
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Clock Ticks for White House to Show Gains in Afghanistan
Wall Street Journal
Washington is about to become fixated on a number: the number of troops President Barack Obama wants to add in Afghanistan.
And that's appropriate, as far as it goes. Each American deployed, after all, represents a life put on the line.
But there are two other questions perhaps more important to the Obama administration's effort to revive America's fortunes in Afghanistan. The first: Can the administration convince Washington that a significantly different strategy already is in place? And second, is the timeline for that strategy fast enough that it will show progress before political support collapses?
If the answers to those two questions are positive, the level of American troops will become secondary. If the answers are no, the administration, by the middle of next year, will find it hard to sustain support for troops at any level.
The lesson of the troop surge in Iraq applies here: Concern about an abstract troop count dominates when the strategy isn't working. Conversely, that concern can fade rapidly when there is a sense that the strategy is working. Put another way, concern about troop levels is a sign of a deeper problem.
As that suggests, the perception of the American effort that takes hold in Washington in the next few weeks is crucial. The tendency now is for Americans to see Afghanistan with a combination of weariness and wariness: weariness because the fight the U.S. and its allies are waging has, in some form, been under way for eight years; wariness because of a growing sense that the longstanding American goal of constructing a stable and effective Afghan central government that can keep Islamic militants in check is simply not achievable.
To battle those problems, the Obama administration will have to foster the sense that what is evolving isn't another turn of the screw but a wholly fresh start. That effort began when Mr. Obama in February approved sending 21,000 additional troops, raising the total to 68,000, and continued when he changed commanders and Defense Secretary Robert Gates ordered up a new strategy.
That new strategy embodied a crucial shift: It fundamentally moved the war effort away from simply trying to hunt down and kill Taliban and al Qaeda fighters, and instead toward protecting the civilian population from Islamic extremists, in the process winning their allegiance for the effort and for the fragile Afghan government that is the West's partner in the undertaking.
Mr. Gates stressed Thursday that this new strategy isn't coming but already is in place. This week, his new commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, offered an assessment of the challenges still standing in the way. The final step comes when Gen. McChrystal declares by month's end how many additional troops he thinks he needs to carry it out. Gen. McChrystal will argue that more troops are necessary, not just to carry out the strategy, but, crucially, to train a bigger and more effective Afghan army.
Pentagon and administration leaders alike argue that this does represent a fresh start because Afghanistan was starved of troops, funds and serious policy attention for much of the past eight years. "We've badly resourced this for so long," Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in an interview. "It's a very complex engagement, and now it's a civilian and a military strategy."
In fact, "underresourced" is the phrase of the hour when it comes to Afghanistan, repeated by military officials and outside advisers to summarize why they think things have slid backward. It means, in a nutshell, that in focusing on the war in Iraq, the U.S. has substantially shortchanged the fight in Afghanistan, in both manpower and money.
Anthony Cordesman and Erin Fitzgerald, at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, have just published a study that attempts to quantify the "underresourced" assertion. (Mr. Cordesman's observations are far more than casual; he was part of a team that helped Gen. McChrystal in his just-completed assessment of strategy in Afghanistan.)
The CSIS report chronicles the extent to which resources flowed to Iraq at the expense of Afghanistan since 2001. Its blunt conclusion: "In the case of the Afghan War, the United States underfunded the conflict to the point where it risked defeat." It was only in the past year, the report says, "some seven years after the war in Afghanistan became a major U.S. strategic commitment, when the U.S. began to fund the war seriously."
Significantly, the White House has picked up precisely this theme. "We underresourced Afghanistan for the better part of a decade, OK?" White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said to reporters this week.
The question now is whether it is too late, in political terms, to convince the country that a fresh and promising start is possible. The administration probably gets one chance to do so. Officials see some positive signs: They think the Afghan populace is showing it doesn't like the Taliban and that allies with troops in Afghanistan are resisting the urge to cut and run.
The flip side: Obama aides thought when they took office that they had perhaps a year and a half to show progress in Afghanistan before political support faced serious jeopardy. On that count, the clock is running.
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We can't give up on Afghanistan
Those opposed to the conflict must confront the idea that things will get worse if we withdraw
Sunny Hundal guardian.co.uk, Friday 4 September 2009
Following Eric Joyce's resignation, it's worth re-stating the case for staying in Afghanistan. It probably won't be the case that Gordon Brown makes later today, but it is a case nevertheless.
There are two nonsensical arguments continually made against our presence in Afghanistan: that British soldiers are dying and that the rights of Afghan women aren't being secured enough. So the whole operation has failed and we should pull out, various commentators have said.
Like most people, I'd rather that deaths in Afghanistan were minimal and I have respect for the soldiers there fighting the Taliban. As a feminist, I would also love to see women's rights protected and enforced. But on further inspection both are absurd expectations.
Did anyone seriously think going into Afghanistan would not result in any British casualties? And did people think overthrowing the Taliban and bringing stability to the region would be painless? Furthermore, Afghanistan's patriarchal culture has been entrenched for centuries. Did anyone really believe that installing a new government would suddenly bring feminist enlightenment? Do people believe householders will pay attention to any constitution rather than century-old customs?
I have always supported the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan, despite a strong hunch George Bush would never manage it adequately. I just didn't realise he would screw it up so spectacularly with an illegal and counter-productive attack on Iraq.
My reasoning for supporting the Afghanistan war: it will bring more stability to the subcontinent. Let's rewind a bit here. Prior to the Taliban takeover Afghanistan was always the target of external meddling by surrounding powers including the Soviets (obviously), Pakistan (obviously), the US (of course) and, less obviously, India and Iran.
The Taliban were the perfect solution for Pakistan because they were a proxy-force that slowly killed off any influence that India, Russia and Iran had. It strengthened their influence, allowing them to focus attention on Kashmir. Taliban elements helped and India was a constant target of terrorist attacks. In 2001 that went as far as a terrorist attack on the Indian parliament that nearly brought war between India and Pakistan. Prior to that al-Qaida and Taliban elements had repeatedly said India was one of their main targets.
So judging our success in Afghanistan solely by the number of British soldiers killed, or laws passed through parliament, is misplaced. South Asia is more secure than it's ever been (the occasional terrorists attacks notwithstanding), primarily since Pakistan's attention is diverted to preventing its own collapse.
It is a key variable here. I've noted in the past that the country needed to face up to the monster – the Taliban – that it's own security services had created. Even the brutal attack on the Marriott Hotel failed to do that.
The internal conflict only came about earlier this year when elements of the Taliban and al-Qaida started to threaten Pakistan's sovereignty. It also eventually led to a large swath of the population and the imam class turning against them (Pakistanis remain fiercely nationalistic people despite the shared religion).
The point is that we have to take a longer view on Afghanistan. The rights of Afghan women can only be secured through long-term political stability. The radical Taliban groups are grossly outnumbered militarily and financially. They'll either turn desperate (attacking Pakistanis) or come to the negotiating table.
Pakistani intelligence needs to confront its own demons and rid itself of covert support for Talibani and other jihadi groups. That can only come by forcing a clash between the two. Its backing down and action against the jihadi groups that masterminded the Mumbai attacks indicates this is happening.
India too has to take solid steps towards peace with Pakistan – increase trade between the two – and create more stability in the region. If we leave now, we create a huge vacuum where Pakistan, India, Iran, Russia, China and al-Qaida will brutally fight for influence. The whole area will become more destabilised and may lead to a stand-off between Pakistan and India. If the Taliban succeed in re-establishing themselves, then they would also be the base for further terrorism aimed at India, Pakistan, the US and UK. We'd have to come back sooner or later.
Lefties opposed to the conflict in Afghanistan must confront two things: that conditions in the subcontinent were much more unstable before the US invasion of 2001 and will get worse if the US leaves with Afghanistan in limbo. That may mean even more lives lost. Second, sometimes we need a short-term conflict (between the Pakistani army and the Taliban) in order for longer-term peace.
Without going too much into the history of how Afghanistan was created – and the involvement of western powers during the Soviet Invasion – this mess is partly our fault. To give up now won't make things any better for anyone. Staying, however, may improve the region – given the right strategy. For me that remains the preferable option.
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Best Left Alone for Democracy to Grow
By Melek Zimmer-Zahine* IPS-Inter Press Service
KABUL, Sep 4 (IPS) - If the numerous foreign diplomats, envoys and super envoys assigned to Afghanistan really want to help the country, the best thing they can do during these vote counting and election-fraud investigation days and maybe weeks ahead is to go on vacation.
Since the presidential poll on Aug. 20, many diplomats have either been busy calling the elections a success or denouncing them for fraud.
Either way, they have succeeded in measuring Afghan democracy by their own democratic yardsticks instead of allowing those who braved election day a chance to have their votes counted and for Afghans to define representational politics by their own terms, at their own speed, for good and for bad.
The week since the elections, much energy has been spent, mainly by the U.S. Embassy, shuffling between meetings with President Hamid Karzai and his main opponent Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister, and spearheading a "special meeting in Paris" to discuss the international communities "response" to an election where the votes have yet to be fully counted and certified by an independent commission.
On Sep. 3, top envoys for Afghanistan from 26 countries including the U.S. and NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) met in Paris for talks on Afghanistan's future.
Rather than send a positive message of support to the Afghan public and civil society- based partners, the Paris talks may have fostered a fabricated hysteria that the country is in some crisis mode when in fact it is not, at least not yet.
It may also lead Afghans, both the elite and ordinary citizens, to suspect that deals and decisions about their future are being made without their participation yet again.
It is true that there was less voter turn out in Afghanistan’s second presidential election but keep in mind that statistics can lie.
In the previous presidential election (2004), which had an estimated 70 percent voter turn out, only eight out of 12 million registered voters voted.
In this year’s election, there were more than 16 million registered voters out of which an estimated five to seven million voters voted. Roughly the same amount as in the previous election. Statistically less but still worthy.
Let us say for argument's sake that out of the five to seven million votes, one million votes are fraudulent. For a country that has only experimented with electoral politics for five years, potentially half of the registered voters coming out to vote is still an accomplishment.
Put into perspective, the number of Afghans who voted this year is roughly the same number of Afghan children, boys and girls, who are enrolled in school, around seven million, a statistic which is often touted as a success story for Afghanistan.
Despite the problems faced by the August election, the fact that they took place within so many security and logistical challenges and that millions went to vote amid violence must also be regarded as a sign of progress and one more step forward in the development of Afghanistan’s democratic culture.
The tax-payer money of those participating in the Paris meeting this week would have been far better spent on a conference after the election results are certified, such as the international summit being planned by the U.N. in Kabul, to discuss in partnership with the next government and Afghan civil society, a productive, positive way forward for both Afghanistan and its partners from around the world.
If Afghanistan’s democratic friends are genuinely committed to supporting the country’s democratic experience, the best thing they can do is to show the kind of patience and restraint that most Afghans are showing during this critical time.
And, to remember that these elections are not an end in themselves but part of what should be a long-term Afghan-driven process if democracy is to take hold and grow.
(*Melek Zimmer-Zahine is the publisher of Killid Magazine. IPS and The Killid Group, an independent Afghan media, have been partners since 2004.) (END/2009)
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Taliban's Tank-Killing Bombs Came from U.S., Not Iran
By Gareth Porter IPS-Inter Press Service
WASHINGTON, Sep 3 (IPS) - In support of the official U.S. assertion that Iran is arming its sworn enemy, the Taliban, the head of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Dennis Blair, has cited a statement by a Taliban commander last year attributing military success against NATO forces to Iranian military assistance.
But the Taliban commander's claim is contradicted by evidence from the U.S. Defence Department, Canadian forces in Afghanistan and the Taliban itself that the increased damage to NATO tanks by Taliban forces has come from anti-tank mines provided by the United States to the jihadi movement in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
The Taliban claim was cited by ODNI in written responses to questions for the record from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence following testimony by Blair before the Committee Feb. 12, 2009. The responses were released to the Federation of American Scientists under the Freedom of Information Act Jul. 30.
ODNI wrote that Iran was "covertly supplying arms to Afghan insurgents while publicly posing as supportive of the Afghan government". As evidence of such covert Iranian arms supply, the ODNI said, "Taliban commanders have publicly credited Iranian support for their successful operations against Coalition forces".
That statement was taken almost word for word from the subtitle of an article in The Telegraph Sep. 14. "A Taliban commander has credited Iranian-supplied weapons with successful operations against coalition forces in Afghanistan," read the subtitle.
The single Taliban commander quoted became plural in the ODNI version.
In the article, British journalist Kate Clark quoted an unnamed Taliban commander as saying, "There's a kind of landmine called a Dragon. Iran's sending it. It's directional and it causes heavy casualties."
The commander said the new mine would "destroy" large tanks "completely", whereas "ordinary" anti-tank mines had only caused "minor damage".
If true, the revelation that an improved Iranian anti-tank weapon had been killing U.S. and NATO troops in larger numbers would have been a major development in the war in Afghanistan. Roadside bomb attacks are acknowledged by U.S. and NATO officials to be the cause of most of the casualties and deaths of foreign troops in the country.
The rapid rise in casualties over the past two years is attributed in part to the increased lethality of the Taliban mines.
But according to the Pentagon agency responsible for combating roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan, the increased Taliban threat to U.S. and NATO vehicles comes not from any new technology from Iran but from Italian-made mines left over from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's military assistance to the anti-Soviet jihadists in the 1980s.
In response to an inquiry from IPS, the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO) said in an e-mail that Italian-manufactured TC-6 anti-tank mines are "very common" in the Taliban-dominated areas of the country and that they have been modified to increase their lethality in IED attacks.
The JIEDDO response said TC-6 mines are being "arrayed in two or three in tandem to ensure the charge is large enough to inflict damage against Coalition vehicles." The TC-6 mines "continue to pose a significant threat to Coalition Forces", JIEDDO said.
The combining of two or three anti-tank mines into a single, more destructive bomb would account for the increased lethality of the anti-tank mines being used by the Taliban.
The claim by the alleged Taliban commander of new, more effective weaponry supplied by Iran appears to have been deliberate misinformation for the Western press.
British writer Jason Elliot, who has traveled extensively in Afghanistan since 1979, reported in a 2001 book "Min(d)ing Afghanistan" that the Italian-made TC-6 was the most commonly used anti-tank mine used in Afghanistan. The 15-pound charge of TNT, wrote Elliot in the TC-6, he wrote, could "flip a tank the way a seagull flips a baby turtle."
Millions of mines remained buried in the ground from the Soviet occupation period, Elliot observed. However, only some 20,000 anti-tank mines have been destroyed since 1989, according to the United Nations.
Further evidence that the Taliban are relying heavily on the TC-6 to damage NATO tanks is a picture published by al-Jazeera on May 1, 2007 in a Taliban storeroom of explosives in Helmand province. The photograph, taken by a cameraman accompanying correspondent James Bays, showed two insurgent bomb-makers working on what was clearly identifiable as an Italian TC-6 anti-tank mine.
The insurgents told the photographer that the explosives in the room were in the process of being converted into "anti-tank bombs".
Canadian forces in Kandahar province have encountered some of the heaviest Taliban use of anti-tank mines in Afghanistan. According to casualty data on the website of the Canadian Forces, since the beginning of 2007, 57 of 81 deaths of Canadian troops in Afghanistan have come from roadside bombs and anti-tank mines.
Capt. Dean Menard, a spokesman for Canadian forces in Kandahar, told IPS in a telephone interview that some of the ordnance used by the Taliban against Canadian tanks "are definitely attributable to the Soviet occupation era" – a reference to mines supplied by the United States through Pakistan during the anti-Soviet war.
The insurgents have obtained anti-tank weapons from "legacy minefields" dating from the period of Soviet occupation, according to Menard. Canadian forces also have intelligence that the Taliban obtain such mines from a "vast black market", he said.
The Canadian spokesman confirmed that the Taliban are "making bigger mines" from the ordnance obtained from those sources.
In 2007 and 2008, Afghan military and police discovered two major caches of weapons in Herat province on the Iranian border that included anti-tank mines which some Afghan officials suggesting had originated in Iran.
But one picture of mines discovered in Herat, published by the Revolutionary Women's Association of Afghanistan, clearly shows nine Italian TC-6 mines and one which resembles the top from a U.S. M-19 landmine, which was among those found in Afghanistan over the past two decades.
One mine cannot be clearly identified from the picture, but it does not resemble any known Iranian mine.
A picture of the 2007 cache in Herat published by AFP shows more Italian C-6 mines, along with a number of what appear to be U.S. M-19 anti-tank mines. The picture shows an Afghan policeman pointing to a mark on one of the latter, suggesting that it is of Iranian origin.
A copy of the U.S. M-19 mine has been manufactured by Iran, according to Jane's Mines and Mine Clearance 2005-2006. However, long-buried Iranian-made M19s provided to the Jamiat-I Islami Mujahedin faction fighting more extremist Hezb-e Islami fighters in the 1992-96 period exploded accidentally in Kabul as recently as 2006.
Moreover, a 2009 study of arms deliveries to Afghanistan in the 1990s by the Moscow-based Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies shows that Iran's large-scale arms aid to the Northern Alliance forces in 1999 included anti-tank mines.
The prominence of the Italian-made mines among weapons found in Herat indicate that the anti-tank mines discovered in Herat in 2007 and 2008 were not assistance from Iran to the Taliban but weapons provided either to the Mujahedin during the Soviet occupation or to the Northern Alliance troops fighting the Taliban in the late 1990s.
Former CIA officer Phil Giraldi, who monitors U.S. intelligence analysis on Iran, told IPS he doubts the ODNI statement on Iranian policy in Afghanistan accurately reflects the analysis.
"If you were to read the original analytical report," said Giraldi, "you would probably find that it's caveated like mad."
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The Same Old Mistake
New York Times By KIMBERLY MARTEN September 3, 2009
The U.S. and Afghan governments have announced a new policy to pay tribal militias to provide security in Afghanistan. This began as a measure to deter Taliban attacks during recent elections but is set to become permanent.
Almost point for point, this plan repeats the terrible mistake that the British colonial army made in the Pashtun tribal areas in what would become Pakistan, in the late 19th century.
The British disrupted local Pashtun power balances by injecting outside money into tribal politics. British intelligence officers created charts of which sub-tribes and leaders (or maliks) had the most influence, and paid them extra money. The favored maliks in turn used these funds for patronage, paying off their supporters. Canny Pashtun factions second-guessed the British, creating security problems that they then “solved” to look more powerful. British payments to the new “official maliks” became hereditary. This system violated the tribal code of equality among all Pashtun men, but the official maliks accepted it with enthusiasm.
Post-colonial Pakistan was forced to continue these payments after independence in 1947, to prevent official maliks from seceding into an independent territory of Pashtunistan. The system is maintained in Pakistan’s Constitution. Normal Pakistani law does not apply in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. Instead official maliks have cooperated with state political agents to control who receives scholarships, visas for foreign travel, and food aid during droughts. Official maliks have regularly received state contracts for roads, schools and hospitals; stories abound of the corruption and poor construction that resulted. Until recently, only official maliks could vote in elections. The collective tribal punishment system created by the British remained in place.
In August, the Pakistani government announced it was modifying these rules, but it isn’t yet clear what this means in practice; substantial change requires constitutional amendment.
Resentment against this arrangement helps explain support for the Taliban in the tribal areas today. Jihad attracts poverty-stricken youths cut out of the official malik system.
The new U.S. plan in Afghanistan also targets Pashtun tribes, on the other side of the artificial border that divides the country from Pakistan. Like the colonial British plan, it is based on detailed intelligence about local tribal power structures, and engages selected sub-tribes and their leaders. This time the goal is to identify less-powerful sub-tribes that are being recruited by the Taliban and favor them instead.
The plan draws on the ideas of David Kilcullen, formerly the senior counterinsurgency adviser to Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq. He recommends that in any tribal situation, the trick is to recruit community leaders who are local power-brokers, able to enforce consistent rules in their communities — in other words, new official maliks. The plan will pay militia members $150 a month for their services. A new Afghan directorate will take over the payments from the United States
At a tactical level this plan may allow the U.S. to compete against the Taliban for immediate influence. But its long-range political consequences sound disturbingly familiar. An outside state gathers intelligence to decide who is powerful and then pays them, making their power even greater. The power-brokers use the funds for patronage. The state continues the payments after the outside power leaves, perhaps eventually being blackmailed to do so. This creates an artificial hierarchy. Resentment grows among those cut out of the deal. Radical Islam may look like an attractive alternative to those not favored.
Mr. Kilcullen helped design the “Awakening Plan” in Iraq, where the U.S. military paid Sunni sheiks to use their militias on behalf of the Iraqi government instead of Al Qaeda. As U.S. forces withdraw, those militias are being integrated into Iraqi security forces. The process is plagued with difficulties, including accusations that Awakening leaders are being targeted for arrest by Shiite officials. Amid resurgent violence in Baghdad, it is premature to declare the plan a long-term success.
Furthermore, Afghanistan is not Iraq. As the RAND analyst Nora Bensahel notes, powerful Sunni sheiks in Anbar Province approached the Americans for protection from Al Qaeda, not the other way around. The sheiks did not want their existing local political control usurped by brutal and predatory outsiders.
In contrast, there is no regional Pashtun movement reaching out for protection. The Taliban is supported by Al Qaeda but has strong local roots, and many Pashtun power-brokers work with it. Paying local militias risks repeating a cycle where local warlords rise up to support outsiders, and yet another disfavored group is left seeking vengeance.
Instead, the U.S. should concentrate on building the new Afghan National Army as the guarantor of security. Security and stability are necessary if investment is to happen; the lack of jobs is one of the major drivers of Taliban support.
The A.N.A. is widely viewed as one of the most successful institutions in Afghanistan. It is not based on tribal militias, but instead recruits, trains and pays individuals, creating a sense of national identity among soldiers. To make the A.N.A. self-sufficient will take time, money, and continued training.
Meanwhile tens of thousands of U.S. and allied troops will need to provide security for Afghanistan’s population, following the more standard counterinsurgency precepts of Mr. Kilcullen’s model. They need to provide a deterrent cordon, warding off Taliban attacks against villages where economic development is progressing. At that point local militias will likely decide on their own to provide security for the infrastructure that their villages value; outside intelligence need not choose favorites.
Security in Afghanistan cannot be done on the cheap. Unless it is done right, the U.S. risks leaving an Al Qaeda staging ground next to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons facilities. Becoming enmeshed in Afghanistan’s opaque tribal politics is not a good exit strategy.
Kimberly Marten is a professor of political science at Barnard College, Columbia University.
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Spooks spill blood in the Hindu Kush
Asia Times By M K Bhadrakumar 09/03/2009
Like in a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel, the murder of Dr Abdullah Laghmani, the deputy head of the Afghan National Directorate of Security, could have been foretold. But the sheer brutality of his murder by a suicide bomber in front of a mosque in the town of Mehtarlam in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday afternoon in the holy month of Ramadan speaks of a visceral hostility not easily fathomable.
A self-styled Taliban spokesman promptly claimed responsibility. "We were looking for him for a long time, but today we succeeded." Commentators will no doubt rush to underscore that Laghmani's killing demonstrates the growing "sophistication" of Taliban operations. Indeed, Laghmani was a heavily guarded figure right in the sanctum sanctorum of the Kabul power structure. The first circle of the Afghan security establishment has been breached. High professionalism is the hallmark of the operation.
However, there are wheels within wheels. At critical junctures in the progress of the Taliban movement, an unseen hand has often summoned the assassin to clear the path or tilt the scales. The chronicle is chilling: Ayatollah Mazari, the top Shi'ite cleric of Afghanistan, (1994); Mohammad Najibullah, president of Afghanistan (1996); Ahmad Shah Massoud, leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, (2001); Haji Abdul Qadir, also in the Northern Alliance, (2002). The list seems never-ending. "The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on ... " [1]
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has been stalking Laghmani for a decade. It is rare for an intelligence agency to single out one individual as its mortal enemy and publicly warn him. The ISI had bestowed on Laghmani that rare honor more than once publicly.
If one could go back and take a peep into the Northern Alliance's (NA's) intelligence apparatus during the anti-Taliban resistance in the latter half of the 1990s, one would spot Laghmani as an operative of exceptional brilliance in the shadows.
Being an ethnic Pashtun, he had keen insight into the political culture of the Taliban movement and the mindset of its patrons in the ISI, which was an invaluable asset for the NA. Pakistan got a taste of what Laghmani could do when in July 2008 he established the connection between the suicide bombers who attacked the Indian Embassy in Kabul and the ISI by tracing a cellphone found in the wreckage to a facilitator in Kabul who was in direct telephone contact with a Pakistani intelligence official in Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province. The ISI felt the maximum heat from him in his native region of eastern Afghanistan, given the complexity of the situation there involving factors such as the traditional failure of the Taliban to strike deep roots among the Ghilzai tribes, the presence of the network of Jalaluddin Haqqani and al-Qaeda and the continuing influence of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and his Hezb-e Islami.
In sum, Laghmani is not easily replaceable for the Tajik-dominated Afghan intelligence in Kabul on account of both his encyclopaedic knowledge of the Pashtun tribal alignments and the inner working of the Taliban and the ISI, as well as his operational skills.
The timing is significant. He has been a key ally of President Hamid Karzai. Pakistan has adopted an air of indifference to the outcome of the Afghan presidential elections, but a strong undercurrent of anxiety is palpable. Especially so, as the prospect of Karzai winning another five-year term as president is appearing. Everything now hinges on the American effort to rein in Karzai by getting the leading contenders to form some kind of a national government and to include technocrats in his cabinet. But then Karzai might well reject such a proposition. Karzai has tasted independence and may have come to like it.
To quote Ahmed Rashid, the well-informed Pakistani author who advises the Pentagon, "Karzai, of course, is showing his independence more and more from the Americans and does not want to be seen as an agent of the West in any way."
With such a curious power calculus forming in Kabul, the ISI needs to prepare for the return of Mohammed Fahim, the head of the NA intelligence - Laghmani's boss - and former defense minister, to the top echelons of Karzai's government as first vice president. That is a tough call. There is no one today in Afghanistan with Fahim's reach of experience in intelligence and military operations.
Pakistan succeeded to get the United States pressure Karzai to remove Fahim from his powerful post as defense minister and send him into political oblivion in 2005. (The US probably had its own geopolitical objectives too.) Pakistan now faces the specter of Fahim rising up, as it were, from the ashes like a phoenix, more powerful than ever. A massive media campaign has appeared against "warlord" Fahim, ever since he began figuring as Karzai's running mate. Unsurprisingly, he evokes strong partisan feelings. But to the consternation of his detractors, Karzai remains unmoved.
Now, Fahim used to be Laghmani's mentor. Indeed, the Fahim-Laghmani team would have turned the heat on the Taliban and the ISI from day one of the new Karzai presidency. Fahim, with his vast experience as an "operations man", is quite capable of carrying the fight to the ISI camp, and Laghmani would have been a "force multiplier" for him in the Pashtun regions. There was an attempt on Fahim's life already in August and Laghmani's murder is most certainly intended as a warning.
Prime facie, Pakistan ought to have nothing to fear from a Karzai presidency. Karzai has repeatedly expressed his willingness to work for a political transition that accommodates the Taliban as an Afghan group, provided it eschews violence. But in Karzai's scheme of things, the reconciliation of the Taliban should be preferably through an intra-Afghan peace process and through a loya jirga (tribal council).
And there is no guarantee that the other Afghan groups will concede any dominant role to the Taliban. Besides, the Afghan-ness of the political process might incrementally loosen the ISI's grip over the Taliban. Indeed, Laghmani with his seamless knowledge of the Taliban leadership and the Pashtun tribal alignments would have posed a constant headache to the ISI if any intra-Afghan peace process got under way.
Laghmani's murder highlights continued interference in Afghanistan. In the coming period, we may see an escalation of such interference. Pakistan, for its part, will feel tempted to exploit the differences that have cropped up between Karzai and Washington.
Pakistani commentators see the Americans "breathing down his [Karzai's] neck harder then ever". They anticipate that in the name of a crusade against public corruption and for good governance, the US will seek the exclusion of important political allies of Karzai who belonged to the Northern Alliance, such as Fahim, Karim Khalili, Mohammed Mohaqiq, Rashid Dostum and Ismail Khan. Indeed, these NA stalwarts ("warlords") will stubbornly reject a Taliban-dominated power structure in Kabul.
Therefore, in the shadowy world of the spooks, the second Karzai presidency may be starting on a bloody note. From all accounts, Laghmani was a popular figure in the Afghan security establishment and he figured in Karzai's inner circle. The general expectation was that he was destined to occupy a key post in any new government under Karzai. There will be many in Kabul who may want to avenge his untimely death.
[1] Quatrain 71of the The Rubaiyat by Persian poet Omar Khayyam (circa 1048-1143) reads, The Moving Finger writes, and having writ, Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a line, Nor all your tears wash out a Word of it.
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
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