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Afghanistan postpones latest vote result release
KABUL — (AFP) – Afghan electoral authorities have cancelled the scheduled release on Saturday of the latest tranche of results from controversial elections that have been overshadowed by fraud allegations.
Tally's round numbers hint at fraud in Afghan vote
Sat Sep 5, 2009 8:06pm IST By Hamid Shalizi and Peter Graff
KABUL (Reuters) - Every single voter in the village of Torzai in Afghanistan's Kandahar province backed incumbent Hamid Karzai for president, official results showed, and at four of its eight polling stations, he received exactly 500 votes.
Afghan presidential challenger wants results held
By HEIDI VOGT The Associated Press
KABUL — The leading challenger in Afghanistan's presidential vote urged electoral officials Saturday to stop announcing preliminary results because of "highly suspicious numbers" in tallies released so far.
Pashtuns lose patience with court of King Karzai
By Matthew Green September 4 2009 The Financial Times
Sitting cross-legged on carpets in a villa in Kabul, Pashtun elders arrayed in magnificent turbans and clutching strings of prayer beads broke the day’s Ramadan fast in silence. Only after they had mopped
AFGHANISTAN: ATTENTION RIVETS ON COMPLAINT COMMISSION AS FRAUD ALLEGATIONS MOUNT
9/04/09 Eurasianet
A EurasiaNet Q&A with commission head Grant Kippen Conducted by Aunohita Mojumdar
As evidence of electoral fraud continues to mount, and the Afghan government delays publicizing results of the August 20 presidential and provincial council elections, attention is focusing on a single point
UN planning summit in Afghanistan next spring
Fri Sep 4, 2009 7:53pm EDT
UNITED NATIONS, Sept 4 (Reuters) - The United Nations is seeking to arrange a summit in Afghanistan early next year to tackle political and economic issues in the strife-torn country, U.N. officials said on Friday.
NATO probes airstrike on tankers in Afghanistan
By Frank Jordans And Jason Straziuso, Associated Press Writers – Sat Sep 5, 7:36 am ET
KUNDUZ, Afghanistan – The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan is "very seriously" concerned over reports civilians may have died in an airstrike against hijacked fuel tankers, an aide said Saturday
Afghans mourn dead under outcry of NATO bombing
KUNDUZ, Afghanistan, Sept 5, 2009 (AFP) - Afghans on Saturday mourned the dead from a NATO bombing that killed scores of people and renewed an outcry over civilian casualties at the hands of Western troops in an eight-year war.
Ashdown asks whether Afghanistan war can be won
Sat Sep 5, 7:57 am ET
LONDON (AFP) – The government needs to ask whether the war in Afghanistan can still be won, the former high representative in Bosnia said Saturday.
In Afghanistan, Let's Keep It Simple
By Ahmed Rashid The Washington Post Sunday, September 6, 2009
For much of the 20th century before the Soviet invasion in 1979, Afghanistan was a peaceful country living in harmony with its neighbors.
EU mulls Afghan stability plans
Saturday, 5 September 2009 05:55 UK BBC News
European ministers are expected to use a summit to discuss ways to promote stability in Afghanistan by focusing on civilian reconstruction.
Spain eyes 200 more troops in Afghanistan - PM
Reuters via Yahoo! UK & Ireland News - Sep 05 5:14 AM
Spain plans to send 200 more soldiers to Afghanistan, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said Saturday. Skip related content
EU piles pressure on next Afghan government, regrets bombing - Summary
Sat, 05 Sep 2009 14:56:39 GMT EARTHtimes.org
Stockholm- The European Union on Saturday piled pressure on the next Afghan government by calling on Kabul to step up its fight against corruption and do more to uphold human rights. "More needs to be done"
NATO head calls for closer EU ties in Afghanistan
Fri Sep 4, 2009 7:30am EDT
PARIS, Sept 4 (Reuters) - NATO and the European Union must work together more closely in Afghanistan because the current lack of cooperation is endangering troops on the ground, the alliance's head said on Friday.
Taliban torch girls' school in Afghanistan
Press TV - Sep 05 3:12 AM
Armed Taliban militants have burnt down a girls' secondary school in Nangarhar province in east Afghanistan.
A Stable Pakistan Needs a Stable Afghanistan
The fight against militant Islam must be pursued on both sides of the border.
Wall Street Journal By FREDERICK W. KAGAN 5 Sept 2009
Winning the war in Afghanistan—creating a stable and legitimate Afghan state that can control its territory—will be difficult. The insurgency has grown in the past few years while the government's legitimacy
Barack Obama As Charlie Wilson?
The Washington Post By Stephen G. Rademaker Saturday, September 5, 2009
Twice in 25 years, Afghanistan has been cast in American politics as the "good" war, worthy of American support, and contrasted with a "bad" war that allegedly was not. The first time, this worked out reasonably
Pentagon seeks stability in Afghanistan deployments
As part of the counterinsurgency mission, US Army units will return to the same regions in order to build on experience and develop stronger relationships on the ground.
The Christian Science Monitor By Gordon Lubold September 5, 2009
Washington - The US Army announced that it would begin deploying the same headquarters units to the same regions in Afghanistan in a sign that the new US commander is serious about creating an effective counterinsurgency mission there.
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Afghanistan postpones latest vote result release
KABUL — (AFP) – Afghan electoral authorities have cancelled the scheduled release on Saturday of the latest tranche of results from controversial elections that have been overshadowed by fraud allegations.
The next batch of results from polling stations would be released on either Sunday or Monday, a spokeswoman for the Independent Electoral Commission said.
"It is because of a technical problem that we will not be able to make any announcement today," Marzia Siddiqi told AFP.
She said the IEC hoped to be able to release the preliminary result at its next announcement. Final results are not due before September 17.
The IEC has been releasing the results piecemeal since the elections for president and provincial councillors were held on August 20.
Throughout the laborious process of gradual announcements, the two main contenders for the presidency, incumbent Hamid Karzi and Abdullah Abdullah, have each claimed victory.
Abdullah, formerly foreign minister, has also alleged widespread vote-rigging by Karzai's camp and has threatened to reject any result he regards as compromised.
The latest results were released September 3, and showed Karzai maintaining a lead with 47.3 percent of the results from 60 percent of the polling stations used in Afghanistan's second only direct presidential election.
Out of 3.69 million valid votes, Karzai won 1.74 million and Abdullah 1.2 million or 32.6 percent, the IEC announced.
The winner needs to secure an outright majority of 50 percent plus one vote in order to avoid a run-off, which many observers have warned could be damaging if turnout proves even lower a second-time round.
NATO and Western allies have stressed in recent days their long-term commitment to keeping troops in Afghanistan to fight a resurgent Taliban, despite concerns about fraud and low turnout in the elections.
The country was still reeling Saturday from a NATO air strike in northern Kunduz province on Friday that officials said killed scores of people.
Officials said the dead were mostly insurgents, but Karzai said any targeting of civilians was unacceptable. His office said 90 people were killed and injured.
Memorial prayers were said Saturday in nearly a dozen villages for those killed in the strike.
Daily attacks and bombings highlight the challenges that the next president will face in combating an insurgency that has made 2009 the deadliest year for more than 100,000 foreign troops fighting against Taliban rebels.
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Tally's round numbers hint at fraud in Afghan vote
Sat Sep 5, 2009 8:06pm IST By Hamid Shalizi and Peter Graff
KABUL (Reuters) - Every single voter in the village of Torzai in Afghanistan's Kandahar province backed incumbent Hamid Karzai for president, official results showed, and at four of its eight polling stations, he received exactly 500 votes.
The election commission has so far published only partial results of the Aug. 20 vote, and says it has excluded ballots where it suspects fraud. Yet results on its Web site already include a remarkable number of figures that end in zeros.
Karzai's main opponent Abdullah Abdullah says that is ironclad proof of fraud on a massive scale.
Abdullah's aides passed out lists on Saturday of more than 100 polling centres where they said a check of the official results online would show numbers that appear bogus.
"This is the blatant violation of the procedure and I think it is stealing in daylight," said Abdullah, who has shown signs of becoming increasingly exasperated since the Aug. 20 vote.
At one polling station in a school in the Zerok district of Paktika province, exactly 400 votes were cast, all for Karzai.
At a mosque in Kandahar's Sayed Bosa village, Karzai received all 4,085 votes cast. Of the mosque's eight polling stations, two reported Karzai with exactly 500 votes, two with 510, three with 520 and one with 515.
These and other round numbers pop out of tables published on the election commission's website here
FRAUD?
Allegations of fraud have held up official results from the election, now more than two weeks old, and threaten to wreck confidence in a vote that had been a centrepiece of U.S. President Barack Obama's regional strategy.
Western officials initially hailed the election, which Taliban fighters failed to scupper with violence. But as reports of fraud mount, those assessments have become more guarded.
So far, the election commission has published results of only about 60 percent of polling stations, saying it has excluded ballots where it suspects fraud.
That so many round numbers have nevertheless slipped through "shows the extent of the fraud, which again unfortunately shows not only the government of Afghanistan has engineered it, but it has been co-engineered by the IEC as well," Abdullah said.
IEC spokesman Noor Mohammad Noor said the election commission stood by the numbers on its Web site and referred complaints to a separate Electoral Complaints Commission, known as the ECC.
Karzai's staff were not available for comment.
The partial results so far show Karzai leading but falling just short the outright majority needed to win in a single round.
Most of the ballots have yet to be counted in the south, heartland of Karzai's support base and also the part of the country where Abdullah says most fraud took place.
The remaining southern results could swing the election for Karzai in a single round, but Abdullah says he will reject the outcome if fraudulent results are not excluded.
Western officials say fraud can still be corrected by the complaint commission, which is led by a Canadian and has the authority to set aside ballots it suspects were stuffed.
The watchdog says it is probing more than 2,000 complaints, including more than 600 serious enough to affect the results.
"This underlines the importance of the ECC's work. They must be allowed to complete the process so they can ensure the integrity of these polls," said Aleem Siddique, spokesman for the U.N. mission which appointed three of the ECC's five members.
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Afghan presidential challenger wants results held
By HEIDI VOGT The Associated Press
KABUL — The leading challenger in Afghanistan's presidential vote urged electoral officials Saturday to stop announcing preliminary results because of "highly suspicious numbers" in tallies released so far.
Results from the Aug. 20 election have been dribbling out alongside a torrent of complaints of ballot box stuffing and voter intimidation. International and Afghan observers have been critical of the vote but have held back judgment until counting and fraud investigations have finished.
Partial results from 60 percent of polling stations show President Hamid Karzai ahead but still shy of the more than 50 percent needed to avoid a runoff.
Former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said that the tallies released so far show suspicious figures, with a number of stations posting nearly identical numbers for Karzai and none for any other candidate. Abdullah said those numbers were "highly suspicious" and indicate that the electoral commission is not holding back votes from areas where complaints have been filed.
The electoral commission has said it is only announcing "clean votes," not reporting those that suggest ballot-box stuffing or other fraud.
Abdullah has previously alleged fraud on the part of the Karzai administration and said that electoral workers, appointed by Karzai, are partisan to the president. He said the latest tallies are proof that the system is rigged.
"It is state-engineered fraud. It is not violations here and there," Abdullah said. "I request the electoral commission not to announce the provisional results anymore because it's fraudulent."
In eastern Paktika province, six polling centers showed hundreds of votes for Karzai, with none for any other candidate, Abdullah noted. Karzai has strong support in the province, where the majority of people belong to his Pashtun ethnic group, but Abdullah said it was highly unlikely that not a single person cast a ballot for one of the more than 30 other candidates.
"The commission has done its best to be impartial and prevent any fraud," the Independent Electoral Commission said in a statement responding to Abdullah's allegations. The statement did not directly address the charge of statistical irregularities in results and officials were not available for comment.
A separate, U.N.-backed complaints commission is supposed to act as a check on the electoral commission for these types of allegations, but Abdullah said that group is working too slowly.
The latest countrywide results released Thursday show Karzai with 47 percent and Abdullah running second with 33 percent.
More had been scheduled for release Saturday, but the electoral commission said early in the day that it was delaying results. Abdullah said he had made an appeal directly to the commission but did not say if the delay was due to his request.
Abdullah said he would not call his supporters out in protest if the request is not met, but warned that they may take action on their own if they feel they are being cheated.
"I still urge our supporters to stay calm, but people's patience will run out someday," Abdullah said.
Voting day itself was marred by Taliban attacks that killed dozens. Turnout was low amid the violence and threats of recrimination against voters.
Abdullah called on international bodies and foreign governments with troops in Afghanistan to push more strongly for a quick and thorough investigation of fraud. He said attempts to look past allegations in the name of preserving calm were misguided.
"If a leadership is imposed on people based on fraud ... this in itself is a recipe for instability," he said.
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Pashtuns lose patience with court of King Karzai
By Matthew Green September 4 2009 The Financial Times
Sitting cross-legged on carpets in a villa in Kabul, Pashtun elders arrayed in magnificent turbans and clutching strings of prayer beads broke the day’s Ramadan fast in silence. Only after they had mopped up the last of the lamb stew with hunks of bread and lit the first of the night’s cigarettes was the name Hamid Karzai mentioned. Expletives soon began to fly.
There was raucous laughter when one of the elders summed up the feelings in the room towards the Afghan president. Turning to me, he said: “If you had come and opened a voting station against Karzai, we would have voted for you.”
Pashtun anger is the biggest threat to US President Barack Obama’s hopes of winning the Afghan war. The community – which makes up 45 per cent of the population – lives mainly in the south of the country, where the insurgency is fiercest. Many Pashtuns are fighting in it or harbour sympathies for the cause.
The only way to stabilise Afghanistan is to bring Pashtun leaders behind the central government. The problem is that some Pashtun tribes are deeply disillusioned with Mr Karzai – a fellow Pashtun. If, as seems likely, he wins re-election, he will have to find a way to soothe this anger if the west’s project is to stand a chance of success.
Ethnic solidarity, strong in Afghanistan, would normally dictate that Pashtuns vote along community lines. Yet this group of 20 or so elders – and many others besides – abandoned him in favour of Abdullah Abdullah in the elections held on August 20. It is a measure of Mr Karzai’s unpopularity among many in his natural constituency that they would choose a man who, though his father is Pashtun, is not regarded as one of their tribe.
For many Pashtun voters, Mr Karzai has become a distant figure. He operates an almost regal rule from the garrison-like presidential palace in central Kabul. Yet he lacks the modernising instincts of some of Afghanistan’s former kings. Instead of the development they championed for their poverty-stricken realm, Mr Karzai has become ensnared by a court run on favour, position and family business networks.
Bringing peace to Afghanistan is essentially an armed popularity contest. The new strategy pursued by General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of more than 100,000 international troops in Afghanistan, is based on the realisation that military might matters little unless the government it protects can deliver for ordinary people. Gen McChrystal needs to convince Afghans they are better off under the western-backed administration than the resurgent Taliban.
Pashtun elders, who occupy commanding positions as opinion-leaders in their villages, were initially happy that a fellow Pashtun emerged to lead the country following the ousting of the Taliban’s austere theocracy in 2001. Indeed, it was only because Mr Karzai was Pashtun and drawn from a leading family that he was able to become president at all.
Yet the past eight years have sown deep divisions between members of Pashtun tribes who have captured dominant positions in provincial government and the security apparatus, and those who feel excluded. Fractious at the best of times, the Pashtuns are increasingly split.
Grim-faced, the elders who had come to Kabul to lodge complaints of electoral fraud by Mr Karzai’s agents recounted multiple stories of treachery, nepotism and violence. They explained how Mr Karzai’s allies have managed to hoodwink Nato forces into settling their old scores with rival Pashtun tribes by unfairly portraying them as Taliban fighters.
Elders accused the president’s brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, the governor of Kandahar province, of orchestrating ballot-rigging to ensure he stayed in office – a comfortable platform for running a business empire. Mr Wali has always denied involvement in the drugs trade, saying it is propaganda spread by his opponents. Yet rival Pashtun tribes feel he runs a predatory state bent on subjugating them. He is nicknamed “the king of the south”.
The Taliban are adept at exploiting this sense of Pashtun alienation. Every mistake by central government in the southern provinces makes it easier for them to adopt the mantle of freedom fighters defending Islam against a corrupt, western-backed, nepotistic and morally bankrupt regime.
Pashtuns have also become disillusioned with the increasing dominance of the Tajik minority in the military and intelligence services. Increasingly, Mr Karzai is viewed as a figurehead installed to lend a veneer of Pashtun power. This anxiety about domination by Tajiks, with powerful allies among the Uzbek and Hazara communities, is a point not lost on the Taliban, who exploited it in pre-election propaganda.
Even so, sections of the Pashtun community are so disaffected with Mr Karzai that they are willing to vote for a half-Tajik to get rid of him. Mr Abdullah’s political base is in the Northern Alliance of Tajiks and Uzbeks, not natural allies for Pashtuns who feel a strong sense of entitlement to rule Afghanistan.
Evidence of massive vote-rigging in the south risks raising Pashtun anger to boiling point. Abdul Zahir, an elder from Uruzgan province, warned that his thousands of followers would not accept results fabricated in favour of Mr Karzai. “They won’t go on to the streets to protest,” he said. “They will go straight to the mountains and start fighting the government.”
Mr Karzai must start delivering better government if he is returned to the presidency. But to do that, he has to regain the popularity among Pashtuns that he once enjoyed as a leader in exile.
The writer is the FT’s south Asia security correspondent
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AFGHANISTAN: ATTENTION RIVETS ON COMPLAINT COMMISSION AS FRAUD ALLEGATIONS MOUNT
9/04/09 Eurasianet
A EurasiaNet Q&A with commission head Grant Kippen Conducted by Aunohita Mojumdar
As evidence of electoral fraud continues to mount, and the Afghan government delays publicizing results of the August 20 presidential and provincial council elections, attention is focusing on a single point -- the Electoral Complaints Commission. Comprised of Afghan and international advisers, the ECC - the repository for all allegations of electoral fraud, manipulation and wrongdoing - will not only help determine the final outcome of the elections, but also the way Afghans view the democratic process.
According to the most recent figures, the ECC has received 2,187 complaints since polling day, of which it says 652 have the potential to influence results.
Grant Kippen, the ECC’s Canadian head, held the same position during the last elections in 2005. He says awareness about voters’ rights and the electoral process has increased over the past four years. In an interview with EurasiaNet, Kippen laid out the tasks and the limitations of the ECC, insisting that the commission’s role is not to rubber stamp a process that lacks legitimacy, but to add credibility to Afghanistan’s democratic process.
EurasiaNet: How do you compare the political contest today to 2005?
Kippen: It may sound hokey, but I am not really paying much attention to the political situation. We have a lot of challenges just because we were late in setting up this organization and getting our headquarters open; finding and hiring people; training them; getting our provincial offices open. We had the first meeting of our commission on April 26. [Editor’s note: Dates for the 2009 elections were only finalized in late January after a political tussle between the president and parliament.]
EurasiaNet: Do you feel the expectations of the ECC are too high and too wide? Are there things that people should not be expecting from this office when the final results are out?
Kippen: I think people are expecting us to make some sort of statement about the credibility and the legitimacy of the elections. We are not going to do that. We will be rendering decisions based on the complaints we receive. We’ll let the decisions speak for themselves. How others want to interpret our decisions -- that is up to them.
EurasiaNet: The pressure on your commission has increased since the international community was seen to have rushed too quickly to endorse the elections. Do you think this has increased the expectations people have of the ECC?
Kippen: If you look at the process, we have very little ability to influence activities at the front end before they take place. We deal with alleged violations - infractions. It is after something takes place that our role comes into play.
We can inform people about what we do and hopefully discourage the various stakeholders from taking wrong actions, or what is deemed to be in violation of the electoral law. But we have very little influence in being able to actively prevent things. One of the things, had we been established earlier, we could have done more of, was public outreach - to advise candidates and others about the law, and what they needed to respect. But there is also a responsibility on all the stakeholder groups involved in the process to know the law as well. We can only do so much from our perspective.
EurasiaNet: Your mandate enables you to order a re-poll. Theoretically speaking, could you order the entire election process to be rescinded and held again?
Kippen: Under the law, it states re-polling [is in our mandate], so theoretically you could say the entire country. But you have to think of what that would entail, what kind of evidence would be needed to make that kind of decision. In the complaints that have come in since Election Day, I don’t recall any saying that the entire elections were fraudulent and therefore the entire process needs to be redone. The complaints have been about a certain polling station or polling center, about certain districts.
EurasiaNet: But if they were widespread enough, might a certain percentage - an overwhelming percentage - be considered enough to call for a re-poll?
Kippen: We will have to wait and see. We are still in the early days of our investigations and some of the complaints do speak to large areas - a district-wide basis. We will have to see what evidence comes forward from the investigations and make our decisions accordingly.
EurasiaNet: There has been much focus on fraud and malpractice. But many voters were unable to vote. Does your mandate look at people’s inability to exercise their right to vote? And to what extent did insecurity prevent people from voting?
Kippen: Yes, some of the allegations are about access to a polling station or polling center. That is something we will be investigating. We would have to look at what kind of remedy was possible, if security was an issue, and if it prevented people [from voting].
If the polling station was open and people did not come to vote, one can argue that was a personal decision. We can’t fault the IEC, [the president-appointed Independent Election Commission] or the security forces. The IEC went to a lot of effort to make sure they could open as many polling centers as possible. But we also have to recognize that we are in a conflict environment here.
EurasiaNet: One of the things you have addressed is the absence of benchmarks, and the need for an electoral certification process. In the absence of that, is everyone fishing around to determine what constitutes credibility?
Kippen: At the end of the day it’s really the Afghan population: the voter population that is going to have to decide how they felt about the election, and if their will is reflected in the vote.
EurasiaNet: Before the elections, you made a number of recommendations, including the need for a strengthened ECC. But not much has changed since the last elections. Were you going into this process with your hands tied?
Kippen: We basically have a structure that mimics what we had in 2005. It would have been much more advantageous to our organization had we been [formed] earlier. For example, if we had provincial offices established during the challenge period, we would not have had to work the process through IEC provincial offices. We could have done it through our own offices. [Editor’s note: The challenge period allows for vetting candidates for possible links to armed groups].
A lot of the things in the observer reports [on the 2005 elections] were not followed through on: the civic education recommended in the interim period, a voter registry, some sort of national identity card, or voter ID. Unfortunately, those things didn’t happen in the interim. But we have a process, we can’t go back, we just need to look at what we can do going forward.
EurasiaNet: Given the fact your recommendations were not accepted, and given the limitations of resources and your mandate, is there not a risk that you end up rubber-stamping a compromised electoral process?
Kippen: No, I don’t think we are rubber-stamping at all. Part of the challenge here - but also a great privilege and opportunity certainly for the internationals - is to work with our Afghan colleagues to build up an institution like the ECC and to try to demonstrate to Afghans that there is an institution that they can rely on, that they can access if they feel they need to. So I don’t think we are rubber-stamping anything. I think we have been very upfront and transparent about what we are doing and I think and I hope that that we are able to contribute to the credibility of the process by our actions.
Editor's Note: Aunohita Mojumdar is an Indian freelance journalist based in Kabul. She has reported on the South Asian region for the past 19 years.
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UN planning summit in Afghanistan next spring
Fri Sep 4, 2009 7:53pm EDT
UNITED NATIONS, Sept 4 (Reuters) - The United Nations is seeking to arrange a summit in Afghanistan early next year to tackle political and economic issues in the strife-torn country, U.N. officials said on Friday.
"The summit has been proposed as a means of bringing the next Afghan government and its international partners together around a common agenda for Afghanistan over the next few years," said Ari Gaitanis, a spokesman for the U.N. peacekeeping department.
The country held elections last month. Partial results show President Hamid Karzai inching toward re-election in a single round, but opposition candidate Abdullah Abdullah has accused authorities of ballot-rigging.
"We want to see fresh momentum on governance and development once the elections are over, and it's hoped this meeting will contribute to that," Gaitanis said.
Afghanistan is mired in an 8-year-old conflict pitting Afghan and NATO-led international forces against Taliban guerrillas. U.S. and NATO casualties in Afghanistan are at record levels and doubts are growing about the war in the United States and other NATO nations.
Gaitanis said the summit would likely held in the Afghan capital, Kabul, next spring, but details were being worked out and no list of invitees had so far been prepared.
Other officials said the United Nations, which maintains a civilian mission in Afghanistan charged with leading international efforts to promote peace and stability, would play a coordinating role in the proposed summit.
Afghanistan has been the subject of repeated international conferences. In February 2006, some 50 countries agreed on a "compact" in London to improve security and efficient governance, promote economic development and curb drug production.
A conference in Paris in June 2008 pledged some $20 billion to finance a national development strategy. (Reporting by Patrick Worsnip; Editing by Peter Cooney)
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NATO probes airstrike on tankers in Afghanistan
By Frank Jordans And Jason Straziuso, Associated Press Writers – Sat Sep 5, 7:36 am ET
KUNDUZ, Afghanistan – The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan is "very seriously" concerned over reports civilians may have died in an airstrike against hijacked fuel tankers, an aide said Saturday, as the alliance investigated the attack that killed up to 70 people.
A U.S. F-15E Strike Eagle jet dropped two 500-pound (225-kilogram) bombs on the two tankers early Friday after they were seized by the Taliban in Kunduz province. Local officials said the ensuing fireball killed both militants and villagers who had swarmed around the tanks to siphon off the fuel, but it was unclear how many were civilians.
The airstrike occurred despite Gen. Stanley McChrystal's orders restricting use of airpower if civilian lives are at risk. High civilian casualties in military operations have enraged Afghans and undercut support for the war against the Taliban.
An aide to McChrystal, who briefed reporters, said the general was taking reports of civilian deaths "very seriously."
McChrystal discussed the incident with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and later told senior commanders that "we need to know what we are hitting," the aide said, speaking on condition of anonymity under command policy.
McChrystal told reporters Saturday in Kabul that he wanted to find out what happened in Kunduz "so that we first can prevent it from happening again — or minimize the chances that it happens again — and correct anything that we might be able to correct about it like helping the injured."
A 10-member NATO investigative team flew over the site on the Kunduz River where the U.S. jet, called in by the German military, bombed the tankers, which reportedly had become stuck trying to cross a river. German officials have said the Taliban may have been planning a suicide attack on the military's nearby Kunduz base using the hijacked tankers.
The investigative team led by U.S. Rear Admiral Gregory J. Smith, NATO's director of communications in Kabul, also spoke to two wounded villagers in the Kunduz hospital, including a boy and a farmer with shrapnel wounds.
Smith said it was unclear yet how many civilians were at the site of the blast. "Unfortunately, we can't get to every village."
Mohammad Shafi, 10, who was injured in the blast and shifted to Kabul for treatment, said that his father had told him not to go near the stolen tankers, but he went anyway. "While I was going to get the fuel, on the way I heard a big bang, and after that I don't know what happened," he said from his hospital bed, with bandages on his arm and leg.
A bomb blast, meanwhile, hit a German military convoy Saturday, damaging at least one vehicle and wounding four troops, none seriously. Kunduz provincial police chief, Abdullah Razaq Yaqoobi, said a suicide car bomb caused the blast, though German military officials said it was a roadside bomb.
An AP reporter at a nearby German base said the blast created a shock wave that could be felt inside the base. The thousands of German troops in Kunduz have come under increasing militant attack in a region that had largely escaped the scale of violence seen in the east and south of Afghanistan.
Germany said 57 fighters were killed in Friday's airstrike and no civilians were believed in the area at the time, based on surveillance of the tankers by a drone aircraft. NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen, however, acknowledged some civilians may have died, and the U.S.-led coalition and the Afghan government announced a joint investigation.
Local government spokesman Mohammad Yawar estimated that more than 70 people were killed, at least 45 of them militants. Investigators were trying to account for the others, he said.
The local governor, Mohammad Omar, said 72 were killed and 15 wounded. He said about 30 of the dead were identified as insurgents, including four Chechens and a local Taliban commander. The rest were probably fighters or their relatives, he said.
Many of the bodies were burned beyond recognition, and villagers buried some in a mass grave.
The deputy U.N. representative to Afghanistan, Peter Galbraith, said Saturday he was "very concerned" about the reports of civilian deaths.
"Steps must also be taken to examine what happened and why an airstrike was employed in circumstances where it was hard to determine with certainty that civilians were not present," Galbraith said.
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Afghans mourn dead under outcry of NATO bombing
KUNDUZ, Afghanistan, Sept 5, 2009 (AFP) - Afghans on Saturday mourned the dead from a NATO bombing that killed scores of people and renewed an outcry over civilian casualties at the hands of Western troops in an eight-year war.
The air strike destroyed two fuel tankers hijacked by the Taliban at a time when witnesses said villagers had rushed towards the vehicles, carrying any container they could to collect free fuel at the insurgents' invitation.
Officials said the dead were mostly insurgents, but Afghan President Hamid Karzai -- leading the count in fraud-tainted elections -- said any targeting of civilians was unacceptable. His office said 90 people were killed and hurt.
Memorial prayers were heard Saturday in nearly a dozen villages for those who were killed in northern Kunduz province, where the atmosphere was highly charged, witnesses said.
The air strike also underscored the increasing Taliban presence in parts of the north that straddle a new supply route for foreign troops coming through Tajikistan in order to minimise dependence on the volatile route from Pakistan.
The White House expressed "great concern" over the loss of civilian lives while European governments warned the raid risked undermining the NATO mission of 64,500 troops from more than 40 countries trying to defeat the Taliban.
NATO, UN and Afghan teams have been on the ground investigating how many people died, their identities and the chain of events that led to the strike.
Police and the interior ministry said up to 56 Taliban were killed and 10 more wounded, including a 12-year-old child, when a NATO air raid targeted the tankers after they were hijacked en route from Tajikistan to Kabul.
Mahbubullah Sayedi, a spokesman for the government in Kunduz gave the highest death toll, saying 90 people were killed, but said most were Taliban.
The insurgent militia, which frequently exaggerates it claims as part of its propaganda effort in an eight-year war against Western troops and the Afghan government, said 150 villagers, most of them young boys, were killed.
The incident came four days after the US and NATO commander in Afghanistan submitted a review into the nearly eight-year war, calling for a revised strategy to defeat the Taliban and reverse the country's "serious" situation.
General Stanley McChrystal's predecessor, General David McKiernan, was removed after air strikes killed dozens of civilians in western Afghanistan.
"It's vital that NATO and the Afghanistan people come together" to resolve the country's problems, British Foreign Minister David Miliband told reporters.
"And obviously incidents like this undermine that," he added.
The White House also said the incident would be investigated and NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen pledged to conduct a thorough investigation.
ISAF said it bombed two stolen fuel trucks spotted on the banks of the Kunduz river, saying a large number of insurgents were killed but expressing regret for "any unnecessary loss of human life".
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Ashdown asks whether Afghanistan war can be won
Sat Sep 5, 7:57 am ET
LONDON (AFP) – The government needs to ask whether the war in Afghanistan can still be won, the former high representative in Bosnia said Saturday.
Paddy Ashdown, whose candidacy as international envoy to Afghanistan was vetoed by President Hamid Karzai in 2008, told BBC radio that Britain had made "catastrophic errors" in the country.
"Events are still moving against us in Afghanistan and we have lost a very great deal of time," said Ashdown, who was the UN's high representative for Bosnia-Hercegovina from 2002 to 2006.
"This was the right war to fight but we have made catastrophic errors over the last five years and unless we can turn this thing round very quickly I think things will not get better, they are likely to get worse."
He said that Britain should not be asking whether its forces should be fighting in Afghanistan, "but the rather more brutal question -- can we win it from where we are now?"
Ashdown criticised the leadership of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who made a keynote speech Friday in support of the war, as more bodies were repatriated from Afghanistan.
"What we needed yesterday was a battle cry to stir the nation. What we got, I fear, was a rather worn exercise in post-rationalisation," Ashdown said.
"In order to give the country a sense of why we are there, we need a little more passion, a little more charisma and a little more clarity.
Ashdown led the Liberal Democrats, the third biggest party, from 1988 until 1999. Before that he served in elite military forces.
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In Afghanistan, Let's Keep It Simple
By Ahmed Rashid The Washington Post Sunday, September 6, 2009
For much of the 20th century before the Soviet invasion in 1979, Afghanistan was a peaceful country living in harmony with its neighbors.
There was a king and a real government, which I witnessed in the 1970s when I frequently traveled there. Afghanistan had what I'll call a minimalist state, compared with the vast governmental apparatuses that colonialists left behind in British India and Soviet Central Asia.
This bare-bones structure worked well for a poor country with a small population, few natural resources and a mix of ethnic groups and tribes that were poorly connected with one another because of the rugged terrain. The center was strong enough to maintain law and order, but it was never strong enough to undermine the autonomy of the tribes.
Afghanistan was not aiming to be a modern country or a regional superpower. The economy was subsistence-level, but nobody starved. Everyone had a job, though farm labor was intermittent. There was a tiny urban middle class, but the gap between rich and poor was not that big. There was no such thing as Islamic extremism or a narco-state.
In 2002, I spent a great deal of time in Washington trying to urge the Bush administration to focus on rebuilding Afghanistan's minimalist state, which had been utterly destroyed by 30 years of war.
At that time a bunch of experts in Washington, some now closely associated with Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, estimated that it would cost the international community about $5 billion a year for 10 years to re-create a basic Afghan state that could counter any threat that al-Qaeda or the Taliban might pose.
The keys were investment in agriculture, because that is where jobs lie; rebuilding the roads that used to link the major cities and border towns, so the economy could take off; and investing in an Afghan army and police force. In addition, the country needed a workable government model, modern and inclusive education and health programs, and a functioning justice system.
We all know what happened. The Bush administration left Afghanistan underresourced, underfunded and in the hands of the CIA and the warlords, and went off to fight in Iraq.
When al-Qaeda and the Taliban saw that George W. Bush was not serious about Afghanistan, they found it easy to return. The insurgency began in the summer of 2003, as the Taliban reoccupied large chunks of the country, used drug money to arm its men, and improved their firepower and tactics so much that the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen, recently said the situation is "serious" and "deteriorating."
Now any operation to patch together a minimalist Afghan state would cost between $10 billion and $15 billion a year and require tens of thousands more Western troops, which nobody is willing to provide. The U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, is widely expected to request additional forces, but he's not going to get that many.
Today Washington is bickering over what constitutes success in Afghanistan, whether the Obama plan will work, how long American public opinion will hold up, how many more troops and dollars are needed and how to stop its alleged NATO allies from slipping out through the back door. Asked what success would look like, Holbrooke even quipped: "We'll know it when we see it."
Many dissenters in Washington, such as columnist George Will, insist that the Afghans are incapable of learning and unwilling to build a modern state. Others, including former British diplomat Rory Stewart, argue that Afghan society should be left alone. But the dissenters do not sufficiently acknowledge the past failures of the Bush administration that led us to this impasse. What's worse, they offer no solutions.
So what needs to be done? First, the American and European people need to be told the truth: Their governments have failed them in Afghanistan over the past eight years, and not a single aspect of rebuilding the minimalist state was undertaken until it was too late. The capital, Kabul, for example, got regular electricity only this year, despite billions of dollars in international aid. Millions of dollars for agriculture has been wasted in cockamamie schemes to grow strawberries and raise cashmere goats.
Governments also need to explain that the terrorist threat has grown and that al-Qaeda has spread its tentacles throughout Africa and Europe. And the West must admit that the Taliban has become a brand name that resonates deep into Pakistan and Central Asia and could extend into India and China.
Second, the minimalist state must be rebuilt at breakneck speed. President Obama understands this. His plan for the first time emphasizes agriculture, job creation and justice; on paper, at least, it's an incisive and productive blueprint. But will he be given the time to carry it out?
The Democrats want to give him just until next year's congressional elections and then start bringing the troops home. For the first time, more than 51 percent of Americans want their men and women back from Afghanistan. The Republicans are looking for slipups, such as the apparent fraud in the presidential election last month, so they can pounce.
However, the Obama administration needs two or three years before it has any chance of success. So the president's first task is to create public and congressional support to give the plan sufficient time.
Third, the insurgency can never be defeated as long as the rebels enjoy a haven. The retreating Afghan Taliban was welcomed in Pakistan in 2001 and is still tolerated there because of a certain logic put forward by the Pakistan army that mainly involves containing India's growing power in the region and in Afghanistan in particular.
Bush never really pushed this issue, choosing to treat then-Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf with kid gloves. Today the Islamabad government is divided between civilians and the military, and as the civilians show themselves more inept, the army's power is once again ascendant.
In recent months the army has seemed more determined to take on the Pakistani Taliban -- since April it has lost 312 soldiers and killed some 2,000 Taliban members. Yet there is no strategic shift to take on the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda in the tribal areas that border Afghanistan.
Despite Holbrooke's attempts to pursue a regional strategy, there is still no breakthrough with Pakistan. And India continues to act tough with Islamabad, offering the Americans little room to maneuver. There is no easy way out of this quandary except time and more international aid to Pakistan.
Last, there have to be Afghan partners on the ground to help build a minimalist state. Unfortunately, Bush ignored that too. The corruption, the growth of the drug trade and the failure to build representative institutions after partially successful elections in 2004 and 2005 were all glossed over, as Bush feted President Hamid Karzai and did not ask hard questions.
The apparent rigging of the Aug. 20 elections has plunged Afghanistan into a political and constitutional crisis for which neither America nor the United Nations has any answer. (In another sign of turmoil, the deputy intelligence chief was blown up by a suicide bomber last week, and the Taliban claimed responsibility.) But the electoral fraud was assured months ago when Karzai began to ally himself with regional warlords, drug traffickers and top officials in the provinces who were terrified of losing their jobs and their lucrative sinecures if Karzai lost. It seemed obvious to everyone except those who mattered in the West.
To emerge from this mess with even moderately credible Afghan partners will be difficult, but it has to be done. (The Americans could start by forcing Karzai to create a government that includes all leading opposition figures.) Without a partner, the United States becomes nothing but an occupying force that Afghans will resist and NATO will not want to support. Holbrooke's skills as a power broker will be sorely tested, with his past successes in the Balkans a cakewalk compared with this perilous path.
The Obama administration can come out of this quagmire if it aims low, targets the bad guys, builds a regional consensus, keeps the American public on its side and gives the Afghans what they really want -- just the chance to have a better life.
There is no alternative but for the United States to remain committed to rebuilding a minimalist state in Afghanistan. Nothing less will stop the Taliban and al-Qaeda from again using Afghanistan and now Pakistan to wreak havoc in the region and around the world.
review_12@hotmail.com
Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist who has covered Afghanistan for 30 years, is the author of "Taliban" and "Descent into Chaos: The U.S. and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia."
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EU mulls Afghan stability plans
Saturday, 5 September 2009 05:55 UK BBC News
European ministers are expected to use a summit to discuss ways to promote stability in Afghanistan by focusing on civilian reconstruction.
The meeting, in Sweden, comes one day after Nato said civilians were likely to be among up to 90 people killed in an air strike in Afghanistan's north.
A number of ministers have called for a quick inquiry, and the US has expressed "great concern" at the incident.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai said targeting civilians was "unacceptable".
Both Nato and the Afghan president have pledged to hold investigations into the air strike.
German troops called in the raid after Taliban rebels hijacked two fuel tankers in the northern province of Kunduz.
Nato said many Taliban insurgents who had taken the tankers were killed but it admitted it had reports of many civilian casualties.
The Nato-led forces in Afghanistan said they regretted "any unnecessary loss of human life".
A statement from Mr Karzai's office said the president expressed "deep sorrow for the loss of our compatriots" and "emphasised that innocent civilians must not be killed or wounded during military operations".
Drug eradication
As EU foreign ministers gathered for Saturday's meeting, there were fears that the deadly air strike risked undermining the credibility of the international presence in Afghanistan, reports the BBC's Oana Lungescu, in Stockholm.
No-one in the EU is talking about an exit strategy, but all insist that insecurity cannot be addressed by military means alone, our correspondent adds.
Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said the EU had to promote economic growth through projects in the countryside to replace drug trafficking and the cultivation of opium poppies.
Also high on the ministers' priority list is the training of new security forces. The EU has around 400 police trainers in Afghanistan and has promised to double that, but deployment has been slow.
The EU, like other international donors, is closely watching the vote count in the presidential election, marred by serious fraud allegations, our correspondent says.
A further tranche of official results are due to be released on Saturday.
With ballots from 60.3% of polling stations tallied, Mr Karzai has 1,744,428 votes to 1,201,838 for Abdullah Abdullah, his main challenger, representing a lead of 47.3% to 32.6%.
A result is scheduled for 17 September but fraud allegations must be cleared before it is made official.
Meanwhile, the United Nations said it hoped to arrange a post-summit between the Afghan government and international partners to promote democracy.
Details where still being decided, but officials said the summit was likely to be held in the Afghan capital, Kabul, early next year.
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Spain eyes 200 more troops in Afghanistan - PM
Reuters via Yahoo! UK & Ireland News - Sep 05 5:14 AM
Spain plans to send 200 more soldiers to Afghanistan, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said Saturday. Skip related content
That would bring Spanish troop levels up to about 1,000, not counting a contingent of 450 who went to Afghanistan to boost security for elections held on August 20.
"Apart from reporting on the current situation, the defence minister will probably ask parliament to increase troop numbers by around 200," Zapatero told Onda Cero radio.
Zapatero had already said earlier he was willing to send more soldiers to Afghanistan if needed.
U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan are due to increase to about 110,000 by the end of the year from a current 103,000.
Spanish troops came under attack from insurgents in northern Afghanistan Thursday, in which the Defence Ministry said at least 13 rebels were killed.
Zapatero also referred to an air attack in Afghanistan on Friday in which Afghan officials say scores of people were killed, many of them civilians, as "awful."
He said that when Spain chairs the European Union during the first half of 2010, it will stress the need for a change in strategy to update a military exit plan from Afghanistan.
(Reporting by Blanca Rodriguez; Writing by Martin Roberts)
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EU piles pressure on next Afghan government, regrets bombing - Summary
Sat, 05 Sep 2009 14:56:39 GMT EARTHtimes.org
Stockholm- The European Union on Saturday piled pressure on the next Afghan government by calling on Kabul to step up its fight against corruption and do more to uphold human rights. "More needs to be done" in the fight against corruption and the rampant drug trade that is feeding both the Taliban insurgency and bribery among Afghan officials, said Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt after chairing an informal meeting of the EU's top diplomats in Stockholm.
"We are determined to increase pressure on ourselves, as well as on the Afghan government," Bildt said.
A text penned by the EU's Swedish presidency called on the international community and Afghanistan's next government to "prioritize objectives, especially in those areas which have seen limited progress, such as governance, corruption and human rights," particularly women's rights.
The wording of the document, and Bildt's comments after the meeting, confirmed that the international community was increasingly dissatisfied with the progress seen so far in Afghanistan, despite nearly a decade of continued support.
In the immediate, Afghanistan's electoral committees should "cleanse" the results of the August presidential elections of any serious fraud allegations, Bildt said.
Incumbent President Hamid Karzai appears set for a run-off in October with his former foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah, according to provisional results. But the credibility of the vote risks being marred by reports of widespread irregularities.
Ministers also pushed for an international conference, to be held in the spring in Kabul, once the new government assumes power, to highlight issues raised by Western diplomats.
According to Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, the conference would be attended by 38 foreign ministers with the aim of signing a "new contract" between the new Afghan government and the international community.
The meeting in Stockholm took place against the backdrop of a devastating NATO air raid near the Afghan city of Kunduz on Friday, which Afghan officials now claim killed at least 150 people, mostly civilians.
Ministers and EU officials expressed deep regret over the incident and welcomed NATO's planned probe into the affair.
"This was a tragedy," Bildt said. "I do not think we will win this war by killing. It might be necessary to kill opponents at times, but I think we will win this war by protecting the population."
The incident took place in an area controlled by German forces, adding pressure on Berlin ahead of the country's general election later this month. Opposition to the West's military role in Afghanistan has been traditionally strong in Germany.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said the international community should work with the Afghan people, "not bomb them."
Noting that the Taliban were recruiting ordinary Afghans by offering them as much as a family's typical monthly earnings, Kouchner said the international community should match those offers and provide a boost to local security forces.
According to the EU's external affairs commissioner, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, some progress had been achieved in Afghanistan, particularly in the area of education, health and the fight against drugs, pointing to a drop in opium cultivation of 20 per cent.
Rather than simply pump ever more money into the country, the EU should refine its strategy to make the country self-sufficient, Ferrero-Waldner said.
On top of providing roughly 1 billion euros (1.4 billion dollars) in aid each year, the EU is also busy training Afghan police forces.
However, the mission continues to be marred by shortfalls, with only 265 of the planned 400 trainers in place to date.
Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moller said member states' failure to live up to their promises in this respect was "unacceptable."
The Swedish initiative discussed in Stockholm called on the 27- member bloc to help build railways, crack down on drug barons, improve the coordination of international aid and use its own experience in the Balkans to stop Pakistan-based Taliban insurgents from crossing the border into Afghanistan.
"This (conflict) is not going to be won by primarily military means. It has to be won through peace and state-building," Bildt said.
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NATO head calls for closer EU ties in Afghanistan
Fri Sep 4, 2009 7:30am EDT
PARIS, Sept 4 (Reuters) - NATO and the European Union must work together more closely in Afghanistan because the current lack of cooperation is endangering troops on the ground, the alliance's head said on Friday.
Behind the scenes, diplomats and strategists have increasingly voiced their anger about the lack of security agreements between NATO and the EU because of a tussle involving Turkey and EU member Cyprus.
In an interview with French newspaper Le Monde, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen made no reference to Turkey and did not gave any explanation for the failure to strike an accord.
"It's crucial to improve cooperation between NATO and Europe. It has been impossible to conclude a security agreement between NATO and the EU in Afghanistan," he was quoted as saying by the paper in a preview of its Saturday edition. "This poses security problems for staff on the ground."
Rasmussen, who took over as head of the Western military alliance on Aug. 1, said he would launch an initiative soon to address the problem.
Diplomats have said Turkey's frustration over by being sidelined by the European Union and its long dispute with Cyprus are hindering NATO-EU relations.
Diplomats told Reuters earlier this year that due to pressure from Turkey, NATO troops in Afghanistan were not sharing plans and documents about the security situation with EUPOL, the EU's police training force there.
They said Turkey was refusing to accept any agreements on mutual security between NATO and the EU, and that EUPOL had to strike agreements with each country instead -- which they said was dangerous and caused uncertainty among troops.
Turkey initially objected to Rasmussen becoming the head of NATO but agreed after U.S. President Barack Obama offered promises that one of Rasmussen's deputies would be a Turk.
In the interview, Rasmussen, who met French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Thursday, also renewed a call for increasing the number of Afghan soldiers in the security forces, and deploying more foreign instructors to train the locals.
Regarding relations with Russia, which he has made a top priority since taking over the helm at NATO, Rasmussen repeated that the alliance had an "open door policy" and wanted to develop a strategic partnership with Moscow. (Reporting by Sophie Hardach)
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Taliban torch girls' school in Afghanistan
Press TV - Sep 05 3:12 AM
Armed Taliban militants have burnt down a girls' secondary school in Nangarhar province in east Afghanistan.
Haji Shirin Mohammed, security chief of Nangarhar Education Department told Press TV on Saturday that Taliban raided the school building on Friday night.
They detonated a bomb in the school's warehouse where tins of edible oil were being kept and awaiting distribution amongst students at a later time.
About 700 tins of oil and several rooms of the school have been destroyed during the explosion. The tins of oil had been donated to the school within the framework of the United Nations World Food Programme (UNWFP) that considers such a ration for girl students every three months.
No one has been arrested in connection with the explosion so far. Taliban have declined from disclosing anything to the media.
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A Stable Pakistan Needs a Stable Afghanistan
The fight against militant Islam must be pursued on both sides of the border.
Wall Street Journal By FREDERICK W. KAGAN 5 Sept 2009
Winning the war in Afghanistan—creating a stable and legitimate Afghan state that can control its territory—will be difficult. The insurgency has grown in the past few years while the government's legitimacy has declined. It remains unclear how the recent presidential elections will affect this situation.
Trying to win in Afghanistan is not a fool's errand, however. Where coalition forces have conducted properly resourced counterinsurgency operations in areas such as Khowst, Wardak, Lowgar, Konar and Nangarhar Provinces in the eastern part of the country, they have succeeded despite the legendary xenophobia of the Pashtuns.
Poorly designed operations in Helmand Province have not led to success. Badly under-resourced efforts in other southern and western provinces, most notably Kandahar, have also failed. Can well-designed and properly-resourced operations succeed? There are no guarantees in war, but there is good reason to think they can. Given the importance of this theater to the stability of a critical and restive region, that is reason enough to try.
Critics of the war have suggested we should draw down our troops and force Pakistan to play a larger role in eliminating radical extremists. American concerns about al Qaeda and Taliban operating from Pakistani bases have led to the conventional wisdom that Pakistan matters to the U.S. because of what it could do to help—or hurt—in Afghanistan. The conventional wisdom is wrong as usual.
Pakistan is important because it is a country of 180 million Muslims with nuclear weapons and multiple terrorist groups engaged in a mini-arms race and periodic military encounters with India—the world's most populous state and one of America's most important economic and strategic partners. Pakistan has made remarkable progress over the last year in its efforts against Islamist insurgent groups that threatened to destroy it. But the fight against those groups takes place on both sides of the border. The debate over whether to commit the resources necessary to succeed in Afghanistan must recognize the extreme danger that a withdrawal or failure in Afghanistan would pose to the stability of Pakistan.
Pakistan's ambivalence toward militant Islamist groups goes back decades. The growth of radical Islamism in Pakistan dates to the 1970s and '80s when the government encouraged radicalism both for domestic political reasons and to combat Soviet encroachment. The Pakistani government, with U.S. support, established bases in its territory for Afghan mujahedeen (religious warriors) fighting the Red Army.
When Afghanistan descended into chaos in the '90s following the Soviet withdrawal, Pakistan intervened by building the Taliban into an organization strong enough to establish its writ at least throughout the Pashtun lands. Links forged in the anti-Soviet war between Pashtun mujahedeen and Arabs from the Persian Gulf remained strong enough to bring Osama bin Laden to the territory controlled by mujahedeen hero and Taliban leader Jalalluddin Haqqani. The 9/11 attacks were planned and organized from those bases.
The 9/11 attacks caught Pakistan by surprise and forced a radical, incoherent and unanticipated change in Pakistan's policies. Under intense pressure by the U.S., including an ultimatum from Secretary of State Colin Powell, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf chose to ally with America against Pakistan's erstwhile Afghan and Arab partners. Mr. Musharraf long tried to channel his own and U.S operations narrowly against al Qaeda while diverting them from the remnants of the Taliban (whom elements of the Pakistani intelligence services continued to support).
But U.S. pressure to act in Pakistan's tribal areas and the inexorable logic of the conflict led Pakistan to take actions that brought it into open conflict with some insurgent groups. Those groups in turn came to see Pakistan itself as their main enemy. By 2004, Pakistan faced a serious and growing insurgency in its tribal areas. By 2008 that insurgency had spread beyond the tribal areas into more settled areas such as the Swat River Valley. By 2009 it had metastasized to the point where Punjabis and not just Pashtuns were fighting the Pakistani government.
Pakistan turned an important—and little noticed—corner in its fight against its own Islamist insurgents this summer. The Pakistani military drove the Pakistani Taliban out of Swat and the surrounding areas, including much of the northern part of the tribal areas. Most recently, Pakistani military operations (with covert American support) decapitated the most dangerous Pakistani Taliban group based in Waziristan by killing its leader, Beitullah Mehsud. He was thought to be responsible for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
In contrast with previous such efforts, the current Pakistani government has retained significant military force in all of these areas and so far appears to be continuing the fight even after these successes. Remarkably, the combat divisions now holding Swat and other areas in the northwest of Pakistan are among those most critical to Pakistan's strategy to defend against the always-feared Indian attack.
But as American and NATO forces in Afghanistan discovered, the fight against the Taliban must be pursued on both sides of the border. Pakistan's successes have been assisted by the deployment of American conventional forces along the Afghanistan border opposite the areas in which Pakistani forces were operating, particularly in Konar and Khowst Provinces.
Those forces have not so much interdicted the border crossings (almost impossible in such terrain) as they have created conditions unfavorable to the free movement of insurgents. They have conducted effective counterinsurgency operations in areas that might otherwise provide sanctuary to insurgents fleeing Pakistani operations (Nangarhar and Paktia provinces especially, in addition to Konar and Khowst). Without those operations, Pakistan's insurgents would likely have found new safe havens in those provinces, rendering the painful progress made by Pakistan's military irrelevant.
Pakistan's stability cannot be secured solely within its borders any more than can Afghanistan's. Militant Islam can be defeated only by waging a proper counterinsurgency campaign on both sides of the border.
Mr. Kagan is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and co-author of "Ground Truth: The Future of U.S. Land Power" (AEI Press, 2008).
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Barack Obama As Charlie Wilson?
The Washington Post By Stephen G. Rademaker Saturday, September 5, 2009
Twice in 25 years, Afghanistan has been cast in American politics as the "good" war, worthy of American support, and contrasted with a "bad" war that allegedly was not. The first time, this worked out reasonably well for America and its Afghan allies. It is unclear whether that will be true this time around.
Twenty-five years ago, Afghanistan was the setting for "Charlie Wilson's War," chronicled in George Crile's book and the movie of the same name. At the heart of that story is a seeming paradox: A Democratic congressman from Texas leads Speaker Tip O'Neill's Congress to stake out a position well to the right of Ronald Reagan on whether America should try to defeat the Red Army in Afghanistan. Urged on by Wilson for the better part of a decade, Congress brushes aside the qualms of the Reagan administration and regularly increases U.S. support for the Afghan mujaheddin, leading ultimately to the Red Army's defeat, the collapse of Soviet communism and victory in the Cold War.
This is the same Ronald Reagan whose policy of arming anti-communist rebels came to be known as the "Reagan doctrine," who famously labeled the Soviet Union the "evil empire"? The same Tip O'Neill who ferociously opposed Reagan's military buildup and his support for the anti-communist contras in Nicaragua? How could this be?
The answer is tucked away in Crile's book. He quotes Wilson as saying that to persuade members of Congress to vote with him on Afghanistan, Wilson told "the liberals it would prove that they were against communism even if they didn't support the contras." Wilson, of course, was passionately committed to the mujaheddin and cannot be faulted for using the foil of a "bad" war to advance the cause he believed in.
To O'Neill and his lieutenants in the congressional leadership, however, the question of Afghanistan was never more than an afterthought to their desire to defeat Reagan's policies in Central America. Crile quotes a defensive Tony Coelho, then House Democratic whip, explaining that the "only reason the political institutional atmosphere would permit something like this to develop was because of the cover of Nicaragua. . . . No one paid any attention to it, and they would have had it not been for Nicaragua."
There was nothing paradoxical, therefore, about Charlie Wilson's success. He didn't succeed despite the congressional leadership's hostility toward the contras but, rather, because of it. And even after the contras receded as a political issue in Congress, Wilson persisted and saw his cause to victory.
For the past two years, Afghanistan has been at the center of a remarkably similar story. As a candidate for president, Barack Obama correctly sensed that to win the Democratic nomination he needed to portray himself as more opposed to the Iraq war than any of his opponents, but that to win the general election he needed to be able to reassure the American people of his determination to defeat terrorism.
Afghanistan offered a convenient solution: Obama held it up as the "good" war that he was determined to win, unlike the "bad" war in Iraq that he would end. He promised a military surge in Afghanistan, and he dared John McCain and the outgoing administration to get to his right on the issue.
On a political level this strategy worked brilliantly, enabling Obama to deflect any suspicion that he was a McGovernite ready to surrender to Islamic extremism. But now that he is president, events are testing his professed commitment to victory in Afghanistan.
By all accounts the war is going badly. August was the deadliest month ever for Americans in Afghanistan. Obama has already ordered 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, and our military commanders are calling for even more. A Washington Post-ABC News poll last month found that a majority of Americans no longer support the war, and the president's former supporters in Code Pink and similar antiwar organizations have declared that they will turn their sights on him if he doesn't wind down U.S. involvement.
Will President Obama prove to be the Charlie Wilson of this story, confident of what he has been saying all along about Afghanistan and committed to victory over the Taliban? Or will he turn out to be the Tip O'Neill, willing to exploit Afghanistan to help end the "bad" war he really cares about, but ultimately indifferent to what happens in Afghanistan? As the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq proceeds and the challenges in Afghanistan mount, it won't be long till we learn the answer.
The writer, senior counsel of BGR Government Affairs LLC, was an assistant secretary of state from 2002 to 2006, with responsibility for arms control, nonproliferation and international security.
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Pentagon seeks stability in Afghanistan deployments
As part of the counterinsurgency mission, US Army units will return to the same regions in order to build on experience and develop stronger relationships on the ground.
The Christian Science Monitor By Gordon Lubold September 5, 2009
Washington - The US Army announced that it would begin deploying the same headquarters units to the same regions in Afghanistan in a sign that the new US commander is serious about creating an effective counterinsurgency mission there.
The announcement Thursday comes as the US assesses the form and size of its commitment in South Asia and what the top commander there, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, deems is necessary to get the job done.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Great Britain made a forceful speech Friday outlining why British troops must continue fighting there amid waning public support in both the UK and the US for some have called in comparison to Iraq "the righteous war"
The Pentagon announcement Thursday means that the Army will deploy the same three or four division headquarters to the same regions in Afghanistan to maintain relationships with the Afghan people. Normally, units rotate in and out depending on the availability of forces – whoever is free, goes. Now there will be some predictability of units in Afghanistan.
"This is counterinsurgency best practice. This is wonderful," says John Nagl, a noted counterinsurgency expert and president of the Center for a New American Security, a think tank in Washington. "Counterinsurgency is all about personal relationships and in-depth cultural, economic and political knowledge."
Ultimately, there will be more predictability at home, too. But first, morale will take a hit. To make the continuity of deployments happen, the Army has to extend one division headquarters – the 82nd Airborne from Fort Bragg, N.C. already in Afghanistan – by about 50 days and another unit by about two weeks.
The Pentagon will also cut short by about six months the amount of time another division, the 101st Airborne at Fort Campbell, Ky., will have at home. Over time, units will see a more predictable deployment cycle, with more time at home, the Army said.
"These force flow adjustments are intended to increase dwell over time toward the 'one-year deployed, two years at home' ratio we've been looking to get to for some time," says Gary Tallman, a spokesman for the Army.
The move could have a dramatic effect on the ground in a war that has not been going well and for which there is diminishing public support. Public opinion polls suggest Americans' patience with the eight-year war continues to diminish absent a strongly articulated strategy from the Obama White House that had made "fixing Afghanistan" a chief campaign priority.
Meanwhile, the war has gotten costly: 44 Americans killed in July and 51 in August – a record high.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates defended the mission Thursday, saying the US can win there and opening the door to sending more American troops in coming months.
And in London Friday, Prime Minister Brown took "head on" the arguments being made that the Afghanistan strategy is flawed. Noting terrorist attacks like those in Bali, Madrid, Mumbai, and London, Brown said the objectives in Afghanistan are doable and the strategy is being put in place to "complete our vital task."
"These are aims that are clear and justified – and also realistic and achievable," he said. "It remains my judgment that a safer Britain requires a safer Afghanistan."
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