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Key Karzai Aide in Corruption Inquiry Is Linked to C.I.A.
By DEXTER FILKINS and MARK MAZZETTI The New York Times August 25, 2010
KABUL, Afghanistan — The aide to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan at the center of a politically sensitive corruption investigation is being paid by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to Afghan and American officials.
Afghanistan drills oil for first time in north
By Sayed Salahuddin – Thu Aug 26, 9:00 am ET
KABUL (Reuters) – Afghanistan, believed to be sitting on top of billions of dollars worth of minerals and energy sources, has extracted oil for the first time and plans to pump a modest 800 barrels a day, officials said on Thursday.
Afghan leader criticizes US withdrawal timeline
By Amir Shah, Associated Press Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan – President Hamid Karzai said that U.S. plans to start withdrawing troops from Afghanistan next year had boosted the Taliban's spirits, while an insurgent attack killed eight Afghan police in the country's increasingly volatile north Thursday.
Obama Iraq speech to signal shift to Afghan focus
By Mark S. Smith, Associated Press Writer
VINEYARD HAVEN, Mass. – With his Oval Office speech Tuesday night, President Barack Obama will signal a shift in America's focus from the Iraq War to the war in Afghanistan, his spokesman said Thursday.
Taliban kill eight Afghan police: governor
KUNDUZ, Afghanistan (AFP) – Taliban fighters overran a police post in northern Afghanistan Thursday, killing eight officers, the provincial governor said, in an attack that underscores the militia's widening insurgency.
Mr. Karzai’s Promises
The New York Times, Editorial 08/25/2010
It did not take long for President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan to forget his latest anticorruption promise. In June, he vowed that “all obstacles” to prosecuting offenders “will be removed.” Then two anticorruption agencies in Kabul arrested dozens of suspects, including a member of Mr. Karzai’s inner circle, on graft charges. Now Mr. Karzai has become one of the main obstacles.
Pakistani Taliban hint at attacks on aid workers
By Rasool Dawar, Associated Press Writer
MIR ALI, Pakistan – The Taliban hinted Thursday they may launch attacks against foreigners helping Pakistan respond to the worst floods in the country's history, saying their presence was "unacceptable." The U.N. said it would not be deterred by violent threats.
India and Afghanistan vow to fight terrorism together
Wed Aug 25, 1:28 pm ET
NEW DELHI (AFP) – India and Afghanistan on Wednesday wound up two days of talks during a visit to New Delhi by Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul, saying they would work together to combat terrorism in the region.
Young Afghan voters aim to change face of parliament
AFP By Lynne O'Donnell 26/08/2010
KABUL - As Afghanistan prepares for its next test as an infant democracy, a crop of bright young men and women is challenging the traditional Afghan belief that power lies in beards and turbans.
Spaniards rethink Afghanistan after fatal shooting
By Daniel Woolls, Associated Press Writer – Thu Aug 26, 8:31 am ET
MADRID – The shooting death of three Spaniards at a military base in Afghanistan has prompted renewed calls for the government to declare the war on the Taliban a failure and join other coalition countries in withdrawing.
Afghan Schoolgirls Sickened By Unknown Gas
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty August 26, 2010
Afghan education officials said that dozens of students and teachers at a girls' school in Kabul were sickened on August 25 by an unknown gas that spread through classrooms.
Armed men abduct parliamentary candidate, 9 others in Afghanistan
HERAT, Afghanistan, Aug. 26 (Xinhua) -- Unknown armed men abducted a female parliamentary candidates and nine of her men in Herat province west of Afghanistan, police said Thursday.
UK climbers make Afghan first ascents
BBC News By Christopher Sleight 26 August 2010
Most climbers like to push their technical limits, others want to reach the highest summits - but a few just want to find places where no-one has climbed before.
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Key Karzai Aide in Corruption Inquiry Is Linked to C.I.A.
By DEXTER FILKINS and MARK MAZZETTI The New York Times August 25, 2010
KABUL, Afghanistan — The aide to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan at the center of a politically sensitive corruption investigation is being paid by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to Afghan and American officials.
Mohammed Zia Salehi, the chief of administration for the National Security Council, appears to have been on the payroll for many years, according to officials in Kabul and Washington. It is unclear exactly what Mr. Salehi does in exchange for his money, whether providing information to the spy agency, advancing American views inside the presidential palace, or both.
Mr. Salehi’s relationship with the C.I.A. underscores deep contradictions at the heart of the Obama administration’s policy in Afghanistan, with American officials simultaneously demanding that Mr. Karzai root out the corruption that pervades his government while sometimes subsidizing the very people suspected of perpetrating it.
Mr. Salehi was arrested in July and released after Mr. Karzai intervened. There has been no suggestion that Mr. Salehi’s ties to the C.I.A. played a role in his release; rather, officials say, it is the fear that Mr. Salehi knows about corrupt dealings inside the Karzai administration.
The ties underscore doubts about how seriously the Obama administration intends to fight corruption here. The anticorruption drive, though strongly backed by the United States, is still vigorously debated inside the administration. Some argue it should be a centerpiece of American strategy, and others say that attacking corrupt officials who are crucial to the war effort could destabilize the Karzai government.
The Obama administration is also racing to show progress in Afghanistan by December, when the White House will evaluate its mission there. Some administration officials argue that any comprehensive campaign to fight corruption inside Afghanistan is overly ambitious, with less than a year to go before the American military is set to begin withdrawing troops.
“Fighting corruption is the very definition of mission creep,” one Obama administration official said.
Others in the administration view public corruption as the single greatest threat to the Afghan government and the American mission; it is the corrupt nature of the Karzai government, these officials say, that drives ordinary Afghans into the arms of the Taliban. Other prominent Afghans who American officials have said were on the C.I.A.’s payroll include the president’s half brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, suspected by investigators of playing a role in Afghanistan’s booming opium trade. Earlier this year, American officials did not press Mr. Karzai to remove his brother from his post as the chairman of the Kandahar provincial council. Mr. Karzai denies any monetary relationship with the C.I.A. and any links to the drug trade.
Mr. Salehi was arrested by the Afghan police after, investigators say, they wiretapped him soliciting a bribe — in the form of a car for his son — in exchange for impeding an American-backed investigation into a company suspected of shipping billions of dollars out of the country for Afghan officials, drug smugglers and insurgents.
Mr. Salehi was released seven hours later, after telephoning Mr. Karzai from his jail cell to demand help, officials said, and after Mr. Karzai forcefully intervened on his behalf.
The president sent aides to get him and has since threatened to limit the power of the anticorruption unit that carried out the arrest. Mr. Salehi could not be reached for comment on Wednesday. A spokesman for President Karzai did not respond to a list of questions sent to his office, including whether Mr. Karzai knew that Mr. Salehi was a C.I.A. informant.
A spokesman for the C.I.A. declined to comment on any relationship with Mr. Salehi.
“The C.I.A. works hard to advance the full range of U.S. policy objectives in Afghanistan,” said Paul Gimigliano, a spokesman for the agency. “Reckless allegations from anonymous sources don’t change that reality in the slightest.”
An American official said the practice of paying government officials was sensible, even if they turn out to be corrupt or unsavory.
“If we decide as a country that we’ll never deal with anyone in Afghanistan who might down the road — and certainly not at our behest — put his hand in the till, we can all come home right now,” the American official said. “If you want intelligence in a war zone, you’re not going to get it from Mother Teresa or Mary Poppins.”
Last week, Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat, flew to Kabul in part to discuss the Salehi case with Mr. Karzai. In an interview afterward, Mr. Kerry expressed concern about Mr. Salehi’s ties to the American government. Mr. Kerry appeared to allude to the C.I.A., though he did not mention it.
“We are going to have to examine that relationship,” Mr. Kerry said. “We are going to have to look at that very carefully.”
Mr. Kerry said he pressed Mr. Karzai to allow the anticorruption unit pursuing Mr. Salehi and others to move forward unhindered, and said he believed he had secured a commitment from him to do so.
“Corruption matters to us,” a senior Obama administration official said. “The fact that Salehi may have been on our payroll does not necessarily change any of the basic issues here.”
Mr. Salehi is a political survivor, who, like many Afghans, navigated shifting alliances through 31 years of war. He is a former interpreter for Abdul Rashid Dostum, the ethnic Uzbek with perhaps the most ruthless reputation among all Afghan warlords.
Mr. Dostum, a Karzai ally, was one of the C.I.A.’s leading allies on the ground in Afghanistan in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The agency employed his militia to help rout the Taliban from northern Afghanistan.
Over the course of the nine-year-old war, the C.I.A. has enmeshed itself in the inner workings of Afghanistan’s national security establishment. From 2002 until just last year, the C.I.A. paid the entire budget of Afghanistan’s spy service, the National Directorate of Security.
Mr. Salehi often acts as a courier of money to other Afghans, according to an Afghan politician who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared retaliation.
Among the targets of the continuing Afghan anticorruption investigation is a secret fund of cash from which payments were made to various individuals, officials here said.
Despite Mr. Salehi’s status as a low-level functionary, the Afghan politician predicted that Mr. Karzai would never allow his prosecution to go forward, whatever the pressure from the United States. Mr. Salehi knows too much about the inner workings of the palace, he said.
“Karzai will protect him,” the politician said, “because by going after him, you are opening the gates.”
Mr. Salehi is a confidant of some of the most powerful people in the Afghan government, including Engineer Ibrahim, who until recently was the deputy chief of the Afghan intelligence service. Earlier this year, Mr. Salehi accompanied Mr. Ibrahim to Dubai to meet leaders of the Taliban to explore prospects for peace, according to a prominent Afghan with knowledge of the meeting.
Mr. Salehi was arrested last month in the course of a sprawling investigation into New Ansari, a money transfer firm that relies on couriers and other rudimentary means to move cash in and out of Afghanistan.
New Ansari was founded in the 1990s when the Taliban ruled most of Afghanistan. In the years since 2001, New Ansari grew into one of the most important financial hubs in Afghanistan, transferring billions of dollars in cash for prominent Afghans out of the country, most of it to Dubai.
New Ansari’s offices were raided by Afghan agents, with American backing, in January. An American official familiar with the investigation said New Ansari appeared to have been transferring money for wealthy Afghans of every sort, including politicians, insurgents and drug traffickers.
“They were moving money for everybody,” the American official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The flow of capital out of Afghanistan is so large that it makes up a substantial portion of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product. In an interview, a United Arab Emirates customs official said it received about $1 billion from Afghanistan in 2009. But the American official said the amount might be closer to $2.5 billion — about a quarter of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product.
Much of the New Ansari cash was carried by couriers flying from Kabul and Kandahar, usually to Dubai, where many Afghan officials maintain second homes and live in splendorous wealth.
An American official familiar with the investigation said the examination of New Ansari’s books was providing rich insights into the culture of Afghan corruption.
“It’s a gold mine,” the official said.
Following the arrest, Mr. Salehi called Mr. Karzai directly from his cell to demand that he be freed. Mr. Karzai twice sent delegations to the detention center where Mr. Salehi was held. After seven hours, Mr. Salehi was let go.
Afterward, Gen. Nazar Mohammed Nikzad, the head of the Afghan unit investigating Mr. Salehi, was summoned to the Presidential Palace and asked by Mr. Karzai to explain his actions.
“Everything is lawful and by the book,” a Western official said of the Afghan anticorruption investigators. “They gather the evidence, they get the warrant signed off — and then the plug gets pulled every time.”
This is not the first time that Afghan prosecutors have run into resistance when they have tried to pursue an Afghan official on corruption charges related to New Ansari.
Sediq Chekari, the minister for Hajj and Religious Affairs, was allowed to flee the country as investigators prepared to charge him with accepting bribes in exchange for steering business to tour operators who ferry people to Saudi Arabia each year. Mr. Chekari fled to Britain, officials said. Afghanistan’s attorney general issued an arrest warrant through Interpol.
American officials say a key player in the scandal is Hajji Rafi Azimi, the vice chairman of Afghan United Bank. The bank’s chairman, Hajji Mohammed Jan, is a founder of New Ansari. According to American officials, Afghan prosecutors would like to arrest Mr. Azimi but so far have run into political interference they did not specify. He has not been formally charged.
In the past, some Western officials have expressed frustration at the political resistance that Afghan prosecutors have encountered when they have tried to investigate Afghan officials. Earlier this year, the American official said that the Obama administration was considering extraordinary measures to bring corrupt Afghan officials to justice, including extradition.
“We are pushing some high-level public corruption cases right now, and they are just constantly stalling and stalling and stalling,” the American official said of the Karzai administration.
Another Western official said he was growing increasingly concerned about the morale — and safety — of the Afghan anticorruption prosecutors.
So far, the Afghan prosecutors have not folded. The Salehi case is likely to resurface — and very soon. Under Afghan law, prosecutors have a maximum of 33 days to indict a person after his arrest. Mr. Salehi was arrested in late July.
That means Afghan prosecutors may soon come before the Afghan attorney general, Mohammed Ishaq Aloko, to seek an indictment. It will be up to Mr. Aloko, who owes his job to Mr. Karzai, to sign it.
“They are all just doing their jobs,” the Western official said. “They are scared for their lives. They are scared for their families. If it continues, they will eventually give up the fight.”
Dexter Filkins reported from Kabul, and Mark Mazzetti from Washington. Helene Cooper contributed reporting from Washington.
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Afghanistan drills oil for first time in north
By Sayed Salahuddin – Thu Aug 26, 9:00 am ET
KABUL (Reuters) – Afghanistan, believed to be sitting on top of billions of dollars worth of minerals and energy sources, has extracted oil for the first time and plans to pump a modest 800 barrels a day, officials said on Thursday.
Afghanistan's Mines Ministry plans to open bidding soon for contracts to refine the oil from the rugged Sar-i-Pul province in the north.
"The infrastructure existed there a long time ago. We overhauled them and this is the first time we are extracting oil," said Jawad Omar, a spokesman for the ministry.
Various estimates of Afghanistan's hidden wealth have been made in recent years -- some as high as $3 trillion -- but the challenge of exploiting those resources in a country at war and with little infrastructure has been too daunting for most investors.
Earlier this month, the Mines Ministry announced the find of an oilfield in the north with an estimated 1.8 billion barrels of oil north of Sar-i-Pul. Plans also remain on track for the tender of a 1.6 billion barrel Afghan-Tajik oil block in early 2011.
The north is Afghanistan's key basin for oil and gas.
Afghanistan hopes its untapped mineral deposits could help reduce its reliance on Western cash to bankroll its impoverished and aid-reliant economy, and for its soldiers to maintain security when foreign troops begin to withdraw.
Most of Afghanistan's oil needs are met by vast convoys trucked across the borders from Central Asia and Pakistan.
Omar said "a foreign institution" had helped with the Sar-i-Pul extraction but would not give any more information.
Sayed Anwar Rahmati, the governor of Sar-i-Pul, told Reuters the project had had Americans help but gave no further details.
Both the U.S. Embassy and USAID said they were not aware of who was involved in the project.
Afghanistan and foreign forces numbering almost 150,000 troops consume 2.5-3.0 million tonnes of oil annually, Omar said.
DECADES OF UNREST
The ministry this week started to re-inject gas from three gas wells which have a capacity of more than 200 million cubic meters of gas and are a key source for a fertilizer plant in Balkh province to the north of Sar-i-Pul, Omar said.
Foreign institutions have also pledged to invest $400 million in coming years to replace gas pipelines linking Balkh and the adjacent province of Jawzjan province, he said.
Afghanistan exported gas to the former Soviet Union during the Soviet occupation of the 1980s.
Ravaged by three decades of foreign interventions and civil war, Afghanistan is now faced by a growing Taliban insurgency and relies on foreign forces for control of many parts of the vast Central Asian country.
The U.S. Defense Department estimated earlier this year that Afghanistan's mineral resources could top $1 trillion, but experts say the fragile security situation could delay seeing the benefits of this wealth for years.
Afghanistan will retender by year-end a deposit of iron of 1.8 billion tonnes it had scrapped earlier this year due to the global recession and changes in world markets.
The untapped mineral resources include iron ore, copper, lithium, oil gas and gems which Afghanistan hopes to develop in coming years despite rising insecurity. Violence is at its worst since the Taliban were ousted in late 2001.
China's top integrated copper producer, Jiangxi Copper Co and China Metallurgical Group Corp, in 2007 became the first major investor in Afghanistan.
They are involved in the exploration of the vast multi-billion dollar Aynak Copper Mine to the south of Kabul.
(Editing by Paul Tait and Sanjeev Miglani)
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Afghan leader criticizes US withdrawal timeline
By Amir Shah, Associated Press Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan – President Hamid Karzai said that U.S. plans to start withdrawing troops from Afghanistan next year had boosted the Taliban's spirits, while an insurgent attack killed eight Afghan police in the country's increasingly volatile north Thursday.
Speaking to a visiting U.S. congressional delegation, President Hamid Karzai said the July withdrawal date had provided "morale value" to the insurgency, the presidential office said.
Karzai also told the head of U.S. Central Command, Gen. James Mattis, that terrorism could not be defeated without rooting out terrorist sanctuaries across the border — a likely reference to Pakistan, where the Taliban and other groups are believed to recruit fighters and base their leadership.
The increasingly outspoken Afghan leader's comments echo a common complaint among President Barack Obama's critics that the deadline gives the Taliban motivation to hold out until after next July and then make a new push for power. Obama himself has stressed that any troop withdrawals will be linked to the security situation, and American military leaders have recently been saying it could take much longer to train Afghan forces.
Violence has spiked around the country as the Taliban push back against a new security push by U.S.-led international force — bolstered by 30,000 U.S. troops in the insurgents' southern and eastern strongholds.
More than 10 militants attacked the police checkpoint outside the northern city of Kunduz, said provincial police chief Abdul Raziq Yaqoubi, adding they suspected the attackers were jihadists from Russia's restive Chechnya region who are active in the surrounding province, also called Kunduz.
He said two or three of the militants were wounded when the police fought back. The militants apparently hoped to steal the policemen's weapons but were beaten back before they could do so, he said.
Kunduz has seen an increasing number of attacks on Afghan and foreign coalition forces who rely on a supply line running south through the province from neighboring Tajikistan. Foreign fighters from Chechnya, Pakistan and the Persian Gulf infiltrate the region from the rugged mountainous border with Pakistan to the east.
Investigations, meanwhile, continued into Wednesday's attack on Spanish troops at a base in the northwestern province of Badghis used by members of Spain's paramilitary Civil Guard to train Afghan police.
Majid Khan Shakib, a member of parliament from Badghis, said the attacker's sister was married to the provincial Taliban commander and the shooting was engineered to incite an uprising against the Spanish. The shooter was killed at the scene by other Spanish police.
After word of the shooting spread, several hundred people protested and hurled stones at the Spanish compound. At least one vehicle was torched and 25 people were wounded by gunshots, although it was unclear who was shooting.
"The Taliban infiltrated the crowd yesterday and agitated everybody. They told people the Spanish were there to colonize the country," Shakib said.
Spain's Interior Ministry initially said the officers' driver opened fire on the men during a training exercise Wednesday. However, Spanish media and Afghan officials said Thursday the shooter was a driver with the Afghan police who occasionally also drove the Spanish officers. He carried an unregistered Kalashnikov rifle to a security checkpoint at the camp entrance and opened fire, provincial police chief Sayed Ahmad Sami said.
NATO spokesman James Appathurai said deliberate killings by Taliban infiltrators were "still very isolated," adding that training Afghan security forces would remain the foundation of a strategy to pass responsibility for security to Afghan forces.
"There are thousands of Afghan army and police being trained every day by NATO soldiers, and it works well. Unfortunately, there are still occasionally incidents like these," Appathurai said.
The string of attacks in the north shows the Taliban and their allies are capable of fomenting instability beyond their traditional strongholds in the east and south, which is the focus of U.S.-led military operations. Provinces in the north previously had been largely spared the violence that have affected provinces such Helmand and Kandahar in the south and Logar, Wardak, Kunar and Khost in the east.
Also Thursday, a candidate in next month's parliamentary elections said 10 of her campaign workers were kidnapped while traveling in the western province of Herat.
Fawzya Galani said she lost contact with the group at about 6 p.m. Wednesday. Villagers told her armed men had stopped the group and driven off in their two vehicles, Galani said.
Local district chief Nisar Ahmad Popal said it wasn't clear whether the kidnappers were political rivals or members of the Taliban, who are seeking to sabotage the Sept. 18 elections for 249 seats in the lower house of parliament.
Citing security concerns, Afghanistan's electoral commission has reduced the number of voting sites for the elections by almost 1,000 to 5,897. It said Thursday that number could drop further if voter safety could not be ensured.
Many Afghans say they plan not to vote, either because of insurgent threats or out of disgust with rampant corruption among government officials.
In eastern Ghazni province's Andar district, two Afghan guards working for a private security company were killed in a Taliban attack on a supply convoy, provincial police chief Zarawar Khan Zahid said.
Two attackers were killed, including a senior regional commander, Mullah Mohmmadi, Zahid said.
NATO has been stepping up operations ahead of the elections and said Thursday it had detained several insurgents in Khost province along the Pakistan border while pursuing senior members of the Haqqani network, an Islamist militant group with deep links to al-Qaida.
The alliance said Afghan and coalition forces captured two Haqqani and several Taliban leaders during 35 separate operations this week.
NATO also reported that three Afghan civilians were killed Wednesday by a homemade bomb in Kandahar's Arghandab district, a Taliban stronghold that has had a growing coalition presence.
Two Taliban commanders were also killed Wednesday in fighting with a joint Afghan-Taliban force in neighboring Uruzgan province, along with 12 regular insurgent fighters, the Afghan National Police reported.
___
Associated Press Writer Mirwais Khan in Kandahar contributed to this report.
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Obama Iraq speech to signal shift to Afghan focus
By Mark S. Smith, Associated Press Writer
VINEYARD HAVEN, Mass. – With his Oval Office speech Tuesday night, President Barack Obama will signal a shift in America's focus from the Iraq War to the war in Afghanistan, his spokesman said Thursday.
Administration officials have portrayed the 8 p.m. EDT speech as an important pivot point from a war that candidate Obama said should never have been fought to a conflict that President Obama sees as vital to the nation's security.
Previewing the speech as Obama vacationed on Martha's Vineyard, Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton said Obama also wants to thank U.S. troops who've fought bravely in Iraq. With the formal U.S. combat mission at an end, troop strength in Iraq this week dropped below 50,000 for the first time since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Many of those troops will remain in a backup and training role.
Before his White House speech, Obama will fly to Fort Bliss in Texas on Tuesday to deliver his thanks in person to troops returned from Iraq.
Burton said the Oval Office address "commemorates an important milepost in American history." He said Obama will use the occasion to speak "directly with the American people about what our mission is in Afghanistan (and) the fact that more of our efforts and focus are now on fighting al-Qaida in Afghanistan."
Iraq has long been a partisan flashpoint, and the run-up to the fall congressional campaign continued the pattern.
Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell said Obama had essentially adopted George W. Bush's strategy for gradually winding down the conflict.
McConnell said "the president (Obama) should be commended for ignoring his own campaign rhetoric."
While hailing Obama's Iraq drawdown, Burton denounced militants behind recent attacks on Iraqi security forces there. On Wednesday, a series of bombings and shootings left at least 56 dead.
"The reason for these attacks is people who don't want Iraq to flourish as a democracy," the spokesman said. "There are people who are trying to use fear and terror as a tactic to slow down what is not stoppable in that country."
Burton said Obama is confident the transition to Iraqi control "has been a successful one" and Iraqis are now capable of maintaining their own security.
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Taliban kill eight Afghan police: governor
KUNDUZ, Afghanistan (AFP) – Taliban fighters overran a police post in northern Afghanistan Thursday, killing eight officers, the provincial governor said, in an attack that underscores the militia's widening insurgency.
The attack took place in Kunduz city, capital of the province of the same name which has become increasingly restive as the Taliban expand their footprint across Afghanistan's previously peaceful north.
"Taliban attacked a police post and killed eight policemen. There were nine people in the post, one of them survived though he was injured," Kunduz Governor Mohammad Omar said.
Residents say some areas of Kunduz have come under Taliban control, and describe recruitment drives that exploit high unemployment and disillusionment with a largely corrupt state security apparatus.
In the southern province of Uruzgan around two dozen militants and three other police officers were killed during an Afghan government operation that is now in its third day, a police commander said.
NATO and the United States have 141,000 troops in the country, set to peak at 150,000 in coming weeks as efforts to quell the insurgency escalate, especially in the south.
Most deployments under a 30,000-strong troop surge ordered by US President Barack Obama are heading to Kandahar and Helmand provinces in the south, though others are being sent north to reinforce small bases run by NATO allies.
Afghan forces and their US-led military backers have intensified a push to secure volatile regions in recent weeks ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for September 18.
NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said it had "killed and captured" about 2,750 insurgents during the past 90 days, a period that coincides with the higher US troop deployment.
It did not give a breakdown of the tally nor was there any independent confirmation of the death toll.
In the same 90-day period, 242 alliance troops have been killed in the war, which is dragging towards the end of its ninth year with momentum widely seen to have turned in favour of the Taliban-led militants.
So far in 2010, 462 foreign troops have been killed in Taliban violence, according to an AFP tally.
Two Spanish paramilitary police along with a Spanish interpreter were shot dead by an Afghan policeman at a training session on a NATO base in northwestern Afghanistan on Wednesday. Their bodies were repatriated Thursday.
The Afghan man was shot dead by security forces, triggering protests by angry locals who tried to storm the base.
ISAF said a joint Afghan government-NATO investigation team had left Kabul Thursday for Bagdhis province.
The alliance is trying to build up the Afghan police force and army to enable the country to take on responsibility for national security and allow foreign troops to withdraw.
Obama has said he wants to begin the drawdown in July 2011, though military commanders say the withdrawal will be gradual and conditional on the competence of Afghan security forces.
Marine General James Conway said Tuesday that Obama's withdrawal deadline was "probably giving our enemy sustenance".
Afghan President Hamid Karzai Thursday reiterated calls on Washington to shift its military focus to "terror" hideouts outside his troubled country, saying there had been "no progress" in the war.
In comments to General James Mattis, head of US Central Command visiting Kabul, Karzai said the US-led war "will not be won unless terrorists' havens are eliminated," his office said in a statement.
Karzai was referring to neighbouring Pakistan, where Afghan officials and Western commanders say the Taliban, Al-Qaeda backers and other Islamist insurgents have strongholds from which they launch attacks on Afghanistan.
NATO said one of its reconnaissance drones, which are largely used to monitor the border regions, crashed in a Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan on Thursday.
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Mr. Karzai’s Promises
The New York Times, Editorial 08/25/2010
It did not take long for President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan to forget his latest anticorruption promise. In June, he vowed that “all obstacles” to prosecuting offenders “will be removed.” Then two anticorruption agencies in Kabul arrested dozens of suspects, including a member of Mr. Karzai’s inner circle, on graft charges. Now Mr. Karzai has become one of the main obstacles.
Last month, he overruled the agencies — and Afghanistan’s attorney general, who signed the arrest warrant — and ordered the top aide’s release. On Sunday, Mr. Karzai charged that the agencies had violated human rights and Afghan law and were foreign controlled. A spokesman announced that the president would soon issue new rules to limit the agencies’ powers.
That would be a huge setback for Mr. Karzai’s shredded domestic credibility and for the American strategy in Afghanistan, which needs a minimally credible partner. A report in Thursday’s Times that the aide, Mohammed Zia Salehi, is a paid agent of the C.I.A. shows, once again, the seamy complications of this war.
In late July, Mr. Salehi, a top national security adviser to Mr. Karzai, was arrested after being accused of soliciting bribes to help block an investigation of the New Ansari Exchange. New Ansari, a financial firm based in Kabul, is suspected of helping move billions of dollars out of Afghanistan.
The two anticorruption agencies, the Major Crimes Task Force and the Sensitive Investigations Unit, were established by the Afghan government last year with encouragement from the United States. They are independent, with broad powers to arrest, detain and try suspects, and they receive technical and other help from the F.B.I. and the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Eventually, Afghans must run things on their own, but right now American support offers the best chance for reining in endemic corruption. So far no one has offered proof of any abuse in the Salehi arrest. Mr. Karzai has said the prosecution will be allowed to proceed, but his intervention casts a shadow. We are dismayed by reports that Mr. Salehi is back working at the palace.
Mr. Karzai’s spokesman has also tried to shift blame onto the Americans, saying that foreign aid has created “an economic mafia” in Afghanistan. There are too few controls on all of the money sloshing around Afghanistan, including on the American end. But Mr. Karzai’s actions suggest that he has no desire to clean things up.
Afghan and American government contracting procedures must be streamlined and made more transparent. Afghan institutions must be strengthened. Programs must be audited. And leaders more interested in good governance than self-enrichment must have a place at every level of Afghanistan’s government.
That will take time. It cannot happen if Mr. Karzai insists on denying or covering up the predatory ways of some his closest political allies and family members.
The Afghan president needs to tread very carefully here. Americans are fast losing patience with the Afghan war and have all but written him off as a partner. Congress is threatening to withhold aid. Even more important, Afghans see their own government as corrupt and unreliable. Unless that changes, there is almost no hope of driving back the Taliban.
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Pakistani Taliban hint at attacks on aid workers
By Rasool Dawar, Associated Press Writer
MIR ALI, Pakistan – The Taliban hinted Thursday they may launch attacks against foreigners helping Pakistan respond to the worst floods in the country's history, saying their presence was "unacceptable." The U.N. said it would not be deterred by violent threats.
The militant group has attacked aid workers in the country before, and an outbreak of violence could complicate a relief effort that has already struggled to reach the 8 million people who are in need of emergency assistance.
Pakistani Taliban spokesman Azam Tariq claimed the U.S. and other countries that have pledged support are not really focused on providing aid to flood victims but had other motives he did not specify.
"Behind the scenes they have certain intentions, but on the face they are talking of relief and help," Tariq told The Associated Press by telephone from an undisclosed location. "No relief is reaching the affected people, and when the victims are not receiving help, then this horde of foreigners is not acceptable to us at all."
He strongly hinted that the militants could resort to violence, saying "when we say something is unacceptable to us, one can draw one's own conclusion."
Foreign countries have pledged nearly $800 million and provided aid workers to help Pakistan cope with floods that began almost a month ago with the onset of the monsoon and have ravaged a massive swath of Pakistan, from the mountainous north to its agricultural heartland.
The U.S. military has also stepped in to help, flying helicopters that have evacuated flood victims and delivered relief supplies in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the northwest province that was hit hardest by the floods.
It is unclear how many foreigners are operating on the ground in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which borders Pakistan's semiautonomous tribal area where the Pakistani Taliban are strongest. Many aid organizations involved in the relief effort have been in Pakistan for years and use networks of locals in the most dangerous areas.
The United Nations said Thursday that the group won't let violent threats deter its relief effort.
"There is a lot of work ahead and millions of people who need our assistance," said Maurizio Giulano, spokesman for the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. "We would find it inhumane for someone to target us and our work, effectively harming the millions of people whose lives we strive to save."
The Pakistani Taliban carried out a suicide attack against the office of the U.N.'s World Food Program in Islamabad last October, killing five staffers. In March, militants armed with assault rifles and a homemade bomb attacked the offices of a U.S.-based Christian aid group helping earthquake survivors in northwestern Pakistan, killing six Pakistani employees.
Violence has been relatively low in the country since the floods hit, but three bomb attacks in northwestern Pakistan on Monday killed at least 36 people.
While increased Taliban attacks would complicate the flood relief effort, the group could also risk backlash from the millions of victims who have lost everything and are desperate to receive food and shelter.
The death toll in the floods stands around 1,500 people, but the disaster ranks as one of Pakistan's worst ever because of the scale and massive economic damage, especially to the country's vital agricultural sector. The U.N. said earlier this week that some 800,000 people are still cut off by the floods and accessible only by air.
Pakistani officials urged anyone left in three southern towns Thursday to evacuate immediately as floodwaters broke through a levee, endangering areas previously untouched by the country's almost monthlong disaster.
The swollen Indus River broke through the Sur Jani embankment in southern Sindh province late Wednesday, threatening the towns of Sujawal, Daro and Mir Pur Batoro, said Mansoor Sheikh, a top government official in Thatta district.
Most of the 400,000 people who live in the area are thought to have evacuated already, but those remaining were warned to flee, he said.
Pakistan's senior meteorologist, Arif Mahmood, said high tides were preventing the Indus River from fully shedding excess water into the Arabian Sea.
"We hope these tides would fully subside after 48 hours," he said.
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Associated Press Writer Ashraf Khan contributed to this report from Karachi.
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India and Afghanistan vow to fight terrorism together
Wed Aug 25, 1:28 pm ET
NEW DELHI (AFP) – India and Afghanistan on Wednesday wound up two days of talks during a visit to New Delhi by Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul, saying they would work together to combat terrorism in the region.
Rassaoul met Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and held talks with his Indian counterpart S.M. Krishna on issues ranging from trade to the scourge of terrorism, a joint statement released after the talks said.
"They agreed that terrorism is the main threat undermining peace and stability in the region and reiterated their resolve to effectively combating and defeating it," it said.
Rassoul and Krishna also discussed the possibility of transforming war-torn Afghanistan into a springboard for trade between central and south Asia, the statement added.
It did not mention whether Pakistan was raised during the talks. Both sides have troubled relations with Islamabad because of their suspicions of Pakistani funding and support for extremism within their borders.
But the statement said: "They also emphasised the need to ensure that terrorist and extremist groups targeting Afghanistan and other countries in the region are denied safe havens and sanctuaries."
Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan are jostling for influence in Afghanistan, which analysts say could bring fresh instability to the country as US-led international troops eye their exit after mid-2011.
Since the US-led invasion ended the Taliban's 1996-2001 regime, India has committed 1.3 billion dollars to Afghanistan -- mainly aid for social services including health and education.
Some 4,000 Indians are building roads, sanitation projects and power lines in Afghanistan, and India is also building the new Afghan parliament.
In February this year, nine Indians were killed in a Taliban suicide attack on foreigners in Kabul, which claimed a total of 16 lives.
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Young Afghan voters aim to change face of parliament
AFP By Lynne O'Donnell 26/08/2010
KABUL - As Afghanistan prepares for its next test as an infant democracy, a crop of bright young men and women is challenging the traditional Afghan belief that power lies in beards and turbans.
The country's second parliamentary poll is scheduled for September 18, with about 2,500 candidates contesting the 249 seats in Afghanistan's Wolesi Jirga, or lower house of parliament.
Afghanistan's politics are infamously partisan, and the parliament is stacked with people with bloody or questionable pasts, seen as using their connections and positions to enhance personal power and wealth.
Almost a decade after the fall of the Taliban, a new activism is creeping into Afghan politics, with an up and coming generation of politicians ignoring Taliban threats in a bid to turn the tide of corruption and patronage.
While the UNDP says 68 percent of a population estimated at 35 million is younger than 25 years, the view that only older men are qualified to lead has proved difficult to shift.
But years of corrupt and ineffective government have attracted a wide range of younger candidates, many of whom believe they can do better than the bearded elders who have presided over 30 years of war and misery.
First-time candidates include television personalities, comedians, actresses and sports stars. Many are considered opportunists, and observers say some will be carried to victory on the recognition factor alone.
Many others are earnest in their desire to work for a better Afghanistan, keen to pay back the country for their education by working on its behalf.
Janan Mossazai says a seat in parliament would help him give voice to Afghans disillusioned by democracy, having watched impotently as massive fraud marred last year's presidential poll, which returned Hamid Karzai for a second five-year term.
"I want to give every individual voter his or her due," said 30-year-old Mossazai, running in Kabul after returning recently from studies in Canada and Central Asia.
-- Giving every Afghan a voice --
Mossazai said he wanted to convince Afghans it was worthwhile to participate in the running of their country, and that by doing so they could have a say in what sort of society they left to their children.
"Afghanistan is not an easy place to give people a true voice because there are vested interests who see their survival in the continuation of the chaos here," he told AFP.
He said he aimed to use his campaign to "make connections with like-minded candidates across the country," in the hope of pulling together a group that could become the basis of party politics now missing from Afghanistan.
"Sound political parties have to be the foundation of strong political development," he said, adding that his focus would be bringing peace to Afghanistan with the cooperation of outside interests.
Many of Afghanistan's troubles with the Taliban are traceable to Pakistan, where the group's leadership is based and which is the source of fighters, funds and the fertiliser used to make ubiquitous roadside bombs.
The United States and NATO have almost 150,000 troops in the country, trying to quell an insurgency that is spreading, the momentum now widely seen as in the Taliban's favour.
Campaigning for the poll, which got underway in late June, has already been tainted by assassinations and threats from the Taliban, who consider the election a manifestation of Afghanistan's occupation by Western forces.
In the past two months, one candidate was abducted and beheaded in Ghazni province, south of Kabul, one died in a suicide bomb attack at a mosque while campaigning in eastern Khost province, while a similar attack in Herat killed the brother of candidate Abdul Hadi Jamshidi.
The Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan (FEFA), an independent monitor, said election-related violence was escalating as the poll neared.
Election authorities have said that 938 out of a total 6,835 polling centres will not open on election day because security cannot be guaranteed.
"I'm aware of the risks and dangers that are out there that threaten every individual candidate," said Mossazai.
"I made my decision to run with that awareness. Afghans who want to make a better future for Afghanistan have to make sacrifices."
-- Fear that rights will be sacrificed --
Fear that Karzai, who wants to make a deal with the Taliban to end the war, will sacrifice hard-won constitutional rights to do so, is the motivation for 28-year-old Farkhunda Zahra Naderi.
Like Mossazai, she is campaigning for one of Kabul's 33 seats, nine of which must be won by women.
The daughter of the spiritual leader of Afghanistan's Ismaili sect, Sayed Mansoor Naderi, Farkhunda travels in a red, armoured Hummer driven by a bodyguard, and is trailed by a cameraman videotaping her every move.
"My parliamentary platform is on women's rights and human rights," she said.
"I believe the rights women have are not enough, women need to ensure their rights through political rights. Women have a presence in two of the three branches of government, (legislative) and executive, but not the judiciary.
"Our constitution is subservient to Islamic law, so women need to know their Islamic rights. No women in the judiciary means interpretation of the law is done by men, so women's rights cannot be guaranteed," she said.
"Until women get into the Supreme Court their rights are superficial and symbolic only."
Naderi has co-opted the burqa -- the pleated, voluminous, synthetic cover-all worn by many Afghan women -- in her campaign because, she said, it is an internationally-recognised symbol of Afghan womanhood.
But rather than wear it as her compatriots do, over her head with only a small mesh window to see through, she uses the fabric to create a more modern look that is simultaneously modest, high-necked and full-length, yet quirky.
Her thick black hair is covered in a fashionable scarf that matches the slate-blue of the burqa fabric, which has been cut into a tight-waisted, sleeveless dress, which she wears over a long-sleeved black top.
She uses the distinctive burqa fabric, she said, because "it is part of my identity," though as a modern, wealthy and well-connected young woman, it is up to her if and how she wears it, a choice millions of Afghan women do not have.
On a mannequin in her campaign headquarters in suburban Kabul, she shows off her piece de resistance, a Western-style graduation gown made from burqa fabric with a matching mortar-board.
This, she says, is how Afghan women should be wearing the burqa, as a celebration of their achievements.
"Afghanistan can only solve its own problems if young people go into politics to do things for their country," she said.
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Spaniards rethink Afghanistan after fatal shooting
By Daniel Woolls, Associated Press Writer – Thu Aug 26, 8:31 am ET
MADRID – The shooting death of three Spaniards at a military base in Afghanistan has prompted renewed calls for the government to declare the war on the Taliban a failure and join other coalition countries in withdrawing.
With the death Wednesday of two Civil Guards and their Iranian-born interpreter in northwestern Badghis province, Spain has lost 93 troops or police in a deployment that began in 2002 and now features a force of about 1,500. Most of the fatalities came in air crashes, but another nine were in insurgent attacks.
However, the shooting at the base during a training course for Afghan police recruits — and mob violence outside the base after word spread that the shooter had in turn been killed by Spanish officers — seems to have hit a particularly raw nerve.
Spain's Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba called the shooting a terrorist attack, although he stopped short of blaming the Taliban outright, and Spanish newspapers said flat-out that Spain's contingent had been caught up in a Taliban offensive against foreign troops and growing resentment among everyday Afghans.
The shooter worked as a driver for the local Afghan police chief, not for the Spanish police as originally believed, and this helps explain how he was able to get onto the base with a rifle hidden in the trunk, the Interior Ministry said.
While the Netherlands this month became the first NATO country to pull out of Afghanistan and other allied countries such as Canada have set timetables for withdrawing, Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has established no such schedule. This year he sent an additional 500 troops in response to an appeal from President Barack Obama, who says US troops will start going home in July 2011.
In Spain's Parliament, a small but important Catalan party called Convergence and Union signaled a shift away from what has been until now ironclad support for Zapatero's commitment in Afghanistan.
Its leader, Josep Antoni Duran i Lleida, complained Wednesday that Zapatero has for months avoided appearing in the legislature as promised to hold a full-blown debate on the Spanish mission and must do so now.
Zapatero, he said, is handling the conflict "as if the army were an NGO and ignoring the existence of a war that the international community has quite possibly lost."
The smaller United Left party called on Zapatero to bring Spain's troops home urgently, saying the allied effort to defeat the Taliban and stabilize the country had achieved nothing.
The conservative opposition Popular Party, which first launched the deployment while in power, appealed again Wednesday to the Socialist government to acknowledge that Spain is mired in a war, not simply taking part in a peacekeeping mission as Zapatero contends.
That's a way for the conservatives to get back at the Socialists over their criticism of the Popular Party government that sent peacekeepers to Iraq in 2003. The US-led invasion was hugely unpopular in Spain, where many people considered the war illegal because it lacked a United Nations mandate. The Afghan mission tends to have more support. There is no popular outcry to bring Spanish soldiers home.
The conservatives were voted out of power in 2004 elections held three days after terrorist bombings that killed 191 people on the Madrid commuter rail network and were claimed by Islamic militants who said they were exacting revenge for Spain's presence in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The newspaper El Mundo ran a cartoon Thursday showing Obama and Zapatero standing chest-deep in a pool of quicksand labeled Afghanistan and the American leader telling Zapatero, "it is best to sit still, because if you move you sink even more."
Flag-draped coffins holding the remains of the Spaniards killed in the base shooting were brought back home Thursday. A military band played Chopin's Funeral March and the national anthem as Civil Guard pallbearers carried the caskets past crying mourners dressed in black.
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Afghan Schoolgirls Sickened By Unknown Gas
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty August 26, 2010
Afghan education officials said that dozens of students and teachers at a girls' school in Kabul were sickened on August 25 by an unknown gas that spread through classrooms.
The incident was similar to earlier cases where scores of girls have been treated for dizziness, headaches, and nausea following suspected poisoning attacks.
Education Ministry spokesman Mohammad Asif Nang said 60 students and teachers from the Totia Girls School were treated after the latest incident, which is under investigation.
The incident has raised fears that Islamic militants are trying new methods to prevent girls from attending school.
compiled from agency reports
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Armed men abduct parliamentary candidate, 9 others in Afghanistan
HERAT, Afghanistan, Aug. 26 (Xinhua) -- Unknown armed men abducted a female parliamentary candidates and nine of her men in Herat province west of Afghanistan, police said Thursday.
"Ms. Fauzia Gilani was on her way to Adraskan district while unknown armed men abducted her along with four of her family members and 6 of her supporters," deputy to provincial police chief Dilawar Shah Dilawar told Xinhua.
She was going for election campaign to Adraskan district on Wednesday afternoon when unknown armed men attacked her motorcade and took her along with nine others to unknown location.
However, the police officer did not point finger at any particular groups or individuals, saying rescue operation has begun.
This is the fourth attack on parliamentary candidates over the past couple of months.
Two candidates have been killed in Taliban-linked activities in the southern Ghazni and eastern Khost provinces.
Taliban militants who had boycotted the last year Afghan presidential elections have threatened to derail the parliamentary polls set for Sept. 18 this year.
More than 930 polling centers out of the country's 6,835 polling centers would remain closed on the voting day due to Taliban-linked security problems, election body's chief Fazal Ahmad Manawi confirmed last week.
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UK climbers make Afghan first ascents
BBC News By Christopher Sleight 26 August 2010
Most climbers like to push their technical limits, others want to reach the highest summits - but a few just want to find places where no-one has climbed before.
It took Alan Halewood years of planning and 18 days of arduous travel to reach his unclimbed peak - in a country that most people wouldn't even dream of visiting.
The mountaineering instructor from Fort William made the first ascent of a 5,561m summit in the Wakhan Corridor, north-east Afghanistan.
It was the culmination of a 20-year ambition and almost three weeks' journey by train, plane, four-wheel drive cars, two sets of horses and finally on foot, battling some of the worst weather the Wakhan locals had seen for years.
The last hours were spent ascending the loose, higher reaches of the mountain solo after his climbing partner Neal Gwynne decided to go down.
His climb is unlikely to be repeated any time soon.
Alan says: "I was standing on top of a mountain in Afghanistan that probably no Westerner had even seen - maybe no human being has even seen.
"It's tucked in a little valley in the middle of nowhere and I'm turning 360 degrees and able to see nothing but snowy peaks as far as the eye could see."
No inhabited valleys overlook the mountain, so Alan named it Koh-e-Iskander - after his two-year-old son Sandy and Alexander the Great, a figure that looms large in central Asian literature.
The solo climb was followed by a delicate and often frightening descent across avalanche-prone slopes in failing light.
"If the slope had gone I probably would have been swept into a crevasse, so it took a lot of care and judgement and was very time consuming," he says.
After more than 12 hours Alan reached his tent, physically and mentally exhausted.
Camped in a tributary valley off the Wakhjir River, near the eastern tip of the Wakhan, there is little or no chance of rescue, Alan acknowledges.
"It's tense. You feel stressed and your brain is ticking over the whole time and continually judging the ground," he says.
"I didn't make the decision to go on alone in a blasé fashion."
A few days later, both climbers made it to the top of another unclimbed peak which they named Koh-e-Khat - or peak of the donkey - as the twin summit towers looked like donkey's ears.
"It was a great summit and a good one to share with Neal," Alan says.
"We were looking at some amazing sheets of rock - 800m high rock faces - and crystal clear glimmering turquoise lakes down underneath us.
"The view was quite stupendous."
The pair's pursuit of the unexplored and unclimbed took them to a country considered as one of the most dangerous in the world - something which often leads to "raised eyebrows" when people learn of their exploits, Alan says.
But, attracted by the scenery, a few adventurous tourists have started to return to the Wakhan Corridor, a spur of land created in the 19th Century as a buffer zone between the imperial powers of Russia and Britain.
'Never felt threatened'
The corridor - just 20km wide in places - is part of Badakhshan Province and has been largely untouched by the years of occupation and conflict that has blighted the rest of Afghanistan.
Welsh and Polish expeditions also visited the region this summer.
And about 70 people are expected to have travelled to the Wakhan by the end of the season, a local tour operator told the BBC.
But the murder of eight foreign medical workers in the southern half of Badakhshan in early August was a deadly reminder that no part of the country can truly be considered safe.
Though Neal says that even after learning of the deaths on their journey back through the Wakhan, they never felt at threat.
"When I look back on it the highlight will certainly be living and travelling with the people," the biology teacher at The Glasgow Academy says.
"I've travelled pretty extensively, in every continent apart from North America, and nowhere have I experienced the hospitality, generosity and kindness remotely close to what we received in Afghanistan," he adds.
"It's the poorest province in one of the poorest countries in the world. They had nothing but they gave you everything they had.
"It was incredible."
The pair say they also brought home indelible memories of a vivid land.
In Kasch Goz, they witnessed a game of Buzkashi - a type of polo traditional in central Asia and played with a goat's head.
And in Sang Naw Ishta they sheltered from the rain in a yurt, sharing tea with a Kabul electronics trader and his "gang of cut-throats" plying an ancient trade route.
Alan says that with the traders and their guide and horsemen who helped them to their base camp, there was a shared bond from travelling - and surviving - in the mountains.
"Even if they didn't understand what we were doing in the mountains, there was a level of respect for us and friendship," he says.
"In the end, we weren't employers and employees, but fellow travellers and friends."
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