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British Support for Fight in Afghanistan Falls
August 4, 2010 VOA News Henry Ridgwell | London
Opinion polls indicate support in Britain for the war in Afghanistan is falling as the public grows skeptical of the government's justification for the conflict. A total of 15 British servicemen were killed in July.
Parliamentarian candidate survives attack, guard killed in N Afghanistan
MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan, Aug. 4 (Xinhua) -- Unknown armed men attacked a parliamentarian candidate Mohammad Yusuf Ghazanfar in Balkh province north of Afghanistan killing a guard and injuring three others on Wednesday.
Divide Afghanistan at your peril
Financial Times By Ahmed Rashid August 3 2010
Over the past 32 years, Afghans have fought a series of wars to keep their country together. For all the machinations of great powers and neighbouring states, no Afghan warlord or leader has ever succumbed to outside pressure for partition.
In Kandahar, U.S. tries the lessons of Baghdad
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, August 3, 2010
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN - This city is starting to feel a lot like Baghdad.
Tall concrete blast walls, like those that surround the Green Zone, are seemingly everywhere. Checkpoints supervised by U.S. soldiers have been erected on all major roads leading into the city. Residents are being urged to apply for new identification cards that require them to have their retinas scanned and their fingerprints recorded.
Afghan Checkpoints Key in Battle for Kandahar
U.S. Military Lets Afghan Police Take Lead in Deciding Who Gets Past Gate But Keeps Eye Out on for Threats, Corruption
CBS News By Mandy Clark Aug. 3, 2010
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - (CBS) In Afghanistan, the drive to push the Taliban out of the country's second-largest city has been called the make-or-break operation of the war.
Second Afghan vice-president leaves for Pakistan
KABUL, Aug. 4 (Xinhua) -- Second Afghan Vice-President Mohammad Karim Khalili left here for a three-day official visit to neighboring Pakistan on Wednesday, a private local television channel Tolo reproted here.
Momentum becomes substitute for logic in Afghan war
The Washington Post By Eugene Robinson Tuesday, August 3, 2010
In Afghanistan, momentum has become a substitute for logic. We're not fighting because we have a clear set of achievable goals. We're at war, apparently, because we're at war.
Afghanistan: which way now?
The Guardian By Peter Beaumont 02/08/2010
As the British and US governments ponder their next move, the Observer's foreign affairs editor Peter Beaumont examines the four most likely scenarios
Planned Afghanistan drawdown a sensitive issue
CNN By Tom Cohen August 2, 2010
Washington - Less than a year from the scheduled start of withdrawing some troops from Afghanistan, opinions remain varied about exactly what will happen when the transition begins at the end of June 2011.
USAID looks to expand its media-building efforts in Afghanistan
The Washington Post - Politics By WALTER PINCUS Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Saying that "freedom of information is essential to stabilizing and rebuilding Afghanistan," the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has decided to expand its media activities in that country.
Is Afghanistan Worth It?
The U.S. cannot remain a superpower if the suspicion takes root that we are a feckless nation.
Wall Street Journal AUGUST 3, 2010
Even Americans who pride themselves on knowing their history have probably never heard of the Battle of Stones River. Fought over frigid ground in January 1863, the battle gave the Union control over central Tennessee and a badly needed morale boost after the disaster of Fredericksburg
Six guards beheaded during bank heist in Afghanistan
Examiner.com Isabelle Zehnder August 3, 2010
On Tuesday it was reported that bank robbers made off with about $269,000 in U.S. and Afghanistan currency, killing and then beheading six guards who were protecting the financial building.
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British Support for Fight in Afghanistan Falls
August 4, 2010 VOA News Henry Ridgwell | London
Opinion polls indicate support in Britain for the war in Afghanistan is falling as the public grows skeptical of the government's justification for the conflict. A total of 15 British servicemen were killed in July.
Under the cover of darkness, a fleet of Chinook helicopters ferries British troops from their base in southern Afghanistan into the heart of Taliban territory.
This is Operation Tor Shazada, the biggest offensive of the summer for British troops. They are joined by hundreds of Afghan soldiers, trying to clear insurgents from the town of Sayedebad in Helmand Province.
Coalition forces say it is a stronghold for the Taliban, where they make many of the Improvised Explosive Devices that are a daily hazard for troops and local Afghans. Captain Brad Pino is the British Platoon Commander.
"The guys are building up positions now just in case the insurgents do decide to attack," said Pino. "We are preparing stores such as rations and water so we can keep ourselves sustained and then it will just be patrolling out from the area to see if we can mix with the locals and find the insurgents."
British commanders say this Operation is making good progress, but in Afghanistan as a whole it has been a tough month, and in Britain public opinion-polls indicate public support is falling. Fifteen British servicemen were killed in July.
On a recent trip to India, British Prime Minister David Cameron justified the Afghan war by saying the troops are keeping Britain safe from terrorism.
But Professor Malcolm Chalmers of the Royal United Services Institute says the public is not buying the prime minister's reasoning.
"Both this and the previous government made this 'chain of terror' argument where we have to be in Afghanistan to prevent al-Qaida moving from Pakistan back into Afghanistan because that may prevent future terrorist attacks on the streets of London. That is a complicated and several-staged argument that is not believable by most people in this country," noted Chalmers.
In the southern province of Uruzgan the 2,000-troop Dutch contingent is packing up and pulling out, after the coalition government in the Netherlands collapsed following a long-running dispute over the deployment. Canadian troops will begin withdrawing next year.
Brigadier General Josef Blotz, a spokesman for the NATO force in Afghanistan, known as ISAF, insists the coalition is holding together.
"The overall forces posture of ISAF and of the Afghan security forces as well is increasing, so we do have the necessary force posture," said Blotz.
Even if troop numbers hold up, Chalmers says future public support for the mission depends on progress.
"If we get to the summer of 2011 and people do not feel that we have made real progress, then I do not think there is an appetite here - or an appetite in the U.S. - to say, 'Well let us have another go and another go.' And just like in Vietnam you can then get a very rapid erosion of public confidence," added Chalmers.
Analysts say it will take major progress against terrorism in Afghanistan to counter the weight of public opinion in Britain and other NATO countries that this is an unwinnable war.
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Parliamentarian candidate survives attack, guard killed in N Afghanistan
MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan, Aug. 4 (Xinhua) -- Unknown armed men attacked a parliamentarian candidate Mohammad Yusuf Ghazanfar in Balkh province north of Afghanistan killing a guard and injuring three others on Wednesday.
"I was going to Chashandi district to address a public meeting as part of election campaign but terrorists opened fire on my motorcade killing one of my guards and wounding three others," Ghazanfar told a news conference here.
One of the attackers was killed and four others were captured during the firefight, he further said.
Without mentioning the attackers' identities, he said, "They were terrorists."
Afghanistan's parliamentary election is going to be held on September 18 this year.
This is the second security incident in Balkh province over the past two days.
In the first incident happened on Tuesday in Balkh's provincial capital Mazar-e-Sharif, six guards of a private bank -- the Kabul Bank were killed and more than 270,000 U.S. dollars were robbed.
This is the fourth attack on parliamentarian candidates in Afghanistan over the past one month. In the previous attacks a parliamentarian was killed in the eastern Khost province while two others had been abducted and were set free after keeping in captivity for few days.
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Divide Afghanistan at your peril
Financial Times By Ahmed Rashid August 3 2010
Over the past 32 years, Afghans have fought a series of wars to keep their country together. For all the machinations of great powers and neighbouring states, no Afghan warlord or leader has ever succumbed to outside pressure for partition.
The war in Afghanistan just got more complicated with the release of secret military files by the Wikileaks website – a big embarrassment to the US, Nato and Pakistan. Yet despite their damaging content, the leaks should not distract from some powerful positive elements that have helped Afghanistan to survive in the past.
Afghanistan has been a nation state since 1761 – a good deal longer than four of its immediate neighbours (Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan). Even though Afghanistan has suffered severe internal wars and coups, falling victim to the entire gambit of 20th-century ideologies, the country and its people have shown remarkable resilience.
The latest attempt to suggest partition comes from an American, Robert Blackwill, a former official in the Bush administration and former US ambassador to India. Mr Blackwill wrote recently in the FT that as the US cannot win the current war in Afghanistan, it should consider a de facto partition of the country, handing over the Pashtun south to the Taliban and propping up the north and west where Uzbeks, Tajiks and Hazaras live. Such a partition, he writes “is now the best that can realistically and responsibly be achieved’’.
Really?
Not a single Afghan will ever support such a demand. In 1988-89, as the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, the KGB tried hard to convince the Uzbek warlord General Rashid Dostum to create a buffer state to protect Soviet central Asia from the Mujaheddeen. Gen Dostum described to me how he gruffly refused.
In the 1980s, and again in the 1990s, Iran tried to persuade its Shia and Hazara protégées to create a Shia corridor linking western and central Afghanistan with Iran. Afghan leaders turned Iran down. In the mid-1990s some of Tajikistan’s leaders tried, and failed, to persuade the Afghan Tajik leader Ahmed Shah Massoud to build a Greater Tajikistan.
In 1996, when the Taliban captured Kabul but initially failed to take the north, Pakistan’s Inter-services Intelligence (ISI) suggested that the Pashtun group create their own state in the south. The Taliban refused, despite their dependence on the ISI.
Twenty years ago, Gen Dostum told me that the first Afghan who suggests partition would have his throat slit. Before the attacks of September 11 2001, Taliban leaders told me the same thing. The same holds true today.
The first thing to note is that Afghanistan’s ethnic mix is extremely complex, with millions of Pashtuns living in the north amidst the Uzbeks and Tajiks. Likewise, the south has its fair share of non-Pashtuns. Partition could lead to worse horrors than witnessed at India’s division in 1947. Mr Blackwill blithely writes that “small islands of non-Pashtuns in the south and east would be an unfortunate but unavoidable consequence”.
Moreover, abandoning the south would betray those Pashtuns who have resisted the Taliban. Partition would relegate the Pashtuns to pariah status, ignored and forgotten except when the US finds it necessary – as Mr Blackwill suggests it sometimes will – to send in the drones.
Such a policy would seriously undermine Afghanistan by fuelling inter-ethnic war. It would endanger Pakistan, encouraging some of the 40m Pashtuns in Pakistan to link up with their 15m Afghan Pashtun brothers and forge an extremist ethnic state that gives refuge to terrorists.
The tragedy of the Bush administration was that for too long after September 11 all Pashtuns were treated as the enemy, and the south and east of Afghanistan became a free-fire zone for US forces. Only recently, under President Barack Obama, has there been a decisive attempt by the US and Nato to woo the Pashtuns and also to strengthen those Pashtun tribes, peoples and women who have been resisting the Taliban all this time.
In Pakistan, several thousand moderate Pashtuns have been gunned down by the Pakistani Taliban. They too need to be bolstered and supported as the Pakistan army is now, finally, belatedly trying to do.
Afghans and Pakistanis have seen the bloody results of 20th-century partitions – not only in India but also Korea, Vietnam, Germany, Yugoslavia, even Pakistan, with the separation of East Pakistan in 1971. To play around now with the borders of a region beset with extremism, terrorism and ethnic conflict would be to throw a match on a ready-made bonfire.
Yes, the situation in Afghanistan is critical, the war against the Taliban is being lost and western forces want to pull out soon. However, the only solution is dialogue between the genuine Taliban leadership, Kabul and Washington for a power-sharing deal at both the centre and in the provinces.
Mr Obama needs to move quickly. The region cannot wait for his December policy review or General David Petraeus’s attempts to inflict defeat on the Taliban before talking to them. The US and Nato must open talks with the Taliban now, forge a regional consensus among Afghanistan’s neighbours for such talks, provide Afghanistan with a long-term nation-building commitment, and slowly transfer power to the Afghan army and police. Talk of partition should be relegated to the dustbin of history.
The writer’s book, Taliban, has just been updated and reissued on the 10th anniversary of its publication
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In Kandahar, U.S. tries the lessons of Baghdad
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, August 3, 2010
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN - This city is starting to feel a lot like Baghdad.
Tall concrete blast walls, like those that surround the Green Zone, are seemingly everywhere. Checkpoints supervised by U.S. soldiers have been erected on all major roads leading into the city. Residents are being urged to apply for new identification cards that require them to have their retinas scanned and their fingerprints recorded.
As U.S. and NATO commanders mount a major effort to counter the Taliban's influence in Kandahar, they are turning to population-control tactics employed in the Iraqi capital during the 2007 troop surge to separate warring Sunnis and Shiites. They are betting that such measures can help separate insurgents here from the rest of the population, an essential first step in the U.S.-led campaign to improve security in and around Afghanistan's second-largest city.
"If you don't have control of the population, you can't secure the population," said Brig. Gen. Frederick Hodges, director of operations for the NATO regional command in southern Afghanistan.
In Baghdad, the use of checkpoints, identification cards and walled-off communities helped to reduce violence because there were two feuding factions, riven by sect. Carving the city into a collection of separate Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods allowed U.S. forces to place themselves along the borders. Both sides tolerated the tactics to a degree because they came to believe U.S. troops would protect them from their rivals.
The conflict in Kandahar is far murkier. There are no differences in religion or ethnicity: Nearly everyone here is a Sunni Pashtun. There are divisions among tribes and clans, but they are not a reliable indicator of support for the Taliban. And many residents regard U.S. forces as the cause of the growing instability, rather than the solution to it.
Military officials hope the measures will nonetheless make it more difficult for the Taliban to transport munitions into the city and to attack key government buildings. The use of biometric scans will allow soldiers at checkpoints to apprehend anyone whose fingerprints are in a database of suspected insurgents.
"Just because Afghanistan is different from Iraq, it doesn't mean you can't use techniques that worked well there," Hodges said.
Another tactic employed in Iraq and soon to be copied in Kandahar involves major outlays from a discretionary fund that commanders can use to pay for quick-turnaround reconstruction projects. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the former top commander in Iraq who recently took charge of the U.S. and NATO mission in Afghanistan, called such money "a weapon system."
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates recently approved a proposal from Petraeus to spend $227 million from the fund -- the largest-ever single expenditure -- to pay for new generators and millions of gallons of diesel to increase the electricity supply in Kandahar. Petraeus and other top military officers in Afghanistan have supported the costly effort because they think the provision of more power will lead residents to view their government more favorably, which is a key element of the counterinsurgency campaign.
But some U.S. civilian officials in the country question whether the increase in power, which will be directed toward businesses, will win over residents. The officials maintain that the United States will have to keep shelling out millions of dollars a month for diesel or risk further wrath from Kandaharis because a hoped-for hydroelectric project intended to replace the generators will take years to complete.
Green Zone revisited?
Contractors working for the NATO regional command already have installed 7,000 concrete slabs -- each eight feet wide -- around the governor's palace and the mayor's office, along major roads and in front of police stations. Demand for the walls are so high that several manufacturing sites have sprung up on the highway heading toward the airport.
Although military officials say their informal surveys of residents show significant support for walls and checkpoints, local leaders have expressed unease. Kandahar's governor, Tooryalai Wesa, told Hodges that he does not want parts of the city to turn into an Iraq-like Green Zone.
Although municipal workers have registered about 20,000 residents into the biometric database and provided them with plastic identification cards, Afghan President Hamid Karzai put the registration on hold last week because of concerns over privacy rights, military officials said.
There are other grievances. Residents near checkpoints say electronic jamming equipment used by soldiers to prevent remote-controlled bombs interferes with their mobile phones. Shopkeepers say they are losing business.
"Since they put the cement walls up, security is better, but nobody is coming to our shops," an elderly man named Rafiullah told Hodges as he visited his small stall filled with sundries next to a checkpoint on the western border.
Hodges promised to "figure out a solution." But removing any of them involves a trade-off in protection for the forces in the city. Last month, three U.S. soldiers and four Afghan interpreters were killed when two suicide bombers stormed a police headquarters building that had not yet been fully encircled with concrete walls.
Hodges said the checkpoints have forced insurgents to find alternate routes into the city, either through the desert or on dirt paths, which limit what they can transport and how quickly they can move. "Will we stop everyone? No," he said. "But it is having an effect. The enemy is having to change their movements."
The Taliban are also seeking to place new obstacles for U.S. and Afghan forces. In the Arghandab district north of Kandahar, where U.S. soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division are seeking to clear out pockets of Taliban fighters, the insurgents have seeded pomegranate groves and vineyards with homemade anti-personnel mines; several soldiers have been maimed by them over the past two weeks. Commanders are wrestling with the option of razing some fields to remove the bombs, which would eliminate many farmers' livelihoods, or assume more risk by leaving the crops untouched.
"Counterinsurgency doctrine says you don't turn the population against you," a U.S. officer in the area said. "But at how much of a cost does that make sense?"
Wayward cousins
Perhaps the most important reason population control worked to the extent it did in Baghdad was because each side believed the other posed an existential threat, and both turned to the United States for security. In many parts of southern and eastern Afghanistan, the population has yet to seek protection.
Many Kandaharis regard the Taliban as wayward brothers and cousins -- fellow Pashtuns with whom they can negotiate and one day reconcile. They also worry about siding with their government because they fear Taliban retribution, both now and when U.S. troop reductions begin next summer.
But the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy depends on persuading Pashtuns to get off the fence and cast their lot with their government. The U.S. military and civilian agencies are trying to help the government win over the public by delivering services to the population that the Taliban does not offer, including education, health care, agricultural assistance and justice based on the rule of law.
That requires capable civil servants willing to work in an unstable environment -- and that's where the strategy is hitting its most significant roadblock.
A recent effort by Karzai's local-governance directorate to fill 300 civil service jobs in Kandahar and the surrounding district turned up four qualified applicants, even after the agency dropped its application standards to remove a high school diploma, according to several U.S. officials.
The main impediment is security. Afghans don't want to work for their government or U.S. development contractors in such an unsafe environment. But if the government and contractors cannot employ qualified workers, the government cannot deliver services and will be unable to win the population's allegiance, a prerequisite for improved security.
To crack that loop, U.S. officials are exploring ways to protect Afghans working for the government. One plan under consideration would involve transforming the Kandahar Hotel into a secure dormitory surrounded by concrete walls, for civil servants. Development contractors working for USAID are building compounds with secret entrances to minimize the chances that insurgents spot staff members.
Getting government officials in place is no guarantee of success. Kandahar's governor and mayor are regarded as ineffective administrators, but U.S. and Canadian advisers are trying to transform them into more competent leaders.
In the Panjwai district to the west of Kandahar, U.S. officials say, the district governor and the police chief recently got into a fight. The chief hit the governor with a teakettle and the governor smashed a teacup on the chief's head, the confrontation culminating in a shootout between their guards.
In Arghandab, U.S. military and civilian officials spent a year working closely with -- and praising -- the district governor, Abdul Jabar. When he was killed in a car bombing in Kandahar this summer, the officials blamed the Taliban.
But some of those same officials concluded that the governor was skimming U.S. funds for reconstruction projects in his district. His killing, they think, was the result of anger by fellow residents over his not distributing the spoils, not a Taliban assassination.
"It was a mob hit," said one U.S. official familiar with the situation. "We saw him as a white knight, but we were getting played the whole time."
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Afghan Checkpoints Key in Battle for Kandahar
U.S. Military Lets Afghan Police Take Lead in Deciding Who Gets Past Gate But Keeps Eye Out on for Threats, Corruption
CBS News By Mandy Clark Aug. 3, 2010
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - (CBS) In Afghanistan, the drive to push the Taliban out of the country's second-largest city has been called the make-or-break operation of the war.
American-led forces are gearing up for battle in Kandahar but on Tuesday heavily armed insurgents staged their own offensive when they tried to storm the NATO air field outside town, CBS News Correspondent Mandy Clark reports.
With 10,000 fresh American troops taking up positions across Kandahar province, the assault by a handful of Taliban was bold, if doomed.
They chose to attack the largest, most fortified base in the region. At around 10 a.m. insurgents launched a volley of rockets into Kandahar Air Field, injuring two civilians. At the same time, another group tried to shoot their way onto the base. A quick reaction force arrived on the scene, and in the gun battle that followed, six insurgents were killed, including two who were wearing suicide vests.
Before the war, Kandahar was the Taliban's capital. They were defeated here in 2001, but they were never pushed out.
Now, for the first time, American troops are aiming to rid Kandahar of insurgents and warlords. As a first step, Army engineers are building a ring of 13 checkpoints to control every major road in and out of the city.
"You can't just do it all with one checkpoint," said Army Chief Warrant Officer 2 Eli Gerhard of the 864th Engineer Battalion. "That's why there's strategic places they are set up."
Each checkpoint is a huge - and expensive - project. One cost more than a million dollars, and it takes time and money to get permission to use the land
"You come in, you start building and then the owners or the government comes in, it causes a lot of headaches," Gerhard said.
The checkpoints are designed to keep traffic moving while making sure that no guns, drugs or insurgents get through.
It's the Afghan cops that do the searching, but there's always an American soldier nearby, keeping a very close eye.
The Afghan police are notorious for using checkpoints as toll booths, where drivers are forced to pay a bribe. Army Capt. John Thomas of the 82nd Airborne Division and his men are at one checkpoint to make sure that doesn't happen, but they prefer to let the Afghan police do most of the talking.
"They know everybody in this area," said Thomas. "If you want something done, they know exactly who to talk to. They know exactly how this area wants to be treated."
Putting american soldiers in close, constant contact with the civilian population is dangerous, and Thomas never wants his men to forget it.
"Always going to be nervous," said Thomas. "But I think you just use that to keep sharp and make sure that everybody's focused on what they need to be focused on."
Right now the focus is on Afghan cops. The success of this operation - and of the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan - depends on their ability to take over and keep the peace.
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Second Afghan vice-president leaves for Pakistan
KABUL, Aug. 4 (Xinhua) -- Second Afghan Vice-President Mohammad Karim Khalili left here for a three-day official visit to neighboring Pakistan on Wednesday, a private local television channel Tolo reproted here.
"The aim of the visit is to enhance cooperation and relationship between the two countries," Tolo television broadcast in its news bulletin.
A high ranking delegation, including Afghan Minister of Interior, minister of Commerce, minister for Refugees Repatriation Affairs and chief of Afghan National Security Directorate are accompanying the vice president in his tour to Pakistan, Tolo television added.
The visit is taking place just a day after Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari warned the western countries that the world is losing the war on terror in Afghanistan.
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Momentum becomes substitute for logic in Afghan war
The Washington Post By Eugene Robinson Tuesday, August 3, 2010
In Afghanistan, momentum has become a substitute for logic. We're not fighting because we have a clear set of achievable goals. We're at war, apparently, because we're at war.
No other conclusion can be drawn from the circular, contradictory, confusing statements that the war's commanders and supporters keep making. President Obama, in an interview with CBS taped last Friday, said it is "important for our national security to finish the job in Afghanistan." But as the war's deadliest month for U.S. troops came to an end, Obama was far from definitive about just what this job might be.
"Nobody thinks that Afghanistan is going to be a model Jeffersonian democracy," Obama said. "What we're looking to do is difficult -- very difficult -- but it's a fairly modest goal, which is: Don't allow terrorists to operate from this region. Don't allow them to create big training camps and to plan attacks against the U.S. homeland with impunity."
But if the war's aim is to eliminate the al-Qaeda base in Afghanistan from which the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were launched, that goal was accomplished long ago. There is no substantial al-Qaeda presence in the country anymore; the terrorist network's affiliates in places such as Yemen and Somalia are much more robust, and the leadership is believed to be hiding in Pakistan. What sense does it make to fight al-Qaeda where it used to be, rather than where it is now?
When he announced his escalation of the war, Obama described his troop increase as a temporary surge and pledged to begin a withdrawal next July. The administration continues to insist that this is official policy -- but warns us not to expect, you know, an actual withdrawal.
"My personal opinion is that drawdowns early on will be of fairly limited numbers," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Sunday. "I think we need to re-emphasize the message that we are not leaving Afghanistan in July of 2011. We are beginning a transition process and a thinning of our ranks, and the pace will depend on the conditions on the ground."
Gates claimed that the administration's policy in Afghanistan is "really quite clear." But this is how he described it: "We are in Afghanistan because we were attacked from Afghanistan, not because we want to try and build a better society in Afghanistan. But doing things to improve governance, to improve development in Afghanistan, to the degree it contributes to our security mission and to the effectiveness of the Afghan government in the security area, that's what we're going to do."
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave a similar description of the U.S. mission: "Afghanistan has to be stable enough, has to have enough governance, has to create enough jobs, have an economy that's good enough so that the Taliban cannot return" to establish a brutal, terrorist-friendly regime.
Is that clear enough? We're not, repeat not, engaged in nation-building -- but we're going to reform an unresponsive government, generate economic development and create loads of new jobs. Sounds like nation-building to me.
According to Mullen, "the central mission in Afghanistan right now is to protect the people, certainly, and that would be inclusive of everybody. And that, in an insurgency and a counterinsurgency, that's really the center of gravity."
All right, we're there to protect the Afghan people. But by all accounts, this effort has been showing few dividends. The more successful tactic has been the targeted assassination, often using drones, of Taliban leaders -- which is consistent with a counterterrorism strategy, not with our stated policy of counterinsurgency. But it is hard to win the affection and loyalty of Afghans while at the same time killing innocent civilians in anti-Taliban airstrikes. We can be loved as the protectors who build roads and schools, or we can be feared as the warriors who rain death from the sky. It's hard to be both.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a steadfast supporter of the administration's policy in Afghanistan, said he worried that "an unholy alliance with the right and left coming together" would coalesce in opposition to the war. "To lose there would be disastrous," he said. "To win there would be monumental. And I think we've got a good chance of winning, but by no means is the outcome certain."
He's wrong. With no real definition of victory or how to achieve it, our chance of "winning" is zero.
The writer will be online to chat with readers at 1 p.m. Eastern time Tuesday. Submit your questions and comments before or during the discussion.
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Afghanistan: which way now?
The Guardian By Peter Beaumont 02/08/2010
As the British and US governments ponder their next move, the Observer's foreign affairs editor Peter Beaumont examines the four most likely scenarios
During the latter period of the British occupation of the Iraqi city of Basra, two questions emerged: whether the high profile of British troops actually provided a target and made the violence worse? And whether the escalating conflict in that area was a direct result of primarily military efforts to bring security to it?
Soldiers in Afghanistan have raised these questions too. They have noted that, the more they go out on operations, the more they are hit; and how, with each escalation on the side of the US and ISAF, far from dampening the conflict, it has been exacerbated.
So will a reduction, perhaps to the point of withdrawal, lead to less violence? Of all the ideas bubbling around potential alternative strategies for Afghanistan, this is the most radical – the antithesis of the present counter-insurgency strategy, designed by the new US commanding officer General David Petraeus with his predecessor, Stanley McChrystal. The latter strategy, criticised by some both inside and outside the military, has been based on increasing the number of soldiers on the ground in the short term to improve security in the hope that political benefits will follow.
What would it look like?
A reverse of the surge ordered by Barack Obama, it would see troops increasingly concentrated in large civilian centres and bases, a policy tried by the British, leading to a gradual withdrawal.
How would it work?
Its proponents, few as there are, have suggested that by putting the Afghan government and forces on the spot, it might create the opportunity for an Afghan solution to an Afghan problem, avoiding all the collateral political issues created by foreign forces supporting Hamid Karzai's government.
It argues, too, that it is the presence of foreign forces that is the catalyst both for a conflict that has succeeded in presenting itself, like the war against the Soviets, as an anti-occupation struggle, as well as standing in the way of inter-ethnic reconciliation.
What are the objections?
As a military strategy, it is based on something of a paradox. Conventional thinking focuses on the control of operational space. By withdrawing, it would potentially hand that space to the Taliban. Then there is the al-Qaida question. Conventional wisdom has it that such a strategy would allow al-Qaida to return and establish new bases, although some have argued that the Taliban of 2010 is not the Taliban of the late 90s and might not be inclined to replicate a relationship that led to its first downfall.
Equally problematic is precisely what Afghanistan's neighbours – Pakistan among them – might do, confronted with such a potential vacuum. The covert war option
Several variations of this option have popped up in the past few weeks, chief among their proponents Jack Devine, former CIA deputy director of operations, who was also head of the covert Afghan Task Force during the Soviet occupation. Another supporter is David Rieff, an international affairs analyst, writer and member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Devine, pictured, agrees with some of the thinking behind the Basra option: that the "large and visible occupying army" in Afghanistan is the wrong force in the wrong place. "Our presence in Afghanistan," he argued recently, "is better left unseen. Most Afghans, even those willing to deal with us, would rather we get our military out of their country. A covert action program would address this concern. It would also cost less than a military effort in treasure and lives, and allow the US to continue to protect its interests and the interests of the Afghans."
Rieff echoes some of Devine's concerns, arguing – in an article for the New Republic – that he would rather see much less fighting in Afghanistan and more drone strikes in Pakistan, and intelligence missions on home soil against potential terrorist threats.
What would it look like?
In some respects, it would look like other theatres of what used to be known as the "war on terror", where drone and missile strikes have been used to target wanted suspects. Devine's model is the CIA's covert actions of the 80s and 2001, when its officials rebuilt their networks among tribal leaders to help topple the Taliban.
What are the objections?
Well, the CIA's covert interventions in the 80s hardly left a stable Afghanistan. And a strategy that concentrates on cross-border drone raids is deeply problematic, both because of the unpopularity of the attacks in Pakistan and because the intelligence has not prevented large numbers of civilian casualties.
The save the north option Unlike the Basra option, this strategy has more visible support, most recently from Robert Blackwill, a former deputy national security adviser to George Bush and former US ambassador to India. Blackwill is among the growing group challenging the present counter-insurgency strategy which, he said in a comment piece for the FT earlier this month, is "likely to fail".
A policy that could also be called "give the Taliban the south", it is pessimistic, arguing that on the ever-shortening political timeline for finding a successful outcome in Afghanistan, it will be impossible to sufficiently weaken the Taliban to get them to the negotiating table.
Another prominent champion of a similar-looking plan is the Pakistani author and journalist Ahmed Rashid, who has suggested reconfiguring the mission in Afghanistan to easier objectives: providing security for large numbers of Afghans in the province around Kabul, where the Taliban is weak and support for the government is strong.
How would it work?
This strategy would see coalition forces abandon the south to the Taliban to prevent the west and north of the country falling to them, too. It would require a long-term military commitment of perhaps tens of thousands of troops. Its aim would be to prevent the further spread of the Taliban while concentrating on the twin tasks of strengthening a weak central government and potentially laying down the ground for future negotiations with the Taliban which – as Rashid argues – would have the south as a future bargaining chip in any political settlement.
What are the objections?
It risks opening up not only the issue of partition but the even more dangerous question of whether there should be a Pashtun homeland – Pashtunistan. When it is discussed, the issue of the Pashtuns living on the other side of the border in Pakistan is invoked.
The steady as she goes option
Given the inherent problems in the other strategies, you might think this was the least problematic. The recent revelations from the WikiLeaks document dump of the faltering progress of the war confirm the futility of just soldiering on.
The counter-insurgency strategy has become increasingly unpopular with soldiers on the ground and its lack of quick successes have led to criticism. Most problematic is that it now has a use-by date, when troops will begin, at least partially, to withdraw.
The relative failure of operations linked to the surge to improve security for more than short periods of time, and at high cost, suggests that a strategy that envisages a similar operation for the Taliban heartland of Kandahar may be fraught with difficulties.
What does it look like?
All too familiar, is the answer. Expect more large-scale operations. An increasing emphasis, too, will be put on training the Afghan security forces, in the hope that they'll take over in around four years' time.
What are the objections?
With June the worst month for coalition casualties since 2001, the evidence remains questionable that the Taliban is being substantially weakened or that ISAF operations have succeeded in improving security in the south and east.
The new emphasis on training – as a US report revealed last month – comes after billions of dollars have been spent. Nonetheless, little headway has been made in creating an army and police force capable of taking on the Taliban.
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Planned Afghanistan drawdown a sensitive issue
CNN By Tom Cohen August 2, 2010
Washington - Less than a year from the scheduled start of withdrawing some troops from Afghanistan, opinions remain varied about exactly what will happen when the transition begins at the end of June 2011.
The Obama administration has made clear some troops -- no one can say how many -- will start withdrawing by next July from stable areas where Afghan forces can provide security.
However, questions over how to measure success and whether the almost 9-year-old war is worth the continuing U.S. investment in lives and resources are gaining prominence as congressional midterm elections approach in November.
In interviews with military and political leaders broadcast Sunday, scenarios presented on what happens next year ranged from guarded optimism to serious concern. While most views followed expected party talking points, all appeared grounded in the common belief that success is vital even as they differed on what it would be.
On CNN's "State of the Union," Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan defended the planned troop drawdown next year as a necessary part of strategy.
"That date is very visible now," Levin said, adding: "It's critical that that date was set to show that it isn't a blank check, it's not an open-ended commitment of American troops in the same numbers that we're going to have there."
Already, he said, the Afghan army is taking over some aspects of security, which gives a psychological boost to the local population while denying the Taliban insurgents of a propaganda tool.
"When their own people see that, it is going to make a difference," Levin said. "And when the Taliban sees that they are not able now to just paint this as ... a lot of foreign troops present in Afghanistan, but now it's their own Afghan army, a popular, respected army, that they are taking on more and more during this next year, that that is going to make a difference. That's a real nightmare for the Taliban to be up against an Afghan-led effort.
On the same program, however, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina worried that the Afghan forces and central government may not be ready to assume the necessary responsibilities within a year.
"[G]enerally speaking, this time next summer, we're still going to be engaged in one hell of a fight," Graham told CNN. "We're going to need every troop we have today, I think, still in Afghanistan next year."
According to Graham, it will be clear by the end of this year where things stand in Afghanistan.
"If, by December, we're not showing some progress, we're in trouble," he said. "And the question is: what is progress? Without some benchmarks and measurements, it's going to be hard to sell to the American people a continued involvement in Afghanistan."
Other Republicans are harsher critics of President Barack Obama's war strategy, saying that any withdrawal date -- regardless of intention -- provides a strategic and psychological boost to the enemy.
" (W)e don't tell the enemy when it is that we're going to essentially wave that white flag and say we're leaving," former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said on "Fox News Sunday."
"No, we're in it to win it. And if we're not, then the American public needs to know that, too," Palin said.
Palin acknowledged the nation was tiring of the war that started in October 2001 in response to the September 11 terrorist attacks that year.
"We want to know that if we're engaged in such activity where we are protecting our own country, we're helping to protect our allies, we had better be in it for ... the long haul," Palin said. "But we had better be in it to win it or, no, we're not going to keep supporting this idea of sending innocents, our young men and women, America's finest, over there for some futile effort."
In an interview with CBS conducted last week and broadcast Sunday, Obama insisted the mission to prevent terrorists from operating out of Afghanistan was worth the current deployment, including 30,000 additional U.S. troops he ordered in last year to increase the eventual total to about 100,000.
"If I didn't think that it was important for our national security to finish the job in Afghanistan, then I would pull them all out today," the president said.
Top military officials emphasized that the draw-down date is part of a strategy, with the actual number of troops withdrawn depending on conditions on the ground. Asked about remarks last month by Vice President Joe Biden that the figure could be "as few as a couple of thousand" troops, Defense Secretary Robert Gates seemed to agree.
"My personal opinion is that drawdowns early on will be of fairly limited numbers, and as we are successful, we'll probably accelerate," Gates said on the ABC program "This Week." But, again, it will depend on the conditions on the ground."
At the same time, Gates emphasized that it was crucial for the United States to demonstrate a long-term commitment in order to ensure the trust and cooperation of Afghanistan.
"We need to re-emphasize the message that we are not leaving Afghanistan in July 2011," he said. "We are beginning a process... and the pace will be set by conditions on the ground."
He welcomed the prognostication by critics that the Taliban fighters will simply hunker down until next July in order to strike after U.S. troops start leaving, saying: "We will be there with a lot of troops."
The purpose is to ensure stability in order to turn over control to the Afghan government and people, not to embark on nationwide reconstruction, Gates said.
U.S. efforts will focus on "those civilian efforts and governance that help us in our security objectives," he said.
Adm. Mike Mullen, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, told NBC's "Meet the Press" that the main goal is to prevent Afghanistan from again becoming a safe haven for al Qaeda.
Even though CIA Director Leon Panetta has said only 50 to 100 al Qaeda figures remain in Afghanistan, Mullen made clear that a hard fight remains to enable the Afghan government to defeat Taliban insurgents who harbored al Qaeda in the past.
"We're at a point now where over the course of the next 12 months, it really is going to, I think, tell the tale which way this is going to go," Mullen said, later adding: "Certainly the longterm goal is to make sure that, with respect to the population in Afghanistan, that there's a governance structure that treats its people well. ... But to say exactly how that's going to look and what specifics would be involved, I think it's just way too early."
Influential Democrats, meanwhile, signaled the growing impatience in their ranks for a war effort that continues to inflict an economic and human toll.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told the ABC program that she hopes that next year's withdrawal brings home more than the "couple of thousand" troops Biden had predicted.
At the same time, Pelosi acknowledged "it's not going to be turn out the lights and let's all go home in one day."
Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts told CNN that Obama was determined to bring the conflict to a new phase that allows a U.S. drawdown.
"He is also determined not to undermine his own effort and not to undermine the military effort on the ground, and the sacrifice that our troops have made," Kerry said. "The president is not going to suddenly pull the rug out from under the very efforts that we've all been engaged in over these years. That would be folly. And I don't see him doing that."
Graham, who has sided with Democrats on some issues, expressed concern that some anti-war elements of both the political left and right could undermine the war effort.
"You know what I worry most about: an unholy alliance between the right and the left," Graham said. "That there are some Republicans who are not going to take a, you know, do-or-die attitude for Obama's war. There are some Republicans that want to make this Obama's war. There will be some Republicans saying you can't win because of the July 2011 withdrawal date, he's made it impossible for us to win, so why should we throw good money after bad?"
Graham added that liberals could also refuse to back the president's plans in Afghanistan.
"You've got people on the left who are mad with the president because he is doing exactly what [former President George W.] Bush did and we're in a war we can't win," Graham said, adding: "My concern is that, for different reasons, they join forces and we lose the ability to hold this thing together."
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USAID looks to expand its media-building efforts in Afghanistan
The Washington Post - Politics By WALTER PINCUS Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Saying that "freedom of information is essential to stabilizing and rebuilding Afghanistan," the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has decided to expand its media activities in that country.
Since 2002, USAID has funded a network of 43 FM radio stations in Afghanistan, trained Afghan journalists and established a content and distribution service for news and radio programming that reaches 80 radio stations.
This new ambitious effort, tagged the Afghanistan Media Development and Empowerment Project (AMDEP), is described as "essential" to expand "the availability of reliable information that allows Afghans to make informed choices about goods, services, their government and the future of Afghanistan," according to a pre-solicitation notice posted last week. Of course, USAID is hardly the only U.S. government agency that has become active in the Afghan media arena. Agency overlap exists -- albeit on a smaller scale -- such as the overlap within the intelligence community, as The Washington Post reported last month.
In May, for example, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul announced it was open to applications from "local representatives of civil society, including non-governmental organizations and universities," for grants from the State Department's public diplomacy funds. Grants would range from $500 to $10 million, the notice stated, and could pay for projects that "expand media engagement . . . build communication capacity of the Afghan people and government . . . [or] counter extremist voices that recruit, mislead, and exploit."
The U.S. military and coalition partners also sponsor various media activities in Afghanistan. A Pentagon official recently provided an example related to the Defense Department budget next year. It calls for spending $180 million on "psychological operations" in Afghanistan and Iraq, a category once known as strategic communications. The Pentagon defines such activities as those that "induce or reinforce foreign attitudes and behavior favorable to the originator's objectives." In Afghanistan, they are almost all run by civilian contractors.
Meanwhile, USAID will seek its own contractors to run AMDEP projects, but they should be nongovernmental organizations or firms willing to give up profits, according to the solicitation notice. The new efforts will include creating regional Afghan media training and production centers; consolidating existing Afghan professional media associations, thereby building "a network capable of advocacy and self-regulation to high journalistic standards"; and providing technical assistance to Afghan ministries in the media sector to help with "business-friendly government regulation of the airwaves and licensing procedures."
The first AMDEP project is to be a mobile phone service that would supply subscribers with free customized daily news reports. The reports would include information streamed from local and foreign radio and television broadcasts (in languages spoken in Afghanistan), newspaper articles read aloud and local blogs.
Subscribers could customize the information they want and access the service numerous ways, including calling a toll-free number for a menu of what's available or selecting a service and receiving a daily call.
The purpose, according to the USAID solicitation, is "to enable the sophisticated news consumption behavior of Afghans who have highly developed skills for triangulating facts by accessing a variety of news sources."
News sources selected for the service are to be paid on a per-user rate, which, according to the USAID notice, could provide incentive for such groups "to produce higher quality and quantity of content." The service is to be operated "according to a non-discrimination standard in regard to independent news and information content." Not mentioned is whether the sources that provide the news would include those favorable to the Taliban or critical of the United States and coalition forces.
Dubbed "Mobile Khabar," meaning mobile news in both Dari and Pashto, the venture aims to increase "the number of individuals creating and sharing their own news and information amongst each other" and expand the use of cellphones to deliver news and information, according to the agency.
USAID expects the contractor to establish what it calls the "Access to Information Foundation" which it projects would need $7 million a year to operate. Though access would be free to subscribers, the agency believes that advertising eventually would be a part. Seeking advertisers, according to USAID, would be another lesson the system teaches the Afghans -- that "from the outset . . . users gain an understanding that advertising comes as part of the provision of news and information."
What has been the result of the first eight years of USAID media programs? Its Afghan office is trying to find out, with a national media assessment, audience survey and efficacy study occurring this summer. Its purpose, according to USAID, is "to gain an understanding of the role media plays in Afghan societies." It plans to share the results to "inform media developments and communications efforts" of the U.S. government, including the military, which has been financing similar polling and surveys over the past four years.
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Is Afghanistan Worth It?
The U.S. cannot remain a superpower if the suspicion takes root that we are a feckless nation.
Wall Street Journal AUGUST 3, 2010
Even Americans who pride themselves on knowing their history have probably never heard of the Battle of Stones River. Fought over frigid ground in January 1863, the battle gave the Union control over central Tennessee and a badly needed morale boost after the disaster of Fredericksburg two weeks earlier. It also resulted in 1,700 Union and 1,300 Confederate deaths. That's nearly three times the fatalities the U.S. has endured in more than eight years of fighting in Afghanistan.
It's never easy to point out that, in the scale of American military sacrifice, Afghanistan does not figure large. But acknowledging a historical fact does nothing to belittle the cost the war has exacted on America's soldiers and their families: It merely offers some mental ballast to offset the swelling panic. What does belittle the sacrifice—both for those who have fallen and those who fight—is to suggest that the war is nothing but a misbegotten errand in a godforsaken land.
In last week's column, I argued that an American withdrawal from Afghanistan, followed by a partial or complete Taliban victory, would mean a humanitarian disaster for Afghans comparable to what happened in Southeast Asia after the Communist takeover in 1975. Averting that outcome by staying in Afghanistan is the liberal case for the war.
What about the conservative case? Let's start with the best conservative case against the war. It holds that (a) all attempts to build Afghanistan as a nation will prove as futile as all past attempts to subdue it; (b) Afghanistan is a sideshow when the focus of our efforts in the region should be Pakistan, Iran or elsewhere; (c) even a "successful" outcome in Afghanistan wouldn't be worth the toll in lives, effort and expense; (d) we've basically defeated al Qaeda already and can keep them in check through drone strikes, so why are we now taking sides in a sectarian Afghan blood feud?; and (e) if Afghans massacre each other in the wake of a U.S. withdrawal, that's their unfortunate business and further proof of proposition (a).
This analysis might be somewhat more compelling if we were having an argument about whether to invade Afghanistan in the first place, as if history were a cassette we could rewind and re-record at will. (Now there's a liberal fantasy.) We are in Afghanistan now. So the choices before us are not what we should have done in 2001, when most Americans—and almost all conservatives—demanded we take Kandahar the way Sherman took Atlanta. The question is what we do in 2010.
For conservatives in particular, the answer ought to entail notions of consistency and responsibility. Consistency, in the sense of supporting a counterinsurgency strategy for Afghanistan similar to the one conservatives urged (and that worked) for Iraq after the abject failure of the "light footprint" approach advocated by Joe Biden. Responsibility, in the sense of keeping faith with those to whom we make commitments.
This is not just a moral argument: The U.S. cannot remain a superpower if the suspicion takes root that we are a feckless nation that can be stampeded into surrender by a domestic caucus of defeatists. Allies or would-be allies will make their own calculations and hedge their bets. Why should we be surprised that this is precisely what Pakistan has done vis-a-vis the Taliban? It's not as if the U.S. hasn't abandoned that corner of the world before to its furies.
How a feckless America is perceived by its friends is equally material to how we are perceived by our enemies. In his 1996 fatwa declaring war on the U.S., Osama bin Laden took note of American withdrawals from Beirut in 1983 and Mogadishu a decade later. "When tens of your soldiers were killed in minor battles and one American pilot was dragged through the streets . . . you withdrew, the extent of your impotence and weakness became very clear." Is it the new conservative wisdom to prove bin Laden's point (one that the hard men in Tehran undoubtedly share), only on a vastly greater scale?
Nor does it seem especially conservative to subscribe to the non sequitur that because Hamid Karzai is not George Washington our efforts in Afghanistan will be of no avail. Utopia is a liberal temptation; conservatism is comfortable with the good enough. In Afghanistan that would mean a run-of-the-mill Third World country that can fend for itself, menaces nobody and is an updated version of what the country was in the 1960s. That's a reminder that Afghan history does not ineluctably condemn it to chaos or fanaticism. It's also a reminder that the measure of success in Afghanistan isn't whether we create a new Switzerland, but whether we avoid another South Vietnam.
"The world is what it is," wrote V.S. Naipaul. "Men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it." Afghanistan, too, is what it is, and we are in it. Can any serious conservative argue that it would be a good thing for the United States to allow itself to become nothing?
Write to bstephens@wsj.com
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Six guards beheaded during bank heist in Afghanistan
Examiner.com Isabelle Zehnder August 3, 2010
On Tuesday it was reported that bank robbers made off with about $269,000 in U.S. and Afghanistan currency, killing and then beheading six guards who were protecting the financial building.
It was a brazen theft carried out by an unknown number of bandits. Authorities said they raided a branch of Kabul Bank in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif.
Police spokesman for Baldh province, Sherjan Durani, said bank staff discovered the bodies of the private security guards “locked inside a room.”
It is believed the guards knew the robbers and had been invited to a meal, unaware the robbers had poisoned the food.
UPDATE
MSNBC reported Tuesday that the six Afghan private security guards were poisoned and fatally stabbed. According to Durani robbers used small and large knives.
Durani further said that earlier reports that the guards were beheaded were inaccurate. Instead, he said, they were stabbed in the neck, stomach, and heart.
Durani said someone apparently mixed the poison into the guards' food. The guards showed evidence of having vomited, he said.
According to the deputy governor of Baldh province, Alhaj Zaher Vahdat, one person is said to have been arrested in connection with the robbery Monday night.
Kabul Bank officials declined to comment on the incident until it has been investigated.
Meanwhile, insurgents wearing suicide vests tried to storm NATO’s largest base in the south, but did not breach its defenses, officials said.
According to Commander Amanda Peterseim, a spokeswoman for NATO forces, the assault on Kandahar Air Field started just before midday Tuesday with two rockets fired into the base, then a handful of would-be suicide bombers assaulted the outer gates.
She said there were no reports of NATO casualties and that all of the attackers were killed in the fighting. Petersteim said there were “approximately four” people in suicide vests.
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