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Afghan parliament to recess without confirming cabinet
Sun, Jan 17, 2010
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN (Reuters) - The Afghan parliament prolonged months of political uncertainty on Sunday by shutting for its winter recess without waiting for President Hamid Karzai to fill nearly half of his cabinet.
Afghan President Karzai regrets parliament's refusal of 10 cabinet nominees
KABUL, Jan. 16 (Xinhua) -- Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday expressed regret over the refusal of 10 cabinet nominees by Wolesi Jirga, or Lower House of parliament.
Karzai’s Bent Ex-Minister Secures Anti-Heroin Role
By Arthur Kent, Skyreporter.com
January 16, 2009 -- The West’s losing war on Afghanistan’s heroin industry was dealt another severe blow today when a disgraced former minister, who presided over the looting of at least one third of international funding of the national police force, was approved by MPs in Kabul to head the Karzai regime’s counter-narcotics ministry.
Afghan president to offer Taliban new peace plan
January 17, 2010
KABUL (AFP) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai is set to announce a new scheme for forging peace with the Islamist Taliban and other militants fighting to topple his government, his spokesman said Sunday.
Afghan government to lure Taliban to switch sides
By DEB RIECHMANN and KATHY GANNON Associated Press writers via SouthCoastToday.com January 17, 2010
KABUL - The Afghan government is crafting a plan to offer jobs, vocational training and other economic incentives to tens of thousands of Taliban foot soldiers willing to switch sides after eight years of war.
Dealing with brutal Afghan warlords is a mistake
The Boston Globe - Editors By Nick Grono and Candace Rondeaux January 17, 2010
AS WASHINGTON rolls out its latest troop surge in Afghanistan, all eyes are on the violent south and east of the country to see whether the additional military muscle will bring stability.
Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan
Ottawa, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- A Canadian soldier was killed in Afghanistan on Saturday, becoming the first Canadian killed in action there in 2010, Ottawa Citizen and Canadian TV reported on Sunday.
Afghan police arrest Taliban commander
KABUL, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- Police in Farah province in western Afghanistan detained a Taliban commander Mullah Naqibullah who acted as self-appointed district chief in Balablok district, provincial police chief Faqir Ahmad Askar said Sunday.
Chinese kidnapped as Karzai mulls Taliban strategy
January 17, 2010
KABUL (AFP) – The Taliban said Sunday they had kidnapped two Chinese engineers in Afghanistan, as President Hamid Karzai's office said he was set to announce a new plan for forging peace with the Islamist insurgents.
Bagram Detainees Named by U.S.
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN and SANGAR RAHIMI January 16, 2010
KABUL, Afghanistan - The American military released the names of 645 detainees held at the main detention center at Bagram Air Base, modifying its long-held position against publicizing detention information and taking a step toward making the system more open.
Running out of time, U.S. and Canadian troops rush to pacify Kandahar
By Heath Druzin, Stars and Stripes Mideast edition, Saturday, January 16, 2010
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — When a platoon of U.S. soldiers rolled up to a restaurant for an impromptu kebab stop in this southern city, the busy street corner grew quiet and all eyes shifted to the patrol.
Jim Gant, the Green Beret who could win the war in Afghanistan
By Ann Scott Tyson The Washington Post Sunday, January 17, 2010; B01
It was the spring of 2003, and Capt. Jim Gant and his Special Forces team had just fought their way out of an insurgent ambush in Afghanistan's Konar province when they heard there was trouble in the nearby village
U.S.-Russian Accord On Transit Of Military Cargo Fails To Get Off The Ground
January 15, 2010 By Robert Coalson Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
When Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama met in Moscow last July, their primary aim was to push negotiations on a replacement for the expiring START nuclear-arms treaty.
What's Our Sputnik?
New York Times Op-Ed Columnist By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN January 16, 2010
Taipei, Taiwan - Dick Cheney says President Obama is “trying to pretend that we are not at war” with terrorists. There is only one thing I have to say about that: I sure hope so.
Rugged North Waziristan harbors US enemies
The Associated Press via The Washington Post By KATHY GANNON Sunday, January 17, 2010
PESHAWAR, Pakistan - They rumble through the narrow snow-clogged mountain passes in black pickup trucks. In the back, eight to ten men armed with Kalashnikov rifles and rocket-propelled grenades huddle together against the cold.
The CIA has long struggled with ensuring safe interrogations
Washington Post By David Ignatius Sunday, January 17, 2010
As the CIA mourns the officers who died in Khost, Afghanistan, last month, there's an understandable desire not to second-guess the procedures that allowed a Jordanian suicide bomber to enter the agency's base.
Pashtun clue to lost tribes of Israel
Genetic study sets out to uncover if there is a 2,700-year-old link to Afghanistan and Pakistan
The Observer Rory McCarthy, Jerusalem Sunday 17 January 2010
Israel is to fund a rare genetic study to determine whether there is a link between the lost tribes of Israel and the Pashtuns of Afghanistan and northern Pakistan.
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Afghan parliament to recess without confirming cabinet
Sun, Jan 17, 2010
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN (Reuters) - The Afghan parliament prolonged months of political uncertainty on Sunday by shutting for its winter recess without waiting for President Hamid Karzai to fill nearly half of his cabinet.
The announcement means Karzai will appear at an international conference on his country's future on January 28 with 11 of 25 cabinet seats vacant.
Confirming his cabinet is the first big test for Karzai since his re-election in a vote last August marred by fraud.
He has promised to name competent ministers but also owes favors to regional bosses who helped get him elected. But parliament has twice rejected his pick.
Western countries with troops serving in Afghanistan are anxious for Karzai to put his new government in place and to build the institutions needed to withstand a Taliban insurgency fiercer than at any time in the eight-year-old war.
Before breaking, lawmakers also demanded reforms for parliamentary elections due this year, setting the country back on a path toward political confrontation after the botched presidential poll last year.
Parliament spokesman Haseeb Noori said lawmakers would now leave for a recess until February 20. They had postponed their leave earlier this month to allow Karzai to pick new names after rejecting more than two thirds of his initial picks, and vetoed more than half of his proposed replacements on Saturday.
Karzai's spokesman, Waheed Omer, said the president would nominate new candidates for the vacant seats when lawmakers return. Until then, Karzai would direct deputy ministers or other caretaker figures to run their ministries, Omer said.
Karzai's re-election, in a fraud-marred vote that took months to resolve, has damaged his standing at home and abroad, and led to months of drift. He and his allies are hoping to turn the page on that uncertainty in 2010, but a fresh political crisis looms with another election, this time for parliament, due in May.
The United Nations has millions of dollars in an account earmarked to hold that vote, but Western officials say they want to see election reforms enacted before the funds are released, to prevent a repeat of last year's fraud.
Omer said Karzai had told visiting U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke on Saturday that the parliamentary election must be held on time on May 22 this year, a date many Western officials fear is too soon to enact needed reforms in time.
REFORMS SOUGHT BEFORE 2010 ELECTION
Parliamentarians discussed the election in their final debate on Sunday, backing the May 22 date but calling for reforms to the election commission, which Karzai's opponents blame for fraud.
"They said the poll must be fair and transparent and for that there should be changes in the election commission, for it is under question," said Mir Ahmad Joyenda. "Delegates said the heads of the lower and upper house of the parliament along with the chief justice should consult on this with the president."
Diplomats say they hope to avoid a clash over the date by persuading Afghans to allow the vote to be pushed back.
Holbrooke told Reuters that Washington and its allies supported holding the election sometime this year.
"The exact date is far less important than the fact that international community has come together and coalesced together around a date in this calendar year. We've crossed that bridge," Holbrooke said.
"They're going to have to do some electoral reforms in order to prevent a repetition of what happened last year," he said.
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Afghan President Karzai regrets parliament's refusal of 10 cabinet nominees
KABUL, Jan. 16 (Xinhua) -- Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday expressed regret over the refusal of 10 cabinet nominees by Wolesi Jirga, or Lower House of parliament.
"President Karzai took into consideration the required efficiency and professionalism as well as 'national participation' in both the lists he presented for confirmation, but regrets that the desirable result was not achieved," a statement released by his office said.
The Afghan Wolesi Jirga through secret balloting on Saturday approved seven out of 17 cabinet nominees presented by Presented Karzai early weekend.
This is the second time since early this month that the parliament has rejected ministerial nominees. Previously, the lower house on Jan. 2 rejected 17 out of 24 ministerial nominees, forcing the president to introduce new faces.
President Karzai is endeavoring to have a functioning cabinet before attending the international conference on Afghanistan scheduled for Jan. 28 in London.
Nevertheless, the statement added that the President respects the decision of the parliament.
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Karzai’s Bent Ex-Minister Secures Anti-Heroin Role
By Arthur Kent, Skyreporter.com
January 16, 2009 -- The West’s losing war on Afghanistan’s heroin industry was dealt another severe blow today when a disgraced former minister, who presided over the looting of at least one third of international funding of the national police force, was approved by MPs in Kabul to head the Karzai regime’s counter-narcotics ministry.
Zarar Muqbul was sacked from the Interior Ministry in October of 2008 after a three year term that saw tens of millions of dollars embezzled from the U.N. administered Law and Order Trust Fund.
Zarar's tenure at the policing ministry was marred by a huge spike in heroin trafficking, official corruption and public mistrust of the Afghan National Police.
Although Zarar’s renomination by Hamid Karzai was denounced as a travesty by anti-drugs officials of some of the Afghan president’s leading international sponsors, his confirmation was secured by a parliamentary majority stitched together by pro-Karzai MPs, together with the estimated 20 to 25 members of the Afghan parliament who are thought to be directly involved in the heroin trade.
Overall, however, it was a bad day for Karzai: ten of his 17 nominees were rejected.
This means that after two attempts at assembling a cabinet, the president's team is dominated by his principal ballot riggers, such as current Interior Minister Hanif Atmar and Finance Minister Omar Zakhilwal, and Defence Minister Rahim Wardak, widely regarded in Afghanistan as a hard-drinking incompetent.
For more on Zarar’s storied past, see Recent Stories for “Karzai’s Ambassador Admits Ex-Minister Is A ‘Problem’”, as well as “Karzai Mocks Canada By Renaming Crooked Crony”.
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Afghan president to offer Taliban new peace plan
January 17, 2010
KABUL (AFP) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai is set to announce a new scheme for forging peace with the Islamist Taliban and other militants fighting to topple his government, his spokesman said Sunday.
The plan would be announced ahead of a key international conference on Afghanistan's security and development due in London on January 28, Waheed Omar said.
Conceding that past efforts at peace have failed, Omar said the new plan would include economic incentives as many men carrying guns for the Taliban didi so for cash rather than to support their hardline religious ideology.
"We have done some things in the past but we have not done enough," Omar told reporters.
"We have not been able to provide proper security for those who join the government. We may have not been very good at providing them with economic opportunities, jobs and anything else anybody would want after reintegration," he said.
"The scheme we are proposing this time is taking all those into consideration and learning from the past and trying to come up with a proper programme where we have all the necessary ground to allow those joining the programme to have a peaceful life," he said.
Karzai has long called for peace talks with the Taliban -- even offering government posts to its leaders -- but the militia has refused dialogue until the withdrawal of international troops on which Kabul relies for security.
Omar said the new programme would reach out to militants in all ranks, from the political leadership to fighters on the ground.
Karzai would announce details "to the Afghan people" before heading to London, where he would request support from his international backers.
The reintegration of militants into Afghan society is one of the key topics slated for discussion at the conference, which is expected to be attended by representatives of more than 60 countries.
Also up for discussion are other areas in which Karzai has pledged reform, including anti-corruption and security.
The United States and NATO have 113,000 troops in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban-led insurgency, with another 40,000 being deployed this year.
Karzai discussed the reintegration of Taliban fighters with Washington's special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, in Kabul on Saturday.
Holbrooke told reporters afterwards that any new plan "couldn't be worse" than past efforts.
"There is a good plan... they have learnt from experience," he said.
"There are a lot of people out there fighting for the Taliban who have no ideological commitment to the principles, values or political movement led by Mullah Omar," he said, referring to the Taliban leader believed to be based in Pakistan.
Holbrooke said the majority of Taliban militants fought "because they have been misled, or out of a personal miscarriage of justice, or a family member who was a victim of a civilian casualty incident."
"There is no vehicle for them to come in from the cold right now and it has to be recreated almost from the ground up," he said.
"If you don't, you give people only two choices -- kill or be killed."
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Afghan government to lure Taliban to switch sides
By DEB RIECHMANN and KATHY GANNON Associated Press writers via SouthCoastToday.com January 17, 2010
KABUL - The Afghan government is crafting a plan to offer jobs, vocational training and other economic incentives to tens of thousands of Taliban foot soldiers willing to switch sides after eight years of war.
Officials hope the multimillion-dollar initiative, which would reach out to 20,000 to 35,000 low- to mid-level Taliban insurgents, will succeed where past programs have failed. Skeptics, though, wonder whether significant numbers of militants will stop fighting when they believe they're winning.
"If this works, it is the turning point in the war," said Mohammad Masoom Stanekzai, a top adviser to President Hamid Karzai, who has promoted the idea of national reconciliation and has even offered to talk with the Taliban's top leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar.
Afghan officials insist their program will be different from one in Iraq where entire platoons of Sunni insurgents who were shooting at U.S. forces one day were paid salaries the next to turn away from al-Qaida and join local security groups under American supervision.
The officials said their program, which will be discussed at a Jan. 28 conference on Afghanistan in London, would create conditions for individuals to lay down their arms while top Taliban leaders are urged to negotiate peace. The Taliban leadership has rejected this so long as foreign forces remain in Afghanistan.
Some Afghans, who fear for their safety and are frustrated by an ineffective, corrupt central government in Kabul, have seen little choice but to side with Taliban in their villages. The goal is to lure scores of Taliban fighters off the battlefield so that violence will drop and the Afghan government will have time to shore up governance and the nation's security forces.
"If you reintegrate the foot soldiers and the mid-level commanders, you will shrink the space in which the Taliban can operate in Afghanistan," Stanekzai said.
U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, told the German magazine Der Spiegel in an interview published this month that the U.S. is ready to back a reintegration program for individual fighters, or groups of fighters.
McChrystal believes "a tremendous number of fighters and commanders" would like to quit and "we just need to craft the kind of program that supports that."
In recent months, there have been isolated cases of Taliban fighters leaving the insurgency. Fifty-seven of them surrendered to authorities in Herat province, according to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's latest quarterly report on Afghanistan. Twelve laid down their weapons in Kunduz, along with 26 in Paktika province, 24 in Ghazni province and 51 in Baghlan province, the report said.
To lure others, Defense Minister Rahim Wardak said the Afghan government will have to offer incentives, such as employment or vocational training — as well as protection.
"The whole Afghan nation is fed up with three decades of conflict and I do believe that they want to support this government," he said. "But up to now, we were not able to provide them with protection, which they needed ... so once we are able to do so I think there will be a great change."
Details of the program have not been worked out. But Stanekzai said that in addition to protection, insurgents willing to join the reintegration program will be given access to jobs mainly through new or existing community development programs and industrial projects across the country.
"Vocational training also should be combined with a de-radicalization process," Stanekzai said. "They have been trained and brainwashed by very radical religious leaders."
Abdul Salam Zaeef, former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, said there is no economic solution to quelling the insurgency.
"It is not possible to separate Taliban fighters from leadership," he said. "Those who come to the government will come only for money. They are not real Taliban. The government wants to buy people with the reintegration program. This is a kind of corruption."
Early estimates say the program will cost at least $600,000 and could approach $1 billion in the first three years, depending on how many Taliban decide to give up their AK-47s for legal employment, Stanekzai said.
Some former insurgents may receive stipends to help them get back on their feet in society, but the thrust of the program centers on community development. according to international officials familiar with the program. Village elders will vouch for insurgents who give up and the international community will work to send development money into those areas with the idea that the money would benefit entire communities.
The program will be partially backed by USAID and money from a fund that enables U.S. commanders to dole out cash for short-term humanitarian projects. Donor nations are expected to pledge additional funds, earmarked specifically for reintegration, as early as the London conference.
Getting the Taliban's top echelon to the negotiating table is a tough sell. Taliban leaders say they won't even consider reconciliation talks until foreign troops leave the country, and right now, 37,000 more U.S. and NATO reinforcements are being sent to the war.
"I think the announcement to send more troops will tell the Taliban that the U.S. is more interested in war than peace," said Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, a former confidant to Mullah Omar and who served as foreign minister when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan. "It means that peace talks are not possible."
To help lure the Taliban to the negotiating table, the Afghan ambassador to the United Nations, Zahir Tanin, asked the U.N. Security Council this month to lift sanctions on certain Taliban figures so that they no longer would be subject to asset freezes, travel restrictions and the like. Council members supported the idea, but some emphasized that reconciliation talks should be held only with insurgent leaders who give up their weapons, recognize the Afghan constitution and break ties with terrorist groups.
"We have to put pressure on the top level as well," Stanekzai said. "As long as they feel they have the space to operate in Afghanistan, then it will be difficult to get them to join with the peace process."
Afghan expert Michael Semple, who has negotiated with mid-level Taliban commanders before, said there are pragmatists in the insurgent network, including some who sit on Omar's 10-member council, but that their voices are weak.
"There are pragmatists, who understand that a continuation of the conflict will only cause more destruction. They can be persuaded to talk," said Semple, a fellow at Harvard University's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.
"Forget the notion of defeating the insurgents," Semple said. "What you have to do is persuade them that there is no possibility of the regime collapsing and in a war of attrition they don't win. The next step is to find someone with whom the Taliban, including Omar, will talk."
Any talks without Omar will yield only piecemeal peace pacts with Taliban who have no authority over the bulk of the fighters, said Muttawakil and another former Taliban minister, Arsala Rahmani.
Omar says he's not interested.
"The invading Americans want mujahadeen to surrender under the pretext of the negotiation," Omar said in a recent statement. "This is something impossible."
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Dealing with brutal Afghan warlords is a mistake
The Boston Globe - Editors By Nick Grono and Candace Rondeaux January 17, 2010
AS WASHINGTON rolls out its latest troop surge in Afghanistan, all eyes are on the violent south and east of the country to see whether the additional military muscle will bring stability. But outside observers are looking in the wrong place: They ought to focus on the backroom deals the United States is preparing to make with some notorious warlords, as these will determine the long-term effectiveness of President Obama's strategy.
While the White House has paid lip service to the importance of good governance in Afghanistan, the reality is that co-opting violent warlords is at the heart of a plan that will likely result in further instability. One of the warlords who may soon star in the new US efforts to rebrand fundamentalists as potential government partners is Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a brutal Afghan insurgent commander responsible for dozens of deadly attacks on coalition troops. As a mujahedeen commander during the civil war in the 1990s, Hekmatyar turned his guns on Kabul, slaughtering many thousands of Afghans, with his militias raping and maiming thousands more.
Three decades of warfare in Afghanistan have produced a multitude of warlords and commanders. Institutions have been supplanted by abusive powerholders, who maintain their control through violence, patronage, corruption, and external backing. There was a real opportunity to fundamentally change this dynamic after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, but it was squandered. Instead of rebuilding institutions, and focusing on the rule of law, the United States tried to build peace on the cheap, subcontracting power to many of those abusive warlords who had been marginalized by the Taliban. These same warlords have now seized on their reprieve with a vengeance.
A list of power brokers in Afghanistan today reads a bit like a who's who of commanders responsible for atrocities during the civil war. While warlords like Afghanistan's current co-vice presidents Mohammad Qasim Fahim and Karim Khalili have reinvented themselves as powerful officials, Hekmatyar chose a different path. After a brief stint as prime minister before the Taliban charged into Kabul, Hekmatyar, founder of the powerful Hizb-e Islami political party, retreated to Iran in the mid-nineties, only to resurface in 2001 when he declared his opposition to the US military engagement in Afghanistan.
Although once backed by the CIA with scores of millions of dollars in arms, and a favored client of both the Saudi and Pakistani intelligence services during the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, Hekmatyar's anti-U.S. stance made him the target of a CIA drone attack in 2002, and earned himself a place on a list of designated global terrorists in 2003. He is now believed to shuttle between hideouts in Pakistan's mountainous tribal areas and in northeast Afghanistan.
In the past year or so Hekmatyar, a charismatic Pashtun Islamic fundamentalist, has begun to raise his profile, granting several interviews with major news outlets and stepping up the tempo of his political propaganda. He has put a lot of effort into restyling himself in a more acceptable guise - as a strong moderate fundamentalist with Afghanistan's best Islamic interest at heart. This despite his own claims that he plotted with the Taliban to foment a deadly attack that killed 10 French soldiers in August 2008, just one of several violent assaults on coalition troops and Afghan government that he has claimed responsibility for in recent years.
And there are increasing signals that Karzai and the United States are willing to cut a deal with him. Karzai has been the most explicit. He has publicly stated that he would be willing to talk to Hekmatyar and even offer him a position in government if that would help end the fighting in Afghanistan. Washington has been more circumspect, but the signs are there: Senior US officials have indicated that they might be open to a political deal with the insurgent commander. Some interpreted the US release last summer of Hekmatyar's son-in-law and former Hizb-e Islami spokesman, Ghairat Baheer, who spent years in captivity at the prison in Bagram, as a sign that an agreement might, indeed, be in the works.
Doing deals with Hekmatyar, or others like him, is a mistake. Similar accords across the border in Pakistan have repeatedly failed. Such appeasement deals give vulnerable Afghan populations little incentive to stand up to the insurgents, especially if they believe that those insurgents have the upper hand. They would send a message that terror pays dividends. And for Kabul and Washington to negotiate from a position of apparent weakness would make long-term political solutions all the more elusive.
Instead of entering into alliances of convenience with the most undesirable of local powerholders, the international community, and the Afghan government, would gain by holding warlords like Hekmatyar accountable for past abuses, and ending the climate of impunity that has allowed so many of them to flourish within and outside government.
Nick Grono is the deputy president at the International Crisis Group in Brussels. Candace Rondeaux is Crisis Group's senior analyst in Kabul.
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Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan
Ottawa, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- A Canadian soldier was killed in Afghanistan on Saturday, becoming the first Canadian killed in action there in 2010, Ottawa Citizen and Canadian TV reported on Sunday.
The 44-year-old Sgt. John Wayne Faught stepped on a buried bomb at about 2 p.m. local time Saturday when he conducted a joint foot patrol with Afghan soldiers about 15 kilometers southwest of Kandahar City. No one else was injured.
Faught was a member of the Edmonton-based first Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, and planned to retire in two years. He is the latest of the 139 soldiers to die in the eight-year-old mission.
Faught's body was carried by a military transport aircraft back to Canada, with more than 1,000 soldiers bid farewell to him Sunday.
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Afghan police arrest Taliban commander
KABUL, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- Police in Farah province in western Afghanistan detained a Taliban commander Mullah Naqibullah who acted as self-appointed district chief in Balablok district, provincial police chief Faqir Ahmad Askar said Sunday.
"We launched an operation Saturday night in Balablok district and captured Mullah Naqibullah," Askar told Xinhua.
He also added that the Taliban outfit had appointed Mullah Naqibaullah as governor of Balablok district and he had organized Taliban activities in the region.
Taliban militants have yet to make comment.
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Chinese kidnapped as Karzai mulls Taliban strategy
January 17, 2010
KABUL (AFP) – The Taliban said Sunday they had kidnapped two Chinese engineers in Afghanistan, as President Hamid Karzai's office said he was set to announce a new plan for forging peace with the Islamist insurgents.
The kidnapping, the latest in a series by the militia or criminals, came as the NATO military force announced that a US soldier had died in eastern Afghanistan after being wounded while fighting Taliban-led insurgents.
The engineers, who had been helping to build a road, were seized on Saturday in the northern province of Faryab with four Afghans, said a local government spokesman who could not identify the kidnappers.
"Unknown people kidnapped yesterday two Chinese engineers along with their two local drivers and two guards in Qaysar district," said Jawaed Bidar.
The abduction was claimed by the Taliban.
"Our mujahedeen have taken two Chinese engineers, their two drivers and their two guards," spokesman Yusuf Ahmadi said. A Taliban's Islamic court would decide on their fate, he said.
Several dozen foreigners, including engineers and journalists, have been kidnapped in Afghanistan since a 2001 US-led operation that toppled the Taliban government.
Some kidnappings are claimed by the insurgents and some by criminal gangs. The Taliban have denied holding two French journalists snatched with three Afghan assistants on December 30.
With the Taliban-led insurgency gaining pace since 2001, Karzai's office said Sunday the president was due to announce a new plan to make peace with insurgents, including by offering them economic incentives to stop fighting.
Karzai intended to announce the plan before a key conference with Afghanistan's international backers in London on January 28, his spokesman Waheed Omar told reporters.
It would include economic incentives as many men carrying guns for the Taliban did so for cash rather than to support their hardline religious ideology, Omar said.
"We have done some things in the past but we have not done enough," Omar said.
"We have not been able to provide proper security for those who join the government. We may have not been very good at providing them with economic opportunities, jobs and anything else anybody would want after reintegration."
Karzai has long called for peace talks with the Taliban -- even offering government posts to its leaders -- but the militia has refused dialogue until the withdrawal of international troops on which Kabul relies for security.
Karzai discussed the reintegration of Taliban fighters with Washington's special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, in Kabul on Saturday.
Holbrooke told reporters afterwards that any new plan "couldn't be worse" than past efforts.
"There is a good plan... they have learnt from experience," he said.
The United States and NATO have 113,000 troops in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban-led insurgency, with another 40,000 being deployed this year.
NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) announced Sunday the latest death of a foreign soldier in the long-running conflict, which is also exacting an increasing toll on civilians.
"An ISAF service member from the United States died of wounds yesterday as a result of an engagement with insurgents in eastern Afghanistan," it said.
It gave no other details.
According to an AFP tally based on one kept by the independent website icasualties.org, 28 foreign soldiers have died in Afghanistan so far in 2010.
Afghanistan's defence ministry said a bomb killed two Afghan soldiers in the southern province of Helmand on Saturday.
And in Herat province, on the western border with Iran, a district governor was killed in a Taliban ambush Sunday along with five other people, police said.
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Bagram Detainees Named by U.S.
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN and SANGAR RAHIMI January 16, 2010
KABUL, Afghanistan - The American military released the names of 645 detainees held at the main detention center at Bagram Air Base, modifying its long-held position against publicizing detention information and taking a step toward making the system more open.
The announcement came as political wrestling over the leadership of the government continued, with the Afghan Parliament again turning down many of President Hamid Karzai's nominees for cabinet ministers.
The release of the detainee list was prompted by a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed in September by the American Civil Liberties Union, whose lawyers had also demanded detailed information about conditions, rules and regulations at the prison.
“Releasing the names of those held at Bagram is an important step toward transparency and accountability at the secretive Bagram prison, but it is just a first step,” Melissa Goodman, a lawyer for the A.C.L.U., said in a statement.
“Full transparency and accountability about Bagram requires disclosing how long these people have been imprisoned, where they are from and whether they were captured far from any battlefield or in other countries far from Afghanistan,” she said.
The move toward more openness — though limited — is in keeping with the Obama administration's stated policy of making public more information about the detention system in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay.
Although the released information will be helpful to human rights advocates in tracking who is detained at Bagram, it is of little use to lawyers attempting to represent Bagram detainees, said Tina Foster, a lawyer for the International Justice Network.
“While it's very important in terms of U.S. government transparency, it means very little to the individuals named because the U.S. government still maintains that everybody whose name appears on that list is not entitled to any human rights under U.S. law,” Ms. Foster said.
Lawyers need more than detainees' names to find their families and see if they want legal representation, Ms. Foster said
Former detainees have described abusive treatment at the base, especially in the first two or three years it was in existence. In 2002, two detainees died after being beaten. In the last several years, detainees who have been released described improved living conditions but have criticized the detention system for having held them for long periods without charges or trial.
A new prison opened in November for detainees, with more space, light and vocational and educational programs. And in the last week, a new administrative review process has begun, which should allow detainees, especially those who were picked up erroneously, to be released more rapidly, according to American military detention officials.
While the majority of the detainees at Bagram are Afghan, a small number are foreigners who are accused of fighting with the Taliban. Also held there are a handful of detainees captured in other countries, according to human rights lawyers and military detention officials.
The current detainee population stands at about 750, according to military detention officials, but in September, when the information request was made, there were about 100 fewer detainees. The numbers have grown over the past few months because of the increased military operations by American forces.
It was not clear whether the names of those released included those held in field detention sites around the country or at a similar prisons at Bagram where some detainees are taken initially before being placed in the general detainee population. When detainees are held initially, they generally have no access to the International Committee of the Red Cross or to their families. But within two weeks, their names must be released to the Red Cross.
The political news, meanwhile, underlines the difficulties that the United States faces in trying to encourage the growth of Afghan government services, a key ingredient in bringing stability.
The Afghan Parliament turned down more than half of Mr. Karzai's second list of potential cabinet ministers on Saturday, prolonging the period in which some ministries will be hobbled by a lack of leadership.
Nominees were rejected for a variety of reasons, including objections to their lack of knowledge about the subject area of their ministries, criticism of their political connections and as an expression of frustration with the executive branch.
Of the 17 nominees considered by Parliament on Saturday, seven ministers were approved; one was a woman. Two other female nominees were rejected and representatives of members of minorities complained that nominees from their ethnic groups were not accepted.
Those approved on Saturday will join seven other ministers already approved by Parliament. The earlier batch included most of the nominees favored by American and foreign diplomats.
“As a member of the Parliament, I think the decision made today by the Parliament is a rightful and just decision, but unfortunately this is the second time that none of the Hazara and Uzbek nominees got a vote of confidence,” said Mohammed Noor Akbari, a Parliament member from Day Kundi Province and a Hazara. “This is a point of concern to us,” he said.
Western diplomats said that with an international conference on Afghanistan just two weeks away, it was unlikely that Mr. Karzai would submit a third list of nominees right away, even though the top jobs at some critical ministries remain unfilled. His nominees for the ministries of health, transportation and telecommunications, among others, failed Saturday.
One position that was filled was that of the minister for counternarcotics — a powerful post given the importance of Afghanistan in the global drug trade. The new minister is Zarar Ahmad Moqbel, a former interior minister who was forced out of office in 2008 amid allegations of corruption.
Two British soldiers were killed Friday by an improvised explosive device while on a foot patrol in Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan, according to Britain's Defense Ministry.
A NATO serviceman also died Saturday from an improvised explosive device that detonated in southern Afghanistan.
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Running out of time, U.S. and Canadian troops rush to pacify Kandahar
By Heath Druzin, Stars and Stripes Mideast edition, Saturday, January 16, 2010
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — When a platoon of U.S. soldiers rolled up to a restaurant for an impromptu kebab stop in this southern city, the busy street corner grew quiet and all eyes shifted to the patrol.
The restaurant manager quickly filled the order for a U.S. Army captain but politely asked him not to linger for fear of drawing the ire of the many Taliban militants operating in the city.
As coalition troops work to pacify this crucial city and its outlying villages, they face a tricky balance. They are stepping up patrols to secure the Taliban stronghold and gain a better rapport with residents. But every time they walk or drive down the street, they become a target — and so does anyone unlucky enough to be nearby when a roving suicide bomber or gunman spots the troops.
They are also dealing with an insurgency that has stepped up attacks recently, inflicting heavy casualties on soldiers with roadside bombs and terrorizing residents with suicide bombings, like one placed in a horse-drawn cart that rocked the heart of Kandahar city on Dec. 24, killing eight people.
Most American and Canadian soldiers interviewed admit that security in the city is still shaky, but say their increased presence has put residents more at ease, pointing to the bustling city center and crowded bazaars.
"It’s all about perception," said Canadian Brig. Gen. Daniel Menard, the top commander in Kandahar. "The number of incidents are very similar but we have been able to provide that perception of stability in the city."
Menard is pushing to have a "ring of security" around Kandahar city by May, when fighting traditionally intensifies as the weather warms and thick foliage provides cover for insurgents. To do this, he is encouraging the Canadian and American soldiers who work in the area to get out on foot, take off their helmets when they feel comfortable, and move off large, heavily fortified forward operating bases in favor of smaller, less imposing compounds.
The plan is in line with the broad strategy laid out by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, for coalition troops to work more closely with regular Afghans to erode support for insurgents.
"Everything we do has to be population-based," Menard said. "I can go after every single Taliban and I won’t be able to turn that corner [without a supportive populace] … I hate FOBs. I think this is not the way to fight a counterinsurgency. We need to live with the people."
Kandahar is Afghanistan’s second-largest city with around 800,000 people and has long been considered the country’s spiritual capital. It was here that Taliban leader Mullah Omar wrapped himself in a cloak said to be from the Prophet Muhammad and proclaimed himself "commander of the faithful" and where the Taliban maintains a strong presence.
Providing security around Kandahar is a joint U.S.-Canadian effort and breaking the Taliban support network has proven difficult, with insurgents having particularly good success recently targeting troops with roadside bombs.
"As soon as we head out of the city center, the enemy pretty much has full rein," said Capt. Mike Thurman, 31, the company commander for a military police company that trains Afghan police and conducts joint patrols with them in Kandahar.
One tactic Canadian forces are using to get closer to residents is the use of "community patrols," in which soldiers with the Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction Team go out to city neighborhoods and outlying villages, often with Afghan soldiers or police, to talk to regular Afghans about day-to-day problems such as security, education and drinking water.
In stark contrast to the aggressive posture most troops took just a few months ago, the Canadians allow people to walk up to them and let traffic pass by when they’re walking the roads on foot. The close quarters ratchets up the risk for soldiers, but it’s worth it to put Afghans at ease around the military, said Canadian Lt. Col. Carl Turenne, the team’s commanding officer.
"The city belongs to the Afghans," he said. "We are guests here."
On one such patrol, a platoon of Canadian soldiers visited a small enclave just outside of Kandahar to talk to villagers. A group of men said the village elder was pilfering aid and one elderly man invited the soldiers for tea.
As the crowd swelled around the platoon, though, the soldiers grew uneasy and with apologies abruptly headed back to their armored vehicles. For troops trained to fight, the new approach requires a delicate balance between protecting themselves and befriending the people they are supposed to defend.
"We kind of have a mentality to be super polite, super professional, but have a plan to kill everybody," said Canadian army Sgt. Tom, who would only use his first name, citing a specific security threat against him.
In addition to the stepped-up military presence, the International Security Assistance Force is greatly expanding civilian presence on the provincial reconstruction teams. The U.S. PRT in Kandahar, responsible for improving civil institutions, is slated to grow from 15 people to 50 by April 1 with the goal of making major improvements in the next 1½ year, said Bill Harris, the senior U.S. reconstruction representative in Kandahar.
"The slogan is this is the year, this is the place, we are the ones," he said. "If the Canadians and Americans don’t get it right [this year] then the next 10 years probably don’t matter that much."
With rampant corruption, grinding poverty, and an entrenched insurgency, though, both Harris and his military counterparts have a daunting task ahead.
"Almost everything has to go right for us in our plan and we have to get lucky," Harris said, "and I believe all that can happen."
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Jim Gant, the Green Beret who could win the war in Afghanistan
By Ann Scott Tyson The Washington Post Sunday, January 17, 2010; B01
It was the spring of 2003, and Capt. Jim Gant and his Special Forces team had just fought their way out of an insurgent ambush in Afghanistan's Konar province when they heard there was trouble in the nearby village of Mangwel. There, Gant had a conversation with a tribal chief -- a chance encounter that would redefine his mission in Afghanistan and that, more than six years later, could help salvage the faltering U.S. war effort.
Malik Noorafzhal, an 80-year-old tribal leader, told Gant that he had never spoken to an American before and asked why U.S. troops were in his country. Gant, whose only orders upon arriving in Afghanistan days earlier had been to "kill and capture anti-coalition members," responded by pulling out his laptop and showing Noorafzhal a video of the World Trade Center towers crumbling.
That sparked hours of conversation between the intense 35-year-old Green Beret and the elder in a tribe of 10,000. "I spent a lot of time just listening," Gant said. "I spoke only when I thought I understood what had been said."
In an unusual and unauthorized pact, Gant and his men were soon fighting alongside tribesmen in local disputes and against insurgents, at the same time learning ancient tribal codes of honor, loyalty and revenge -- codes that often conflicted with the sharia law that the insurgents sought to impose. But the U.S. military had no plans to leverage the Pashtun tribal networks against the insurgents, so Gant kept his alliances quiet.
No longer. In recent months, Gant, now a major, has won praise at the highest levels for his effort to radically deepen the U.S. military's involvement with Afghan tribes -- and is being sent back to Afghanistan to do just that. His 45-page paper, "One Tribe at a Time," published online last fall and circulating widely within the U.S. military, the Pentagon and Congress, lays out a strategy focused on empowering Afghanistan's ancient tribal system. Gant believes that with the central government still weak and corrupt, the tribes are the only enduring source of local authority and security in the country.
"We will be totally unable to protect the 'civilians' in the rural areas of Afghanistan until we partner with the tribes for the long haul," Gant wrote.
A decorated war veteran and Pashto speaker with multiple tours in Afghanistan, Gant had been assigned by the Army to deploy to Iraq in November. But with senior military and civilian leaders -- including Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates; Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan; and Gen. David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command -- expressing support for Gant's views, he was ordered instead to return to Afghanistan later this year to work on tribal issues.
"Maj. Jim Gant's paper is very impressive -- so impressive, in fact, that I shared it widely," Petraeus said, while McChrystal distributed it to all commanders in Afghanistan. One senior military official went so far as to call Gant "Lawrence of Afghanistan."
The abrupt about-face surprised the blunt-spoken major. "I couldn't believe it," Gant said in a recent interview, recalling how his orders were canceled just days before he was set to deploy to Iraq. "How do I know they are serious? They contacted me. I am not a very nice guy. I lead men in combat. I am not a Harvard guy. You don't want me on your think tank."
Gant, who sports tattoos on his right arm featuring Achilles and the Chinese characters for "fear no man," is clearly comfortable with the raw violence that is part of his job. An aggressive officer, he is known to carry triple the ammunition required for his missions. (One fellow soldier referred to this habit as a "Gantism.") But he is equally at ease playing for hours with Afghan children or walking hand-in-hand with tribesmen, as is their custom.
As a teenager in Las Cruces, N.M., Gant was headed to college on a basketball scholarship and had no plans to join the military until he read Robin Moore's 1965 fictionalized account of Special Forces actions in Vietnam. Captivated by the unique type of soldier who waged war with indigenous fighters, Gant decided to become a Green Beret and scheduled an appointment with his father, a middle school principal, to break the news.
Enlisting in the Army soon after his high school graduation, Gant became a Special Forces communications sergeant and fought in the Persian Gulf War. Later, as a captain, he served combat tours in Afghanistan in 2003 and 2004, and one in Iraq during the height of the violence there in 2006 and 2007.
Intellectually, Gant is driven by a belief that Special Forces soldiers should immerse themselves in the culture of foreign fighters, as British officer T.E. Lawrence did during the 1916-1918 Arab revolt. In Iraq as well as in Afghanistan, Gant relied on his Special Forces training to build close bonds with local fighters, often trusting them with his life.
In Iraq in December 2006, a roadside bomb flipped over Gant's Humvee twice and left it engulfed in flames, with him pinned inside. Members of the Iraqi National Police battalion that Gant was advising pulled him out. Soon afterward, Gant led those same police in fighting their way out of a complex insurgent ambush near the city of Balad, saving the lives of two policemen and an Iraqi girl while under heavy fire, and deliberately driving his Humvee over two roadside bombs to protect the police riding in unarmored trucks behind him.
Gant earned a Silver Star for his bravery, but he remembers most the goat sacrifice the police held for him that day. "We had just won a great battle. We had several [police] commandos there, with several goats, and they were putting their hands in the blood, and putting their handprints all over us and on the vehicles," Gant recalled in a 2007 interview. He felt both strange and honored. "It's something I will never forget," he said.
Under Gant's plan, small "tribal engagement teams," each made up of six culturally astute and battle-tested Special Forces soldiers, would essentially go native, moving into villages with rifles, ammunition and money to empower tribal leaders to improve security in their area and fight insurgents. The teams would always operate with the tribes, reducing the risk of roadside bombs and civilian casualties from airstrikes.
The U.S. military would have to grant the teams the leeway to grow beards and wear local garb, and enough autonomy in the chain of command to make rapid decisions. Most important, to build relationships, the military would have to commit one or two teams to working with the same tribe for three to five years, Gant said.
Such a strategy, he argues, would bolster McChrystal's counterinsurgency campaign by tapping thousands of tribal fighters to secure rural populations, allowing international troops and official Afghan forces to focus on large towns and cities. Building strong partnerships with the tribes, whose domains straddle Afghanistan's border with Pakistan, could also prove critical to defeating insurgents entrenched in Pakistan's western tribal areas, he contends.
Adm. Eric Olson, who leads the 57,000-strong Special Operations Command, said in the latest issue of Joint Force Quarterly that Gant's proposal is "innovative and bold" and likely to have "strategic effects." And in recent congressional testimony, Gates agreed that the U.S. military should step up cooperation with Afghan tribes, saying many security responsibilities are likely to fall on them rather than the Afghan army or police force.
Thorough intelligence analysis should drive the selection of the tribes, Gant said, noting that the U.S. military has already gathered much of the intelligence. "There are 500-page documents breaking these tribes down. You would be shocked how much we know about who is who," he said.
Gant's proposals go well beyond the more cautious tribal-outreach efforts underway in Afghanistan, where the U.S. military is experimenting with neighborhood-watch-type programs such as the Community Defense Initiative, in which Special Forces teams partner with tribes selected by an Afghan minister. With time running out, Gant believes tribal engagement must be bolder. "We are trying not to lose, not trying to win," he said. (Gant's experiences helped shape the CDI effort, and he is currently preparing to return to Afghanistan to implement his vision, according to a senior military official.)
Still, Gant acknowledges that his strategy has risks. The teams would depend on the tribes for their safety. "American soldiers would die. Some of them alone, with no support. Some may simply disappear," he wrote in his paper on the strategy. Another possibility is that intertribal conflict would break out between two or more U.S.-backed tribes. "Could it happen? Yes. Could it cause mission failure? Yes. Could we have to pick sides for our own safety? Yes," Gant said. But he believes that if American advisers forge strong ties with the tribes, the chances of such conflicts can be minimized.
Gant's greatest fear is that the United States will lack the fortitude to back the tribes for the long haul, eventually abandoning them. He, for one, plans to stick with his tribe in Afghanistan, at least to fulfill a personal promise to return to Konar province to see elder Malik Noorafzhal, now 86.
"I am not here to imply that I think I could win the war in Afghanistan if put in charge," Gant wrote in his paper. ". . . I just know what I have done and what I could do again, if given the chance."
Ann Scott Tyson, a staff writer for The Washington Post, has covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001.
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U.S.-Russian Accord On Transit Of Military Cargo Fails To Get Off The Ground
January 15, 2010 By Robert Coalson Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
When Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama met in Moscow last July, their primary aim was to push negotiations on a replacement for the expiring START nuclear-arms treaty.
The two leaders promised to deliver an agreement before the end of 2009 -- a deadline that has since lapsed amid talks that are reportedly growing ever more contentious.
Still, the presidents were able to smile and shake hands over one key "deliverable": an agreement that would allow the United States to transit lethal military cargo via Russian airspace to Afghanistan. That deal was said to mark an important uptick in bilateral cooperation on stabilizing Afghanistan, a goal that both sides emphasize is in their strategic interests.
Speaking a few days after the summit, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov emphasized the grand scale of the accord, saying, "the U.S. military plans to carry out a significant number of flights, up to 4,000-and-something per year."
But six months later, that agreement has produced no significant results, despite the growing insecurity of U.S. supply lines to Afghanistan through Pakistan and the dramatic increase in the number of coalition forces deployed in the region.
The inability of the two sides to implement this seemingly straightforward agreement may illustrate the difficulty that Moscow and Washington have in separating out areas of common interest from the complex of contentious disputes that characterize bilateral relations generally.
One Flight Or Two?
U.S. Pentagon spokeswoman Almarah Belk told RFE/RL there have been just two test flights into Afghanistan under the agreement, the first of which landed at Bagram Air Base near Kabul in October.
Andrew Kuchins, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the co-director of the institute's research project on the so-called Northern Distribution Network to supply Afghanistan [LINK: http://csis.org/publication/northern-distribution-network-and-afghanistan], says there were test flights in October and November.
Russian sources, including Viktor Ozerov, the chairman of the Federation Council's Defense and Security Committee, say there has only been one flight.
Whether there has been one flight or two in half a year, the figure is far below the 12 daily flights originally envisioned.
Officially, the Pentagon asserts that all needed supplies are reaching coalition troops and that Russia has never denied a request for a transit flight. The Pentagon and independent analysts emphasize that the ground transit of nonlethal cargo across Russia to Afghanistan is generally proceeding smoothly.
At The Mercy Of Kremlin Policy?
But there is more to the story of the nonimplementation of the July agreement. For one thing, the original accord was overplayed in the context of a summit where expectations had been raised by weeks of talk of "resetting" relations, but where there was actually precious little agreement, says Daniel Korski, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations:
"There was a clear desire by both parties to come out of the Moscow summit between Presidents Medvedev and Obama with some tangible, deliverable agreements," Korski says.
"Most of the agreements were incredibly contentious and complex -- such as what to do with the different military treaties, what to do with the missile-defense shield, and so on. And this agreement to provide the facility for transportation of supplies across Russian territory, in a sense, was the simplest one of all the different agreements that were discussed."
"And so it is obvious that both parties wanted it to be highlighted as a success," Korski adds, "even though it may actually take longer to figure out what goes on, and even though there may still be some reticence across the Russian military establishment."
The CSIS's Kuchins also emphasizes the political origins of the agreement, saying air transit over Russia was "not something high on [the Pentagon's] want-list," although the U.S. military is happy to have alternative supply routes. Pentagon spokeswoman Belk described the July agreement as "a redundancy system."
Julian Lindley-French, a professor of strategic studies at the University of Leiden, Netherlands, says no Western military "would ever wish to put its forces entirely at the mercy of Kremlin policy."
"We all know from past experience that the Kremlin can use whatever lever it can to try to influence Western policy and Western forces," he says, "and I cannot imagine for the life of me that Washington would want to be that vulnerable to a Kremlin veto."
A Complex Calculus
But there are increasing indications that even on the political level, this agreement was not as straightforward as Washington and Moscow indicated during the summer.
While both countries have a strategic interest in stabilizing Afghanistan, Russia seems to be treating the issue as merely part of a larger political calculus. Analyst Korski argues that Moscow sees the air-transit agreement as more beneficial to the United States than to Russia, and therefore may be seeking additional advantages.
"I think it is in both Russia's and America's interests that Afghanistan stabilizes. And I think the Russians, to some extent, are playing a bit of a parochial game, in that they would prefer that America does not fail, but they are not doing everything they can to [help America] succeed," Korski says.
"And in some respects, this agreement is not something the Russians seem to be approaching as useful to them as well, because it will help America and the international coalition to succeed in Afghanistan. But rather, it's something they are approaching from a narrow perspective of scoring immediate points for Russia."
Russian Federation Council member Ozerov conceded in comments to RFE/RL's Russian Service that Moscow has tied implementation of the transit agreement to the broader range of contentious issues that bedeviled the July summit.
"It is big politics. And in politics, games can be played," Ozerov said. "We tell the U.S. that we'll give you military transit, and they say to us, 'give us the telemetry of your new missiles.' How can we reach an agreement with such brazenness? It's laughable.
"We say to them, since you have occupied Afghanistan, you should also fight against opium. And they say, no, this has to be done with special police forces. And we say, we're giving you military transit, but then what?"
In addition to such explicit linkages, Ozerov emphasizes Russia's pragmatic approach to the Afghanistan problem. "Today we must have a foreign policy that meets Russia's interests" he said. "Yes, at various stages we can bring our policy in line with the interests of the international community, but doing so, we must be careful that we are not deceived."
Moscow's New Consensus
Korski says Moscow is becoming "uncomfortable" with the prospect of a NATO victory in Afghanistan and, as a result, is "half-hearted" in its commitment to assisting the effort there.
Russian military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer goes further, arguing that a "consensus" has formed in Moscow that NATO will fail in Afghanistan.
"There is, of course, undoubtedly a political subtext in what is happening. A consensus has developed in Moscow among specialists, the military, diplomats, and the political class generally that the U.S.-led coalition is losing in Afghanistan and that the current situation there is similar to what happened with the Soviet war in Afghanistan in the 1980s," Felgenhauer says.
"And if the Soviet Union collapsed, now NATO will collapse -- or it will lose, certainly. If we lost there, then the Americans will lose there. So no one is in any particular hurry to support a hopeless and losing operation."
Throughout the first year of the Obama administration, officials in both Moscow and Washington have asserted it is possible for the two countries to cooperate in areas of mutual interest, particularly nuclear arms control, combating the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, insuring that Iran does not acquire nuclear arms, fighting international terrorism, and so on.
But the failure over the last six months to implement the military transit agreement shows that the practice of isolating such areas of mutual interest is far from easy.
RFE/RL Russian Service correspondent Danila Galperovich contributed to this report from Moscow
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What's Our Sputnik?
New York Times Op-Ed Columnist By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN January 16, 2010
Taipei, Taiwan - Dick Cheney says President Obama is “trying to pretend that we are not at war” with terrorists. There is only one thing I have to say about that: I sure hope so.
Frankly, if I had my wish, we would be on our way out of Afghanistan not in, we would be letting Pakistan figure out which Taliban they want to conspire with and which ones they want to fight, we would be letting Israelis and Palestinians figure out on their own how to make peace, we would be taking $100 billion out of the Pentagon budget to make us independent of imported oil — nothing would make us more secure — and we would be reducing the reward for killing or capturing Osama bin Laden to exactly what he's worth: 10 cents and an autographed picture of Dick Cheney.
Am I going isolationist? No, but visiting the greater China region always leaves me envious of the leaders of Hong Kong, Taiwan and China, who surely get to spend more of their time focusing on how to build their nations than my president, whose agenda can be derailed at any moment by a jihadist death cult using exploding underpants.
Could we just walk away? No, but we must change our emphasis. The “war on terrorists” has to begin by our challenging the people and leaders over there. If they're not ready to take the lead, to speak out and fight the madness in their midst, for the future of their own societies, there is no way we can succeed. We'll exhaust ourselves trying. We'd be better off just building a higher wall.
As the terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman noted in an essay in The Washington Post: “In the wake of the global financial crisis, Al Qaeda has stepped up a strategy of economic warfare. ‘We will bury you,' Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev promised Americans 50 years ago. Today, Al Qaeda threatens: ‘We will bankrupt you.' ” And they will.
Our presence, our oil dependence, our endless foreign aid in the Middle East have become huge enablers of bad governance there and massive escapes from responsibility and accountability by people who want to blame all their troubles on us. Let's get out of the way and let the moderate majorities there, if they really exist, face their own enemies on their own. It is the only way they will move. We can be the wind at their backs, but we can't be their sails. There is some hope for Iraq and Iran today because their moderates are fighting for themselves.
Has anyone noticed the most important peace breakthrough on the planet in the last two years? It's right here: the new calm in the Strait of Taiwan. For decades, this was considered the most dangerous place on earth, with Taiwan and China pointing missiles at each other on hair triggers. Well, over the past two years, China and Taiwan have reached a quiet rapprochement — on their own. No special envoys or shuttling secretaries of state. Yes, our Navy was a critical stabilizer. But they worked it out. They realized their own interdependence. The result: a new web of economic ties, direct flights and student exchanges.
A key reason is that Taiwan has no oil, no natural resources. It's a barren rock with 23 million people who, through hard work, have amassed the fourth-largest foreign currency reserves in the world. They got rich digging inside themselves, unlocking their entrepreneurs, not digging for oil. They took responsibility. They got rich by asking: “How do I improve myself?” Not by declaring: “It's all somebody else's fault. Give me a handout.”
When I look at America from here, I worry. China is now our main economic partner and competitor. Sure, China has big problems. Nevertheless, I hope Americans see China's rise as the 21st-century equivalent of Russia launching the Sputnik satellite — a challenge to which we responded with a huge national effort that revived our education, infrastructure and science and propelled us for 50 years. Unfortunately, the Cheneyites want to make fighting Al Qaeda our Sputnik. Others want us to worry about some loopy remark Senator Harry Reid made about the shade of Obama's skin.
Well, what is our national project going to be? Racing China, chasing Al Qaeda or parsing Harry? Of course, to a degree, we need to both race China and confront Al Qaeda — but which will define us?
“Our response to Sputnik made us better educated, more productive, more technologically advanced and more ingenious,” said the Johns Hopkins foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum. “Our investments in science and education spread throughout American society, producing the Internet, more students studying math and people genuinely wanting to build the nation.”
And what does the war on terror give us? Better drones, body scanners and a lot of desultory T.S.A. security jobs at airports. “Sputnik spurred us to build a highway to the future,” added Mandelbaum. “The war on terror is prompting us to build bridges to nowhere.”
We just keep thinking we can do it all — be focused, frightened and frivolous. We can't. We don't have the money. We don't have the time.
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Rugged North Waziristan harbors US enemies
The Associated Press via The Washington Post By KATHY GANNON Sunday, January 17, 2010
PESHAWAR, Pakistan - They rumble through the narrow snow-clogged mountain passes in black pickup trucks. In the back, eight to ten men armed with Kalashnikov rifles and rocket-propelled grenades huddle together against the cold.
These Islamic militants are on their way to Afghanistan to kill Americans and their allies. Their launching point: Pakistan's North Waziristan district- a lawless border area that has become the nerve center of the insurgency in nearby Afghanistan.
North Waziristan is a place where al-Qaida and its Afghan and Pakistani allies can train fighters, store explosives and rest from the strain of war. The United States is pressuring Pakistan to launch military operations in North Waziristan, and CIA-operated unmanned aircraft are unleashing missiles with increasing frequency at suspected militant leaders holed up there.
However, for now, militants from al-Qaida, the Taliban and allied groups operate with impunity in North Waziristan, a bleak, arid Rhode Island-sized region with mountain passes that run like tentacles into provinces of Afghanistan.
"They go back and forth in pickup trucks, and they are all mixed together," said a senior tribal elder from North Waziristan's Shawal Valley. "They are Arabs, and Afghans and Uzbeks. It's a mix."
He spoke to the Associated Press in Peshawar, about 100 miles northeast of Waziristan, on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. The elder's descriptions were similar to those provided by other Pakistanis who have recently visited North Waziristan, which is off-limits for Western journalists because of safety concerns and Pakistani government regulations.
From Miram Shah, the capital of the region, roads and trails snake across the mountains into Afghanistan. In the winter, rickety old buses and sleek pickup trucks struggle through the narrow passes, sometimes pushed over the most rugged stretches of road by their occupants, most of them wearing only sandals on their feet.
Thick forests stretch the length of the border, providing natural camouflage for insurgents. From caves hewn into the mountain peaks, insurgents can watch American helicopter gunships flying on the Afghan side of the border, often taking aim with their rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
Much of North Waziristan is a wasteland dotted with small clusters of sun-baked mud houses that seem to blend into the dusty brown landscape. Outside the towns, there are few signs of modern life -- no power lines or telephone poles. Occasional herds of goats drift past, shepherded by nomadic tribes searching for water.
It was in the town of Mir Ali that al-Qaida regrouped after the U.S. and its allies ousted the Afghan Taliban regime in 2001. And Miram Shah once served as headquarters for one of the deadliest Afghan Taliban groups, led by Jalaluddin Haqqani.
"Read Haqqani as al-Qaida. They are one and the same," said Mahmud Shah, former security chief for the tribal regions.
In 2006, the Pakistan army signed a peace pact with militants in Miram Shah, which the U.S. said allowed the Taliban and al Qaida to regroup. Under the agreement, Pakistan promised to keep an estimated 10,000 army men in their barracks, while the militants promised to stop crossing into Afghanistan, expel foreigners and stop fighting Pakistan.
The army kept its side of the agreement. But the militants regrouped and rearmed.
U.S. officials believe Afghanistan cannot be stabilized until Pakistan's tribal regions- and North Waziristan in particular- have been routed of Taliban and al-Qaida. With nearly 80,000 soldiers deployed on its western border with Afghanistan, Pakistan has launched offensives in several tribal regions, including a recent offensive on Taliban strongholds in South Waziristan.
Yet it is North Waziristan and Haqqani's Afghan Taliban faction that the U.S. has been pressing Pakistan to target. The U.S. believes North Waziristan is where al-Qaida's top leadership, possibly including Osama bin Laden himself, have taken refuge. Haqqani's group plots attacks inside Afghanistan from its North Waziristan base, including the Dec. 30 suicide assault on the CIA base in Khost that killed seven CIA officials.
Pakistan insists its forces are already overstretched, battling its own Taliban and other extremist groups across a territory that extends for several thousand kilometers (miles). It has refused so far to open another front in North Waziristan.
"We are definitely not considering an operation in North Waziristan," Pakistan's army spokesman Gen. Athar Abbas told the AP, only days after Sen. Joe Lieberman said Pakistan may be preparing to move into the area.
With 2,000 Pakistani soldiers already killed fighting insurgents in the border area and with anti-Americanism on the rise, the government has told Washington it will not open a front in North Waziristan against an enemy that isn't targeting Pakistan-- a reference to Haqqani's group and al-Qaida.
"The army is overstretched and getting into an operational imbalance," Abbas said. He said a greater commitment near the country's western border with Afghanistan would draw down forces available to respond to other threats- including neighboring India, with which Pakistan has fought three wars.
"Pakistan is dealing with it in a logical manner. Pakistan can't underwrite U.S. security in Afghanistan. It doesn't have the capacity," said Shah, the former security chief in the frontier. "It would take at least 50,000 soldiers for an offensive in North Waziristan. Pakistan has to wait until every other area is secure before it goes into North Waziristan because it will need all its soldiers."
In the absence of a Pakistan ground offensive in North Waziristan, the United States has stepped up its unmanned drone assaults on the area, say local residents.
Ehsanullah, a tribesmen from North Waziristan's Miram Shah, told the AP in Peshawar that the whine of the unmanned drones can be heard daily. While Pakistan publicly complains about the use of drone fired missiles, most residents believe the U.S. is operating with tacit approval of the government and military.
"After every attack there is a deep silence and fear is everywhere," said Ehsanullah. "We don't know where it has landed. People from the neighborhood first come out and look around and then we go see who has been killed."
Abbas said the drone attacks are making the army's job more difficult because they are driving local residents to the Taliban.
"If you ask people who they support- the security forces or the Taliban- will say the Taliban," Ehsanullah said. "We are angry because the government doesn't protect us from the drones and they don't allow us to protect ourselves."
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The CIA has long struggled with ensuring safe interrogations
Washington Post By David Ignatius Sunday, January 17, 2010
As the CIA mourns the officers who died in Khost, Afghanistan, last month, there's an understandable desire not to second-guess the procedures that allowed a Jordanian suicide bomber to enter the agency's base. But this practice of meeting with agents "inside the wire" has a controversial history within the CIA, and it offers some useful background as the agency considers changes.
The debate about how to handle agents in war zones surfaced in Iraq in 2003. The question was how to balance the safety of CIA personnel with the needs of intelligence gathering. Headquarters argued for meeting agents inside the Green Zone; case officers in the field countered that this would actually put them and their agents at greater risk -- and choke the flow of information.
The tradecraft dispute went on for more than a year, but in the end, the headquarters view prevailed. By 2005, CIA officers had generally stopped meeting agents in the "red zones" of Iraq, outside secured areas. Agent-handling procedures in Afghanistan also evolved toward "inside the wire" meetings. ad_icon
Some CIA veterans continued to argue privately, however, that the new approach was potentially risky. This account is based on their comments.
CIA officers in the field began to develop their Iraq tradecraft in the months after the March 2003 invasion. The dangers were highlighted by a shootout in Baghdad in midsummer that year when insurgents attacked three case officers riding in military Humvees. The Baghdad station developed procedures to operate more stealthily, using ordinary civilian vehicles.
The biggest danger, CIA officers concluded, was crossing the checkpoints to enter the Green Zone in Baghdad and other secured locations. The insurgents maintained surveillance outside the gates. And on several occasions, jittery soldiers shot at agency vehicles. In the spring of 2004, for example, Kurdish guards opened fire on CIA officers at a checkpoint in Sulaymaniyah, and a CIA security officer was killed.
In the spring of 2004, the chief of the agency's Near East division, worried about such incidents, ordered a halt to most meetings in red zones. The CIA station in Baghdad protested, arguing: "If you pull people inside the wire, it's unsafe."
The field officers warned that some of their best agents would refuse to come inside the Green Zone because they thought it would put them at risk. "They didn't want their faces known," recalls one agency veteran.
The Baghdad station argued instead for using its fleet of cars, which could be repainted and retagged repeatedly, to avoid detection. When headquarters proposed using only armored vehicles, the station again balked, arguing that these behemoths would be giveaways. Instead, the Baghdad tech shop devised homemade armor for some of its beat-up civilian cars.
To enhance security outside the Green Zone, the Baghdad station also developed procedures in 2004 for monitoring Iraqi agents who might be hostile. Surveillance teams of Iraqis and other Arabs would precede agency officers on their way to meetings to look for insurgent activity. The Arab surveillance teams would also track the agency's contacts, checking for signs they might be carrying suicide bombs.
The Baghdad station felt so strongly that it would be a mistake to bring agents inside the wire that its leaders in mid-2004 proposed moving case officers to safe houses outside the Green Zone. That way, the officers and agents wouldn't have to worry about running the gantlet at checkpoints. Headquarters refused.
Through 2004, a standoff developed between headquarters and the Baghdad station over which approach -- inside or outside -- was safer. The field officers continued to operate relatively safely with the war zone tradecraft they had evolved, even as violence increased. But the dangers were obvious.
The leadership of the Baghdad station changed in 2005, and the new bosses are said to have opted for the approach that headquarters preferred. Meetings out in the hostile red zones declined. In Afghanistan, too, agency officers reduced their movements in high-threat areas. Since their bases were generally at forward military outposts, CIA officers were already more visible to the enemy. This argued for avoiding meetings outside the wire.
CIA Director Leon Panetta is conducting a high-level review of the Khost tragedy, in part to explore what tradecraft procedures make sense for the future. Agency veterans argue that the Iraq experience -- like the agency's tradecraft in Lebanon during the 1980s -- shows it may be safer to operate out in the field, away from "protected zones" that, in reality, have become targets for the enemy.
davidignatius@washpost.com
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Pashtun clue to lost tribes of Israel
Genetic study sets out to uncover if there is a 2,700-year-old link to Afghanistan and Pakistan
The Observer Rory McCarthy, Jerusalem Sunday 17 January 2010
Israel is to fund a rare genetic study to determine whether there is a link between the lost tribes of Israel and the Pashtuns of Afghanistan and northern Pakistan.
Historical and anecdotal evidence strongly suggests a connection, but definitive scientific proof has never been found. Some leading Israeli anthropologists believe that, of all the many groups in the world who claim a connection to the 10 lost tribes, the Pashtuns, or Pathans, have the most compelling case. Paradoxically it is from the Pashtuns that the ultra-conservative Islamic Taliban movement in Afghanistan emerged. Pashtuns themselves sometimes talk of their Israelite connection, but show few signs of sympathy with, or any wish to migrate to, the modern Israeli state.
Now an Indian researcher has collected blood samples from members of the Afridi tribe of Pashtuns who today live in Malihabad, near Lucknow, in northern India. Shahnaz Ali, from the National Institute of Immuno¬haematology in Mumbai, is to spend several months studying her findings at Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, in Haifa. A previous genetic study in the same area did not provide proof one way or the other.
The Assyrians conquered the kingdom of Israel some 2,730 years ago, scattering 10 of the 12 tribes into exile, supposedly beyond the mythical Sambation river. The two remaining tribes, Benjamin and Judah, became the modern-day Jewish people, according to Jewish history, and the search for the lost tribes has continued ever since. Some have claimed to have found traces of them in modern day China, Burma, Nigeria, Central Asia, Ethiopia and even in the West.
But it is believed that the tribes were dispersed in an area around modern-day northern Iraq and Afghanistan, which makes the Pashtun connection the strongest.
"Of all the groups, there is more convincing evidence about the Pathans than anybody else, but the Pathans are the ones who would reject Israel most ferociously. That is the sweet irony," said Shalva Weil, an anthropologist and senior researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The Pashtuns have a proud oral history that talks of descending from the Israelites.
Their tribal groupings have similar names, including Yusufzai, which means sons of Joseph; and Afridi, thought by some to come from Ephraim. Some customs and practices are said to be similar to Jewish traditions: lighting candles on the sabbath, refraining from eating certain foods, using a canopy during a wedding ceremony and some similarities in garments.
Weil cautioned, however, that this is not proof of any genetic connection. DNA might be able to determine which area of the world the Pashtuns originated from, but it is not at all certain that it could identify a specific genetic link to the Jewish people.
So far Shahnaz Ali has been cautious. "The theory has been a matter of curiosity since long ago, and now I hope a scientific analysis will provide us with some answers about the Israelite origin of Afridi Pathans. We still don't know what the truth is, but efforts will certainly give us a direction," she told the Times of India last year.
Some are more certain, among them Navras Aafreedi, an academic at Luck¬now University, himself a Pashtun from the Afridi tribe. His family trace their roots back to Pathans from the Khyber Agency of what is today north-west Pakistan, but he believes they stretch back further to the tribe of Ephraim.
"Pathans, or Pashtuns, are the only people in the world whose probable descent from the lost tribes of Israel finds mention in a number of texts from the 10th century to the present day, written by Jewish, Christian and Muslim scholars alike, both religious as well as secularists," Aafreedi said.
The implications of any find are uncertain. Other groups that claim ¬Israelite descent, including those known as the Bnei Menashe in India and some in Ethiopia, have migrated to Israel. That is unlikely with the Pashtuns.
But Weil said the work was absorbing, well beyond questions of immigration. "I find a myth that has been so persistent for so long, for 2,000 years, really fascinating," she said.
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