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Air strike kills 15 insurgents in NW Afghanistan: official
KABUL, Jan. 20 (Xinhua) -- Air raids against militants' hideouts in Badghis province, in northwest Afghanistan, left more than a dozen insurgents dead early Wednesday, senior police commander in the region Ikramudin Yawar said.
Assault in central Kabul leaves residents angry and fearful
Washington Post By Pamela Constable and Keith B. Richburg Washington Post Foreign Service Wednesday, January 20, 2010
KABUL - In the rooftop ruins of an electronics market Tuesday, overlooking a plaza with the presidential palace just beyond, a shaken security guard pointed out three pools of blood amid spent shells and chunks of fallen plaster on the charred carpet.
Pakistan-Based Terror Chiefs Exploit West’s Weakest Flank
By Arthur Kent, Skyreporter.com
January 19, 2010 -- With their strike Monday at the heart of Kabul, which Afghan security sources say was planned, equipped and controlled from Pakistan, the Taliban have delivered an emphatic response to embattled President Hamid Karzai’s
After Afghan Attack, Some See U.S. Role
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN January 19, 2010
KABUL, Afghanistan - Twenty-four hours after seven insurgents stormed a shopping center in downtown Kabul and immobilized the city, the shoemakers who ply their trade in front of the mall were back in business on Tuesday.
Afghanistan war: gap grows between US efforts, Afghan expectations
Many Afghans say the pace of development has not matched the amount of investment. Since 2001, the US has spent more than $39 billion on humanitarian and development projects.
Christian Science Monitor By Tom A. Peter Correspondent January 19, 2010
Dabay, Afghanistan - As a group of Afghan men gathered around US Army Staff Sgt. Adam James, neither he nor the locals were terribly enthused about talking. James's platoon had been tasked with surveying villagers about their needs in Dabay, a tiny collection of houses in Paktika Province.
Taliban ambush kills three, wounds police commander in S Afghanistan
GHAZNI, Afghanistan, Jan. 20 (Xinhua) -- Taliban militants ambushed a police convoy in Ghazni province of southern Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing three people and wounding a police commander and his two sons, provincial police chief Khayalbaz Shirzai said.
Warning over heightened risk to NGO staff in 2010
KABUL, 20 January 2010 (IRIN) - A new report by the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office (ANSO) says the number of local NGO staff killed in violent incidents fell sharply in 2009 from the previous year, but warns that NGO staff could face increasing risks in 2010.
Appointment of Afghan counter narcotics chief dismays British officials
The Telegraph, UK By Ben Farmer in Kabul 01/19/2010
An Afghan minister who was pushed from his job because of British and US concerns over corruption has been voted back into Hamid Karzai's cabinet as counter narcotics chief.
Kabul Attack Highlights Competing U.S., Taliban Urban Strategies
January 19, 2010 By Abubakar Siddique Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Kabul has cautiously returned to its everyday hustle and bustle, a day after a Taliban attack that rocked the city's center and brought the harsh realities of war perilously close to the presidential palace and key ministry buildings.
Karzai plans to woo Taliban with 'land, work and pensions'
The Guardian By Julian Borger in Lashkar Gah 01/19/2010
• Incentives to be offered to fighters to lay down arms
• Visiting Miliband pledges support for reintegration
Afghanistan's president will unveil a plan in the next eight days to offer work, education, pensions and land to Taliban fighters who lay down their weapons.
Al-Qaeda wants South Asia war, says US secretary Gates
January 20, 2010 BBC News
Al-Qaeda is trying to destabilise the whole of South Asia hoping to provoke war between India and Pakistan, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates says.
Gates backs Afghan effort to reach out to Taliban
U.S. defense secretary says Kabul's new effort to reconcile with militants will be critical to success against Taliban
The Wall Street Journal - Today's Paper - Europe By YOCHI J. DREAZEN JANUARY 20, 2010
NEW DELHI - The Obama administration offered cautious support for the Afghan government's new outreach effort to the Taliban, expressing hope that lower-level militants would reconcile with Kabul even if senior leaders continued fighting.
Lavrov: Russia Has Allowed Just One U.S. Military Overflight To Afghanistan
January 19, 2010 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
MOSCOW (RFE/RL) -- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told RFE/RL today that Russia has allowed only one flight of lethal U.S. military equipment to transit its airspace en route to Afghanistan, despite a July agreement envisioning as many as 12 flights a day.
US regrets end to refueling mission for Afghanistan
Tue Jan 19, 2:29 pm ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – A senior US diplomat on Tuesday voiced regret that Japan ended a naval refueling mission for military operations in Afghanistan, saying Washington had made clear to Tokyo how critical it was.
New Wave of Warlords Bedevils U.S.
Wall Street Journal By MATTHEW ROSENBERG JANUARY 19, 2010
In his teen years, Sirajuddin Haqqani was known among friends as a dandy. He cared more about the look of his thick black hair than the battles his father, a mujahideen warlord in the 1980s, was waging with Russia for control of Afghanistan.
The Kabul lottery
The Guardian By Julian Borger 01/19/2010
• The Afghan capital thrives despite a steady onslaught of bombs and rockets
When the insurgents struck at quarter to ten this morning, I was doing what most Kabulis do for much of the day - sitting in traffic. In a city frequently visited by car bombers the usual boredom and frustration
US terror suspects in Pakistan 'denied legal aid'
By Syed Shoaib Hasan BBC News, Islamabad Tuesday, 19 January 2010
Five US citizens being held in Pakistan on suspicion of plotting attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan are being denied legal aid, activists say.
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Air strike kills 15 insurgents in NW Afghanistan: official
KABUL, Jan. 20 (Xinhua) -- Air raids against militants' hideouts in Badghis province, in northwest Afghanistan, left more than a dozen insurgents dead early Wednesday, senior police commander in the region Ikramudin Yawar said.
"We got information through intelligence report about Taliban meeting in Khatawaran village of Balamirghab district and passed it on to international troops. NATO-led forces carried out air raids and killed 15 rebels," Yawar told Xinhua.
He added that some important Taliban commanders are also among those killed in the air strike.
There were no casualties on the troops, he said.
Taliban militants have yet to make any comment.
Considered as a hotbed of Taliban militants in Badghis province, Balamirghab has been the scene of Taliban activities since early 2009.
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Assault in central Kabul leaves residents angry and fearful
Washington Post By Pamela Constable and Keith B. Richburg Washington Post Foreign Service Wednesday, January 20, 2010
KABUL - In the rooftop ruins of an electronics market Tuesday, overlooking a plaza with the presidential palace just beyond, a shaken security guard pointed out three pools of blood amid spent shells and chunks of fallen plaster on the charred carpet.
It was there that three suicide commandos, part of a Taliban squad that tried to attack multiple buildings in the heart of the Afghan capital early Monday, blew themselves up after a three-hour firefight. Officials said the attack also killed two civilians and three members of the security forces.
"We don't care about the damage they did, but it was terrible to see the fear and panic, the adults trampling on children as they ran," said Hasibullah Khan, 22. "Every time there is another attack, we lose a little more faith in our government."
Afghan and U.S. officials praised the brave response by local security forces, who battled at least 10 Taliban gunmen. The death toll was much lower than in some previous Taliban assaults in the city, which some analysts said was a sign of improved government defenses.
But this assessment contrasted sharply with the angry comments of residents and merchants, who poked through piles of singed cloth, charred teapots and melted hangers in a shopping center that was destroyed by fire as security forces fought the militants. "We feel shame that our government was too weak to defend the capital, shame that even the troops from 36 nations could not protect us," said Abdul Wahid, 43, whose clothing shop was burned to ashes. "We used to feel safe because we were so near the presidential palace. Now we just feel scared."
Psychologically, the battle seemed to leave residents more shaken than previous attacks. In some of those cases, assailants had targeted the same buildings, but none had gone after so many buildings at once or some so close to the seat of power.
The high-decibel firefight sent thousands fleeing and ignited a five-story market, where smoke billowed for hours. By Tuesday morning, the sidewalk vendors and beggars had returned to their posts, but the mood on the streets was edgy and grim. "When I heard the first explosion, I ran across the Kabul River and stood on the other side all day, watching the fire," said Mazullah, 36, whose clothing shop was wiped out. "They wanted to show the world they could invade and destroy Kabul, and it looked like they had."
Residents were also incredulous that the attackers could have penetrated so deeply into the city, reaching within one block of the presidential palace. To do so, they had to evade multiple checkpoints and vehicle searches, which clog commuter traffic every day.
The political mood was already sour and uncertain. The attack came as President Hamid Karzai, reelected last summer in a fraud-plagued poll, was inside the fortified palace, attempting to swear in a group of new cabinet officials after parliament had rejected most of his first choices.
The attack also closely followed a visit by Richard C. Holbrooke, the U.S. special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. He was here in part to promote the coming U.S. military and civilian buildup, intended to overwhelm Taliban forces and revive the war-battered economy.
But many Afghans remain suspicious and resentful of the U.S. and NATO military presence, and some asked why the thousands of foreign troops -- mostly stationed in rural combat outposts -- were unprepared to help defend Kabul.
"What is the use of these soldiers from so many countries when they can't even stop a few boys in suicide vests," said Wahid. "Our religion teaches peace, but others use it to make war on us. Will nobody stop them?"
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Pakistan-Based Terror Chiefs Exploit West’s Weakest Flank
By Arthur Kent, Skyreporter.com
January 19, 2010 -- With their strike Monday at the heart of Kabul, which Afghan security sources say was planned, equipped and controlled from Pakistan, the Taliban have delivered an emphatic response to embattled President Hamid Karzai’s pleas that his enemies lay down their arms in return for amnesty.
It’s not compromise but victory the Taliban taste now.
Privately, U.S. and NATO leaders are seeking a way to adapt to that reality, as shockwaves from Monday’s attack reach far beyond the scarred precincts of the Western-backed Kabul regime.
In Washington D.C., the attack gives new urgency to arguments advanced by key aides to President Barack Obama, notably chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and senior adviser David Axelrod, that American overtures to reconcile the Pakistan-based Taliban leadership should be intensified, guided by an acceptance that the Afghan government must eventually throw open the gates of Kabul in some form of power sharing arrangement with its opponents.
“The momentum is building towards reconciling at any cost,” reports one well-placed observer, who has witnessed a shift in sentiment in the U.S. capital in recent weeks.
“More of the president’s advisers are telling him that it’s vital, by this summer if possible, to show Americans that their troops really will start coming home in 2011.
“In London next week, there’ll be a lot of talk about transitioning to the Afghans. The current government will be the assumed beneficiary, but in truth it’ll be other groups of Afghan leaders that stand to gain the most. That’s the Taliban, and the rest of the opposition groups operating from Pakistan.”
Indeed the London conference on Afghanistan convening January 28th will see a chastened, much maligned Hamid Karzai in the hot seat.
“If he’s not looking over his shoulder for (Taliban leader) Mullah Omar, he should be,” a London-bound Western diplomat tells Skyreporter.
“Karzai’s been nothing but belligerent towards his international supporters since last year’s election, and frankly we’re fed up to the teeth with his lack of action on corruption and bad governance.”
“If Obama looks for alternatives, including a back door exit strategy, Karzai can’t be surprised.”
Such sentiments would have been unthinkable just one year ago. Despite the regime’s abundant shortcomings, the Afghan Taliban were viewed as an intractable foe whose alliance with al Qaeda precluded any notion of power sharing.
But the sheer exasperation of U.S. and NATO leaders, and their unwillingness to take effective counter-measures against the Taliban’s command and control networks in Pakistan, leave few if any viable options.
“It’s a disgrace,” says the Washington observer, who has long advocated the interests of the Afghan people, as opposed to Afghanistan’s war-profiteering elite, within the D.C. power structure.
“It’s a sell out, both of the Afghans and our original objective of securing the region from terrorists.
"The willpower to reverse all the losses of the Bush years is just not there. We’re soft on corruption, and negligent on Pakistan. Game over.”
Certainly U.S. officials like Defense Secretary Robert Gates will continue describing the Taliban as irreconcilable.
But with no new strategy to hurt the Taliban’s leadership where they live and work, reconciling with the devil is not only on the cards. It’s in the works.
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After Afghan Attack, Some See U.S. Role
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN January 19, 2010
KABUL, Afghanistan - Twenty-four hours after seven insurgents stormed a shopping center in downtown Kabul and immobilized the city, the shoemakers who ply their trade in front of the mall were back in business on Tuesday.
Nearby, shopkeepers returned to hawk tapes of Madonna alongside recordings of Afghan and Bollywood stars, and a crowd of men joked with a man wearing a large shawl, because that was the same outfit the attackers wore on Monday to hide their guns.
Stoic about the assault, convinced that it would happen again and lacking faith in the government's ability to stop such attacks, those who work near the sites that were attacked were most interested in the question of why the insurgents had not killed more civilians.
“They could have slaughtered everyone in Faroshga,” said Mohammed Essa, 35, a shoemaker, referring to the shopping center that two suicide bombers entered Monday morning and left a shell. But the gun battle there with Afghan security forces, which lasted for hours, killed only five people — two civilians and three members of the security forces. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attacks.
“It does impress us,” Mr. Essa said. “If they wanted to, they could have killed everyone.”
There were nods of assent on the raised platform where the shoemakers sit in a row under a tattered awning. “Their goal was something else. They wanted to show the government, ‘We can destroy whatever we want,' and look what they did,” said 17-year-old Hamid Shah, gesturing at the blackened building behind him as he hammered a new heel on a customer's shoe.
According to numerous accounts from shopkeepers who were in the building on Monday, two men wearing the large blanket-like shawls favored by Afghan men to keep out the winter chill entered the building and went up to the fourth or fifth floor. There, they threw off their cloaks, revealing heavy weapons, and told people to get out.
They fatally shot one boy, according to several accounts, and they pointed their guns at a watchman and a cleaner, firing on either side of them while shouting that everyone should leave. With only a few exceptions, people in the building emerged unscathed.
Afghan intelligence officials say they believe that the scarcity of many civilian deaths was more a matter of chance than intent. Amrullah Saleh, the chief of intelligence, said the original target had been the government's central bank, which a suicide bomber tried to enter, but he was shot before he could get inside. Had he been able to detonate himself inside, many employees and visitors would have been killed.
The two men in shawls had planned to follow him into the bank, Mr. Saleh said, but when he was shot, they ran into the shopping center nearby.
People who were near the site of the attacks said that that still did not explain why the two men, both heavily armed, had not detonated their explosives inside the shopping center.
A dozen people interviewed all agreed that the government was too weak to prevent such assaults. Politicians and average Afghans questioned, for example, how the attackers had been able to move undetected through many checkpoints to reach the center of Kabul.
“The question is how come these terrorists are able to come all the way from the border to Kabul with all their ammunitions and stuff,” said Noor ul-Haq Uloumi, a member of Parliament who sits on its Defense Committee.
He said that corruption was probably involved. There are many reports of cases where guards have been bribed to enable criminals or insurgents to move through an area. “If we cannot eliminate corruption in the government and cannot make a government based on the rule of law to serve the people of Afghanistan, this corruption can bring many of such attacks,” Mr. Uloumi said.
Azizullah, 60, who sells music tapes from a booth that is only a few inches wider than his shoulders, made a similar point. “The government has police, intelligence guards and army soldiers in all the crossroads, so how can these people get in?” said Mr. Azizullah, who like many Afghans uses one name.
Corruption is so pervasive that the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reported on Tuesday that interviews with 7,600 Afghans across the country led to the conclusion that the bribes people pay account for nearly a quarter of the country's gross domestic product.
Some Kabul residents speculated that Monday's attack had been engineered by the United States to justify staying longer in Afghanistan. “Maybe the Americans are behind it,” said Zia-ul Haq, 22, who works in a stationery store a few feet from the site of a second major attack on Monday, in which a militant driving an ambulance blew himself up. “Otherwise, how could they have come through all these security checkpoints?”
“It is masterminded by insiders,” he said.
Several Afghans said they thought that the main motive for the attack was propaganda: to show the world that Kabul, the capital, was vulnerable. But at the same time, no one seemed to think that the government was in danger of being overrun.
“This is to show the Afghan government and the internationals that they can carry out an attack one kilometer from the presidential palace,” said Abdul Rashid, 45, who stood outside the Faroshga center waiting for a watchman to open the locked gate, so he could inspect the charred remains of his shop.
“But they can't overthrow the government,” Mr. Rashid said. “This is only an attack, an effort at strangulation. Kabul is safe with the presence of all these security forces.”
Abdul Waheed Wafa and Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting.
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Afghanistan war: gap grows between US efforts, Afghan expectations
Many Afghans say the pace of development has not matched the amount of investment. Since 2001, the US has spent more than $39 billion on humanitarian and development projects.
Christian Science Monitor By Tom A. Peter Correspondent January 19, 2010
Dabay, Afghanistan - As a group of Afghan men gathered around US Army Staff Sgt. Adam James, neither he nor the locals were terribly enthused about talking. James's platoon had been tasked with surveying villagers about their needs in Dabay, a tiny collection of houses in Paktika Province.
Nearing the end of their yearlong tour, even the privates in the platoon could guess fairly accurately what the Afghans would say – irrigation equipment, building supplies, and warm-weather clothing.
As for the Afghans, after more than eight years of US soldiers passing in and out of their town, they had a pretty good idea of what would happen. One villager initially refused to speak to the soldiers, saying, “Five years ago, American soldiers came here asking about our problems. They wrote them down in their notebooks and then they never came back.”
For both Afghans and US soldiers alike, reconstruction often proves a frustrating process. After nearly a decade of reconstruction pledges from the US and international community, many Afghans have grown frustrated by the slow pace of progress. Meanwhile, the US soldiers juggling the country's security challenges and development projects must constantly deal with expectations management.
Given the amount of money invested in the country, many locals charge that the pace of development has not matched the level of investment. $39 billion on humanitarian aid, reconstruction
Since 2001, the US has spent more than $39 billion on humanitarian and reconstruction projects in Afghanistan, not including the more than $25 billion that has come from the international community. As in Iraq, however, there have been a number of problems with limited oversight, and many international watchdog agencies speculate that billions of dollars allocated to Afghanistan's reconstruction is probably unaccounted for.
Additionally, despite this significant investment, at most, a little more than half of Afghans have heard of or know about any reconstruction project or program in their area funded by foreign aid, according to a recent survey by The Asia Foundation.
“Unfortunately, the big ticket projects that have been funded and led by the international community have not really provided a big kind of impact on the average Afghan,” says Thomas Gouttierre, director of the Center for Afghanistan Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
Still, Mr. Gouttierre, whose center is involved in several independent development projects throughout Afghanistan, points to a number of improvements that would not have been possible without all these development projects. He says, though, that the current system is complicated by myriad donors with different objectives and accountability systems.
Amid this backdrop, the US military is working to implement its own development projects. In an area like restive Paktika Province, however, they're confronted with a layered set of problems. At Combat Outpost Zerok, for example, US soldiers responsible for helping to implement some projects are themselves living without any running water.
“The locals always say that 'you ask us all these questions about what we need and yet we never see anything done.' It's pretty true for the most part,” says US Army Lt. Erik Hall, the executive officer of Able Company, 3-509 Infantry Battalion.
While Hall says his unit has been fairly successful with small projects, such as providing basic construction materials to reinforce irrigation channels, larger projects require more time than his unit are likely to spend in the country. Tighter grip on the US wallet
The US military is also less willing to pass out money as freely as it once did. In the early days of the war, the US was eager to win hearts and minds by providing whatever Afghans asked for, without doing much research. As a result, the US would finance the construction of too many wells in an area and take the water table below sustainable levels, or build clinics in towns without doctors.
“The local populace will say, if you build us this, we'll be able to take care of it and run it ,and 9 times out of 10, they can't,” says US Army Capt. John Meyers, civil military operations director for the 3-509 Infantry Battalion. “They may want a clinic with X-ray machines and surgical equipment, but do they have surgeons, do they get supplies on a regular basis, do they have consistent power? If they don't, then there's no point in building that for them.”
In the past year, the US military has worked to become more strategic in its aid distribution, says Meyers. Now he says, if a community asks for wells, they try to research whether the water reserves can handle another well. As a result, it takes longer to get projects approved, and many Afghans interpret the delay as a failure by the US military to make good on promises.
Development work in Afghanistan provides the additional challenge of making certain that no tribe feels shortchanged compared with its neighbors. Even in instances where the US military has been investing the same amount of money, if not more, in two tribes, soldiers say that locals often complain if they're not getting the same projects as their neighbors.
“We try hard to target each community so it doesn't look like we're favoring one or the other,” says Lt. Michael Bassi, Able Company's civil military operations specialist. Given these challenges, the US is working to push Afghans to rely more on their own government to meet their needs.
“They do not bring their issues to me because I've reiterated to them many times that I'm here to help the government, and to help it help you. Although I would like to help every person, I just can't, and that's the fact of the matter,” says US Army Capt. Bryce Kawaguchi, commander of Able Company.
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"Armed militants ambushed motorcade of Rasul Khan when he was on the way to provincial capital this morning, injuring him along with his two sons who served as policemen," he told Xinhua.
A policeman and two Taliban militants were also killed in the firefighting lasting for a while, he added.
Taliban militants, whose regime was toppled by the U.S.-led forces in late 2001, have vowed to intensify their activities this year, while U.S. President Barak Obama has ordered deploying an additional 30,000 troops in Afghanistan to curb Taliban-led insurgency.
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Warning over heightened risk to NGO staff in 2010
KABUL, 20 January 2010 (IRIN) - A new report by the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office (ANSO) says the number of local NGO staff killed in violent incidents fell sharply in 2009 from the previous year, but warns that NGO staff could face increasing risks in 2010.
In 2009, 19 NGO staff, all Afghans, were killed in 172 recorded incidents - down from 31 NGO deaths (six international and 25 local) in 2008, it said.
The drop in NGO casualties is reported as the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said more civilians (2,412) were killed in the conflict, mostly by insurgents, in 2009 than previous years.
“The number of NGO fatalities tends to vary from year to year with no evident pattern,” Sebastien Hogan, director of ANSO, told IRIN, adding that NGO security was not directly linked to the conflict.
Having a “presence” in at least 97 percent of the country the insurgents - whom ANSO calls Armed Opposition Groups (AOG) - were behind 114 NGO security incidents. Criminal groups were involved in 49 incidents and nine NGO workers were murdered this year, according to ANSO.
No international NGO staff were killed in 2009: All 19 victims were Afghans.
“Afghans were more susceptible to security incidents because they work and travel much more within high risk areas and are more exposed to general crime,” said Hogan, adding that international staff tended to travel less by road.
International NGO workers remained a primary abduction target, but this was not specifically linked to their work status.
“Neutrality”
Local NGO workers were particularly vulnerable and suffered more casualties in “new conflict zones” which were not controlled by either of the warring parties, according to the report.
The ANSO report rejects the notion that NGOs do not operate in areas controlled or strongly influenced by insurgents. It says NGOs are running operations in southern, eastern and central districts.
“NGO neutrality was the determining factor in most targeted attacks and abductions conducted by AOG this year,” it said.
ANSO said the Taliban and most other AOGs were not systematically targeting NGOs and seemed to be making some effort to distinguish between neutral and non-neutral actors.
“Neutrality and local acceptance, not the military or counter-insurgency, have become the dominant factors of security for NGOs in the vast areas of the country now dominated or controlled by the Taliban and other armed opposition groups,” it said.
To back this assertion, ANSO said most of the 59 NGO staff abducted by insurgents in 2009 were released unharmed after their “neutrality” and local acceptance were verified.
UN involvement in political projects such as elections, the report said, had led to direct attacks on the UN: on 28 October an attack on a guest house killed five UN staff .
Warning
ANSO warned that NGOs could increasingly come into contact with insurgents if the latter establish a more permanent presence in densely populated areas in the west and north. In these circumstances NGOs believed to be supporting counter-insurgency projects could be at great risk, it said.
“NGOs should also continue to be wary of attempts by IMF [international military forces] and some donors to lure NGOs into areas recently ‘secured’ by IMF, as these are some of the most dangerous areas for NGOs due to the risk of being associated with the military effort,” the report says.
ANSO is funded by European donors and provides free security advice to member NGOs.
Some aid agencies have voiced concern about the so-called “militarization” of aid by top donors to Afghanistan - adversely affecting their neutrality and impartiality.
Lex Kassenberg, country director of CARE International, said NGOs have to build and maintain good relations with beneficiary communities, something that often required time.
“Some donors do not appreciate this,” he told IRIN, adding that mutual confidence and local acceptance were critical for NGO security.
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* This article was amended on 20 January 2010 with a new headline and lead paragraph.
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Appointment of Afghan counter narcotics chief dismays British officials
The Telegraph, UK By Ben Farmer in Kabul 01/19/2010
An Afghan minister who was pushed from his job because of British and US concerns over corruption has been voted back into Hamid Karzai's cabinet as counter narcotics chief.
The appointment of Zarar Ahmad Moqbel caused dismay among British officials who head international efforts to stamp out the world's largest poppy growing and opium trafficking businesses.
Mr Moqbel was interior minister until late 2008 and faced widespread accusations that he was linked to rampant corruption within his ministry.
The interior ministry, which is responsible for the police, became notorious during his stewardship for selling positions and appointing predatory police chiefs who often colluded with drugs traffickers.
British and American officials were so concerned about the ministry's role in alienating the Afghan public, that they lobbied Mr Karzai to have him replaced in late 2008.
Mr Moqbel, who is strongly backed by power brokers from the ethnic Tajik north of the country, has denied any wrongdoing and has never faced any charges.
One international official said: "I don't think there's an international official in the country who will tell you they are glad to see Moqbel in the cabinet.
"It's absolutely a step in the wrong direction." Another diplomat said: "We were certainly unhappy with his presence in the interior ministry, but there was never any evidence to start a process to indict him." Gordon Brown and the Nato-led coalition have stressed that continued support for Mr Karzai depended on him reforming his weak and corrupt government.
He said the British government would not fund any ministries that were failing to tackle graft.
The appointment of Mr Moqbel as counter narcotics minister was ratified by the lower house of the Afghan parliament along with six other nominees.
However MPs rejected 10 other nominees as the long-marginalised parliament continued to rebel against Mr Karzai's authority.
The parliament vetoed 17 of Mr Karzai's 24 nominees earlier this month and Saturday's rebellion against his replacement list means he has still to appoint a third of his cabinet two-and-a-half months after his election for a second term.
Parliamentarians had complained Mr Karzai's nominees were inexperienced or linked to warlords and power brokers being paid back for their support in the August 20 election.
The new rejections included Mr Karzai's choices for higher education, commerce, transportation, public works, refugee and border and tribal affairs.
His palace said it regretted the verdict of the 224 MPs in a secret ballot on each candidate and said they had been chosen for "their talents, expertise and national participation".
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Kabul Attack Highlights Competing U.S., Taliban Urban Strategies
January 19, 2010 By Abubakar Siddique Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Kabul has cautiously returned to its everyday hustle and bustle, a day after a Taliban attack that rocked the city's center and brought the harsh realities of war perilously close to the presidential palace and key ministry buildings.
But the January 18 brazen attack, in which just seven Taliban militants managed to detonate suicide bombs that destroyed a shopping center and wage a lengthy gun battle with Afghan forces, has raised serious questions about the state of security even in areas thought to be relatively secure.
Jamal Nasir described the concerns of his fellow Kabul residents in an interview with Reuters today. "Yesterday's situation was a terrifying situation in Kabul. All people were wondering what to do," he says. "It was a situation out of our control, one of my relatives decided to leave the country after yesterday's incident."
Threat to McChrystal's Plan
The attack -- which left three Afghan soldiers and two civilians dead, and another 70 people wounded -- also exhibited the Taliban's ability to strike at the heart of a key U.S. strategy being launched by U.S. and NATO commander General Stanley McChrystal. The plan focuses on securing urban areas, with the intention of turning the Afghan public against the Taliban while raising Afghans' confidence in the ability of their own forces to protect them.
The eventual deployment of 40,000 fresh U.S. and NATO troops in populated areas of the remote southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, as well as eastern provinces along the Pakistan border, is a key component of McChrystal's plan. With Kabul's security handed over to Afghan troops, the capital has essentially become a litmus test for the country's own forces.
Haroon Mir, who heads the Afghanistan Policy and Research Center, tells Reuters that there are many lessons -- many of them positive -- to take from the violence seen in central Kabul on January 18.
"If these [attackers] are able to pass these checkpoints with their guns and with their ammunition and with their explosives, it means that they are still able to bribe some of the police forces and there are still some weaknesses in the Afghan government," he says.
But Mir suggests that "the most important thing was that this could have turned very bad. This could have turned into hijacking of people, buildings, and more killing of people. But we are fortunate that the Afghan security forces were able to neutralize and kill these seven suicide bombers."
"This is a big achievement and big accomplishment," he added.
All seven Taliban attackers were killed by Afghan security forces or blew themselves up as they detonated their explosive vests. The attacks left the charred remains of a major shopping center, where several holed-up attackers fought security forces for hours.
Thomas Ruttig, the director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network and a former United Nations and European diplomat in the country, still keeps a close eye on its political and security situation. He tells RFE/RL that the Taliban sought to show that they can "attack anywhere at any time," but downplays the effect on McChrytal's plan to protect key population centers.
"It undermines [McChrystal's plan], but only to an extent," he says. "Because these Taliban operations, I think, are not designed to take over population centers. They create havoc, they kill people, and damage properties and show that there is a lot of insecurity. But protecting population centers also means to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Taliban, and I think we are not there."
Fighting Versus Reconciliation
Ruttig does suggest, however, that the mission handed to the 40,000 troops who will join the 100,000 already on the ground in Afghanistan might be misguided.
"This [surge] is trying to hunt insurgents -- insurgents which are not ready to reconcile, while they hit in the back of the surge, so to say," he says.
Talking to journalists after the January 18 attack, Amrullah Salih , the head of Afghan intelligence, pointed fingers at the Taliban network headed by anti-Soviet jihad era commander Jalauddin Haqqani and his son Sirajuddin Haqqani, who the Afghans see as operating out of sanctuaries in neighboring Pakistan.
Salih said the attacks should not be viewed as victory for the enemy.
"Today's attack was in no way a success for the enemy," he claimed. "They cannot claim credit for entering a shopping mall and just blindly shooting at the civilians. That will further strengthen the will and determination of our people to know what they are and that will rally more support for the Afghan security forces."
Abdul Wahid Taqat, a former communist-era Afghan intelligence official, agrees. He tells RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan that the Afghanistan government and the international forces backing it needs to be more innovative while confronting the Taliban.
He cites the successes of the Moscow-backed regime of President Mohammad Najibullah, which outlived the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and survived for nearly three years after the withdrawal of the Red Army in 1989.
"They should consult our former intelligence colleagues about guerrilla warfare," he says. "They should also form guerrilla bands because only guerrilla tactics, intelligence maneuvers, and accurate intelligence information can protect in a guerrilla warfare."
Ruttig suggests that to move forward in Afghanistan, Western and Afghan leaders will have to rethink the counterinsurgency doctrine as it is being applied on ground in the country.
"In think the only way -- which will be very hard and difficult and sometime very painful way -- is to try to do a political accommodation with the insurgents to lower the level of the violence and establish peace in the long-term," he says.
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Karzai plans to woo Taliban with 'land, work and pensions'
The Guardian By Julian Borger in Lashkar Gah 01/19/2010
• Incentives to be offered to fighters to lay down arms
• Visiting Miliband pledges support for reintegration
Afghanistan's president will unveil a plan in the next eight days to offer work, education, pensions and land to Taliban fighters who lay down their weapons.
Hamid Karzai intends to launch the reconciliation and reintegration plan at the start of next week's London conference on Afghanistan, although he is under pressure to announce the details earlier to help build international support.
The Afghan president has also pledged to hold a new peace conference, a loya jirga, in the spring, restating a standing invitation to insurgents ready to swear an oath to the country's constitution.
David Miliband promised the initiative would have international backing.
"We are looking for a lead from the Afghans about the sort of institutional mechanism they want to pursue, but I'm also in close discussion with colleagues around the world about how we can make sure that there is a viable reintegration plan," the foreign secretary told the Guardian during a visit to Afghanistan to prepare for the conference.
Kabul has a longstanding policy of offering to help resettle Taliban followers who defect. But the programme has been poorly funded and patchily implemented. It has failed to persuade large numbers of fighters to lay down their arms.
Afghan officials say the Kabul government has learned from earlier mistakes and promise that the plan will be far more comprehensive, offering in some cases, a totally new life to the Taliban.
The initiative, which was presented to senior western diplomats in Abu Dhabi earlier this month, will include jobs or land to farm, education for young fighters and pensions for older insurgents who may have fought for much of the past three decades of conflict. The package will also offer security against reprisals.
"There's evidence that a lot of the insurgents are tired of fighting and are prepared to do a deal. They are fed up with the Arabs [in al-Qaida]," said one official with knowledge of the plan. "But the political signalling has to be clear and security has to be guaranteed."
The incentive package will focus on alienated communities rather individuals, rewarding clusters of villages whose sons return home from the fighting. The idea is that such clusters will be strong enough to ensure their own security, and are less likely to return to the Taliban fold.
In unusual cases in which security was offered to Taliban commanders at odds with their own communities, they could be offered sponsored resettlement in another area.
There is some concern that overgenerosity may alienate Afghans who have not sided with the Taliban. "It is going to be a delicate balancing act between the tribes," an unnamed diplomat in Kabul said.
Lt Gen Sir Graeme Lamb, a former British special forces commander who leads the reconciliation programme for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), has helped to design the structure of the reintegration programme.
But senior ISAF officers believe the initiative is being launched too early to benefit from the anticipated impact of the current surge in US troops in Afghanistan.
Western diplomats are also worried that the weak Afghan state, which is still unable to provide normal government services to most of its population, will prove incapable of handling such a complex task.
Asked at the weekend about the plan, Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, said it would be different from previous efforts and added: "It can't be any worse."
British officials and some other western diplomats want Karzai to announce the plan ahead of the London conference so that Afghanistan's international backers would have time to digest it, before offering endorsements and funding. But an Afghan spokesman said today that Karzai still intended to wait until the conference begins on 28 January.
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Al-Qaeda wants South Asia war, says US secretary Gates
January 20, 2010 BBC News
Al-Qaeda is trying to destabilise the whole of South Asia hoping to provoke war between India and Pakistan, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates says.
"It's important to recognise the magnitude of the threat," Mr Gates said, after meeting his Indian counterpart AK Antony in Delhi.
Mr Gates said India might not show restraint if it suffered another attack like the one in 2008 on Mumbai.
Blamed on Pakistan-based militants, the attack killed more than 160 people.
The two countries' peace process is still on hold.
The US defence secretary said militant groups in South Asia - the Taliban in Afghanistan and in Pakistan, and the Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Taiba - were seeking to spark conflict between India and Pakistan, or to provoke instability in Pakistan.
He said: "It's dangerous to single out any one of these groups and say, 'If we can beat that group, that will solve the problem,' because they are in effect a syndicate of terrorist operators intended to destabilise this entire region."
When one group succeeded in carrying out an attack, all of them gained in capability and reputation, he said.
"A victory for one is a victory for all."
Mr Gates praised his hosts for the restraint shown by India in the aftermath of the attack on Mumbai (Bombay) in November 2008, for which Lashkar-e-Taiba militants operating out of Pakistan have been blamed.
But he warned: "It is not unreasonable to assume Indian patience would be limited were there another attack."
After militants attacked parliament in Delhi in 2001, India massed troops on the border with Pakistan, but the country made no such move following the 2008 attack.
The two countries have fought three wars since independence from Britain.
The BBC's Chris Morris, in Delhi, says the US would like to see India and Pakistan working together against the militant threat - but Mr Gates said co-operation would be a tough sell.
Mr Gates is to hold talks in Islamabad on Thursday.
He said any conflict between India and Pakistan would only further the militants' agenda - as well as throwing American policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan into disarray.
The defence secretary also praised the "extraordinary" financial aid India had given Afghanistan, but acknowledged this had created tension with Pakistan.
"There are real suspicions both in India and Pakistan about what the other is doing in Afghanistan," he said.
"So I think each country focusing its efforts on development, on humanitarian assistance, perhaps in some limited areas of training, but with full transparency for each other, would help allay these suspicions and frankly create opportunities."
Reports in recent days have suggested the US would like India to help train Afghan police.
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Gates backs Afghan effort to reach out to Taliban
U.S. defense secretary says Kabul's new effort to reconcile with militants will be critical to success against Taliban
The Wall Street Journal - Today's Paper - Europe By YOCHI J. DREAZEN JANUARY 20, 2010
NEW DELHI - The Obama administration offered cautious support for the Afghan government's new outreach effort to the Taliban, expressing hope that lower-level militants would reconcile with Kabul even if senior leaders continued fighting.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, at the start of an official visit to India, said the U.S. welcomed Afghan President Hamid Karzai's new efforts to persuade Taliban militants to lay down their weapons in exchange for jobs, education and security guarantees for themselves and their families.
Mr. Gates said that he believed such reconciliation efforts would ultimately be "critical" to ending the long and increasingly bloody Afghan war.
But the defense chief cautioned that top Taliban leaders such as Mullah Omar would be unlikely to participate in peace talks with the Afghan central government unless the U.S. and its allies reclaimed the battlefield momentum in Afghanistan.
"I'd be very surprised to see a reconciliation with Mullah Omar," Mr. Gates told reporters during the flight here. "It's our view that until the Taliban leadership sees a change in the momentum and begins to see that they are not going to win, the likelihood of reconciliation at senior levels is not terribly great."
The Karzai government said Sunday it was finalizing a major new initiative aimed at convincing large numbers of Taliban fighters to renounce violence and agree to work with—or at least tolerate—the Afghan central government.
The new effort has been crafted with the close participation of senior U.S. military and civilian officials, though it will be led exclusively by the Afghans. Mr. Karzai has offered amnesty to Taliban militants who choose to stop fighting and has long talked openly of wanting to negotiate with Mullah Omar and other top Taliban leaders, but the earlier outreach efforts have generally fizzled.
The U.S. has higher hopes for the new effort, which will be much better funded than any of the earlier attempts. A senior U.S. military officer said in an interview last week that Japan was likely to announce a $500 million contribution to the Karzai government's new reconciliation plan at a London conference on Afghanistan later this month.
The official said the U.S. expected other countries to make smaller but still significant pledges of additional money. A defense official said he expected the conference to raise as much $1 billion for the reconciliation push.
The U.S. officials said the new money will primarily be used to fund jobs and education programs for fighters who choose to lay down their weapons, a tactic used successfully in Iraq.
They said the Karzai government was also working to determine the best way of keeping former fighters and their families safe from Taliban retribution, a significant potential obstacle to the ultimate success of the outreach push.
The U.S. and Afghan governments are also trying to tie reconciliation effort to the country's social dynamics. The senior military official said troops from both countries were working with local leaders, tribal elders and religious figures to develop informal systems for welcoming former fighters back into traditional social structures, and monitoring their status to prevent them from rejoining the fight.
Mr. Gates, a Bush administration holdover, helped shift the U.S. mission in Iraq toward a counterinsurgency focus that devoted significant resources to creating jobs for former Sunni fighters, educating U.S.-held prisoners, and otherwise setting the conditions for many militants to peacefully rejoin Iraqi society. Success in Afghanistan, he said, would need to follow roughly the same recipe.
"Reconciliation has to be a part of the ultimate conclusion here, just as it was in Iraq," he said.
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Lavrov: Russia Has Allowed Just One U.S. Military Overflight To Afghanistan
January 19, 2010 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
MOSCOW (RFE/RL) -- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told RFE/RL today that Russia has allowed only one flight of lethal U.S. military equipment to transit its airspace en route to Afghanistan, despite a July agreement envisioning as many as 12 flights a day.
Speaking to RFE/RL's Russian Service, Lavrov said the United States had asked for transit permission for a second flight, but had recalled the decision for unknown reasons.
Lavrov said Moscow is ready to fulfill its transit agreement with Washington, but that the issue has been hindered by unresolved technical problems involving Central Asian states, particularly Kazakhstan.
The agreement on creating a Russian air corridor for the transit of lethal U.S. military equipment to Afghanistan was considered the leading achievement of an otherwise tepid summit between U.S. President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, in July 2009.
Speaking a few days after the summit, Lavrov said the U.S. military planned to carry out more than 4,000 flights a year.
A U.S. Pentagon spokeswoman told RFE/RL last week that there had been two test flights into Afghanistan under the agreement, the first of which landed at Bagram Air Base near Kabul in October.
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US regrets end to refueling mission for Afghanistan
Tue Jan 19, 2:29 pm ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – A senior US diplomat on Tuesday voiced regret that Japan ended a naval refueling mission for military operations in Afghanistan, saying Washington had made clear to Tokyo how critical it was.
But Kurt Campbell, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific affairs, played down how much the move, as well as a row over a US air base, would affect the US-Japanese security alliance, which marked 50 years on Tuesday.
"We have communicated directly to the Japanese government not only our appreciation for the refueling mission," Campbell said during a briefing to mark the anniversary of the US-Japanese security alliance.
"But we've also tried to be very clear that it's made an enormous difference in our ability to operate," Campbell said.
"But not just our ability, other major nations have taken full advantage of this refueling capacity," he added.
"I don't think it's an understatement to say that it will be missed. It's played a huge and critical role, and we regret it," said Campbell, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's pointman for Asia.
Japan on Friday ended the mission that has supported the US-led military effort in Afghanistan since 2001 as the center-left government in Tokyo flexes its muscles in its ties with Washington.
The end of the mission fulfilled a pledge by Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's government, which ousted the long-ruling conservatives four months ago pledging a less subservient relationship with the United States.
Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa ordered the two naval ships and their 340 personnel to return home after eight years of helping supply oil and water to vessels used by international forces that are engaged in Afghanistan.
The move came days before Washington and Tokyo marks the 50th anniversary of the signing their security alliance, which has been strained by a row over the relocation of a US military base on the southern island of Okinawa.
But Campbell played down the tension in ties.
"There is, I think, very clearly a relationship that's developing with new players across the Pacific. And I'm quite confident about the direction ahead," he said.
"And so I think it's important not to overblow what, you know, these ...challenges that we face and put them in a larger context and to recognize that our alliance is bigger than any one or two issues," he said.
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New Wave of Warlords Bedevils U.S.
Wall Street Journal By MATTHEW ROSENBERG JANUARY 19, 2010
In his teen years, Sirajuddin Haqqani was known among friends as a dandy. He cared more about the look of his thick black hair than the battles his father, a mujahideen warlord in the 1980s, was waging with Russia for control of Afghanistan.
The younger Mr. Haqqani is still a stylish sort, say those who know him. But now, approaching middle age and ensconced as the battlefield leader of his father's militant army, he has become ruthless in his own pursuit of an Afghanistan free from foreign influence. This time the enemy is the U.S. and its allies.
From outposts along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, his Haqqani network is waging a campaign that has made the Afghan insurgency deadlier. He has widened the use of suicide attacks, which became a Taliban mainstay only in the past few years. U.S. officials believe his forces carried out the dramatic Monday gun, grenade and suicide-bomb attack in Kabul on Afghan government ministries and a luxury hotel. The assault claimed five victims plus seven attackers.
Mr. Haqqani also aided the Dec. 30 attack by an al Qaeda operative that killed seven Central Intelligence Agency agents and contractors at a U.S. base in eastern Afghanistan, say militant commanders. And he orchestrated last year's assault on a United Nations guesthouse that killed five U.N. staffers, along with other attacks in the capital.
In a rare interview with The Wall Street Journal conducted by email and telephone last month, Mr. Haqqani declared, "We have managed to besiege the Afghan government. We sustain very few causalities; we can inflict heavy casualties to the enemy's side."
That message is problematic for a key plank of the U.S. military's Afghan "surge" which is based on a strategy of applying sufficient pressure on some Taliban leaders that they will negotiate for terms acceptable to Washington. On Tuesday, the Obama administration lent cautious support to the Afghan government's new outreach effort to the Taliban—a show of optimism that lower-level militants would reconcile with Kabul even if senior leaders continued fighting.
The rise of Mr. Haqqani, who is in his late 30s or early 40s, is part of a broader changing of the guard in the Afghan militant movement. A younger generation of commanders have helped transform the Taliban from a peasant army that harbored al Qaeda and was routed by the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 into a formidable guerrilla force that killed a record 520 Western troops last year.
Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar and his inner circle—believed to be based in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta—still provide overall leadership of the Taliban movement. Osama bin Laden still rallies the al Qaeda faithful. But more than either man, Mr. Haqqani is at the fulcrum of the Afghan rebellion and its twin uprising in Pakistan's northwestern mountains. His base in North Waziristan, on the Pakistani side of the border, has become arguably the most important Islamist militant haven in the region, say U.S. and Pakistani officials. It attracts aspiring jihadis from around the globe, such as the five young Americans arrested last month in Pakistan who were allegedly on their way there.
Mr. Haqqani has emerged as a powerbroker on both sides of the border. He has ties to almost every major faction in the confederation of groups operating under the Taliban umbrella. He has the strongest links to al Qaeda of any major Taliban faction, say U.S. officials and Pakistani experts. While pledging allegiance to Mullah Omar, he operates independently, choosing his own targets and only loosely coordinating with the Taliban's supreme leadership.
Mr. Haqqani showed his sway when the Pakistani Taliban, an offshoot of Afghanistan's Taliban, were on the verge of a bloody struggle following the death of its leader in a U.S. airstrike this summer. He called the major factions to North Waziristan to settle the dispute, telling them they must "follow the path of a great leader....You should save your bullets for your true enemies," said a tribal elder who attended the meeting.
Within days, the Pakistan Taliban's leadership was settled. The group has since repeatedly set off bombs in major cities and sent teams of gunmen to attack symbolic targets, including the headquarters of Pakistan's military.
In Afghanistan, Mr. Haqqani's men have kept up the heat on the government of President Hamid Karzai and U.S and allied forces with ever-more brazen attacks, including this week's assault on Kabul.
The attack was trademark Haqqani. Teams of gunmen and suicide bombers struck Kabul in broad daylight. It's a strategy the Haqqani network has used repeatedly in the past 12 months to sow fear and chaos in the seat of Afghanistan's weak central government.
The assailants struck on the day that members of the new Afghan cabinet were to be sworn in. They picked a spot that would allow them to hit a number of high-profile targets at once: Pashtunistan Square, which is ringed by the central bank, the entrance to the presidential palace, as well as several ministries, a shopping center and a luxury hotel.
U.S. and Afghan officials believe Mr. Haqqani has cultivated high-level double agents inside the Afghan government—including senior military and police officers, some of whom are suspected of having aided an assassination attempt on President Karzai at a parade in April 2008 in Kabul.
"There is no doubt that some of our countrymen in the army and police are helping us in our fight against the occupiers," Mr. Haqqani said when asked about the parade attack.
The U.S. takes such boasts seriously. "The Haqqanis are the most dangerous," said a senior U.S. military commander in Afghanistan. "They're going all the way to Kabul to carry out major attacks. They've got connections on both sides of the border in a way no one else does. They're dangerous for us and they're dangerous for the Pakistanis."
Pakistan has until now taken a hands-off approach to Mr. Haqqani, arguing he spends most of his time in Afghanistan and is ultimately America's problem. U.S. officials have long alleged that Pakistan tolerates and even aids Mr. Haqqani, so he can be used to maintain its influence in Afghanistan after an eventual American withdrawal.
Pakistani officials deny that charge. Mr. Haqqani's central role in the insurgencies and his clear embrace of al Qaeda and the Pakistan Taliban have now prompted Pakistan's military and its spy service to consider taking action against his North Waziristan sanctuary, say Pakistani officials. Some U.S. officials, too, believe Pakistan is reconsidering its relationship with the Haqqanis.
The tone surrounding discussions about Mr. Haqqani has changed markedly in the past year. Officials in Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, have gone from calling him a potential "force for peace" in Afghanistan to telling journalists that they lost nearly three dozen agents and informers in North Waziristan last year. Most were caught spying and killed by Mr. Haqqani's fighters and their Pakistan Taliban allies, the officials say.
"It's clear to all that the Haqqanis' interests and our interests, over the long term, they're not the same," said a senior Pakistani civilian official.
Any move by the Pakistanis against Mr. Haqqani appears to be months away, at the soonest. It would mark a reversal of Pakistani policy that U.S. officials say could greatly increase the chances of stabilizing the region.
Others in the younger generation of Taliban commanders include Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul, known as Mullah Zakir, who is in his mid-30s and one of the main Taliban commanders in southern Afghanistan. His five-year stint as a prisoner in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has given him "rock-star status" in the Taliban, said Brig. Gen. John Nicholson, the former top American commander in southern Afghanistan. (Mr. Rasoul was released in 2007 into Afghan custody.)
In Pakistan, the most powerful Taliban faction leader is Hakimullah Mehsud, 31, who is considered brutal even by other militants, say tribal elders and militants.
After three decades of almost continuous conflict in Afghanistan and more than a decade of upheaval in Pakistan's tribal areas, all these young men have little memory of life without war, said Rustam Shah Mohmand, a former Pakistani official.
But while an older generation of Afghan warlords, including Mr. Haqqani's father, had a deep pragmatic streak, the younger commanders may be much more resistant to a settlement.
"Peace talks are about bringing people into the political power structure," said Mr. Mohmand, who served as Islamabad's envoy in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2005. "I don't think this younger generation has any idea of politics or any desire to take part in them....All they've grown up around is war and fighting."
Sirajuddin Haqqani grew up amid the struggle for Afghanistan. His father, Jalaluddin, rose to prominence in the early 1980s battling the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. He was a favorite of the U.S., which was pouring millions of dollars into the insurgency. He also was courted by Pakistan, where he established his base and developed close ties to the country's spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence.
But "the child didn't take to war," said Brig. Amir Sultan Tarar, a retired ISI officer known as Col. Imam, of the young Mr. Haqqani. It wasn't until his early 20s—sometime around 1990—that the younger Mr. Haqqani "became an active participant in our struggles," said Brig. Tarar.
Friends who grew up with Mr. Haqqani say a religious awakening spurred his transformation.
"He saw the Arabs and their devotion and admired it," said Gul Khan, a businessman in North Waziristan who went to school with Mr. Haqqani. Some of the Arabs then fighting the Soviets, including Osama bin Laden, would go on to form the core of al Qaeda.
Those who know Sirajuddin Haqqani say he shares his father's battlefield acumen, which propelled him ahead of other siblings to assume day-to-day leadership of the militant faction in the past two or three years. His father remains titular chief.
Under Sirajuddin Haqqani, the faction has strengthened its dominance over the territory carved out by his father in the 1980s—Khost, Paktika and Paktia provinces of eastern Afghanistan. His men also have moved deeper into Afghanistan, according to U.S. military assessments.
As his stature has risen, he has begun to see himself in grandiose religious terms, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials and tribesmen in the border region. He now styles himself "Khalifa"—a title for a leader who rules Muslims in accordance with Islamic law.
In his public rhetoric, he distances himself from his father's past ties to the U.S. while claiming the same mantle of Islamic resistance to occupiers.
"My father was fighting the Russians....I am following his footprints," he said in the Journal interview. "Like today, during the Soviet era the mujahideen were fighting an occupying force and believed that foreign forces are the only obstacle which prevents peace and stability in Afghanistan."
But, he added, "My father didn't have a personal relationship with the Americans," who along with Saudi Arabia provided most of the financing for the mujahideen.
Financial aid to the mujahideen also came from wealthy Muslim donors. Those connections remain, and have provided the Haqqanis with much of the cash needed to bankroll their fight, say U.S. officials and experts.
As for Pakistan, once his father's staunchest supporter, the relationship with the son appears increasingly strained.
Pakistan has been pursuing a military campaign in South Waziristan, a tribal region bordering North Waziristan that was also a safe haven for al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban. Already, Mr. Haqqani is beginning to feel the pressure in his rear flank in North Waziristan, say tribal elders and militants in the region.
Residents of Miran Shah, the main city in North Waziristan, say that a number of Islamic seminaries used by the Haqqanis have been largely abandoned in the past two weeks, except for a skeleton staff of guards. The Haqqani loyalists moved out partly because they feared retaliatory U.S. strikes following the CIA attack, said Gul Khan, the tribal elder.
But "they see that there are soldiers in South Waziristan and everywhere else," he said, referring to the most recent offensive against the Pakistan Taliban, which is taking place on Mr. Haqqani's doorstep. "They're all underground now. It's a very dangerous time." —Anand Gopal in Kabul and Yochi J. Dreazen in Kandahar, Afghanistan, contributed to this article.
Write to Matthew Rosenberg at matthew.rosenberg@wsj.com
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The Kabul lottery
The Guardian By Julian Borger 01/19/2010
• The Afghan capital thrives despite a steady onslaught of bombs and rockets
When the insurgents struck at quarter to ten this morning, I was doing what most Kabulis do for much of the day - sitting in traffic. In a city frequently visited by car bombers the usual boredom and frustration is always tinged with anxiety. I was in a western embassy vehicle with its telltale high antennae moving in a short motorcade. A sitting duck, in other words, for what the Nato military call a VBSIED (vehicle-borne suicide improvised explosive device).
I am only here for a few days. The people who live here, Afghans and foreigners alike, learn to live with the risk. They hope that any would-be car bombers are stuck in traffic too, out of range. They avoid driving in the morning, on the grounds that suicide bombers tend to strike early, while their resolve is intact. If they spend hours cruising around looking for a target of opportunity, so the thinking goes, their self-destructive zeal ebbs away.
Most of all, the people who live here put their trust in statistics. It is a city of 3.5 million people. There is a security incident every seven or 10 days, but some of those are poorly aimed rockets. Complex attacks like this happen once or twice a year. Ultimately, it's a matter of luck, and so far Kabulis and foreigners have been prepared to live with the odds.
The city is booming. Areas that were brown earth two years ago are now crowded with new buildings. The outskirts of the city are a sprawling car park for the biggest collection of construction equipment I have ever seen gathered in one place.
The daily odds would be improved if Afghan and Nato intelligence improved. It would also help if Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI) and that country's military establishment took action against the Haqqani network, which is based in North Waziristan and believed to be behind many previous attacks of this sort.
But Kabul will only be secure once a peace deal is done, and even then there will be dead-enders who stick to violence for years afterwards, as in Northern Ireland. The problems of Kabul are ultimately no more than a reflection of the country as a whole. It cannot and will not be safe while the rest of the country is at war.
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US terror suspects in Pakistan 'denied legal aid'
By Syed Shoaib Hasan BBC News, Islamabad Tuesday, 19 January 2010
Five US citizens being held in Pakistan on suspicion of plotting attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan are being denied legal aid, activists say.
Human rights campaigner Khalid Khawaja told the BBC access to the men was not being granted, despite a court ruling that they should be allowed visits.
After a court hearing on Monday some of the five said they had been tortured in custody - charges the authorities deny.
The students were arrested in Sargodha in December. They deny any wrongdoing.
The students' families reported them missing from the US state of Virginia after finding a farewell video message.
The men have been remanded to police custody twice in the past few weeks and are due to appear in court on 2 February.
'Confessions'
"The government has once again shown how much respect it has for the higher judiciary," said Mr Khawaja, who is handling their case.
"We have a standing order from the Lahore high court for the advocate-general to provide us with the police report and investigation evidence that is in the charge sheet against the five.
"But the government is continuing to ignore the order."
Mr Khawaja said the authorities had not provided him with any information regarding the case and that he and his team had not been allowed to meet his clients.
He said the five men's chances of receiving a fair trial were bleak.
"They have themselves said that the police tortured them into giving the confession - how can those then have any legal status?"
Mr Khawaja said his Defence of Human Rights organisation had now written to the interior ministry to gain access to the men.
"We also intend to file a petition against the advocate-general on Wednesday as he is continuing to ignore the court's orders," he said.
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