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Taliban Overhaul Their Image in Bid to Win Allies
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN January 20, 2010
KABUL, Afghanistan - The Taliban have embarked on a sophisticated information war, using modern media tools as well as some old-fashioned ones, to soften their image and win favor with local Afghans as they try to counter the Americans' new campaign to win Afghan hearts and minds.
Afghans protest over alleged civilian deaths
January 21, 2010 AFP
GHAZNI, Afghanistan — Angry Afghan villagers took to the streets on Thursday claiming that civilians were killed in a raid by Afghan and NATO troops but the international force said the dead were insurgents.
NATO creates top Kabul post
The Wall Street Journal - Today's Paper - Europe By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV JANUARY 21, 2010
KABUL - The North Atlantic Treaty Organization plans to create a new top civilian post in Kabul to flank its military chief in Afghanistan, and the British ambassador to Afghanistan is the leading contender, according to senior officials familiar with the matter.
Muslim anger over US military 'Jesus' scopes
Thu Jan 21, 3:30 am ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – Muslim groups reacted angrily after it emerged that the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan were using rifle sights inscribed with coded Biblical references.
Afghan mission has lost momentum, British ambassador says
The mission in Afghanistan has "lost momentum" with the Taliban undermining security over the last year, the British ambassador to the country has admitted.
Telegraph.co.uk By Thomas Harding, Defence Correspondent 21 Jan 2010
Speaking ahead of the London Conference on Afghanistan next week Mark Sedwill said the meeting of foreign secretaries needed to "inject some international momentum" to secure the country.
Taliban leaders 'offered asylum' under London peace plan
Taliban leaders could be offered exile abroad and have their names deleted from a UN sanctions blacklist as part of a peace plan for Afghanistan to be unveiled in London next week.
Telegraph.co.uk By Ben Farmer in Kabul 20 Jan 2010
A briefing paper on the Afghan government's proposals seen by The Daily Telegraph says any peace deal may include "potential exile in a third country" for insurgent leaders.
U.N. corruption report causes criticism from Afghan officials
KABUL, Jan. 21 (Xinhua) -- A U.N. report, which said 59 percent of Afghans see corruption as the greatest problem and the bribes comes to one quarter of the country's GDP, has triggered criticism from Afghan officials.
Majority of Afghans wants India, not Pakistan, to help
The Economic Times - Politics/Nation 21 Jan 2010
NEW DELHI - A majority of Afghans prefer involvement of India in the reconstruction of their country as opposed to Pakistan, according to a new opinion poll. The opinion poll, commissioned by BBC, ABC and German TV ARD, found that 71% of over 1,500 Afghans
Osama bin Laden is 'worth more alive than dead'
Times Online Anne Barrowclough January 21, 2010
Osama bin Laden is worth more to the United States alive than dead because his death could unleash "very,very nasty" attacks by militants, his son Omar Ossama bin Laden claims.
U.S. Defense Secretary meets Pakistani officials
ISLAMABAD, Jan. 21 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates held separate talks with Pakistan's army chief Ashfaq Pervez Kayani and Defense Minister Ahmed Mukhtar on Thursday to discuss U. S. war strategy in neighboring Afghanistan, according to local media reports.
Pakistan snubs US over new Taliban offensive
Thursday, 21 January 2010 BBC News
Pakistan's army has said it will launch no new offensives on militants in 2010, as the US defence secretary arrived for talks on combating Taliban fighters.
U.S. Envisions a Continuing Civilian Presence in Afghanistan and Pakistan
New York Times By MARK LANDLER January 20, 2010
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration's ambitious civilian push in Pakistan and Afghanistan will keep thousands of Americans in those countries for years — rebuilding Afghan agriculture, rooting out corruption and using the local media to counter anti-American sentiment.
Mystery shrouds Pakistani scientist in US trial
By Hasan Mansoor January 20, 2010
(AFP) –KARACHI — She has been dubbed Lady Al-Qaeda by US media, but the Pakistani family of Aafia Siddiqui, on trial in New York, insist she is a moderate Muslim more interested in flowers and animals than wielding weapons.
Afghanistan Needs a Surge of Diplomacy
New York Times By KARL F. INDERFURTH and CHINMAYA R. GHAREKHAN Op-Ed Contributor January 20, 2010
The 68-nation London conference at the end of this month will focus on the future of Afghanistan, against the backdrop of major new military commitments by the United States and NATO, promises from the international community of increased civilian assistance, and pledges of new anti-corruption measures from President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan.
Impossible to Separate Afghan, Pakistan Taliban: U.S.
REUTERS January 21, 2010
ISLAMABAD - Making a distinction between Pakistani Taliban and their Afghan allies is counterproductive and pressure on Taliban havens on both sides of the border is necessary, U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates said on Thursday.
A Deal with the Taliban?
The New York Review of Books By Ahmed Rashid January 20, 2010
My Life with the Taliban by Abdul Salam Zaeef, translated from the Pashto and edited by Alex Strick van Linschoten and Feliz Kuehn
Volume 57, Number 3 • February 25, 2010
Columbia University Press, 331 pp., $29.95 1.
For thirty years Afghanistan has cast a long, dark shadow over world events, but it has also been marked by pivotal moments that could have brought peace and changed world history.
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Taliban Overhaul Their Image in Bid to Win Allies
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN January 20, 2010
KABUL, Afghanistan - The Taliban have embarked on a sophisticated information war, using modern media tools as well as some old-fashioned ones, to soften their image and win favor with local Afghans as they try to counter the Americans' new campaign to win Afghan hearts and minds.
The Taliban's spiritual leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, issued a lengthy directive late last spring outlining a new code of conduct for the Taliban. The dictates include bans on suicide bombings against civilians, burning down schools, or cutting off ears, lips and tongues.
The code, which has been spottily enforced, does not necessarily mean a gentler insurgency. Although the Taliban warned some civilians away before the assault on the heart of Kabul on Monday, they were still responsible for three-quarters of civilian casualties last year, according to the United Nations.
Now, as the Taliban deepen their presence in more of Afghanistan, they are in greater need of popular support and are recasting themselves increasingly as a local liberation movement, independent of Al Qaeda, capitalizing on the mounting frustration of Afghans with their own government and the presence of foreign troops. The effect has been to make them a more potent insurgency, some NATO officials said.
Afghan villagers and some NATO officials added that the code had begun to change the way some midlevel Taliban commanders and their followers behaved on the ground. A couple of the most brutal commanders have even been removed by Mullah Omar.
The Taliban's public relations operation is also increasingly efficient at putting out its message and often works faster than NATO's. “The Afghan adaptation to counterinsurgency makes them much more dangerous,” said a senior NATO intelligence official here. “Their overarching goals probably haven't changed much since 2001, but when we arrived with a new counterinsurgency strategy, they responded with one of their own.”
The American strategy includes limiting airstrikes that killed Afghan civilians and concentrating troops closer to population centers so that Afghans will feel protected from the Taliban.
American and Afghan analysts see the Taliban's effort as part of a broad initiative that employs every tool they can muster, including the Internet technology they once denounced as un-Islamic. Now they use word of mouth, messages to cellphones and Internet videos to get their message out.
“The Taliban are trying to win the favor of the people,” said Wahid Mujda, a former Taliban official who now tracks the insurgency on the Internet and frequently comments on Afghan television. “The reason they changed their tactics is that they want to prepare for a long-term fight, and for that they need support from the people; they need local sources of income,” he said. “So, they learned not to repeat their previous mistakes.”
The Taliban can shape the narrative about attacks sometimes before NATO public affairs even puts out a statement. Unlike the NATO press machine, the Taliban are willing to give details, and while some are patently exaggerated or wrong, others have just enough elements of truth that they cannot be entirely ignored.
Bruce Riedel, who led President Obama's review of the administration's Afghanistan and Pakistan strategy, described the information war as critical. “You have to respond in the propaganda war in a very quick time cycle; you can't put out a statement saying, ‘We're looking for all the facts before we comment,' ”Mr. Riedel said.
The new public relations campaign combined with relatively less cruel behavior may have stemmed some of the anger at the insurgency, which tribal leaders in the south said had begun to rally people against the Taliban.
But the most important factor in their growing reach is the ineffectiveness of the central government and Afghans' resentment of foreign troops. Military intelligence analysts now estimate that there are 25,000 to 30,000 committed Taliban fighters and perhaps as many as 500,000 others who would fight either for pay or if they felt attacked by the Western coalition.
The effort to change the Taliban's image began in earnest last May when Mullah Omar disseminated his new code of conduct. The New York Times obtained a copy of the document through a Taliban spokesman. A version of the new code was authenticated last summer by NATO intelligence after a copy was seized during a raid and its contents corroborated using human intelligence, according to a senior NATO intelligence official.
The version sent to The Times is a 69-point document ranging from how to treat local people, how to treat prisoners, what to do with captured enemy equipment and when to execute captives. Much of the document deals with the Taliban chain of command and limits the decisions that field commanders can make on their own. The document exhorts insurgents to live and work in harmony with local people.
In an eerie echo of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit the photographing of prisoners, one edict states: “If someone is sentenced to death, he must be killed with a gun, and photographing the execution is forbidden.”
Creating a code of behavior is one thing, enforcing it another. The Taliban have survived in part because they are an atomized movement and it is difficult to persuade local commanders, who operate in mountain or desert redoubts, to follow directives from leaders living hundreds of miles away in Pakistan.
There are doubts as well about the Taliban's recent assertions that they are independent from Al Qaeda. Leaders of both groups live in the same areas of Pakistan, and Al Qaeda remains a source of financing and training for the Afghan movement.
“If you compare the document to actual behavior, Mullah Omar only has marginal control over his forces,” said Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith, the director of communications for NATO.
“A portion of it may stick in some parts of the country, but not in other places,” he said. Despite an edict that says in suicide attacks “to try your best to avoid killing local people,” a suicide bombing in Oruzgan Province last Thursday killed 16 civilians. But in most places, the civilian casualties from suicide bombers have been in the single digits. The Kabul attack on Monday killed five people, two of them civilians, and wounded 32.
That contrasts sharply with Pakistan, where the insurgency routinely fields suicide bombers who kill scores of civilians.
Admiral Smith and others say that according to a recent Defense Intelligence Agency survey, the Taliban's new strategy has failed to win over Afghans and that even though the insurgency may be carrying out fewer mutilations and beheadings, it still relies on intimidation through night letters, threatening conversations and even assassinations.
Interviews with tribal elders in areas where the Taliban are active suggest a complex picture. Several interviewed in rural Kandahar Province praised the Taliban's new, less threatening approach, but said that did not translate into enthusiasm for the Taliban movement. At the same time, there is not much liking for either the Afghan government or NATO troops.
“There is a tremendous change in the Taliban's behavior,” said Haji-Khan Muhammad Khan, a tribal elder from Shawalikot, a rural district of Kandahar Province. “They don't behead people or detain those they suspect of spying without an investigation. But sometimes they still make mistakes, people still fear them, but now generally they behave well with people. They had to change because the leadership of the Taliban did not want to lose the support of the grass roots.”
The latest refrain of Taliban commanders, their Internet magazine and from surrogates is that the insurgency represents Afghanistan's Pashtuns, who are portrayed as persecuted by the Afghan government. “Pashtuns are suffering everywhere; if you go and check the prisons, you won't find any prisoners except Pashtuns; when you hear about bombings, it is Pashtuns' homes that have been bombed,” said a Taliban commander from Kandahar Province who goes by the name Sangar Yar.
While Pashtuns have been disproportionately affected by the Western military offensive, the insurgency is active predominantly in Pashtun areas where it is difficult to separate civilians and fighters.
At the moment, the dueling propaganda wars seem to have reached a stalemate.
“People have no choices; they are in a dilemma,” said Abdul Rahman, a tribal elder and businessman in Kandahar. “In places where the Taliban are active, the people are compelled to support them, they are afraid of the Taliban. And, in those places where government has a presence, the people are supporting the government,” he said.
Taimoor Shah contributed reporting from Kandahar.
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Afghans protest over alleged civilian deaths
January 21, 2010 AFP
GHAZNI, Afghanistan — Angry Afghan villagers took to the streets on Thursday claiming that civilians were killed in a raid by Afghan and NATO troops but the international force said the dead were insurgents.
NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said it killed four insurgents including a 15-year-old boy in an operation in the Qarabagh district of Ghazni province on Wednesday night.
"While conducting the operation, a young man estimated to be 15 years old displayed hostile intent and grabbed the weapon of a service member. He was shot and killed," the alliance said in a statement.
But about 50 furious villagers brought five coffins to the provincial capital Ghazni city on Thursday, claiming that three of the dead were civilians, including two children below the age of seven, an AFP reporter saw.
"Doctors told me that there were two children among the bodies brought to hospital," said Mohammad Ismail Ibrahimzai, head of the provincial hospital where the bodies were initially taken.
Provincial deputy police chief Abdul Rehman Shaidayee said only that four people were killed and that they were investigating claims of civilian casualties.
Civilian deaths at the hands of foreign forces fuel distrust between the Afghan population, the government and US and NATO troops, even though most such deaths are caused by insurgent tactics such as home-made bombs.
About 113,000 troops under NATO and US command are battling an escalating insurgency by the extremist Taliban movement, which regrouped after being ousted from government in a 2001 US-led invasion.
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The announcement could be made as soon as Jan. 28, the day of an international conference on Afghanistan to be held in London, the officials said.
The new appointee would head the civilian pillar of the U.S.-led coalition's work here, directing the flow of funds and aid to the provinces, and—if necessary—bypassing corrupt Afghan institutions. The official would play a prominent role in the effort to get insurgents to switch sides and to reintegrate them into society.
A British government official said the United Nations and European Union will also likely announce new special representatives to Afghanistan at or around the London conference. The British government wants the London meeting to result in a new strategy for reversing Taliban advances and for steering President Hamid Karzai's administration toward more efficient and competent governance.
American officials have long advocated for a senior international civilian figure to work hand-in-hand with the military on rolling back the insurgency and supervising economic development, in part through the existing network of military-run provincial reconstruction teams. The new position would help enact the so-called civilian surge, providing development and reconstruction to districts that have been cleared of insurgents. It would also create a civilian counterpart to U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top commander for all the 110,000 U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, making it easier for the alliance to oversee nonmilitary aspects of the counterinsurgency strategy.
The new position won't be as influential as similar civilian administrator jobs in Bosnia-Herzegovina or Kosovo, proposals that Mr. Karzai had rejected. But the official is expected to have much greater authority than the alliance's current senior civilian representative in Kabul, Fernando Gentilini of Italy, who is expected to leave Kabul after the London conference.
While no final decision on the appointment has been made, the plan backed by the U.S. and likely to be endorsed by other allies envisions giving the new job to the current British ambassador in Kabul, Mark Sedwill. A representative for the British Embassy in Kabul said: "It's up to NATO to agree on their appointments."
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Muslim anger over US military 'Jesus' scopes
Thu Jan 21, 3:30 am ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – Muslim groups reacted angrily after it emerged that the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan were using rifle sights inscribed with coded Biblical references.
The company producing the sights, which are also used to train Afghan and Iraqi soldiers under contracts with the US Army and the Marine Corps, said it has inscribed references to the New Testament on the metal casings for over two decades.
The British Ministry of Defense meanwhile announced it had placed an order for 400 of the gunsights with Trijicon but added it had not been aware of the significance of the inscriptions, in a decision criticized by the opposition Liberal Democrat party.
The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) called on US Defense Secretary Robert Gates to immediately withdraw from combat use equipment found to have inscriptions of Biblical references after it emerged that Trijicon has contracts to supply over 800,000 of the sights to the US military.
The Pentagon sought to defuse the brewing controversy, saying it was "disturbed" by the reports.
"If determined to be true, this is clearly inappropriate and we are looking into possible remedies," Commander Darryn James, a Pentagon spokesman, told AFP.
The codes were used as "part of our faith and our belief in service to our country," Trijicon said.
"As long as we have men and women in danger, we will continue to do everything we can to provide them with both state-of-the-art technology and the never-ending support and prayers of a grateful nation," a company spokesman said on condition of anonymity.
The move appeared to be a direct violation of a US Central Command general order issued after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq that strictly prohibits "proselytizing of any religion, faith or practice."
A whistleblower group that first alerted ABC News to the issue this week warned the practice was putting troops in harm's way by raising fears of Christian proselytizing in Muslim-majority nations home to militants resentful of US military presence.
"This is the worst type of emboldenment of the enemy that you can imagine," Military Religious Freedom Foundation founder and president Michael "Mikey" Weinstein said in an interview.
Weinstein, a former White House legal counsel in Ronald Reagan's administration, said his group would submit a filing in US federal court in Kansas City, Missouri by February 4 in a related case.
"Having Biblical references on military equipment violates the basic ideals and values our country was founded upon," MPAC Washington director Haris Tarin said in a statement.
"Worse still, it provides propaganda ammo to extremists who claim there is a 'Crusader war against Islam' by the United States," he added.
The shocking revelation raises fresh fears of Christian fundamentalism seeping through the US military's ranks.
"It's got to stop. It's wrong on a million levels," said Weinstein. "This is massively endangering the lives and well-being of our members of the military."
His foundation, he added, represents nearly 16,000 troops, the bulk of them Christians.
A Muslim-American soldier, who declined to be named due to fears of persecution, said he was "ashamed" and "horrified" by the writings on the gunsights of weapons he used during deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"There are many other soldiers who feel as I do. Many are Protestant and Catholic and they fear reprisal just as much as I do for trying to stand up to the Christian bullies in uniform who outrank us," he said in a letter dated January 14 and addressed to Weinstein and his foundation.
The Secular Coalition for America demanded the US military end its contracts with Trijicon.
"Trijicon knew that the scopes they were producing were for the use of the US military and their decision to keep these engravings shows a flagrant disregard by a private contractor of the laws that govern our land," said the group's director Sean Faircloth.
According to photographs seen by AFP, the coded inscriptions include JN8:12, an apparent reference to John 8:12: "Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life."
Trijicon, a defense contractor founded by devout Christian Glyn Bindon, vows on its website to follow "biblical standards" it says make America great.
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Afghan mission has lost momentum, British ambassador says
The mission in Afghanistan has "lost momentum" with the Taliban undermining security over the last year, the British ambassador to the country has admitted.
Telegraph.co.uk By Thomas Harding, Defence Correspondent 21 Jan 2010
Speaking ahead of the London Conference on Afghanistan next week Mark Sedwill said the meeting of foreign secretaries needed to "inject some international momentum" to secure the country.
But he argued that the conference could be a "turning point" with the Afghan government for the first time setting the agenda "taking more responsibility for its own destiny".
"We all know that with the election last year coming on top of difficult year in security that we suffered a loss of momentum in the Afghan project," he told journalists in London.
The conference next Wednesday will focus on security in Afghanistan, with increases in local force numbers to be announced and will address corruption and international issues.
It will be jointly hosted by David Miliband the foreign secretary, his Afghan opposite number, and will include a host of foreign dignitaries including Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State.
The conference will work on a reconciliation program to persuade Taliban fighters to lay down their weapons.
But Mr Sedwill warned that there would be further terrorist attacks like the one in Kabul earlier this week when 20 Taliban penetrated the government district.
He said: "Obviously there is a risk that these groups will try a spectacular around the time of the conference. That would make sense from their perspective and we should not be taken by surprise if something like that happens."
He added that in the last few days a rocket "went over my residence and landed nearby" but added it was a "level of violence that we are going to be tolerating for some time."
The ambassador also warned other countries neighbouring Afghanistan to stop using it as a territory to play "the Great Game".
In a reference probably directed at Pakistan, India, and Iran he said: "Afghanistan for too long has been the ground on which regional powers have exercised and fought out tensions. That has to stop. The Great Game is over and Afghanistan ha to become a land of stability."
He agreed that Helmand, where the majority of British troops are based, was the "main effort" for both the Taliban and Nato forces.
The conference will probably set out a tentative timetable for handing over security to local forces.
Mr Sedwill said the handovers will not mean foreign troops will be gone, but said they are part of an overall strategy for their eventual withdrawal.
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Taliban leaders 'offered asylum' under London peace plan
Taliban leaders could be offered exile abroad and have their names deleted from a UN sanctions blacklist as part of a peace plan for Afghanistan to be unveiled in London next week.
Telegraph.co.uk By Ben Farmer in Kabul 20 Jan 2010
A briefing paper on the Afghan government's proposals seen by The Daily Telegraph says any peace deal may include "potential exile in a third country" for insurgent leaders.
The document does not name any country, but Saudi Arabia, which recognised the former Taliban regime, is believed to be a possible candidate to give leaders a new life.
The plan was endorsed by Afghan ministers and the international community in Kabul on Tuesday. It envisages a twin-track strategy aiming separately at foot soldiers and the leadership.
After eight years of intensifying fighting Nato commanders have acknowledged political negotiation is the only solution to the worsening fighting.
They are now backing a "carrot and stick" strategy of more troops to reverse the Taliban's military momentum coupled with incentives for fighters to rejoin society.
International donors are preparing to pay hundreds of millions of pounds towards the scheme, with Japan and the US already allocating substantial budgets.
In the first phase, junior fighters, who commanders believe are mainly motivated by money, will be offered jobs, training and education if they lay down their weapons and renounce violence.
Further incentives could include pensions for older fighters and allotments of land.
Villages which persuade their men to give up their struggle will get a "peace dividend" of aid and development.
Fighters would be offered security and protection from reprisal, which has so far led to the deaths of many who have tried to defect.
A peace jirga, or tribal council, will be held by President Hamid Karzai after the London conference to kick start the plan.
A separate push will later target the Taliban high command. It could include giving them asylum or political positions if they lay down their weapons, break links with al-Qaeda and agree to abide by the Afghan constitution the paper said.
They would also see their names taken off a UN sanctions list of Taliban and al-Qaeda which has frozen their assets and blocked foreign travel. Any deal would also need their removal from United States "kill or capture" lists.
The report says: "The government reaches its hand out to the Taliban and other insurgent groups to offer them a dignified and respectful way to renounce violence and peacefully reintegrate into their communities and separate themselves from their past."
The plan will be unveiled to the London conference on Jan 28 by Mr Karzai and his adviser Mohammad Masoom Stanakzai.
Mullah Arsala Rahmani, a former Taliban deputy higher education minister who appears on the UN list despite now being a senator, said peace relied on talks with members of the insurgents' ruling Quetta Shura.
He said: "I am sure dealing with the Taliban soldiers is not the solution. They are strongly linked to their commanders and trust them. First you have to talk to the most senior people."
He said while Mullah Mohammad Omar remained the nominal head of the movement, negotiations now relied on his lieutenants in Quetta, Pakistan.
Robert Gates, US defence secretary, said earlier this week he doubted the Taliban high command would consider a settlement until the momentum of the insurgency had been reversed. He also questioned whether reconciliation with Mullah Omar was realistic.
Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, another blacklisted former Taliban ambassador who spent several years at Guantanamo, said the reintegration plan was corrupt and would hinder peace efforts.
"While America is talking about peace talks, on the one hand it wants to divide the Taliban and buy some of them with money, and on the other hand it sends more troops for the war," he said.
"These are all contradictory issues and no one can make decisions in such a situation.
"The Taliban say these are all a conspiracy against them and this will harden their position."
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U.N. corruption report causes criticism from Afghan officials
KABUL, Jan. 21 (Xinhua) -- A U.N. report, which said 59 percent of Afghans see corruption as the greatest problem and the bribes comes to one quarter of the country's GDP, has triggered criticism from Afghan officials.
The report was released here on Thursday by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
The report said it was based on interviews with 7,600 people in 12 provincial capitals and more than 1,600 villages around Afghanistan between autumn 2008 and autumn 2009.
"One of the most interesting findings of this survey is that 59 percent of Afghans think or consider corruption as the first priority and even bigger concern than security and unemployment," Jans-Luc Lemahieu, UNODC representative in Afghanistan, told a press conference here Thursday.
The second finding, he added, is that more than half of Afghans had to pay at least one time bribe last year, and the total amount of such bribes comes to 2.5 billion U.S. dollars, nearly one quarter of the country's 10 billion dollar GDP.
The average bribe is 160 dollars, in a country where GDP per capita is a mere 425 per year, according to the report.
However, Afghan officials have expressed displeasure over the report.
"There is no doubt that corruption and bribes are widespread in the government institutions, but we have our reservations," Qaseem Ludin, Deputy Director General for the High Office of Oversight and Anti-Corruption, said at the same press conference.
Ludin also said one of the reservations he had is the huge amount of 2.5 billion dollars in bribery.
Afghan Finance Minister Omar Zakhilwal on Wednesday lashed out at the report, saying the detailed document on graft was "full of flaws," and accused the United Nations officials of using the report "for personal promotion."
Afghan President Hamid Karzai previously said corruption does exist in Afghanistan, but the problem was exaggerated.
Last year, the watchdog group Transparency International ranked Afghanistan as the world's second most-corrupt country ahead of Somalia.
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Majority of Afghans wants India, not Pakistan, to help
The Economic Times - Politics/Nation 21 Jan 2010
NEW DELHI - A majority of Afghans prefer involvement of India in the reconstruction of their country as opposed to Pakistan, according to a new opinion poll. The opinion poll, commissioned by BBC, ABC and German TV ARD, found that 71% of over 1,500 Afghans endorsed India's role in the reconstruction of the country while Pakistan was the least popular country with 15% of the votes. India was followed by Germany (59%), the US (51%), Iran (50%) and Britain (39%).
The poll also support the findings of an earlier Gallup poll that also found overwhelming support for India's initiatives in Afghanistan, which are viewed with suspicion by Pakistan. The Gallup poll found that Afghans favoured India's role in reconstruction and developmental efforts over that of the United Nations, NATO, Iran and Pakistan.
The other significant aspect of the latest poll was that there is growing disenchantment with the Taliban. Ninety per cent said they wanted their country run by the Karzai government, compared with 6% who said they favoured a Taliban administration. Sixty-nine per cent believed the Taliban posed the biggest danger to the country, and 66% blamed the Taliban, al Qaeda and foreign militants for violence in Afghanistan.
The survey was conducted in all 34 provinces of Afghanistan in December 2009 and is based on interviews with 1,534 Afghans. The field work has been done by the Afghan Center for Socio-Economic and Opinion Research (ACSOR) in Kabul.
Afghans who were polled were also optimistic about the future of their country with 70% saying Afghanistan was going in the right direction. Just a year ago only 40 percent of the respondent had shown the same optimism.
Sixty-eight per cent of those polled also favoured the continued presence of US troops in Afghanistan, compared with 63% a year ago. Support for Nato troops also increased from 59% to 62%. 71% said they were optimistic about the situation in 12 months' time, while in 2009 only 51% had expected improvement in an year's time.
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Osama bin Laden is 'worth more alive than dead'
Times Online Anne Barrowclough January 21, 2010
Osama bin Laden is worth more to the United States alive than dead because his death could unleash "very,very nasty" attacks by militants, his son Omar Ossama bin Laden claims.
In an at times rambling interview with Rolling Stone magazine, which was conducted in part in a Damascus strip club, the terror leader's fourth eldest son said his father had already won the war on terror because he had achieved his aim of humbling the UInited States, and would probably not feel the need to launch more big attacks.
However he said Barack Obama's decision to increase troop numbers in Afghanistan was a big mistake that would damage the US economy.
"It is like adding water to sand, as we say in the Arab world - it only makes the sand heavier," Mr bin Laden told the magazine.
"If I was in his position, the first thing I would do is make a truce. Then for six months or one year, no fighting, no soldiers. Afghanistan can never be won. It has nothing to do with my father. It is the Afghan people," he said.
"It is going to be worse when my father dies," he added. "The world is going to be very, very nasty then. It will be a disaster."
Mr bin Laden, whose autobiography Growing Up Bin Laden detailed his childhood growing up in militant camps in Sudan and Afghanistan as his father pursued his jihadist plan, left bin Laden in Afghanistan shortly before the September 11 attack in 2001. He has since married a British woman almost twice his age whom he met while on a ride to the Giza pyramids in Egypt and now makes a living as a scrap metal merchant in the Saudi city of Jeddah. He has been banned from entering Britain with his wife Zaina because of fears that his presence would cause “considerable public concern”.
He said he respected former president Bill Clinton for his 'smart' decisions to attack his father's training camp with cruise missiles in retaliation for attacks on US interests in Africa.
"He didn't get my father, but after all the war in Afghanistan, they still don't have my father," he said. "They have spent hundreds of billions. Better for America to keep the money for its economy. In Clinton's time, America was very, very smart. Not like a bull that runs after the red scarf."
His father was delighted when George W Bush was elected president, he said. "My father was so happy. This is the kind of president he needs — one who will attack and spend money and break the country.
"I am sure my father wanted McCain more than Obama. McCain has the same mentality as Bush. My father would be disappointed because Obama get the position."
The failure of the huge intelligence and military effort to find and kill bin Laden was a piece of luck for America, said Mr bin Laden, because his father's followers killed for killing's sake while bin Laden was so controlled would only kill if he felt it was necessary.
"People were always asking my father to attack more," he said of the militants he saw with his father in Afghanistan. They would say, 'Sheik, we must do more.' Crazy things. My father has a religious goal. He is controlled by the rules of jihad. He only kills if he thinks there is a need."
He said he doubted that bin Laden would order any more mass attacks.
"He doesn't need to. As soon as America went to Afghanistan, his plan worked. He has already won."
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U.S. Defense Secretary meets Pakistani officials
ISLAMABAD, Jan. 21 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates held separate talks with Pakistan's army chief Ashfaq Pervez Kayani and Defense Minister Ahmed Mukhtar on Thursday to discuss U. S. war strategy in neighboring Afghanistan, according to local media reports.
Kayani briefed Gates on the ongoing military operation against Taliban insurgents in Pakistan's South Waziristan tribal area near the Afghan border, saying that greater intelligence sharing between Pakistani and U.S. military will help target the Taliban militants along the Pakistan-Afghan border.
Gates earlier told Defense Minister Ahmed Mukhtar that the Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan must be destroyed, otherwise it could make greater trouble for Islamabad and Kabul in the future.
Gates laid a wreath at the Pakistan Army Martyr's Monument at General Headquarters in Rawalpindi to pay tribute to the sacrifices made by Pakistani security forces in their fight against terrorists.
Gates arrived in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad Thursday for a two-day visit.
Gates told media that his talks are intended to explain the U.S. war strategy in Afghanistan and reassure Pakistan that the U.S. is "in this region for the long haul."
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Pakistan snubs US over new Taliban offensive
Thursday, 21 January 2010 BBC News
Pakistan's army has said it will launch no new offensives on militants in 2010, as the US defence secretary arrived for talks on combating Taliban fighters.
Army spokesman Athar Abbas told the BBC the "overstretched" military had no plans for any fresh anti-militant operations over the next 12 months.
Our correspondent says the comments are a clear snub to Washington.
The US would like Pakistan to expand an offensive against militants launching cross-border attacks in Afghanistan.
Defence Secretary Robert Gates arrived in Pakistan on Thursday for his first visit since US President Barack Obama took office last year.
'Embarrassing'
The one-day trip comes at a crucial time in the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban, with the US planning to commit 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan.
Mr Gates was expected to tell Pakistan that it could do more against top Taliban leaders operating in its territory, some of whom are alleged to have close links to Pakistan's ISI intelligence service.
The Pakistani army launched major ground offensives in 2009 in the north-west against Pakistani Taliban strongholds in the Swat region, last April, and in South Waziristan, last October.
The militants have hit back with a wave of suicide bombings and attacks that have killed hundreds of people across Pakistan.
In the capital, Islamabad, on Thursday, Maj Gen Abbas, head of public relations for the Pakistan army, told the BBC: "We are not going to conduct any major new operations against the militants over the next 12 months.
"The Pakistan army is overstretched and it is not in a position to open any new fronts. Obviously, we will continue our present operations in Waziristan and Swat."
'Trust deficit'
The BBC's Syed Shoaib Hasan in Islamabad says the comments are a clear brush-off to top US officials.
Our correspondent adds they are embarrassing for Pakistan's shaky coalition government, and likely to further destabilise already-low ties with its US ally.
He says it also threatens to render ineffective an expanded coalition troop deployment in Afghanistan, as the Taliban over the border would be relieved of any pressure from the Pakistan army.
Before arriving in Islamabad, Mr Gates told reporters travelling with him from India: "You can't ignore one part of this cancer and pretend that it won't have some impact closer to home."
His visit comes amidst a slight cooling in relations between the two allies. In an article published in a Pakistani newspaper on Thursday, Mr Gates referred to a "trust deficit".
As well as talking with his counterpart, Ahmed Mukhtar, the US defence secretary is expected to meet Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and President Asif Zardari.
Talks were also expected to focus on US drone strikes against militants near the Afghan border.
Hundreds of people have died in the attacks, which have stoked deep resentment of the US among many Pakistanis.
But our correspondent says Mr Gates will argue that drone strikes are the only effective measure against the Taliban.
Pakistan has been an important US partner in South Asia since the 11 September 2001 attacks in the US.
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U.S. Envisions a Continuing Civilian Presence in Afghanistan and Pakistan
New York Times By MARK LANDLER January 20, 2010
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration's ambitious civilian push in Pakistan and Afghanistan will keep thousands of Americans in those countries for years — rebuilding Afghan agriculture, rooting out corruption and using the local media to counter anti-American sentiment.
The steps, laid out in a 30-page policy paper to be released Thursday by the State Department, are the most detailed blueprint yet for the civilian part of the administration's strategy in the region.
But the report — much like President Obama's initial proposal for increased numbers of troops in Afghanistan — leaves important questions unanswered, including whether Congress will approve the financing to support such a high level of engagement over the long term, and what role the United States will play in Afghan efforts to draw people away from the Taliban.
President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan is preparing to announce a package of incentives to lure Taliban supporters back into Afghan society. But American officials are skeptical of the Afghan government's talk of trying to reconcile with the Taliban's leaders, especially Mullah Muhammad Omar.
The formal introduction of a civilian strategy reflects the State Department's frustration that this side of policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan has been largely eclipsed by the Pentagon's enlarged military operation.
“Everyone pays lip service to the fact that the civilian strategy is important, but then no one pays attention to it,” said Richard C. Holbrooke, the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, who is scheduled to testify on Thursday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
In the report, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said, “Our civilian engagement in Afghanistan and Pakistan will endure long after our combat troops come home.”
The United States has already tripled the number of civilians in Afghanistan, from 320 early last year to nearly 1,000 now. It plans to add 200 to 300 this year, putting many of those people outside Kabul, the capital, in agricultural projects or in government ministries, where they will serve as advisers.
Persuading farmers to turn away from poppy cultivation has emerged as the top American civilian priority in Afghanistan. The administration wants to reconstitute an agricultural credit bank in Kabul that could make loans to farmers to encourage them to plant fruit, nuts and other alternatives to poppies.
Setting up an agricultural bank would require about $500 million, administration officials said, with $50 million likely to come from the United States and $450 million from other countries.
There are nearly 100 American agricultural experts in Afghanistan, mostly in the south and east. They are helping to build new irrigation systems, picking up on work that Americans performed there in the 1960s.
Still, the big challenges in Afghanistan this year are more legal and political. The United States and Britain are helping the Afghan government set up a major-crimes task force in the Interior Ministry, which is intended to be the government's main agency to crack down on corruption.
The administration also plans to combat anti-American messages carried by Taliban-controlled radio stations. It is hiring David Ensor, a former correspondent for CNN and ABC, to devise what it calls a communications and counterpropaganda campaign. The goal is to substantially reduce “enemy propaganda” by July 2011, when American troops are set to begin withdrawing.
Congress has approved $400 million to pay for the deployment of additional civilians in Afghanistan. But the American ambassador in Kabul, Karl W. Eikenberry, a retired Army lieutenant general, is asking for more, according to officials. General Eikenberry's frustration with budgetary constraints spilled into the open last fall, when cables he sent to the State Department were leaked.
The sketchiest part of the report concerns the reintegration of Taliban followers into Afghan society. This Afghan-led effort will cost $100 million a year over several years, the report says, with the money likely to come from the United States, Britain, Japan and other countries.
But the State Department must obtain approval from the Treasury Department, because the Taliban are classified as a terrorist organization, meaning it cannot be linked to American financial support. Mr. Karzai is still weighing whether to ask the United Nations to remove Mullah Omar's name from a blacklist. Mr. Holbrooke said that the United States opposed that idea.
Mr. Holbrooke was speaking on the way home from a trip to the region. As the administration begins carrying out its policy, he is emerging as the salesman for the strategy, traveling to Europe and the Middle East to drum up support from NATO allies and Persian Gulf states.
Mr. Holbrooke said he was now most concerned about Pakistan, which he thinks is not getting adequate international support. He said he planned to tell lawmakers that he hoped Congress would set aside even more money, beyond the current $7.5 billion in nonmilitary assistance.
“The Europeans are not giving enough aid to Pakistan,” he said.
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Mystery shrouds Pakistani scientist in US trial
By Hasan Mansoor January 20, 2010
(AFP) –KARACHI — She has been dubbed Lady Al-Qaeda by US media, but the Pakistani family of Aafia Siddiqui, on trial in New York, insist she is a moderate Muslim more interested in flowers and animals than wielding weapons.
Their description of a loving mother, daughter and good neighbour fond of tending her rose garden clashes with US prosecutors' description of an Islamic extremist who grabbed a gun and opened fire on US soldiers and FBI agents.
Whether she deceived her family about her extremist views, radicalised during a long unexplained disappearance, or really is the woman they say she is, is a mystery that may, perhaps, be explained on the stand in New York.
On the opening day of the trial Tuesday, prosecutors described the US-educated neuroscientist as a would-be terrorist who in July 2008 grabbed an American soldier's rifle at an Afghan police station and opened fire.
The 37-year-old has repeatedly disrupted the proceedings, complaining that the court is unfair. On Tuesday she was ordered out of the court after her outbursts.
In the upmarket Gulshan-e-Iqbal neighbourhood of Pakistan's biggest city, Karachi, her frail 70-year-old mother Ismat Siddiqui thumbs through an old family photo album and defends the girl smiling from the pages.
"She loves people, animals and flowers. She wouldn't hurt anything alive. How can she try to kill US soldiers?" Ismat Siddiqui told AFP.
"She was a good Muslim and at the same time she was a good human. She would help people in distress and never thought of killing an insect. How can she be accused as a terrorist and a member of Al-Qaeda?"
Ismat sits on a spacious veranda overlooking the manicured lawn of the large family home where her daughter spent some of her childhood before attending the prestigious MIT university in Massachusetts.
Siddiqui's elder sister, Fowzia, a doctor, recalled her sibling's childhood love of animals and academic excellence.
"She was religious but not a religious fanatic. She was crazy about roses and she had planted different varieties of roses in our little garden" -- a garden where Pakistani police now guard the family.
"She had four pet dogs, one of them I remember was called Shaggy.... She was brilliant in all respects. She was an excellent student and a brave mother," said Fowzia.
A neighbour, 55-year-old trader Mohammad Hashim, described Siddiqui as "a nice girl, a decent and caring girl".
However, a different picture emerged in the New York courtroom.
According to US prosecutors, Siddiqui was arrested by Afghan police on July 17, 2008 in the provincial city of Ghazni with notes on her referring to a "mass casualty attack" and target lists including New York's most famous landmarks.
The next day, while being held at the local police station, she allegedly grabbed an M4 assault rifle belonging to one of several US servicemen and FBI agents who had come to interrogate her.
She opened fire, missed, and was shot by one of the US soldiers, prosecutors allege. Defence lawyers will argue that there is little direct physical evidence that she shot at the Americans.
How Siddiqui ended up in Afghanistan that day is one of many mysteries.
Siddiqui was living in Karachi with her family when she vanished along with her three children in March 2003. A year later, she featured on a 2004 US list of people suspected of Al-Qaeda links.
She is also said to have married a relative of 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, although her mother denies this.
Some human rights activists and lawyers have speculated that Siddiqui was in secret US custody all those years, a long incarceration that damaged her mental health and led to hallucinations of her dead or missing children.
The US military has denied this, saying the allegation is "unfounded" and she may have gone underground in the missing years. A judge ruled in July 2009 that Siddiqui was mentally fit to stand trial.
While two of Siddiqui's children are missing -- one presumed dead -- her 13-year-old son Mohammad Ahmed now lives with the family in Karachi.
"He has yet to fully recover from the mental trauma of languishing in an Afghan jail," Ismat Siddiqui said, glancing fondly at the shy boy who sits nearby holding a placard. It reads: "Release my Mom."
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Afghanistan Needs a Surge of Diplomacy
New York Times By KARL F. INDERFURTH and CHINMAYA R. GHAREKHAN Op-Ed Contributor January 20, 2010
The 68-nation London conference at the end of this month will focus on the future of Afghanistan, against the backdrop of major new military commitments by the United States and NATO, promises from the international community of increased civilian assistance, and pledges of new anti-corruption measures from President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan.
But assuring Afghanistan's future will require more than a military and civilian surge and better Afghan governance. A diplomacy surge is also required. Specifically, in the words of a recent statement signed by 20 former foreign ministers led by Madeleine K. Albright, “there needs to be a regional solution to Afghanistan's problems.”
To reach the goal of a stable and peaceful Afghanistan, the country must have better relations with its powerful neighbors, including Pakistan, Iran, China, India and Russia.
Afghanistan's neighbors have reached the conclusion (some grudgingly) that support for a stable, independent, economically viable Afghan state is preferable to the past three decades of chaos in that country and its spillover effects of extremism and terrorism.
Despite this, the region's opportunistic states will revive their interference in Afghanistan in the event of a failing Kabul government or an international community that reneges on its commitments to help secure and rebuild the country.
While dealing with the Taliban insurgency must be the first order of business, the best way out of this morass is to return Afghanistan to its traditional policy of neutrality — of noninterference by others in its internal affairs and by it in other countries — and to take Afghanistan “off the board” for future “Great Game” rivalries.
For much of the 20th century, the rulers of Afghanistan highlighted this approach, as expressed by King Nadir Shah in 1931: “The best and most fruitful policy that one can imagine for Afghanistan is a policy of neutrality. Afghanistan must give its neighbors assurances of its friendly attitudes while safeguarding the right of reciprocity.”
The 2001 Bonn Agreement that re-established Afghan state institutions also provides a basis for this approach. It contains a request from the conference participants to the United Nations “to take necessary measures to guarantee national sovereignty, territorial integrity and unity of Afghanistan as well as the noninterference by countries in Afghanistan's internal affairs.”
This charge has yet to be acted upon, despite the fact that the Security Council has adopted numerous resolutions on Afghanistan since the signing of the Bonn Agreement.
A number of neutrality models for Afghanistan can be considered, such as the International Agreement on the Neutrality of Laos, signed in Geneva in 1962 by 14 states, including the five permanent members of the Security Council, regional neighbors, India and Canada. The agreement spelled out reciprocal commitments, including pledges to respect Laotian neutrality, to refrain from forging military alliances with the country, establishing bases on its territory or interfering in its internal affairs.
This format suitably adapted for Afghanistan could include a formal Afghan proclamation of neutrality, its endorsement by the Security Council, and the acceptance of reciprocal obligations by the Afghan state and relevant countries.
In addition, these elements could provide the framework for a comprehensive package that would include a settlement acceptable to both parties of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and a commitment on the eventual elimination of foreign forces now in Afghanistan.
Other issues would also need to be addressed: What kind of mechanism should be established to monitor compliance? Should there be peacekeeping of some sort? Who would deal with complaints of violations?
Almost two years ago the Atlantic Council of the United States issued a report that said: “Unless those parties interested in saving Afghanistan understand that a regional approach is essential, the stalemate will continue.”
The London conference provides an opportunity to launch this regional effort and should call for the formation of an international contact group, under the auspices of the U.N. secretary general, to lead a surge of diplomacy for Afghanistan.
Karl F. Inderfurth served as U.S. assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs from 1997 to 2001. He is a professor at George Washington University. Chinmaya R. Gharekhan served as India's special envoy for the Middle East and is a former U.N. under secretary general.
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Impossible to Separate Afghan, Pakistan Taliban: U.S.
REUTERS January 21, 2010
ISLAMABAD - Making a distinction between Pakistani Taliban and their Afghan allies is counterproductive and pressure on Taliban havens on both sides of the border is necessary, U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates said on Thursday.
Islamabad has mounted big offensives against Pakistani Taliban factions that are attacking the state but has resisted U.S. pressure to attack Afghan Taliban in border enclaves who do not attack in Pakistan but cross the border to fight U.S. troops.
Pakistan says it has its hands full with the Pakistani Taliban and cannot open too many fronts at the same time.
But analysts say Pakistan sees the Afghan Taliban as tools to counter the growing influence of old rival India in Afghanistan and as potential allies in Afghanistan when U.S. forces withdraw and, as many Pakistanis fear, leave the country in chaos.
"It is important to remember that the Pakistani Taliban operates in collusion with both the Taliban in Afghanistan and al Qaeda, so it is impossible to separate these groups," Gates said in a commentary in Pakistan's the News newspaper on Thursday.
"If history is any indication, safe havens for either Taliban on either side of the border will in the long-run lead to more lethal and more brazen attacks in both nations," said Gates, adding he would be visiting Pakistan but did not say when.
Nuclear-armed Pakistan and the United States have been allies for years but ties have been strained by U.S. calls for Pakistan to do more to stop militants crossing from its lawless ethnic Pashtun border lands to fight in Afghanistan.
"Maintaining a distinction between some violent extremist groups and others is counterproductive," Gates said.
"Only by pressuring all of these groups on both sides of the border will Afghanistan and Pakistan be able to rid themselves of this scourge for good," he said.
About 2,000 Pakistani soldiers have been killed battling the al Qaeda-linked Pakistani Taliban behind numerous bomb attacks on the security forces and government and foreign targets.
The army has captured most insurgent bases in the rugged South Waziristan region on the Afghan border in an offensive launched in October but militant leaders have slipped away. Some are believed to have taken refuge with Afghan Taliban allies.
Gates, referring to a "trust deficit" between the United States and Pakistan, said the United States wanted to relinquish grievances of the past held by both sides.
The United States was committed to a stable, long-term, strategic partnership with a democratic Pakistan, he said.
The United States is Pakistan's biggest aid donor and has given about $15 billion (9.25 billion pound), including security assistance, since Pakistan signed up to the U.S.-led campaign against militancy after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
But many Pakistanis are deeply sceptical of the U.S. war on militancy, believing it is aimed at suppressing Muslims. Many Pakistanis also believe the United States wants to confiscate its nuclear weapons.
(Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Paul Tait)
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A Deal with the Taliban?
The New York Review of Books By Ahmed Rashid January 20, 2010
My Life with the Taliban by Abdul Salam Zaeef, translated from the Pashto and edited by Alex Strick van Linschoten and Feliz Kuehn
Volume 57, Number 3 • February 25, 2010
Columbia University Press, 331 pp., $29.95 1.
For thirty years Afghanistan has cast a long, dark shadow over world events, but it has also been marked by pivotal moments that could have brought peace and changed world history.
One such moment occurred in February 1989, just as the last Soviet troops were leaving Afghanistan. Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze had flown into Islamabad—the first visit to Pakistan by a senior Soviet official. He came on a last-ditch mission to try to persuade Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, the army, and the Interservices Intelligence (ISI) to agree to a temporary sharing of power between the Afghan Communist regime in Kabul and the Afghan Mujahideen. He hoped to prevent a civil war and lay the groundwork for a peaceful, final transfer of power to the Mujahideen.
By then the Soviets were in a state of panic. They ironically shared the CIA's analysis that Afghan President Mohammad Najibullah would last only a few weeks after the Soviet troops had departed. The CIA got it wrong—Najibullah was to last three more years, until the eruption of civil war forced him to take refuge in the UN compound in April 1992. The ISI refused to oblige Shevardnadze. It wanted to get Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, one of the seven disparate Mujahideen leaders and its principal protégé, into power in Kabul. The CIA had also urged the ISI to stand firm against the Soviets. It wanted to avenge the US humiliation in Vietnam and celebrate a total Communist debacle in Kabul—no matter how many Afghan lives it would cost. A political compromise was not in the plans of the ISI and the CIA.
I was summoned to meet Shevardnadze late at night and remember a frustrated but visibly angry man, outraged by the shortsightedness of Pakistan and the US and the clear desire of both governments to humiliate Moscow. He went on to evoke an apocalyptic vision of the future of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the region. His predictions of the violence to come turned out to be dead right.
At that pivotal moment, if Shevardnadze's compromise had been accepted, the world might well have avoided the decade-long Afghan civil war, the destruction of Kabul, the rise of the Taliban, and the sanctuary they provided al-Qaeda. Perhaps we could have avoided September 11 itself—and much that has followed since, including the latest attempt by a Nigerian extremist to blow up a transatlantic airliner, the killing of seven CIA officers at an Afghan base, and the continuing heavy casualties among NATO troops and Afghan civilians in Afghanistan.
With Obama's controversial and risk-laden plan to first build up and then, in eighteen months, start drawing down US troops in Afghanistan, every nation and political leader in the region now faces another pivotal moment. At stake is whether the US and its allies are willing to talk to the Afghan Taliban, because there is no military victory in sight and no other way to end a war that has been going on for thirty years.
When that moment comes—as it must—will the US and NATO be ready to talk with the Taliban or will they be internally divided, as they are now? Will President Hamid Karzai have the credibility to take part in such talks and deliver on an agreement that might be reached? Will the ISI demand that their own Taliban protégés return to power? Will the Taliban hard-liners, now scenting victory, even agree to talks and, as a consequence, be prepared to dump al-Qaeda? Or will they sit out the next eighteen months waiting for the Americans to begin to leave? 2.
The Afghan Taliban are now a country-wide movement. During the last year they expanded to the previously quiet west and north of Afghanistan. Their leadership has safe havens in Pakistan. Casualties on all sides have risen dramatically. According to the UN, in 2009 there were an average of 1,200 attacks a month by Taliban or other insurgent groups—a 65 percent increase from the previous year. Over the twelve-month period, 2,412 Afghan civilians were killed, an increase of 14 percent; of those, two thirds were killed by the Taliban, a 40 percent increase. In addition, US and NATO combat deaths rose 76 percent, from 295 in 2008 to 520 in 2009.
Adding to the challenges facing the Afghan government, only 3 percent of recruits joining the Afghan army are from the Pashtun belt in southern Afghanistan, where the Taliban are dominant, according to Lieutenant General Bill Caldwell, who is leading the US training mission in Afghanistan; even so, the Taliban have infiltrated parts of the Afghan army and police—the key components of the US plan to start the handover of power to local forces by July 2011. In large parts of Afghanistan, development programs have come to a halt and nearly half of the UN staff assigned to Afghanistan have been relocated to Dubai and Central Asia because of security concerns.
According to Major General Michael Flynn, the NATO military chief of intelligence in Afghanistan, the Taliban now have shadow governors in thirty-three out of thirty-four provinces—they serve to organize the movement at a provincial level and disrupt government initiatives in their area—and the movement "can sustain itself indefinitely." Flynn has described US intelligence in Afghanistan as "clueless" and "ignorant."*
Taliban commanders have stepped up their vicious campaign to intimidate or kill any Afghan civilians working for the Karzai government, aid agencies, women's groups, and even the UN. On January 18, militants launched a double suicide attack just yards from the presidential palace in central Kabul, provoking a gun battle in which three soldiers and two civilians were killed and more than seventy wounded. "We are now at a critical juncture.... The situation cannot continue as is if we are to succeed in Afghanistan," UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told the UN Security Council earlier in the month. "There is a risk that the deteriorating overall situation will become irreversible," he added.
The prevailing view in Washington is that many Taliban fighters in the field can eventually be won over, but that the present US troop surge has to roll them back first, reversing Taliban successes and gaining control over the population centers and major roads. According to the current American strategy, the US military has to weaken the Taliban before negotiating with them. The commander of US and NATO forces, General Stanley McChrystal, has both a special fund of $1.5 billion to provide incentives and other forms of support to Taliban who put down their arms, and a group of British and American officers who are drawing up plans to win over Taliban commanders and fighters as the troop surge tilts the battlefield back in favor of the US. General McChrystal told me in Islamabad in early January that he is confident that many Taliban will be won over in the field. This US reconciliation effort would be led by Karzai, who for several years has called for talks with Taliban leaders.
There is another way of looking at the present crisis. Despite their successes, the Taliban are probably now near the height of their power. They do not control major population centers—nor can they, given NATO's military strength and air power. There are no countrywide, populist insurrections against NATO forces as there were against the coalition forces in Iraq. The vast majority of Afghans do not want the return of a Taliban regime despite their anger at the Karzai government and the general international failure to deliver economic progress. Many Afghans believe that as long as Western troops remain, there is still the hope that security can return and their lives change for the better.
Thus the next few months could offer a critical opportunity to persuade the Taliban that this is the best time to negotiate a settlement, because they are at their strongest. 3.
Both Generals McChrystal and David Petraeus, the head of the US military's Central Command, have said that they cannot shoot their way to victory. Obama is clear about defeating al-Qaeda, but he is more inclined toward negotiations with the Taliban. In his West Point speech in December, Obama said he supported Kabul's efforts to "open the door to those Taliban who abandon violence and respect the human rights of their fellow citizens."
The present US military strategy aims to peel away Taliban commanders and fighters and resettle them without making any major political concessions or changes to the Afghan constitution. But Washington remains deeply divided about talking to the Taliban leaders. The State and Defense Departments, the White House, and the CIA all have different views about it, and there are also divisions between the US and its allies.
General McChrystal told me that many mid-level Taliban commanders and their men are waiting for Karzai to announce a reconciliation strategy before offering to change sides. "The reintegration of former Taliban into society offers a good chance to reduce the insurgency in Afghanistan...while al-Qaeda needs to be hunted and destroyed." Whether the US and its allies should hold talks with the Taliban leadership, he said, is a political decision to be made by Washington. In December Richard Holbrooke, the US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, told me that in his estimation some 70 percent of the Taliban fight for local reasons or money rather than because of ideological commitment to the movement, and they can be won over.
Meanwhile the Taliban have shown the first hint of flexibility, as suggested in a ten-page statement issued in November 2009 for the religious festival of Eid. The Taliban leader Mullah Omar, while urging his fighters to continue the jihad against "the arrogant [US] enemy," also pledged that a future Taliban regime would bring peace and noninterference from outside forces, and would pose no threat to neighboring countries—implying that al-Qaeda would not be returning to Afghanistan along with the Taliban. Sounding more like a diplomat than an extremist, Omar said, "The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan wants to take constructive measures together with all countries for mutual cooperation, economic development and good future on the basis of mutual respect."
A week later, the Taliban's response to Obama's West Point speech again suggested a changed attitude. There was not a single mention of jihad or imposing Islamic law. Instead the Taliban spoke of a nationalist and patriotic struggle for Afghanistan's independence and said they were ready to give legal guarantee if the foreign forces withdraw from Afghanistan." In a New Year's message the Taliban, while condemning the US surge, even seemed to empathize with Obama, observing that the American president faces "a great many problems and opposition" at home.
The Taliban's new tone can be traced to secret talks in the spring of 2009. Sponsored by Saudi Arabia at Karzai's request, the talks included former (or now retired) Taliban, former Arab members of al-Qaeda, and Karzai's representatives. No breakthrough took place, but the talks led to a series of visits to Saudi Arabia by important Taliban leaders during the rest of 2009. The US, British, and Saudi officials who were indirectly in contact with the Taliban there quickly encouraged them to renounce al-Qaeda and lay out their negotiating demands. In turn, the Taliban said that distancing themselves from al-Qaeda would require the other side to meet a principal demand of their own: that all foreign forces must announce a timetable to leave Afghanistan.
Istakhbarat, the Saudi intelligence service, is not set up to produce political results, but it has given the Taliban a safe venue to meet and it has acted as an interlocutor with Afghan government and Western officials. Significantly the ISI, which has demanded a key part in the negotiations from its erstwhile Saudi allies, has so far been left out at the request of both the Taliban and the Afghan government—neither of whom trust it. That now may be about to change. The key to more formal negotiations with Taliban leaders lies with Pakistan and the ISI. 4.
Tensions between the US and Pakistan have escalated in recent months as Washington demands that the Pakistani military "capture or kill" Afghan Taliban leaders as well as top militants in Pakistan. These include the Afghan Taliban leadership living in Quetta and Karachi, as well as their allies such as Jalaluddin Haqqani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who live in North Waziristan in the tribal areas abutting Afghanistan. Pakistan says it is too busy dealing with its own acute problems with the Pakistani Taliban and a growing number of terrorist attacks by various insurgent groups. Its forces are overstretched, it has little money, and it will oblige the Americans only when it is ready to do so. In fact Pakistan would never launch a military offensive against the Afghan Taliban leaders since it has viewed them as potential allies in a post-American Afghanistan, when the US will probably ditch Pakistan as well.
Pakistan's military is deeply fearful of a US withdrawal from Afghanistan; the result could be civil war and mayhem in its backyard once again. "We want the American surge to succeed in Afghanistan, because if they don't we will pay the price," a senior Pakistani military officer told me. The army is also convinced that the US will eventually align itself with India and that it has allowed India to strengthen its influence in Kabul at Pakistan's expense. Despite all the sacrifices it has made for the Afghans over thirty years, supporting them against the Soviets, Pakistanis are now friendless in Afghanistan—except for the Afghan Taliban, who are more wary than friendly toward the ISI.
To regain influence in Afghanistan and drive the Indians out once the Americans leave, the Pakistan military could, as an alternative, back the Taliban in a plan to retake Kabul and set up a government that would do Pakistan's bidding. However that possibility is now too risky; the international community would never tolerate it, and such a regime would also provide a base from which the Pakistani Taliban could launch further attacks in Pakistan.
In a major policy shift, senior Pakistani military and intelligence officials say they have offered to help broker talks between Taliban leaders, the Americans, and Karzai. "We want the talks to start now, not in eighteen months when they are leaving; but the Americans have to trust and depend on us," a senior military officer told me. There is a deep lack of trust between the CIA and the ISI, and other countries may also balk at Pakistan's insistence that all negotiations should be channeled through the ISI. Pakistani officials suggest that if the ISI helps arrange talks, then independent contacts between Taliban leaders and the CIA, British intelligence (MI6), and Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security (NDS) would have to stop. In return, Pakistani officials say only that they want to be sure "that Pakistan's national interests in Afghanistan are looked after"—interests that have yet to be clearly spelled out to the Americans and Afghans.
This is an important change in the official position of Pakistan. For the past nine years—despite the well-known connections between the ISI and the Afghan Taliban—Pakistan has denied that it has influence over the Taliban leaders, and openly playing host to them was considered out of the question. Pakistan will have to make serious efforts to gain the confidence of the US and the Afghans if it is to sponsor negotiations with the Taliban; but their differences could be worked out through arrangements made between the various intelligence agencies and governments involved. Senior US officials say that Pakistan is showing itself to be "more flexible" on Afghan policy than before.
How will the Taliban leaders respond? Many of them are fed up with years of ISI manipulation and strategizing on their behalf and would prefer to keep the ISI out of such talks. Some members of the Taliban have built up a rapport with Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security, the domestic intelligence agency of the Kabul government. The NDS and the ISI loathe and mistrust each other, and the NDS would be extremely reluctant to allow the ISI a central part in negotiations. Moreover the crucial acceptance of reconciliation with the Taliban has to come from the non-Pashtun population in the north who are extremely hostile to the Taliban and the ISI. If the northern ethnic groups who make up just over 50 percent of the population do not accept the reconciliation plan, there could be a renewed civil war as in the 1990s.
But the ISI has power and influence over the Taliban. Not only are the Taliban able to resupply their fighters from Pakistan, and seek medical treatment and other facilities, but the families of most Taliban leaders live in Pakistan where they own homes and run businesses and shops. Taliban leaders travel to Saudi Arabia on Pakistani passports. All this makes them vulnerable to ISI pressure. Even before the US military can consider coopting mid-level Taliban commanders, both sides would have to ascertain how this would play with the ISI.
The Pakistani army's desperate desire to have some control over future events in Afghanistan is partly due to its strategic aim of avoiding encirclement by India; but it is also a result of the setbacks it has received since 2001. The military is still smarting from former President Bush's decisions to allow the anti-Pakistan Northern Alliance to take Kabul in 2001, to ignore Islamabad's later requests for consultations on US strategy in Afghanistan, and to treat all Afghan Pashtuns as potential Taliban. This helped radicalize Pakistan's own Pashtun population, which is more than twice the size of Afghanistan's. (There are 12 million Pashtuns in Afghanistan and 27 million in Pakistan.) 5.
Talking to the Taliban requires more than just secret cooperation among intelligence agencies or the CIA handing out bribes to Taliban commanders to change sides—as it did with the Northern Alliance in 2001. There is an urgent need for a publicly promoted strategy involving concrete efforts to build political institutions and provide humanitarian aid in ways that do not require intrusive Western control—a strategy that could attract many members of the Taliban, reduce violence, and placate Afghans who are opposed to all such compromises. Obama officials have talked up the need for such a public strategy but accomplished little during his first year in office. Yet such goals are of paramount importance.
Here are some suggestions of steps that should be taken in advance of talking to the Taliban. Almost all these points have theoretically been accepted by the US and NATO but none have been acted upon:
1. Convince Afghanistan's neighbors and other countries in the region to sign on to a reconciliation strategy with the Taliban, to be led by the Afghan government. Creating a regional strategy and consensus on Afghanistan was one of the primary aims of the Obama administration; but little has been achieved. From Iran to India, regional tensions are worse now than a year ago.
2. Allow Afghanistan to submit to the UN Security Council a request that the names of Taliban leaders be removed from a list of terrorists drawn up in 2001—so long as those leaders renounce violence and ties to al-Qaeda. Russia has so far refused to entertain such a request; but Obama has not tried hard enough to extract this concession from Russian leaders.
3. Pass a UN Security Council resolution giving the Afghan government a formal mandate to negotiate with the Taliban, and allow the US, NATO, and the UN to encourage that process. This would mean persuading reluctant countries like Russia and India to support such a resolution.
4. Have NATO and Afghan forces take responsibility for the security of Taliban and their families who return to Afghanistan, enlisting the help of international agencies such as the UN High Commission for Refugees or the International Committee of the Red Cross to work with the Afghan government to assist these returning Taliban members, arranging for compensation, housing, job training, and other needs they may have in facing resettlement.
5. Provide adequate funds, training, and staff for a reconciliation body, led by the Afghan government, that will work with Western forces and humanitarian agencies to provide a comprehensive and clearly spelled-out program for the security of the returning Taliban and for facilities to receive them.
6. Encourage the Pakistani military to assist NATO and Afghan forces in providing security to returning Taliban and their families and allow necessary cross-border support from international humanitarian agencies. Encourage Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to help the Taliban set up a legal political party, as other Afghan militants—such as former members of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hizb-i-Islami party—have done. This would be a tremendous blow to al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban and it would give concrete form to Obama's repeated pledge that he is ready to reach out to foes in the Muslim world.
7. The Taliban leadership should be provided with a neutral venue such as Saudi Arabia or elsewhere, where it can hold talks with the Afghan government and NATO. The US should release the remaining Afghan prisoners held at Guantánamo and allow them to go to either Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia.
Unless such publicly announced policies are carried out, the Taliban may well conclude that it is better and safer to sit out the next eighteen months, wait for the Americans to start leaving, and then, when they judge Afghanistan to be vulnerable, go for the kill in Kabul—although that would only lead to a renewed civil war. 6.
Just as Afghanistan faces a crucial choice, we have a book that for the first time places readers at the heart of the Taliban's way of thinking—My Life with the Taliban, by Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, the former Taliban minister and ambassador to Pakistan, who spent over four years in Guantánamo prison. Originally published in Pashto, the language of the Pashtuns, the book has been beautifully translated and extensively edited for easier understanding by Alex Strick van Linschoten and Feliz Kuehn, two researchers who live in Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban.
Zaeef was born in 1968 and grew up in a small dusty village in Kandahar province. Like many Taliban, he came from a family of mullahs and grew up an orphan, having lost his parents at an early age. Economic development never penetrated such Afghan villages as his and daily life was centered on learning at the madrasa, farming, and sustaining the Pashtun tribal code of honor and revenge. His extended clan fled to Pakistan after the 1979 Soviet invasion, but at the age of fifteen he secretly returned home to fight the Soviets. In the 1980s he served under several commanders, including Mullah Omar.
Zaeef dramatically brings to life the extremely harsh conditions under which the Afghans fought—without food, medical aid, or enough ammunition, and under constant Soviet bombardment:
When I first joined the jihad I was fifteen years old. I did not know how to fire a Kalashnikov or how to lead men. I knew nothing of war. But the Russian front lines were a tough proving ground and I eventually commanded several mujahedeen groups.
After the Soviets left Afghanistan, Zaeef became a mullah in a small village near Kandahar. He describes how the situation deteriorated in the south as warlords and criminals extracted tolls from trucks on the road, kidnapped and raped women, and held young boys captive to become their forced lovers. Zaeef was one of the original Taliban; in the winter of 1994 he joined with like-minded young men to work out a strategy for dealing with the warlords.
He was and remains intensely loyal to Mullah Omar, who would, he writes,
listen to everybody with focus and respect for as long as they needed to talk, and would never seek to cut them off. After he had listened, he then would answer with ordered, coherent thoughts.
When Zaeef attended the founding meeting of the Taliban, each man took an oath of loyalty to Omar. That oath is still in effect, which is why no senior Taliban commander has ever betrayed the whereabouts of Omar. As the Taliban started to conquer Afghanistan, Zaeef was promoted from one job to the next.
After the Taliban capture of Kabul in 1996, Zaeef was moved to the defense ministry where, he writes, the weekly budget for the various Taliban militias fighting the Northern Alliance was $300,000 a week, or just $14 million a year. By 1999 when the Taliban controlled 80 percent of the country, their entire annual budget was just $80 million—from the Islamic taxes the Taliban imposed as well as donations from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and, after 1996, Osama bin Laden (although Zaeef does not mention his contribution). He describes a chaotic and uncoordinated government:
The budget didn't even come close to what was needed in order to start any serious development; it was like a drop of water that falls on a hot stone, evaporating without leaving any trace.
Early in his book Zaeef describes his intense hatred for the ISI, which deepened in 2000 when he was appointed Taliban ambassador to Pakistan. He claims he resisted being recruited by the ISI. "In my dealings with them I tried to be not so sweet that I would be eaten whole, and not so bitter that I would be spat out." He describes how "the ISI extended its roots deep into Afghanistan like a cancer puts down roots in the human body," and how "every ruler of Afghanistan complained about it, but none could get rid of it." Zaeef set up his own clandestine network of Pakistani officials who provided him information about what the ISI was planning regarding the Taliban.
What Zaeef omits or fudges is significant. He makes no mention of the ISI's financial and material support to the Taliban, and says hardly anything about al-Qaeda or how his hero Mullah Omar became so close to Osama bin Laden. He has nothing to say about the Taliban's repressive attitudes toward women, including the ban on their education, and he makes no mention of the Taliban's harsh punishments, including public stonings.
By 2001, after UN sanctions restricted the Taliban's international contacts, Zaeef became the only Taliban leader who could meet with US and Western envoys. His relationship with the US embassy in Islamabad was dominated by American demands to hand over Osama bin Laden. In the days after September 11, he frantically tried to stave off the impending US attack on his country by appealing to Western embassies, writing letters to the UN, and trying to enlist support from Islamic countries. He met with Mullah Omar, who was convinced that the Americans would not dare attack. In Omar's mind, Zaeef writes, "there was less than a 10 percent chance that America would resort to anything beyond threats and so an attack was unlikely."
In January 2002 he was turned over to the Americans by the ISI—sold, according to him—and ended up in Guantánamo. He now lives in Kabul under government protection and his final plea is for peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan. He says he does not believe in al-Qaeda, but speaks as an Afghan patriot with strong Islamist leanings toward the Taliban. Afghanistan, he writes, is "a family home in which we all have the right to live...without discrimination and while keeping our values. No one has the right to take this away from us." Can Afghanistan ever be a peaceful home for all Afghans? They certainly deserve it.
Notes
*See Noah Shachtman, "'Afghan Insurgency Can Sustain Itself Indefinitely': Top U.S. Intel Officer," Wired.com, January 8, 2010. General Flynn's briefing, called " State of the Insurgency: Trends, Intentions and Objectives," was presented on December 23, 2009. Also see "NATO Official: US Spy Work Lacking in Afghanistan," Associated Press, January 5, 2010.
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