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Afghan parliament rejects Karzai's Cabinet list
By Rahim Faiez And Deb Riechmann, Associated Press Writers – Sat Jan 2, 3:49 pm ET
KABUL – A chastened President Hamid Karzai must submit new Cabinet picks after defiant lawmakers rejected 17 of his 24 nominees Saturday, including a powerful warlord and the country's only woman minister.
Afghan parliament ratifies nominees for key ministries
KABUL, Jan. 2 (Xinhua) -- Afghanistan's Wolesi Jirga, or Lower House of parliament, entrusted the acting ministers of defense, interior and finance nominated by President Hamid Karzai through asecret balloting held Saturday.
Afghan parliament rejects 17 of 24 cabinet nominees
By Hamid Shalizi – Sat Jan 2, 10:53 am ET
KABUL (Reuters) – The Afghan parliament on Saturday dealt President Hamid Karzai a painful political blow when they rejected 17 out of 24 of his cabinet nominees, including several close allies and former guerrilla commander Ismail Khan.
Afghanistan to hold parliamentary elections in May
By Dusan Stojanovic, Associated Press Writer – Sat Jan 2, 6:49 am ET
KABUL – The chief officer of Afghanistan's elections commission said Saturday a parliamentary vote will be held in May despite widespread international concern that the country's electoral system needs serious reform.
Karzai visits south Afghanistan, rockets land nearby
By Abdul Malek – Sat Jan 2, 11:51 am ET
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Afghan President Hamid Karzai visited the southerly Helmand province on Saturday, where he condemned recent foreign air strikes that have killed civilians, and two rockets apparently exploded nearby.
Bomb kills 5 civilians in southwest Afghanistan
Sat Jan 2, 7:20 am ET
HERAT, Afghanistan (AFP) – Five civilians were killed and six wounded when their pick-up truck detonated an improvised explosive device in southwestern Afghanistan, the governor of Nimroz province told AFP Saturday.
Afghan forces kill 2 militants, arrest 8
KABUL, Jan. 2 (Xinhua) -- Afghan forces eliminated two militants and detained eight others during a routine operation in the southern Zabul province, south of Afghanistan, a press release of the Defense Ministry said Saturday.
Nineteen Taliban militants arrested in W Afghanistan
KABUL, Jan. 2 (Xinhua) -- Afghan troops detained 19 militants during an operation against a Taliban hideout in Farah province west of Afghanistan on Saturday, a military officer in western region Atta Mohammad said.
French TV exec heads to Afghanistan after kidnapping
Sat Jan 2, 4:18 pm ET
PARIS (AFP) – A senior executive with France Television said Saturday he was flying to Kabul as efforts continued to free two of the station's journalists abducted in Afghanistan this week.
Official: 512 foreign troops killed in Afghanistan in 2009
KABUL, Jan. 2 (Xinhua) -- A total of 512 international troops was killed in Afghanistan in 2009, local media reported Saturday.
Killings Rock Afghan Strategy
Bomber of CIA Base Was Being Recruited as Informant; Retaliation for U.S. Push
The Wall Street Journal By SIOBHAN GORMAN and YOCHI J. DREAZEN JANUARY 2, 2010
WASHINGTON - The attack that killed seven Central Intelligence Agency officers on a U.S. base in Afghanistan appears to stem from a strategy of calculated risk in running the spy agency's informant network, posing a sharp challenge as operations ramp up for the Obama troop surge.
Great Game: How China Can Help Afghanistan
Khaleej Times Online C Raja Mohan 2 January 2010
As Beijing debates the policy implications of its rise to great power status, its media is actively promoting a discussion on how deep should China be drawn into the international efforts to stabilise Afghanistan.
Afghans Answering the Call to Fight
By CARLOTTA GALL The New York Times January 3, 2010
KUNDUZ, Afghanistan — Bakhtiar Ludin looks like a rogue, with a roughly tied checkered scarf for a turban, a Kalashnikov and a band of similarly tough, armed men for company.
French bakery offers hope to Afghan children
by Lynne O'donnell
KABUL (AFP) – On the wall of Le Pelican cafe in Kabul's dusty suburbs are photographs showing a baker's dozen of Afghan children beaming over a tray of pastries fresh out of the huge industrial oven behind them.
Can the West avoid Russia's fate in Afghanistan?
After the Soviets left defeated, a war hero from the SAS and one from the Red Army say the same mistakes are being made
Mark Franchetti From The Sunday Times January 3, 2010
The white flashes of explosions and red traces of artillery fire filled the moonlit sky on the night of October 7, 2001, as Britain and the US launched the war in Afghanistan against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
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Afghan parliament rejects Karzai's Cabinet list
By Rahim Faiez And Deb Riechmann, Associated Press Writers – Sat Jan 2, 3:49 pm ET
KABUL – A chastened President Hamid Karzai must submit new Cabinet picks after defiant lawmakers rejected 17 of his 24 nominees Saturday, including a powerful warlord and the country's only woman minister.
The Afghan parliament rejected nominees viewed as Karzai's political cronies, those believed to be under the influence of warlords and others deemed unqualified.
"I think, unfortunately, that the criteria were either ethnicity or bribery or money," lawmaker Fawzia Kufi said of Karzai's picks.
The vote was a setback to Karzai, though one political analyst in Kabul speculated that it could free up the president to appoint qualified professionals rather than settle political debts.
"There were lots of demands on Karzai from people asking for Cabinet positions because they campaigned for him," Mohammad Qasim Akhgar said. "This was the only way he could reward them and if parliament didn't approve them, it wasn't his fault. Very soon, Karzai will come out with a new list with the names of people he really wants to have in his Cabinet."
The new Cabinet is a bellwether for the U.S. and other nations hoping a stronger government will keep disenchanted Afghans from siding with the Taliban after Karzai won a second five-year term last year in a disputed election rife with ballot-box stuffing.
The lawmakers approved a handful of incumbent ministers favored by the West and instrumental to the war effort.
Karzai has defended his choices, which he announced late last month after several delays. He said his proposed Cabinet represented a balance of the nation's ethnic factions.
But parliamentarians weren't happy. They complained the list looked too much like the existing Cabinet and spelled another five years of business as usual for the Karzai government, which has been criticized as being corrupt and ineffective.
Of the 12 incumbent ministers Karzai sought to retain, the parliament approved only five: Defense Minister Gen. Abdul Rahim Wardak; Interior Minister Hanif Atmar; Finance Minister Omar Zakhilwal; Agriculture Minister Muhammad Asif Rahimi; and Education Minister Ghulam Farooq Wardak.
Karzai had wanted to keep Water and Power Minister Ismail Khan, a warlord in Herat province during the civil war of the 1990s who retains considerable local power. Critics said keeping Khan proved Karzai remained beholden to regional power brokers at the expense of the country's national interests. Khan's nomination was narrowly defeated.
Had he been seated, Khan would not have been the only warlord in Karzai's government. The two vice presidents — Mohammad Qasim Fahim and Karim Khalili — are both former warlords widely believed to have looted Afghanistan for years. Karzai likely put them on his ticket to win votes from their minority ethnic communities.
The parliament's rejection of the only woman on Karzai's current team — Minister of Women's Affairs Husn Bano Ghazanfar — was an awkward blow to the president, who has pledged to place more women in high government posts in the traditionally male-dominated society.
Recently, Karzai said he would appoint women to sub-Cabinet level positions and hinted he had a woman in mind as head of the new Ministry of Literacy, one of two new ministries he has asked the parliament to create.
Despite their demand for fresh blood in the Cabinet, the lawmakers approved only two of 12 new names Karzai submitted.
"I'm sure that Karzai used a trick here by introducing some unknown people — completely new faces — that nobody knew anything about," said Akhgar, the analyst.
Karzai did not propose a nominee for foreign minister. He has asked incumbent Rangin Dadfar Spanta to stay in the post until after the Jan. 28 international conference in London, which will focus on security and other issues as 37,000 more U.S. and NATO troops arrive in the country.
The Karzai administration had no immediate comment on the voting, which took more than 10 hours. Each of the 232 members of parliament present for the vote marked paper ballots for each Cabinet nominee. After the votes were cast, two secretariats of parliament took turns reading the more than 5,500 votes of confidence or no confidence.
Wahid Majzhda, an independent political analyst in Kabul, said he was happy to see that the lawmakers did not rubber-stamp Karzai's selections.
"I appreciated the work of the parliament today because they didn't just think about their region," he said. "They didn't just think about their language. They were voting for the nation today."
He too suggested that Karzai might have expected the rebuke.
"Maybe Karzai has already selected other people for these ministries, knowing these would not be approved," he said.
Karzai has said he will make new nominations for any unfilled posts, but it is unclear when he will submit new nominees or when a parliamentary vote will be held.
Also Saturday, the Afghan election commission chief said parliamentary elections would be held as scheduled on May 22 despite widespread international concern that the country's electoral system needs reform.
Ali Najafi told a news conference that Afghanistan needs about $50 million from the international community to meet the election's estimated budget of $120 million. It was not clear whether the vote would or could be held if donor countries do not provide the money.
In the wake of last August's disputed presidential election, many critics have pushed Karzai and his government to delay the parliamentary vote. Karzai has insisted the constitution, which specifies the elections be held by May, must be observed.
A visiting U.S. congressional delegation said it warned Karzai last week that holding the election without substantive electoral reform could undermine support for U.S. aid to the country.
___
Associated Press Writer Dusan Stojanovic in Kabul contributed to this report.
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Afghan parliament ratifies nominees for key ministries
KABUL, Jan. 2 (Xinhua) -- Afghanistan's Wolesi Jirga, or Lower House of parliament, entrusted the acting ministers of defense, interior and finance nominated by President Hamid Karzai through asecret balloting held Saturday.
Abdul Rahim Wardak, acting minister of defense, had secured 124 votes from 232 legislators present in the session and therefore remained in the cabinet, speaker of the 249-seat House Mohammad Yunus Qanooni announced.
Qanooni also said that Mohammad Hanif Atmar, the nominee for Interior Ministry, and Hazrat Omar Zakhilwal, the minister-designate for finance, retained their portfolios by securing 147 votes and 141 votes in favor respectively.
However, the House rejected the nomination of ex-warlord and serving acting minister for Water and Power Mohammad Ismael Khan for the post.
Khan, once a powerful warlord in west Afghanistan and had built his fame in fighting ex-Soviet Union's army and resisting Taliban onslaught in late last century, had secured 111 votes from the parliament while he needed 117 votes to retain the post in the new cabinet.
This is the first time that Afghan parliament has rejected a former warlord who supported President Hamid Karzai during the August 20 fraud-tainted presidential election that enabled Karzai to remain in office for the second five-year term.
President Karzai on Dec. 19, 2009 introduced 24 ministerial nominees for approval, with many of them as incumbent or former ministers.
However, the post of foreign minister remained unfilled in the cabinet nominees list.
In Saturday's voting, which began in the morning and lasted for nine hours, seven nominees received votes of confidence, including acting Minister of Education Farooq Wardak and acting Minister of Agriculture and Livestock Mohammad Asif Rahimi, who will continue their offices in the new cabinet.
The only woman nominee in the new cabinet is Husan Bano Ghazanfar, designated for the Ministry of Women Affairs.
However, she narrowly failed as she secured 115 votes, two votes short of the needed 117 ones, speaker of the house Qanooni said.
The parliament also rejected over a dozen nominees, including minister-designate for justice Sarwar Danish, minister-designate for public health Syed Mohammad Amin Fatimi, minister-designate for economy Anwarul Haq Ahadi.
The president, according to the law, would introduce new nominees for the parliament as soon as possible.
In the new cabinet, there will be 25 ministers and the nominee for foreign minister, according to some lawmakers, would be introduced to the Lower House after the London Conference on Afghanistan to be held within weeks.
The Afghan parliament will begin 45-day winter vacation from Jan. 5.
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Afghan parliament rejects 17 of 24 cabinet nominees
By Hamid Shalizi – Sat Jan 2, 10:53 am ET
KABUL (Reuters) – The Afghan parliament on Saturday dealt President Hamid Karzai a painful political blow when they rejected 17 out of 24 of his cabinet nominees, including several close allies and former guerrilla commander Ismail Khan.
The justice, commerce, energy, economy, public health and communications portfolios are among those still open after parliamentarians made full use of a rare opportunity for a public slap in the face for Karzai.
"Karzai was unsuccessful before the presidential election and he is unsuccessful after the election. His choice and his decision is not correct for parliament and it is not correct for the country," said Ahmad Shah Ahmadzai, a former prime minister.
"The president should now resign, he must resign."
Cabinet approvals are one of the few areas where parliament has genuine power to hold the government's executive to account.
At a time when security and corruption problems are worsening dramatically, representatives appear to have been relishing that influence, quizzing ministers for over a week on past policy and future plans.
The secret ballot system raised speculation about ministers buying votes but also may have encouraged votes against powerful figures such as Khan.
Parliament stayed open for about six extra hours to finish the laborious processing of votes. Many ministers had considered the confirmation proceedings little more than a formality, but they turned into tense political drama.
"Yes" and "No" ballots for each minister were counted out in front of parliament and the session ran late into the evening. One nominee was rejected by a margin of just two votes.
TRUSTED HANDS OR NEW IDEAS?
Karzai's nominations kept many key ministers in posts they have held since before the presidential election in the autumn. Many of his Western backers were satisfied to see technocrats stay in position, but critics said the president was recycling old names at a time when the country needs new ideas.
The highest-profile scalp claimed by parliament was Khan, a renowned anti-Soviet guerrilla leader and anti-Taliban commander who was also energy minister in the last cabinet.
He is unpopular with some because of his role in an era when Afghanistan was split by civil war.
Khan received two more votes in his favor than against, but blank and spoiled votes tipped the balance against him in a system that requires candidates to get over half of votes cast, said the speaker of the house, Mohammad Younus Qanuni.
Close Karzai allies also rejected included public health nominee Sayed Mohammad Amin Fatimi and communications candidate Amirzai Sangeen. The only female candidate, women's affair's nominee Husn Bano Ghazanfar was also rejected.
Some Western diplomats said the retention of top ministers reflected the difficulty Karzai faces in recruiting people who are qualified to take on big portfolios.
(Writing by Emma Graham-Harrison; Editing by Louise Ireland)
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Afghanistan to hold parliamentary elections in May
By Dusan Stojanovic, Associated Press Writer – Sat Jan 2, 6:49 am ET
KABUL – The chief officer of Afghanistan's elections commission said Saturday a parliamentary vote will be held in May despite widespread international concern that the country's electoral system needs serious reform.
Ali Najafi told a news conference the national vote will be held May 22.
However, he said Afghanistan needs about $50 million from the international community to meet the election's estimated budget of $120 million. It was not clear whether the vote would or could be held if donor countries don't provide the money.
In the wake of last August's heavily disputed presidential election, many critics have pushed President Hamid Karzai and his government to delay the parliamentary vote. Karzai has insisted the constitution, which specifies the elections be held by May, must be observed.
Najafi said security in the insurgency-ridden country would be a concern for the elections and said the vote would not be held in areas where it could not be ensured. He suggested voters from those areas could travel elsewhere to cast votes. In the presidential election, that arrangement was made for voters in 10 districts.
A U.S. Congressional delegation that met with Karzai in Kabul last week said it had warned the president that holding the election without first enacting substantive electoral reform could undermine support for U.S. aid to the country.
"We did not receive any official reaction from the international community that says that they are not supporting the election," Najafi said. "But in this regard, a paper was made by the United Nations which made certain recommendations and requested certain reforms."
He said reforming the electoral law was one of the issues raised by the international community, however, "it is not in our control, it is up to the parliament to approve the electoral law."
Karzai on Saturday visited the southern province of Helmand to express condolences to relatives of civilians allegedly killed in an airstrike.
Helmand provincial governor spokesman Dawud Ahmadi, who confirmed the president's visit to the town of Lashkar Gah, said an attack by international forces Wednesday killed seven civilians and two Taliban insurgents.
Civilian casualties is a sensitive issue facing foreign forces in Afghanistan. NATO says it's investigating the allegation.
The incident in Helmand was the second claim of civilian deaths in allied attacks in a week. The Afghan government said last week 10 people were killed, including eight schoolchildren, in a village in eastern Kunar province in a nighttime raid by international forces.
Meanwhile Saturday, the Afghan parliament began voting on Karzai's list of nominees for his new Cabinet. The list, announced last month, keeps U.S. favorites in several posts critical to the war and reconstruction. But some lawmakers criticized it as signaling more of the same from a government that has been criticized as ineffective and corrupt.
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Karzai visits south Afghanistan, rockets land nearby
By Abdul Malek – Sat Jan 2, 11:51 am ET
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Afghan President Hamid Karzai visited the southerly Helmand province on Saturday, where he condemned recent foreign air strikes that have killed civilians, and two rockets apparently exploded nearby.
The two blast were heard near a meeting hall as Karzai addressed around 500 people, encouraging them to persuade their children to enlist with the Afghan army and attacking the deaths of civilians in recent air attacks.
It was not clear if the rockets were fired at Karzai.
"We strongly request foreign forces in Afghanistan to stop irregular house searches and operations that are not coordinated (with Afghan forces), especially air strikes," Karzai said.
"We will pursue the issue of civilian casualties very seriously," he added.
A villager from Bulan, several hundred meters away from where Karzai was talking, told Reuters that two rockets had landed there during the speech, but no one was hurt or killed.
Karzai has survived at least three assassination attempts, the most recent in April 2008 while attending a military parade close to the presidential palace in Kabul.
The latest foreign air strike to come under scrutiny was a mid-week attack in Helmand province, near Lashkar Gah, that killed eight civilians, although Karzai apparently did not plan to visit the site.
Helmand Governor Gulab Mangal said the attack, in a province that is a stronghold of the Taliban insurgency, killed eight civilians, including four children.
A convoy of foreign troops was passing through Babaji district when they came under insurgent attack and called for air support, Mangal added.
NATO forces declined immediate comment on the incident, the latest in a series of such attacks that have inflamed tensions within Afghanistan, and between Karzai and his Western backers.
Last weekend a disputed night raid killed a group that Karzai and the United Nations said included at least eight school-age students, but NATO-led forces described as an insurgent group.
The deaths, in restive eastern Kunar region, sparked protests by hundreds of people in at least three cities.
(Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi in Kabul; writing by Emma Graham-Harrison)
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Bomb kills 5 civilians in southwest Afghanistan
Sat Jan 2, 7:20 am ET
HERAT, Afghanistan (AFP) – Five civilians were killed and six wounded when their pick-up truck detonated an improvised explosive device in southwestern Afghanistan, the governor of Nimroz province told AFP Saturday.
The attack was carried out by the Taliban in the district of Bakwan, Farah province, said governor Ghulan Dastagir Azad, whose province borders Farah.
The area where the attack took place is on the border between Farah and Nimroz, he said. Both provinces are under Taliban influence.
He said the blast occurred as the victims tried to travel to a market "regularly targeted by Taliban racketeering".
Civilians have become the main victims of the Afghan war. In the first 10 months of 2009, 2,038 civilians were killed in the conflict, 10 percent more than over the same period in the previous year, according to the United Nations mission in Afghanistan.
Nearly 70 percent of those killed died in attacks carried out by the insurgents, according to the UN.
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Afghan forces kill 2 militants, arrest 8
KABUL, Jan. 2 (Xinhua) -- Afghan forces eliminated two militants and detained eight others during a routine operation in the southern Zabul province, south of Afghanistan, a press release of the Defense Ministry said Saturday.
The operation took place in Mizan district on Thursday during which two anti-government militants were killed and eight others made captive, according to the press release.
A number of arms and ammunitions including six Kalashnikovs were seized by the troops during the operation, the press release said.
There were no casualties on the troops, it stressed.
Taliban militants, who have intensified their attacks against government interests, have not made comment.
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Nineteen Taliban militants arrested in W Afghanistan
KABUL, Jan. 2 (Xinhua) -- Afghan troops detained 19 militants during an operation against a Taliban hideout in Farah province west of Afghanistan on Saturday, a military officer in western region Atta Mohammad said.
"A unit of Afghan soldiers backed by NATO-led troops raided a hideout of Taliban rebels in Balablok district early morning today and arrested 19 rebels including two commanders," Mohammad told Xinhua.
Mohammad, who works for the press department of the 207th Afghan Corps in west Afghanistan, also stressed that there were no casualties on the troops.
Meantime, Taliban militants have yet to make comment.
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French TV exec heads to Afghanistan after kidnapping
Sat Jan 2, 4:18 pm ET
PARIS (AFP) – A senior executive with France Television said Saturday he was flying to Kabul as efforts continued to free two of the station's journalists abducted in Afghanistan this week.
"I am going to Kabul to take stock of the situation," said director of news Paul Nahon. "I am going to meet with different Afghan authorities."
Nahon said the broadcaster had received no further news about its journalists following information on Friday that they were being treated well and were in good health.
There has been no claim of responsibility for the kidnapping but a colleague of the two journalists, who were snatched with three Afghan assistants on Wednesday, has blamed the Taliban militia.
The group was abducted while going to meet a contact 60 kilometres (40 miles) from the Afghan capital, according to the French colleague.
Criminal groups and Taliban insurgents have kidnapped several dozen foreigners, many of them journalists, since the 2001 US-led invasion ousted the Taliban regime in Kabul, sparking the current insurgency.
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Official: 512 foreign troops killed in Afghanistan in 2009
KABUL, Jan. 2 (Xinhua) -- A total of 512 international troops was killed in Afghanistan in 2009, local media reported Saturday.
Among those killed, 448 were in military operations and 64 in other incidents, the English newspaper Outlook Afghanistan quoted Jeff Loftin, press officer of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), as saying.
The press officer told the newspaper that 280 foreign soldiers were killed by improvised explosive device (IED) strikes, which is branded the most lethal kind of attack launched by the Taliban.
Loftin failed to disclose as which country suffered how many military causalities.
The around 83,000-strong ISAF troops were from 44 countries.
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Killings Rock Afghan Strategy
Bomber of CIA Base Was Being Recruited as Informant; Retaliation for U.S. Push
The Wall Street Journal By SIOBHAN GORMAN and YOCHI J. DREAZEN JANUARY 2, 2010
WASHINGTON - The attack that killed seven Central Intelligence Agency officers on a U.S. base in Afghanistan appears to stem from a strategy of calculated risk in running the spy agency's informant network, posing a sharp challenge as operations ramp up for the Obama troop surge.
U.S. intelligence and military officials said Friday that Wednesday's attacker had been recruited as a possible informant and brought onto Forward Operating Base Chapman, passing through at least one checkpoint. He detonated his charge shortly before being searched, blowing himself up, killing seven and wounding six.
It was a "high-level asset meeting gone bad," said one former intelligence official familiar with the incident.
In providing additional details of the Wednesday suicide bombing, the agency's worst loss of life since 1983, former and current U.S. intelligence officials painted a clearer picture of how the agency has battled Taliban and allied militants.
In particular, Chapman appears to have taken a less strict line on security than at other U.S. military bases. Only modest searches are performed there, some U.S. officials say, in the hopes of establishing trust with those who may furnish information. Through its efforts in the region, the CIA has been able to create a large network of informants about the activities of al Qaeda and other militants.
"The CIA team there was very professional, and they knew there was a risk to their security protocols," the official said. "But they felt the need to gather viable, time-sensitive intelligence was so pressing that it justified the trade-off."
Some former officers have been critical of the practice. One said allowing informants onto a CIA base was poor spy tradecraft and that officers should meet informants off-base. "In a war zone, they don't follow standard tradecraft," the former official said. "If you don't follow tradecraft rules, this is what happens."
The CIA is reviewing its security practices on bases. "What happened is being looked at very, very closely," said Marie Harf, a CIA spokeswoman.
It appears unlikely the CIA will substantially change its use of informants. One intelligence official, in fact, said it is stepping up efforts in this area.
U.S. officials are still investigating how the informant, said to be wearing an Afghan National Army uniform, was able to get close enough to so many CIA officers without a more thorough screening. They are also investigating the attack's source. A Pakistan Taliban commander claimed responsibility Friday in an interview with the Associated Press.
One military official said the U.S. had "indications" the bombing was retaliation for a U.S. push against the Haqqani network, an extremist group that has become the Taliban's most important battlefield partner in the war against the U.S. In recent weeks, American forces have killed more than two dozen midlevel Haqqani commanders in Khost, according to a senior military official.
The Haqqani network is the primary target of the CIA team stationed at the Chapman base, located in the violent southeastern province of Khost, close to the Pakistani border. A senior U.S. military official said CIA personnel believed the attacker possessed detailed information about the Haqqani network.
A U.S. intelligence official, asked about the different security standards for potential informants, said: "Intelligence assets are basically asked to risk their freedom -- and often their lives -- to collect information on behalf of the United States," the official said. "It's a fact of espionage that you frequently have to deal with people you need but don't or can't trust."
Such risks will be amplified as the CIA ramps up its operations in Afghanistan to accompany the military surge President Barack Obama has ordered. The CIA expects to increase its own forces by 20% to 25% in the next 18 months, said one U.S. intelligence official.
The death toll is the largest suffered by the spy agency in three decades and has wiped out decades of experience in counterterrorism, current and former officials say. One former CIA official said the base chief, a mother of three, had counterterrorism experience dating to the agency's Alec Station, created to monitor Osama bin Laden years before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The meeting also included a high-level CIA officer who had traveled to the remote base from Kabul. It is unclear whether that person was among those killed.
Chapman houses the CIA detachment and a State Department-run provincial reconstruction team, so it has only a minimal military presence. It was established in the months after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as the U.S. launched its CIA-led offensive against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. The CIA's presence is an open secret locally, say former intelligence officials.
Intelligence and military officials familiar with the base's operations said CIA personnel at Chapman used the facility to recruit and pay informants, as well as to funnel information about high-value targets and other intelligence to Special Operations forces. They also provide targeting information, as do many of CIA's operations in the region, to the operators controlling the unmanned aerial drones flying over Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The U.S. has escalated its shadow war against the Haqqani group in recent weeks. The senior military official said the CIA team at Chapman had been working with contingents of elite American Special Operations troops to develop more detailed intelligence and to kill or capture specific Haqqani commanders.
The network is now commanded by Sirajuddin Haqqani. "Sirajuddin isn't the kind of guy who absorbs blows without punching back," the official said.
The Haqqani network was founded by Sirajuddin Haqqani's father, Jalaluddin, a leader of the Islamist uprising against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s. More recently, the militants introduced the use of suicide bombings to Afghanistan. The network operates out of havens on both sides of the porous Afghanistan-Pakistan border and is believed to maintain close ties to al Qaeda.
Local Afghans are a vital link in the CIA's battle against such groups, as they can collect information on militants' activities.
"It's how the agency functions," said Henry A. Crumpton, who led the CIA campaign in Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002. "That's how they're able to operate with such a very small footprint, and how they can do things that no other U.S. government agency can. Of course, with those benefits comes some unique risk."
Al Qaeda has sought to exploit that vulnerability for years. In its publications dating back to 2003, al Qaeda noted the U.S.'s work with the Afghan National Army. "Al Qaeda said, 'That's a great idea, because we can send people into [the Afghan Army] to get trained and get weapons and establish espionage,'" said Michael Scheuer, a former senior CIA analyst who established the CIA's bin Laden unit.
Mr. Crumpton cautioned against drawing conclusions now about possible security lapses. Whether it's wise to invite an informant on base, he said, "depends on the environment entirely."
CIA officials have said the agency will retaliate forcefully against the perpetrators of the attack. One U.S. intelligence official said that the attack shows the clear risk that CIA officers undertake in their work, adding "one byproduct of this tragedy is it will silence the critics who claim the agency is risk-averse."
A young CIA officer who has recently served in both Iraq and Afghanistan expressed a different concern -- that the attack would lead the CIA to put stricter limits on its field operatives in places like Chapman as part of a push to further reduce risk. "We're already handcuffed in the field," this person said. "This will almost certainly make things stricter."
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Great Game: How China Can Help Afghanistan
Khaleej Times Online C Raja Mohan 2 January 2010
As Beijing debates the policy implications of its rise to great power status, its media is actively promoting a discussion on how deep should China be drawn into the international efforts to stabilise Afghanistan.
Three broad views have begun to emerge. All of them highlight the importance of China undertaking the responsibilities that come with being a great power. They all agree that Afghanistan is a vital region on the Chinese frontiers and that bringing peace and stability to the war torn nation in Beijing's vital interest.
The first view argues that Beijing should stop seeing Afghanistan as an exclusive problem of the United States and recognise it as a long-term challenge to China's own security. It goes on to say that “China possesses almost unlimited resources and capability to help stabilise the situation in Afghanistan and by providing substantive support, China can help the reconstruction of Afghanistan for the benefit of the Afghan people as well as its neighbours.”
A second view is more cautions and points to the many negative consequences of a military involvement in Afghanistan. These include the prospect of Chinese homeland and its personnel and assets abroad becoming a target of Islamist radicalism and terrorism, as Beijing gets sucked into the Afghan quagmire.
It also underlines the possibility of the ‘China threat' theory gaining ground in the region and the world, and points to likely large scale casualties among the Chinese troops deployed in Afghanistan. It therefore argues that China should stick to “purely diplomatic and humanitarian” contributions to Afghan stability.
A third view underlines a middle path. It suggests sending Chinese police and paramilitary forces into Afghanistan rather than the army.
Such an approach would increase Chinese role in Afghanistan as well as signal Beijing's commitment to regional security.
Its emphasis on sending police and paramilitary is circumscribed by a number of caveats. “China should not send police to aid the war in Afghanistan, or to help to search Osama bin Laden in the remote mountains. Instead, they should be sent to help the Afghan government to safeguard the construction projects aided or invested by the Chinese government.” The analysis adds that “the Chinese government should first of all get the permission from their Afghan counterparts”.
Delhi will find it interesting that the Chinese debate is now pointing to the benefits of Sino-Pak strategic coordination in Afghanistan. One view suggests that “any joint action between China and Pakistan relating to Afghanistan will be a natural outgrowth of their many decades of strategic partnership. It will be welcomed by many people in both China and Pakistan and will be more acceptable to the Afghan people.”
Another view underlines that “China, which shares a common border with both Afghanistan and Pakistan and enjoys close and strategic relations with Pakistan, is one of the few countries, if not the only one, which can substantively help to make a major difference in the Afghan status quo.”
Partnership with Pakistan, of course, is only one element that has already positioned Beijing as a powerful future player in Afghanistan. If and when the United States starts reducing its footprint in Afghanistan, the Sino-Pak partnership would become a powerful force in eastern and southern Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, China is stepping up its contact with all the other sub-regional forces in western and northern Afghanistan, besides cultivating strong bonds with the Hamid Karzai government in Kabul. Even before it draws down its military forces, Washington is already pressing Beijing to take more responsibilities in Afghanistan. Whatever move that China makes towards Afghanistan in the next year will be hailed by all as a big favour to regional security and stability. As the world welcomes a larger Chinese role in Afghanistan, Delhi might be tempted to sulk. Isn't it smarter for India to initiate a dialogue with China on Afghanistan instead of simply objecting to it?
Digging the past China's archaeologists say they have found a nearly 1,800-year-old tomb belonging to the legendary ruler Cao Cao, who is known for his tyranny as well as military acumen. The archaeological discoveries in China during the recent years have been at once dramatic and unending. If the Indian political classes can't stop fighting over the past, the Chinese communists are investing massively in discovering and salvaging it.
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Afghans Answering the Call to Fight
By CARLOTTA GALL The New York Times January 3, 2010
KUNDUZ, Afghanistan — Bakhtiar Ludin looks like a rogue, with a roughly tied checkered scarf for a turban, a Kalashnikov and a band of similarly tough, armed men for company.
But much of the hopes of Afghan and American officials to turn around the eight-year war here rests with him and those like him.
Mr. Ludin and his band are part of a push to raise local militias to help stop the Taliban from spreading to new areas, like here in the north, where the insurgents advanced quickly in the past 18 months.
Not long ago even police cars could not drive down the eastern approaches to the city of Kunduz, for fear of rocket attacks from Taliban insurgents. No more.
“Bakhtiar is really good,” said Noor Muhammad, the police captain who commands a small post on the edge of town. “He secured the area.”
Supported by American Special Forces troops, and led by Afghan intelligence officials, the effort has been building for six months and is now gaining traction in some rural areas where Afghan and NATO forces are too thinly spread to stop the Taliban’s encroachment.
As security deteriorated here in Kunduz Province, the governor and intelligence chief enlisted the help of former resistance fighters like Mr. Ludin, called mujahedeen, who had fought against Soviet invaders and the Taliban in the past.
Opponents of the plan warn that resurrecting the mujahedeen would give power back to the warlords after long efforts to disarm them.
Although the Americans have said they will not provide weapons to the militias, the Afghans gave them guns. They also provide critical backup when needed, including transportation, communications and medical treatment, Afghan security officials said.
The militias, working alongside Afghan and NATO forces, recently helped clear several areas of insurgents. The gains may not be permanent, but they have dealt a setback to the Taliban, the officials said.
For three years President Hamid Karzai called for former mujahedeen forces to be revived but failed to find Western support for the idea, until now.
Half measures, like raising auxiliary police forces, proved largely ineffective, and the security situation has become so critical that the idea has gained support.
“We, the government, must destroy the Taliban in Kunduz this winter because next spring they will be stronger,” said Gen. Muhammad Daoud, a deputy interior minister who commanded mujahedeen forces in Kunduz when they helped overthrow the Taliban government alongside coalition forces in 2001.
“We should use former mujahedeen, formally and logically, as they have the sense of how to fight the Taliban,” he said.
During the resistance period the mujahedeen had forces in every village, General Daoud said. Still loyal to their parties and their local leaders, they represent an extensive network of potential fighters, informants and helpers throughout the country, he said.
As the Taliban began moving into these northern districts in the spring of 2008 and began a campaign of assassinations and intimidation, community representatives came asking for help.
“They came to us and said, ‘The Taliban are killing our leaders. If you want we will stand with you, but if not, we will have to join the Taliban,’ ” said Muhammad Omar, the governor of Kunduz.
The plan finally came together when the government asked mujahedeen and tribal forces to help secure rural areas for the August presidential election. Afghan intelligence officials started contacting former resistance fighters and urging them to rebuild their old networks.
One of those they contacted was a tough, stocky Turkmen commander, Nabi Rahman, 49, who was running a fish restaurant in Hairatan, on the border with Uzbekistan, since his mujahedeen force was disbanded in 2002.
The Taliban had started killing people in his district, Qala Izal, in 2008, including several of his relatives who were in the police force, Mr. Rahman said.
Some of his former fighters were forced to flee their homes. Then, this summer, the Taliban started demanding usher, an Islamic tax, from the farmers, which upset everyone, Mr. Rahman said. “Some of the community leaders asked me to come back,” he said.
He said he agreed only when the government backed the plan, and he was careful to announce his support for the police and the army from the start, he said. “If the police become strong, there will be no need for us,” he said.
While it has been easy to mobilize Turkmen and Uzbek tribes, who are under threat from the Taliban, it has been harder to encourage local Pashtun communities to resist the Taliban, who are largely Pashtun.
Yet a number of Pashtun commanders in the Khanabad district, east of the city of Kunduz, became uneasy about the presence of foreign fighters with the Taliban and several beheadings they had carried out.
“We did not care about tribe, we talked together and decided to stand together,” said Mahmad Omar, one Pashtun commander from Khanabad. “Then we came to the government and said we want to stand.”
They began gathering support in the villages, and within three months 77 villages in the Khanabad area had joined the plan. Every third village has an appointed commander, said Sayed Rahman, one of the leading former resistance commanders.
But the plan has not been without risk. Mr. Rahman was killed by a bomb near his home the day after he was interviewed in mid-November, and the commander, Mr. Omar, narrowly escaped an assassination attempt.
The population has also mixed feelings about the return of the mujahedeen, who gained a reputation for committing atrocities during the civil war in the 1990s.
“The people were afraid of the commanders, but now they have a choice — they have to choose between the Taliban and the commanders,” said one villager, who asked that his name not be used for fear of reprisals from the Taliban who have occupied his village.
A Western official in northern Afghanistan, who asked not to be identified because of the political nature of the topic, said, “These commanders have much to gain; they feel re-engaged.”
But, the official warned, “they have a level of independence that is disturbing and undermines the rule of law.”
Still, the experience of the local fighters and their familiarity with their own areas can be effective.
When groups of Taliban fighters started using Mr. Ludin’s village, called Ludin, as a base from which to ambush the police, wealthy shopkeepers asked him to help and cleared it with the government.
Mr. Ludin, 40, and his men quickly figured out who was behind the attacks.
“We killed the Taliban commander the first night we patrolled,” he said with a grin.
The commander was Mullah Rashid, from the village next door, who had been away studying in a madrasa in Pakistan for the past eight years, Mr. Ludin said.
Even the embattled police chief of Kunduz, Muhammad Razzaq Yakubi, a former communist with a distaste for the mujahedeen, acknowledges that for now, he needs them.
“For the short term they are good, but not for the long term,” he said.
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French bakery offers hope to Afghan children
by Lynne O'donnell
KABUL (AFP) – On the wall of Le Pelican cafe in Kabul's dusty suburbs are photographs showing a baker's dozen of Afghan children beaming over a tray of pastries fresh out of the huge industrial oven behind them.
Nearby shelves are stacked with their wares -- croissants, pains au chocolat, baguettes, apple and peach tarts and turnovers, sugar cookies, a variety of breads -- which teenagers Habib and Zahir carefully put in paper bags for enthusiastic customers.
In a city that has little trace of the sophistication of its past, Le Pelican Boulanger is more than just a welcome oasis for an expatriate community living and working as if under seige.
The cafe is an outlet for what its French owners, Jacques and Ariane Hiriart, have built from scratch to educate children from Afghanistan's ethnic Hazara community, who have long suffered discrimination and exclusion.
At the Hiriart's vocational centre in Kabul's southeastern suburbs, almost 200 Hazaras -- not all of them children -- learn to read and write before they take on the task of turning out fine French pastries and breads.
The aim is to give them skills they can use to find jobs in the hospitality industry, said Jacques, though he concedes the day Afghanistan welcomes tourists from across the world is probably a long way off.
Many of the children at Le Pelican child care centre "just knock on the door," said Ariane, or she hears about them by word of mouth and invites them to come and learn.
While most are children, Hazara women also come to learn to read and write, she said, adding the youngest at the centre is six and the oldest 32 years old.
On the vocational side, however, it is still early days for the Hazara boys learning to make bread and hoping the skills will help them find future work.
"Everyone is still very young, and there are not so many hotels here so it is difficult for them to find good work," Jacques told AFP, sitting over a hot chocolate in a sunny alcove of Le Pelican as one of three cats dozed on the next chair.
Jacques, 61, and Ariane have a long association with Afghanistan, having first worked in Kabul for a Swiss non-governmental organisation in 2000, while the brutal and extremist Taliban was still in control.
Under the Sunni Taliban regime the discrimination long suffered by the Shia Hazara -- believed to be descendants of the Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan and his sons who swept across Central Asia in the 13th century -- had become even worse. The few NGOs in the country were not permitted to work with them.
After the 9/11 Al-Qaeda attacks on the United States, the couple were on the last evacuation flight to leave Kabul two days later.
Within a month, the Taliban had been pushed from power in a US-led invasion, and not long afterwards the Hiriarts returned to Kabul "to do what we really wanted to do -- to take care of what we considered the most vulnerable people, Hazara children," Ariane said.
Years earlier, after the death of their only child at age 10, the couple had decided to change their lives, she said.
In 1986, Jacques ended his 12-year career as an oil rig engineer to retrain as a baker, learning l'art de la patisserie with a vague plan of moving abroad and starting a new life.
After running a successful boulangerie in eastern France for 10 years, they were inspired by French writer Joseph Kessel's book "On the Horsemen's Steps," about the traditional Central Asian mounted game of buzkashi.
"This was our inspiration, as it was for many French people, to come to Afghanistan," said Jacques. "So we joined an NGO but it was not satisfying -- what was missing was contact with the population.
"I'm not really interested in doing the sort of work that means you sit behind your computer and never see what is happening outside, that is very sad. Most important for us is the contact with the local people."
As their plans took shape, they found help in odd corners -- for instance, the bread oven at their centre was brought into Afghanistan by the French military, fighting with the US and NATO to quell a Taliban insurgency.
"We had our first customer on September 12, 2006, the day of my birthday," he said, searching for the bill on his laptop. "We sold croissants, pains au chocolat and hamburger buns."
Annual operating costs are 120,000 dollars, said Jacques, adding that the cafe and sales of the bakery products had made 12,000 dollars since April 2009.
They rely on private donations and keep a low profile, not wishing to draw attention in a country ranked by the international watchdog Transparency International as the world's second most corrupt, after Somalia.
Unlike many foreigners with businesses in Afghanistan, the Hiriarts refuse to pay bribes to stay open, believing they are setting an example to their trainees.
For now, however, they believe they have reached a plateau and that to take their concept further they need help -- preferably from another couple who will be able to run the cafe and bakery while they develop the centre.
"We are searching, but it is not easy. Not many people like us want to come to Afghanistan," said Jacques.
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Can the West avoid Russia's fate in Afghanistan?
After the Soviets left defeated, a war hero from the SAS and one from the Red Army say the same mistakes are being made
Mark Franchetti From The Sunday Times January 3, 2010
The white flashes of explosions and red traces of artillery fire filled the moonlit sky on the night of October 7, 2001, as Britain and the US launched the war in Afghanistan against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
From the roof of a mud-caked house in Tobdara, a mountainside village high above the Shomali valley, 30 miles north of the Afghan capital, Kabul, I watched as allied war planes and cruise missiles streaked beyond a high ridge separating us from the front line.
Loud explosions echoed into the night as I was joined by a group of hardened Northern Alliance fighters, the loose coalition of former mujaheddin rebels who had sided with the West. Armed with AK-47 machine guns and careful not to use even a torch to avoid attracting incoming fire from an enemy position above, the men had come to witness the twilight of the Taliban.
“It won’t take long,” predicted one, wrapped in an Afghan blanket and wearing a pakol, the woollen round-topped hat favoured by the mujaheddin. “The Taliban are finished. A few days of heavy bombardment and then we’ll go in with a ground assault. They’ll either flee or die.”
His confidence was engaging. But in the dusty plains below there were many reminders of another superpower’s bloody attempt to wage war in Afghanistan. Soviet tanks and armoured personnel carriers, burnt out and twisted, still littered the country, more than two decades after Moscow had withdrawn its troops, ending its disastrous nine-year war.
In the shadow of the Taliban front line, a few miles below Tobdara, the Bagram air base was overgrown and abandoned. The spot from where the Soviets launched their invasion in 1979, it is now the US army’s largest base in the country.
The mujaheddin’s predictions did not take long to come true. Five weeks later Kabul fell. Al-Qaeda and the Taliban were on the run, dispersed in the high mountains along the border with Pakistan. His optimism, however, proved premature. More than eight years since the war began in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Taliban have made a comeback.
Over 240 British soldiers have been killed in the war (more than in Iraq), many in ferocious close combat that has been compared to the trench warfare of the first world war. By the end of this year, American and British forces will have been in Afghanistan as long as the Soviets. And yet Russia’s experience in the country has been largely overlooked by the allies. It was, say American and British generals, a different war fought in different times by a different army.
Many military experts would now beg to differ. There are compelling parallels between the obstacles faced first by the Soviets and now the allies. Often, the mistakes are the same. What lessons are there to be learnt from the Soviet war in Afghanistan? Just as the allies failed in 2001 to study the fateful Soviet invasion, the Russians before them dismissed Queen Victoria’s foray into a country some have dubbed “the graveyard of empires”. So when in early 1980 the Soviet deputy foreign minister pointed out to his boss, Andrei Gromyko, that three previous invasions by the British had failed, Gromyko asked sternly: “Are you comparing our internationalist forces to those of the British imperialists?”
“No, sir, of course not,” answered his deputy. “But the mountains are the same.”
One senior British military man to sense he could learn from the Soviet war is Brigadier Ed Butler. The former commander of 22 SAS and 16 Air Assault Brigade in Helmand, Butler, 47, was the original mastermind of Britain’s strategy to fight the Taliban in the southern Afghan province. A soldier for 24 years, mostly with the SAS, he served in Afghanistan in 2001, 2002 and 2006.
Butler was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for displaying exceptional bravery on daring top-secret operations behind Taliban lines. Tipped as a future head of Britain’s armed forces, he shocked many by resigning in 2008. He now heads an international company trying to attract investment into impoverished regions. “I wanted more time with my children,” he told me. “But I was also finding it hard to publicly state that we had enough resources at the same time as talking to parents about the loss of a son, when more resources may have made a difference.”
Butler began early on to read detailed accounts of the Soviet invasion. “I found it useful and fascinating, as their tactical experience turned out to be very similar to ours,” he said.
Then, as he planned the 2006 British operation in Helmand province, Butler invited a Soviet colonel who had commanded a helicopter regiment in Afghanistan over to his headquarters in Colchester. “He gave us a very good first-hand account of the ground and enemy which reinforced our assessment that in such a harsh environment it would be as tough to survive as it would be to fight,” recalled Butler. “He also told us that to reduce the number of helicopter crashes, each pilot’s one-litre weekly vodka ration should be cut down by a third. It was a wonderfully Russian way of looking at things.”
To gain a better sense of the parallels between the Soviet and allied campaigns, and consider what lessons can be drawn from the past, The Sunday Times Magazine flew Butler to Moscow to exchange views and compare notes with Lieutenant-General Ruslan Aushev. Awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union, the former communist state’s highest military award, for his service in Afghanistan, Aushev, 55, spent four years and eight months in the country. He was seriously wounded, rose to regiment commander and is one of the war’s most respected veterans.
During a long and animated exchange on a chilly Moscow morning, a few hundreds yards from Red Square, the two war heroes talked frankly about their time in Afghanistan.
Aushev, strong-willed and moustached, castigated the West for still being there and for what he sees as a doomed attempt to impose our institutions and way of life on a country deeply steeped in feudalism — but he also spoke candidly about the many Soviet mistakes.
Sharp and thoughtful, Butler, who retains the stiff and trimmed demeanour of a senior military man, challenged some of Aushev's advice on how best to extricate the allies, and defended some decisions taken by Britain and the US.
Most striking, however, was how little the two disagreed, given the passing of three decades since the Soviet invasion and the fact that they were brought up believing rival ideologies. “Most tactics used by the Taliban against us are very similar to those the mujaheddin used against the Soviets,” said Butler. “Many of the mistakes are the same, as are the difficulties faced. Listening to the general’s advice was fascinating and frankly I found myself mostly agreeing with him.”
Contrary to the cold war picture painted by our propaganda, the Kremlin’s decision to send troops into Afghanistan in December 1979 was not conceived as an imperialist land-grab. Moscow went in to prop up the Afghan communist government, which had come to power in a coup the previous year. It did not plan to stay long. The politburo had resisted numerous calls by the Afghan government for troops to help quash armed rebellion to its socialist reforms — which had angered tribal and religious leaders. Moscow finally went in mainly because it feared that the Afghan communist president, Hafizullah Amin, was cosying up to America. Elite KGB special forces were flown into Bagram to help stage a coup. In a textbook raid, they took the presidential palace, killed Amin and installed the pro-Soviet Babrak Karmal as leader.
The regime change was supported by “a limited troop contingent”. Its task, so Soviet documents have since shown, was to stabilise the situation in the county and withdraw after about six months, leaving behind only political advisers and intelligence agents. “We thought it would be over quickly,” Aushev recalled. “We believed that when such a powerful army as ours goes in, things would calm down. The opposite happened. The civil war only intensified.
“We took sides. It’s the same mistake now being committed by the coalition. You’re supporting one element of Afghan society against the other. To them, you’re outsiders just as we were. History and past experience show the Afghan people don’t like it when outsiders come in, whatever their purpose.
“The longer the war, the more resistance will last. You need to understand that the Taliban are not terrorists. They may use terrorist tactics, but they are a part of the Afghan people. You must acknowledge that your forces are now fighting with a section of the population, just as ours did.”
The coalition’s view, Butler pointed out, is that most Afghans are opposed to the Taliban and want rid of them. Only partly true, said Aushev. If the Taliban are so unpopular, who is feeding and harbouring them if not the locals? But there is an element of terror, Butler countered. “Why then aren’t they taking up arms against the Taliban to defend their own villages?” said Aushev.
Most Soviet Afghan war veterans now view the 1979 invasion as ill-judged. The conflict killed around 15,000 Soviet soldiers and some 1.3m Afghans. A third of the country’s pre-war population went into exile. Many also believe it accelerated the collapse of the Soviet Union, two years after Mikhail Gorbachev, the father of glasnost and perestroika, pulled out troops in February 1989.
At the height of the conflict, there were nearly 120,000 Soviet troops deployed in Afghanistan. The surge recently announced by Barack Obama will take today’s allied troops to more than that amount — over 130,000. Aushev said the Soviets lost 300 helicopters in the war — compared to the coalition’s 56. So far about 800 US soldiers have died along with the British total.
The mujaheddin could never defeat the Russians in military terms. “No Soviet garrison or major outpost was ever overrun,” said Lieutenant-General Boris Gromov, the last commander of the 40th Soviet Army in Afghanistan and its last soldier to leave the country.
But the Russians could never keep long-term control of areas they seized — a problem the coalition has become painfully familiar with. In a 1986 memo that could mostly have been written today, the Soviet army’s chief of staff stated gloomily: “After seven years in Afghanistan there is not one square kilometre left untouched by the boot of a Soviet soldier. But as soon as they leave the place, the enemy returns and restores it all the way it used to be. We have lost this war.”
Then as today, Afghanistan’s lack of a railway meant that supplies and ammunitions had to be transported mainly by land — across treacherous mountain passes and harsh deserts — making military supply columns exceptionally vulnerable to hit-and-run attacks.
“The terrain, especially in the mountains, is so impenetrable that you could lose sight of an entire battalion,” said Aushev, who spent months fighting there and recalls having to drink water from puddles to stay alive. “All the mujaheddin had to do is hit the first and last vehicle and the whole column would get bogged down.”
In October 1986, while protecting an artillery regiment on the move along the narrow mountain road to the Salang pass in the north of the country, Aushev was badly wounded in an ambush. Hit by fire from an AK-47, he returned to the war several weeks later.
The elusive nature of the enemy in Afghanistan has also changed little. Acting in small, highly mobile groups, the mujaheddin — as the Taliban today — were hard to spot, let alone distinguish from civilians. The Russians referred to the mujaheddin as dukhi, or ghosts.
“I’d be passing with my regiment,” Aushev says. “There’d be a man by the roadside with a shovel in his hand. He’d smile and wave, and I’d wave back, but I knew he’d just planted a mine.”
“It’s very similar,” said Butler. “We used to say that the Afghan farmer standing in his field could just as easily have an AK-47 hidden in the ditch. Moreover, he’s smiling at you.”
The zelonka, as the Russians called the narrow labyrinth of greenery and mud houses typical of Afghan villages, is as perilous a war theatre as the country’s steep mountain passes. There, say Aushev and Butler, a network of underground tunnels were used by the mujaheddin, and now by the Taliban, to vanish after an attack.
Close proximity and ample cover for the enemy make rocket-propelled grenade attacks exceptionally difficult to escape.
“The tactics have not changed,” said Butler. “The mujaheddin used mines against the Soviets, often with devastating effect, while the Taliban are now using improvised explosive devices and roadside bombs against us.”
While the Soviet army was mostly made up of conscripts, coalition forces are all professional. They are better trained, have far superior technology than the Russians in the 1980s, and crucially, are better fed and equipped. Some Soviet soldiers became so desperate they traded weapons and ammunition with the enemy in exchange for food and clothing.
Disease, especially infectious hepatitis, took a devastating toll on Russian troops. It is estimated that more than 400,000 soldiers fell sick during the conflict.
But state-of-the-art technology and kit aside, combat in Afghanistan has not become easier.
“Imagine fighting day in and day out for 20 hours a day,” said Butler, “in 50-degree heat, carrying 70lb of equipment, drinking hot water, with the knowledge that there is a good chance of being either killed or wounded every time you leave the base. That was a typical paratrooper’s day in Helmand in 2006. Just getting from A to B is logistically very tough.”
Unlike the coalition, which planned the war from scratch in a record 26 days, the Soviets had intimate knowledge of Afghanistan prior to their invasion as Moscow had KGB agents and political advisers on the ground assisting the country’s communists. “That’s a big advantage,” Butler told Aushev. “We went in cold and had very little information about what we’d face. For instance, we had hardly any understanding of the country’s very complex tribal tapestry.”
Nor were totalitarian Soviet leaders ever constrained by domestic public opinion or the body-bag count — arguably the most pressing worry for the coalition. True casualty figures were not released until after the collapse of communism. Relatives of those killed in the war were forbidden from engraving Afghanistan on the tombstone of the fallen. There were no anti-war demonstrations, and for much of the conflict most Soviets received only rosy propaganda reports from the front. Nonetheless, the Soviets had one particular disadvantage: unlike the current campaign their conflict was fought against the backdrop of the cold war. America, first secretly and then overtly, funnelled billions of dollars in ammunition and weapons to the mujaheddin in a proxy war against its rival superpower. The CIA helped train insurgents, and Britain, Pakistan, most Arab Gulf states and even China contributed to arming the rebels.
In what most Soviet veterans, including Aushev, consider a turning point, by 1986 the CIA began supplying the mujaheddin with hand-held Stinger surface-to-air missiles — which in part explains the high number of Soviet helicopters downed. Less trumpeted is the conviction that the covert operation inadvertently helped create Al-Qaeda, whose early leaders, including Osama Bin Laden, were mujaheddin armed by the West.
“We had much of the world against us,” said Aushev. “Today most countries are on your side. And the mujaheddin had very good weapons, the best mines and better medical equipment than us. Imagine if the Taliban had Stingers.”
The solution, however, Butler and Aushev agreed, is not military. The decorated British war veteran was noncommittal when I asked him about proposals to send in extra troops — the so-called surge which for a while at least helped reduce violence in Iraq.
First, in Butler’s view, the government must clearly state its objectives. “What do victory and defeat look like for us in Afghanistan?” as he put it. “What exactly are we trying to do there and how much can we afford to spend? Only then can one make a poised decision on the surge.”
Aushev by contrast had no doubts. Any troop increase is destined to fail. “What difference will another 40,000 men make? None. You’d need a million to control it but you’d still have terrorist attacks,” he says. “Militarily we could do pretty much what we wanted. We had no problem landing 2,000 troops somewhere, just like that. But that is not the way out.”
Nation-building alone is not enough either. The Soviets implemented a programme far more extensive than the coalition has so far. They built roads, factories, hospitals and schools and trained the Afghan elites, often by sending them to Moscow. “We got into nation-building long before we went in,” said Aushev. “Most Afghans loved us. That changed when we sent in the military because inevitably civilians get killed.”
The Soviets and the coalition made one fundamental mistake, according to the general. Both went in with a clear and limited objective but allowed themselves to get bogged down in pursuit of unattainable goals.
The Russians sent in troops to stage a coup and stabilise the situation, but then sought to Sovietise Afghan society. The coalition went in to remove Bin Laden and the Taliban, but is now trying to “democratise” the country. “In 2001 you told the world you were going in to remove a terrorist threat, not impose democracy, but now you are trying to stage western-style elections in a country where most people can’t read,” says Aushev. “You dispersed the Taliban and had some local support. That’s when you should have gone home leaving the Afghans in charge. We made the same mistake, seeking to impose our Soviet way of life, telling them they should have collective farms, pioneer camps and so on.”
The historical parallels go further. With Karmal, the Soviets backed a weak, unpopular president who rarely ventured outside Kabul for fear of assassination. A hostage in his own country, he was guarded round the clock by KGB special forces. The same, argued Aushev, is true of Hamid Karzai, the western-backed Afghan president who, shadowed by US special forces, is back in power for another five years following the country’s recent hotly-contested elections.
In 1987, the Kremlin replaced Karmal with Mohammad Najibullah who oversaw the Soviet withdrawal and ruled for over four years with substantial financial aid from Moscow. That quickly changed when Boris Yeltsin cut off all funds and cheap gas supplies. In 1996 the Taliban finally caught up with Najibullah, dubbed the “Ox of Kabul”. He was tortured, castrated and hung from a traffic-light post.
Gordon Brown hopes a UN-sponsored conference in London later this month will set a timetable for a transition to Afghan security forces of their own country, paving the way for troops to come home.
When Butler asked him what advice he would give the coalition, Aushev, who in August was invited to share his views on Afghanistan with the Pentagon, was resolute. Western-style elections should be scrapped. The country should be ruled by a jorga, or council, made up of respected tribal elders and ethnic leaders.
Karzai and his government should take responsibility for the country. The president should be given a strict ultimatum. He should state his aspirations for Afghanistan and plan for achieving them. The West should assist him, but remove him unless he has made progress within a certain time frame. Replacing his US bodyguards with Afghans would stir Karzai into action, added the Soviet general mischievously.
“The Afghans must tackle their own problems,” Aushev told Butler. “They have governors, ministers, a president. Let them talk to their own people. Why are you going in? Give government envoys trucks of medicines, potatoes and flour when they travel outside Kabul, but let them talk to each other.”
But that is exactly what Butler did in Musa Qala in 2006 when he personally sat down with local tribal leaders who wanted to take charge of their own security, reaching a compromise to put an end to the fighting. Butler recalled they said: “‘Give us money and we will rebuild but don’t come into our villages. We’ll keep control of the Taliban.’ It worked for only a few months until the Taliban came back in and started the fighting again.”
The answer, Aushev insists, would have been to put in a self- defence unit made up of locals. “Give them weapons but let the people of Musa Qala defend their Musa Qala.” Crucially, he went on, the coalition must help build up a strong and independent Afghan army, police and intelligence agency capable of tackling the country’s security problems. By the time the Russians left Najibullah in charge they had trained an Afghan army three times the current size. But that did not save him once the Kremlin cut supplies.
In the general’s eyes no viable political solution can fail to include the Taliban, even if they insist on imposing sharia law in regions where their influence is at its strongest. “What’s wrong with that? It’s the same law used in Saudi Arabia but you are not seeking to impose democratic elections there,” said Aushev.
When it comes to possibly the single most pressing factor in shaping Afghanistan’s future, Butler and Aushev could not have found more common ground. Combined, the two war heroes may have served over five decades in the army, but in their eyes the solution to the country’s complex problems is not military — despite the urgency of strengthening the Afghan armed forces.
It must focus on an ambitious long-term programme to help develop Afghanistan’s economy to improve the lives of millions of Afghans. How? Through aid but also direct investment, to build factories and businesses that generate revenues for local communities rather than the authorities. It is a concept Butler has embraced with enthusiasm since retiring and heading CforC (Corporates for Crisis), which provides political, business and cultural advice to investors interested in emerging and frontier markets. “It’s difficult because of the cycle of violence, but I’m a huge believer in the importance of attracting investment into post-conflict zones. We are facilitating business recovery, through foreign direct investment, in Africa and it could work in Afghanistan. Regrettably, development budgets there are only a fraction of what is spent on the military.”
“Turn to a tribal leader,” hypothesised Aushev. “Tell him you want to build a local leather factory which will bring jobs. Of course he’ll provide security. Get the locals involved on all fronts. Build milk, meat factories. Surely that’s not so difficult for a coalition of 40 countries. What’s cheaper, to keep a 100,000 strong army there or build 100 new factories? Today the Afghan leadership is hiding behind your shoulders and worrying only about private matters, just like they did with us.”
As the two veterans exchanged military souvenirs and posed side by side, they agreed that failure to develop Afghanistan and improve the life of the ordinary Afghan could lead to the chilling threat of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism spreading far beyond the region’s borders. To some it may seem an unlikely scenario. But then again, as I watched the firepower lighting the sky in Tobdara eight years ago, few ever imagined America and Britain would still be fighting here.
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