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UN lifts sanctions on 5 former Taliban officials
By Kim Gamel, Associated Press Writer
KABUL – Five former Taliban officials have been removed from the U.N. sanctions list ahead of Thursday's key international conference in London that is expected to focus on a government plan to persuade militants to switch sides.
Russia won't block removal of former Taliban members from U.N. terrorism list
By Colum Lynch Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, January 27, 2010; A10
UNITED NATIONS -- A U.N. Security Council committee announced Tuesday that it has lifted sanctions against five former Taliban officials, bolstering Afghan and U.N. efforts to pursue peace talks with the group
Afghan lawmakers skeptical about reintegrating Taliban to end war
By The Canadian Press
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Afghan leaders and more than 60 foreign ministers are expected to lay out a plan to end the war in Afghanistan when they meet Thursday in London.
Holbrooke says US to back Taliban reintegration
By Gregory Katz, Associated Press Writer
LONDON – The United States government will support a plan to reintegrate Taliban fighters set to be announced by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, special representative Richard Holbrooke said Wednesday.
IMF, World Bank announce debt relief for Afghanistan
by Veronica Smith – Tue Jan 26, 10:50 pm ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The IMF and the World Bank announced that they will back an international debt relief program of 1.6 billion dollars for Afghanistan, following completion of key reforms.
Geopolitics: A Swiss Afghanistan and Russian NATO
January 27, 2010, 7:56 am New York Times
Once John Chipman, the director general of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, had baptized the session on Rethinking Security in the 21st Century an open brainstorm
London Conference to Focus on Afghan Security
Aunohita Mojumdar Contributor AOL News
KABUL (Jan. 26) – There is plenty of substance on the agenda of Thursday's one-day conference on Afghanistan in London. The assembled U.N. and NATO officials, as well as foreign ministers including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Shadow Taliban government rules Afghans' lives
by Karim Talbi – Wed Jan 27, 12:42 am ET
KABUL (AFP) – When the body of a petty thief was found riddled with bullets near the Afghan town of Muqur, the victim of rough justice by the Taliban's shadow government, the locals were happy, Fazal Haq said.
Fighting for a Draw in Afghanistan
By Tony Karon Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2010 time.com
America went to war in 2001 to rid Afghanistan not only of al-Qaeda but also of an extremist Taliban regime that viciously abused its own people. But as the international community prepares to gather in London
Taliban for sale?
We still don't understand the enemy
New York Post - Wed Jan 27, 1:25 am ET
A highlight of this week's "what do we do about Afghanistan?" conference in London will be the announcement of a $500-million program to bribe low-level Taliban fighters to quit.
Can the US exploit divide between Taliban and Al Qaeda?
New details have emerged about the tense relationship between Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, and Mullah Omar, the head of the Taliban, in the days before 9/11. In Afghanistan, the US aims to exploit that divide.
By Caryle Murphy Correspondent The Christian Science Monitor - Tue Jan 26, 11:03 pm ET
In a bid to weaken the two forces that led US troops to invade Afghanistan eight years ago and expand their presence today, Washington and its Afghan allies have been seeking to exploit the fissures between the Taliban and Al Qaeda
NATO finalizes Afghan transit deal with Kazakhstan
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO said on Wednesday it had finalized an agreement with Kazakhstan on the transit of supplies to Afghanistan, hoping it will reduce its reliance on a route through Pakistan that has been attacked by the Taliban.
NATO struggling to fulfill commitments for more troops in Afghanistan
By Craig Whitlock Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, January 27, 2010; A10
NATO is struggling to make good on commitments to deploy extra forces to Afghanistan, one month after the Obama administration said it was counting on the alliance to send as many as 10,000 more troops to serve alongside U.S. soldiers.
Afghan warlord re-emerges despite West's demands
By Robert H. Reid, Associated Press Writer – Tue Jan 26, 2:58 pm ET
KABUL – He is among Afghanistan's most notorious warlords, accused of widespread abuses including the massacre of thousands of Taliban prisoners. Now he's back, reinstated by President Hamid Karzai in a top army post despite Western demands for sweeping reform.
Q+A-What does Pakistan want in Afghanistan?
27 Jan 2010 09:29:51 GMT By Robert Birsel
Jan 27 (Reuters) - An international conference on Afghanistan in London on Thursday is aimed at setting a framework for handing security over to Afghan forces and seeking a common approach among Afghanistan's neighbours on helping stabilise the country.
Merkel says wrong to set date to quit Afghanistan
BERLIN, Jan 27 (Reuters) - It would be a mistake to set a concrete date for the withdrawal of German troops from Afghanistan because that would encourage the Taliban, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday.
Russia says ready to rebuild Afghanistan with Western funds
January 27, 2010 People's Daily
Russia is ready to help reconstruct Afghanistan provided that the West offers the money, Russian business daily Kommersant reported on Wednesday, citing the country's NATO envoy.
In London speech, will Karzai bite the hand that feeds him?
McClatchy Newspapers By Roy Gutman 01/26/2010
KABUL, Afghanistan - When 60 or more nations convene in London Thursday to discuss Afghanistan's future, the script calls for agreement on plans to split the Taliban insurgency, a process to reach an eventual political settlement, improvements in governance and the battle against corruption.
We invaded Afghanistan - can't we pay to rebuild it?
Foriegn aid needs to better support Britain's national interests, writes Neil O'Brien.
Telegraph.co.uk By Neil O'Brien 27 Jan 2010
There is an informal law in international relations known as the "Pottery Barn Rule". It is based on the uncompromising policy adopted by one American china shop: "If you break it, you pay for it."
Afghan Planning Faces Grim Realities
Foreign Ministers to Discuss Foreign Role in Afghanistan, but With a Weak Government in Kabul, Hopes Are Muted
Wall Street Journal By ALISTAIR MACDONALD And VANESSA FUHRMANS JANUARY 26, 2010
Foreign ministers will meet in London on Thursday hoping to provide Afghanistan with political support to go with the military surge and convinc e war-weary publics that governments are laying the groundwork for eventual withdrawal.
Australian sentenced to death in Afghanistan
By Rohan Sullivan, Associated Press Writer
SYDNEY – An Australian security contractor has been sentenced to death in Afghanistan for fatally shooting an Afghan colleague and trying to blame the slaying on the Taliban, Australian and Afghan officials said Wednesday.
Afghan judge says Australian deserves death penalty
Wed Jan 27, 4:37 am ET
KABUL (AFP) – A judge who upheld a death sentence handed to an Australian for killing an Afghan security guard defended his ruling Wednesday, saying he was convinced the man was a "murderer" and deserved to die.
Taliban kill militia leader in NW Pak: officials
KHAR, Pakistan (AFP) – Taliban fighters have killed a pro-government militia leader in northwest Pakistan's Bajaur district, where helicopters have been shelling insurgent hideouts, officials said Wednesday.
Armed men shot dead 3 civilians in E Afghanistan
January 27, 2010 People's Daily
Unknown armed men shot and killed three civilians in Khost province east of Afghanistan Wednesday, a local official said.
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UN lifts sanctions on 5 former Taliban officials
By Kim Gamel, Associated Press Writer
KABUL – Five former Taliban officials have been removed from the U.N. sanctions list ahead of Thursday's key international conference in London that is expected to focus on a government plan to persuade militants to switch sides.
President Hamid Karzai has been pressing for the removal of certain Taliban figures from the list, which imposes punitive measures such as a travel ban and an assets freeze, as part of reconciliation efforts.
The United Nations said Tuesday that the sanctions committee approved the removal of Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, a former foreign minister and confidant of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar and four others.
The U.N. did not mention the reconciliation plan but said the decision was made Monday after a review of the list. Sanctions had been imposed on the five men in 2001.
Karzai has said Taliban who are not part of al-Qaida or other terrorist groups "are welcome to come back to their country, lay down arms and resume life."
He plans to seek international support for a new government reintegration plan at the London conference.
The other four removed from the list were the Taliban's deputy commerce minister, Faizl Mohammed Faizan; Abdul Hakim Monib, the deputy minister of frontier affairs who later renounced the Taliban and became a provincial governor; Mohammad Musa Hottak, the deputy planning minister who was later elected to parliament; and a former press officer, Shams-ul Safa Aminzai.
The effort to remove some Taliban figures from the list is one of the incentives being discussed as part of the plan, along with jobs and vocational training. Officials hope the multimillion-dollar initiative will succeed where past programs have failed. Skeptics, though, wonder whether significant numbers of militants will stop fighting when they believe they're winning.
Wahid Muzhda, a Kabul-based security analyst, said the removal of the men from the list was not likely to persuade other Taliban militants to leave the fight. He said all five were relatively low-level or already had turned on the militant group.
"These people are not fighters now and they weren't powerful commanders then," he said. "This won't have any effect on peace or stability. It won't give confidence to the Taliban."
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Russia won't block removal of former Taliban members from U.N. terrorism list
By Colum Lynch Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, January 27, 2010; A10
UNITED NATIONS -- A U.N. Security Council committee announced Tuesday that it has lifted sanctions against five former Taliban officials, bolstering Afghan and U.N. efforts to pursue peace talks with the group, Security Council diplomats said. The decision came after Russia agreed to stop blocking a U.S.-backed proposal to delist the men.
The action marks a dramatic shift by Russia, which for years had opposed requests by the U.S. and European governments to delist former Taliban members who say they back the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. No Taliban member had been delisted since the Security Council first imposed sanctions on the group more than 10 years ago.
Recently, Afghanistan and its U.N. special envoy, Kai Eide, had appealed to the 15-nation council to lift sanctions on a handful of former Taliban officials whom Afghanistan's U.N. ambassador, Zahir Tanin, described as "willing to renounce violence and join the peace process."
The delisting process is part of a broader review of anti-Taliban sanctions by the Security Council, which has been criticized for failing to remove dead combatants and add new terrorism suspects to the U.N. blacklist, according to Richard Barrett, the chairman of a U.N. panel that oversees the implementation of sanctions against the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
Russia's move helps ensure that the list is "up to date and reflects the reality of the threat," Barrett said, adding that delisting shows that "a change of behavior can lead to a removal from sanctions and an opportunity to play a full part in the future of Afghanistan."
The Security Council approved sanctions on the Taliban in October 1999 after the group refused to surrender Osama bin Laden to face trial in New York for masterminding the August 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa. More than 100 Taliban leaders were placed on a sanctions list in January 2001.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the United States ushered through resolutions that expanded the list to cover people suspected of being al-Qaeda members. The sanctions include a travel ban, an arms embargo, and a prohibition on the direct or indirect provision of funding to nearly 500 terrorism suspects.
Over the years, several members of the former Taliban government switched sides to join forces with Karzai's government. But Russia repeatedly rebuffed initiatives by the United States and other governments to reward them by easing sanctions.
Now, after Russia's shift, those measures have been lifted against Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, who was a minister of foreign affairs in the Taliban government, and Abdul Hakim Monib, another former Taliban official who has since served as Karzai's governor in Uruzgan province. Sanctions against Fazl Mohammad Faizan, Shams-us-Safa Aminzai and Mohammad Musa Hotak have also been dropped.
The Russian decision reflects the new thinking that political reconciliation with some elements of the Taliban leadership "is both feasible and a good idea," said J. Alexander Thier, the director for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the U.S. Institute of Peace. "Taking some Taliban names off the sanctions list is like a prisoner exchange, a small step and sign of good faith on the part of U.N. Security Council members."
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Afghan lawmakers skeptical about reintegrating Taliban to end war
By The Canadian Press
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Afghan leaders and more than 60 foreign ministers are expected to lay out a plan to end the war in Afghanistan when they meet Thursday in London.
But Afghan lawmakers are skeptical about a proposal to buy off low-and mid-level Taliban fighters by creating an international fund worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
The fund is part of a reintegration plan, expected to be announced in London, that would also offer jobs and vocational training to militants who lay down their arms and join Afghanistan's mainstream.
Members of Afghanistan's Parliament say the plan is based on the faulty premise that the insurgents are willing to work with other Afghans for the good of their country.
Mohammed Ibrahim Qasemi, an Afghan MP from Kabul, says the Taliban won't be satisfied unless they control all of Afghanistan.
He says the insurgents have a fundamentally different view of how the country should be run and won't accept anything else.
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Holbrooke says US to back Taliban reintegration
By Gregory Katz, Associated Press Writer
LONDON – The United States government will support a plan to reintegrate Taliban fighters set to be announced by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, special representative Richard Holbrooke said Wednesday.
The veteran U.S. negotiator said Karzai will outline an ambitious plan Thursday to convince low-level and midlevel Taliban fighters who don't back al-Qaida to give up their fight against U.S. and NATO forces.
The plan will be a centerpiece of a one-day London conference designed to boost the flagging war effort in Afghanistan, where U.S. and NATO forces have been taking increasing casualties from resurgent Taliban forces. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in London Wednesday for the talks.
Holbrooke said U.S. officials believe the majority of Taliban forces do not back al-Qaida or embrace extremist goals.
"The overwhelming majority of these people are not ideological supporters of Mullah Omar (the fugitive Taliban leader) and al-Qaida," Holbrooke said. "Based on interviews with prisoners, returnees, experts, there must be at least 70 percent of these people who are not fighting for anything to do with those causes."
He said he was encouraged by recent polls in Afghanistan indicating that a majority now blames the Taliban, not Western forces, for the country's violence.
Holbrooke declined to say how much the reintegration plan would cost.
"We don't know enough about the plan," he said.
He said there are "red lines" that could not be crossed during negotiations with Taliban figures, and that those who back al-Qaida, or support the group's harsh treatment of women, would not be accommodated.
He said there has been no discussion of an amnesty for Taliban fighters, saying the immediate goal is to convince them to stop fighting.
"My philosophy is that you're trying to prevent future deaths," he said. "We're trying to offer an opportunity to get shooters off the field so they don't kill more people. My heart goes out to the families that have lost loved ones, but this is not a disservice to them."
Holbrooke, who played a central role in negotiating the Dayton peace agreement that helped bring the Bosnian war to a halt, said the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan is far more complicated than the one he faced in the Balkans.
He said the goals for the London conference go beyond the reconciliation plan and will include discussions of a province-by-province handover of security control from U.S. and NATO forces to Afghan forces. But he conceded no timetable will be announced.
Instead, conditions will have to be met before the security transition can begin, he said.
The U.S. also plans to endorse stronger anti-corruption measures in an effort to clean up government practices, he said.
Holbrooke endorsed Karzai despite widespread vote-rigging in the last election and leaked diplomatic cables showing that the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan had grave doubts about Karzai's fitness to lead.
"The election last year was very messy, as President Obama has said publicly," Holbrooke said. "But he is without doubt the legitimate, elected president, despite the voting irregularities, which were very unfortunate, so the international community will work him."
The Afghan government received strong support Wednesday as Britain's Treasury chief Alistair Darling announced that Afghanistan's creditors have agreed to debt relief worth US$1.6 billion ahead of the London conference.
He said on the decision will help Karzai's government to rebuild the country's fragile economy.
Afghanistan's Finance Minister Omar Zakhilwal said in London the country had now received debt relief worth a total of US$11 billion.
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IMF, World Bank announce debt relief for Afghanistan
by Veronica Smith – Tue Jan 26, 10:50 pm ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The IMF and the World Bank announced that they will back an international debt relief program of 1.6 billion dollars for Afghanistan, following completion of key reforms.
The announcement came ahead of Thursday's major international conference on Afghanistan in London aimed at determining the conditions needed for achieving the international community's goals in the war-ravaged country.
The IMF and World Bank boards of directors agreed that Afghanistan has taken the necessary steps to reach the "completion point" under the enhanced Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative, said a joint statement by the sibling Washington-based bodies.
Afghanistan qualified to become the 27th country to benefit from the international program that rescues poor countries from being buried under interest payments on mountains of debt.
Under the agreement, Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world, will have a total debt service savings of 1.6 billion dollars, the institutions said. Related article: 5 Taliban officials removed from UN list
That total includes 1.3 billion dollars from the HIPC Initiative, 260 million dollars from Paris Club creditors beyond HIPC, and 38.4 million dollars from the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI).
All multilateral and Paris Club creditors, as well as some other official creditors, have agreed to participate, the statement said.
"To reach the completion point, Afghanistan carried out a number of important reforms despite an extremely challenging environment characterized by insecurity, a food crisis, and a difficult political situation," the institutions said.
The reforms included actions to begin implementing a national development strategy, maintain a stable macroeconomic environment, and enhance debt management.
The Afghan authorities also made progress in public financial management, mining sector reforms, and transparency and accountability in health and education services, the statement said.
"Based on strong commitments going forward, the government of Afghanistan was granted waivers for two completion point triggers on pension reform for public employees and the military, and the restructuring of four key service delivery ministries, both of which had been substantially implemented," the institutions said.
The IMF and the World Bank underscored that reforms under the HIPC Initiative are expected to mobilize additional resources and support the country?s reconstruction and poverty reduction, helping to place it on a sustainable path.
"The Afghan government has demonstrated a very strong commitment to an ambitious reform program since it reached its HIPC decision point in 2007," said Nicholas Krafft, World Bank country director for Afghanistan.
"This is a very commendable achievement given the deteriorating security situation and political uncertainty over the recent election year."
Officials stressed that even after HIPC debt relief Afghanistan "would remain a country under high risks of debt distress due its reliance on donor funding."
Enrique Gelbard, the IMF mission chief for Afghanistan, said that in addition to improvements in security, the key challenges Afghanistan faces will be to increase domestic revenues, invest in infrastructure, and forge ahead with its national development plan to reduce poverty.
"This will require significant efforts by the authorities as well as substantial and sustained support from donors and multilateral institutions," Gelbard said.
Foreign ministers including US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will attend the 60-nation conference on Afghanistan aimed at boosting the domestic security forces there and tackling corruption.
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Geopolitics: A Swiss Afghanistan and Russian NATO
January 27, 2010, 7:56 am New York Times
Once John Chipman, the director general of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, had baptized the session on Rethinking Security in the 21st Century an open brainstorm — “where people are allowed to say provocative things” — the floodgates were open. For one and a half hours in the Davos bubble, well-worn diplomatic slogans were replaced with, well, provocative ideas.
Lilia Shevtsova, a senior analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center, said that if the West wanted to make it harder for Russia to feed anti-western propaganda to its people, it would only have to offer it membership in NATO. In fact, she said, “they should have invited Russia into NATO in the early 1990s,” suggesting that current tensions with Ukraine and Georgia might have been avoided altogether.
The solution to the mess in Afghanistan, according to Abdullah Abdullah, the country’s former foreign minister and ex-presidential candidate, was not sending more troops, but binning the constitution and turning Afghanistan into a highly decentralized, federal country — a bit like Switzerland.
“Can you imagine an official sitting in Bern thinking about every detail of national policy?” he asked. The current Kabul-centric approach was doomed to failure in a tribal culture like his own, Mr. Abdullah said: “A highly centralized system doesn’t work.”
Mr. Chipman himself floated the question of diplomatic “shock therapy” in the Palestinian-Israeli standoff. Should European countries unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state to jolt the peace process back into action? And should the Arab League battle a perceived clash of civilizations by making Israel, with its substantial Arab population, a member?
Amre Moussa, the Arab League’s secretary general was in the room. But even in an open brainstorm he looked a little unsettled by this idea. “We’ll talk later,” he said, “when the Palestinian issue is solved.”
Certainly food for thought. Unfortunately few members of the international business and political elite will get to chew over it: About 80 percent of the room was empty as attendees headed for simultaneous panels focused on the economic and financial questions of the day.
Tellingly, according to a poll CNBC conducted among its viewers and released in Davos on Wednesday, only 9% of respondents believed the geopolitical concerns were a priority for governments today.
– Katrin Bennhold
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London Conference to Focus on Afghan Security
Aunohita Mojumdar Contributor AOL News
KABUL (Jan. 26) – There is plenty of substance on the agenda of Thursday's one-day conference on Afghanistan in London. The assembled U.N. and NATO officials, as well as foreign ministers including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, are expected to endorse a recent agreement on a substantive increase of Afghan National Security Forces and set timelines for beginning to hand over security responsibility to them. They may well hash out a concrete proposal for political reconciliation with the Taliban. But looming over the proceedings will be memories of previous international conferences on Afghanistan – including one in London in 2006 and another in Paris in 2008 – that have seen little or no follow-through.
Thursday's London conference is meant to dispel differences within the international community on the approach toward Afghanistan, which came to a head during the election period. The United Nations, with the support of the European Union, had already proposed a conference in Kabul following the new government's election. But France, Germany and the United Kingdom, under domestic pressure not to spend more money and human resources on a nonperforming government under President Hamid Karzai, wanted a forum to put concrete demands on the Afghan government, leading to London in January with a Kabul conference mooted in spring.
The London agenda that has emerged will center on security concerns and specific military strategy. Participants want to spell out a security strategy that will enable the major troop-contributing countries to give their voters a clearer sense of when their forces can start withdrawing. But before that can happen, according to plans endorsed by President Barack Obama last month, 30,000 more U.S. troops and 7,000 from allied countries will deploy in Afghanistan. On Tuesday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel pledged to increase her country's military presence there from 4,500 to 5,000 troops.
An agreement endorsed in Kabul last week after tough negotiations between the Afghan government and donors calls for more than doubling the Afghan National Security Forces, from 191,000 now to 400,000 in five years. That effort will require more money and more trainers from Afghanistan's partners, and the British government hopes to secure commitments for both at the conference.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has suggested that Afghan forces must be ready to take the lead in "at least five provinces ... by the end of 2010," but it is far from clear whether an actual number of provinces will be spelled out at the conference, let alone specific provinces named – even though those decisions have a direct bearing on any contemplated troop withdrawals.
The Karzai government is expected to table a policy that would allow reconciliation with the "Afghan" Taliban, an effort recently endorsed by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top commander of U.S. and NATO troops in the country. Karzai will also call for renewed military operations across the border in Pakistan and ask Western donors to pay into a fund to enable cash payments to reintegrated fighters.
"Those Taliban who are not part of terrorist networks, who are the sons of the Afghan soil, and who are in thousands and thousands, they have to be reintegrated, and they are welcomed to be integrated," Karzai said at a regional conference in Istanbul on Tuesday.
Development and governance have also been cited as themes for the conference, but concrete, measurable steps on those issues will be tougher to secure, much to the regret of many experts. "The focus on governance is long overdue," said Rachel Reid, Afghanistan researcher for Human Rights Watch. "As long as there are known rights abusers and people associated with criminal activity in public office, the government will fail to win the trust of the people. Similarly, there can be no half measures from the international community, who are bringing pressure upon the government to reform, but are still failing to audit who it is they are enriching and empowering in Afghanistan."
Many Afghan civil society groups, including defenders of women's rights, are concerned about the process of reintegrating Taliban forces into society, Reid said. "Those who do not wield guns should not be excluded from these important decisions," she said.
Civil society groups and nongovernmental organizations are not invited to the conference itself, but have met in their own forum in London earlier this week. Many of them believe earlier conferences have seen little follow-through. In 2008, for instance, leaders endorsed the Afghan National Development Strategy, which Ashley Jackson of Oxfam International said "does prioritize the needs of Afghanistan but does not seem to be on the agenda right now."
"An international preoccupation with military strategy has deflected attention from building up civilian institutions and developing the economy," the Afghan Research and Evaluation Unit, a respected research organization, has concluded. The organization expressed the hope that the London and Kabul conferences would lead the international community to commit itself to building public institutions that are legitimate in Afghan eyes, something that had been "too long neglected in preference of quick-fix and military solutions."
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Shadow Taliban government rules Afghans' lives
by Karim Talbi – Wed Jan 27, 12:42 am ET
KABUL (AFP) – When the body of a petty thief was found riddled with bullets near the Afghan town of Muqur, the victim of rough justice by the Taliban's shadow government, the locals were happy, Fazal Haq said.
"This Anwarai was 35 years old and he would take up position by the road and then rob people coming back from the town with their shopping," Haq, a resident of Muqur, in southern Afghanistan's Ghazni province, told AFP by telephone.
Then four months ago, Anwarai stole a motorbike from a Taliban militant. His punishment was two bullets to the chest and one in the head, his corpse left by the side of the road.
"In the past, the Taliban used to deliver justice far from the town and they hid themselves. Now they are less than three kilometres (two miles) from Muqur and the locals go to them for help resolving their problems," Haq said.
The United States and NATO are swelling the number of foreign troops in Afghanistan this year to about 150,000 in a bid to turn the tide in an eight-year-long war.
The Taliban's jurisdiction, however, is growing as their insurgency gains force and Afghans tire of President Hamid Karzai's ineffective and corrupt government.
Karzai and his foreign backers are meeting in London on Thursday to hammer out possible peace plans and a timeline under which NATO troops can eventually hand control to locals.
But in most provinces, the Taliban have their own parallel network of power, with a governor, judges and heads of police intervening in everything from theft to neighbours' disputes and badly arranged marriages.
"In 33 out of 34 provinces, the Taliban has a shadow government," said a senior official with NATO's military intelligence in Kabul.
At a national level, their leader Mullah Omar has a government-in-waiting, ready for the day Karzai's administration falls, the official said.
"We have governors, district heads, a military court for each province and a civil court for dealing with everyday problems," Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location.
Khalid Pashtun, a member of parliament for Kandahar province, a Taliban stronghold, conceded that people are now turning to the insurgents, whose hardline Islamist government was toppled by US-led forces in late 2001.
"Their governors were part of the Taliban regime before it fell... They are young, dynamic, determined and influential. And people go to them because their justice is quick and seen as more effective than normal justice," Pashtun, a Karzai supporter, told AFP.
"Our government is undermined by its corruption and doesn't do the job, people are turning away from them and asking the Taliban to arbitrate."
In an example of the Taliban's reach into everyday life, Ghulam Rasool told AFP they had solved a long-running dispute between two families over arranged marriages between their sons and daughters.
The quarrel, which had been running for three years in Gurtafa district, in the northern province of Kunduz, was resolved in a few hours by a Taliban committee that ordered the reluctant father to agree to his daughter's marriage.
A Taliban official in the district of Archi, also in Kunduz, said the insurgents had not had to cut off thieves' hands or stone adulterers, as typically demanded by strict Islamic Sharia law, because of a decline in serious crime.
"Those who have to be punished are beaten up or put in detention in the tribal chiefs' homes," he said.
Even as the insurgents extend their influence, NATO is planning to train up more Afghan police and army recruits to prepare for when US troops begin to withdraw in mid-2011.
Kabul will ask world leaders in London to fund an increase from about 190,000 security forces to more than 300,000 by the middle of next year.
Karzai also wants to secure backing for a scheme to get Taliban and other insurgent foot-soldiers to lay down their weapons in exchange for money and jobs.
With a record number of foreign troops killed in the conflict last year and Karzai's failure to rein in corruption, the Taliban may feel confident enough of their power over the Afghan people to spurn a reconciliation.
Another Kandahar resident, Mohammad Khan, says people have no choice but to obey their rule.
"People are scared of Taliban reprisals if they ask for the help of the police or the legal system. The Taliban control the region and one can't do anything about them," he said.
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Fighting for a Draw in Afghanistan
By Tony Karon Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2010 time.com
America went to war in 2001 to rid Afghanistan not only of al-Qaeda but also of an extremist Taliban regime that viciously abused its own people. But as the international community prepares to gather in London on Thursday, Jan. 28, to plot an endgame for the eight-year conflict, it is becoming increasingly clear that the war will end with the Taliban being restored to some measure of power. Indeed, the strategic purpose of President Obama's troop surge now appears primarily to be setting the table for an acceptable compromise with the Taliban.
Speaking in Pakistan last Friday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates described the Taliban as part of Afghanistan's "political fabric," dispelling any notion that the movement — no matter how noxious — can be eliminated by force of arms. And General Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander on the ground, told the Financial Times in an interview published Monday that "a political solution ... is the inevitable outcome" and "the right outcome" of the surge of 30,000 new U.S. troops into Afghanistan this year. "As a soldier," McChrystal said, "my personal feeling is that there's been enough fighting. What I think we do is try to shape conditions which allow people to come to a truly equitable solution to how the Afghan people are governed."
Centcom commander General David Petraeus weighed in on the question of a political settlement in the Times of London Monday, warning that before a political resolution could be achieved, there would be some intense fighting to roll back the Taliban and disabuse them of the prospect of a battlefield victory. And Gates has made clear that the movement's leadership is unlikely to negotiate a compromise until it has been dealt some heavy blows on the battlefield. Still, Petraeus suggested, current outreach efforts that are limited to those Taliban willing to lay down their arms and accept the Afghan constitution could eventually give way to direct talks with the Taliban leadership, possibly involving Pakistan.
All roads, in other words, point to a negotiated settlement.
This emerging consensus stems in part from the realization of what Pakistan can do and is willing to do in the fight. The Pakistani military reiterated during Gates' visit last week that it has no intention of going after the Afghan insurgent sanctuaries in North Waziristan. The Pakistanis claimed that their forces were overstretched by their offensives against the Pakistan Taliban in Swat and South Waziristan and that a new offensive is beyond their capability.
While the Pakistani military is willing to fight those extremists who challenge the Pakistani state's authority, it is more inclined to view the Afghan Taliban as a potential strategic ally and asset. And dozens of visits from U.S. officials over the past year have failed to persuade Pakistan to adopt Washington's view that the Afghan Taliban are a menace to Pakistan. Instead, Pakistan continues to see its primary security challenge as emanating from India, which it views as the power behind the Karzai government in Afghanistan. So right now, the Afghan Taliban and associated Afghan insurgent groups based in Pakistan are seen as Pakistan's best hope for rolling back Indian influence and regaining some of the strategic influence lost when the Taliban were routed in 2001.
Instead of trying to crush the Taliban as the U.S. had hoped it would, Pakistan is talking to the movement's leaders and urging Washington to do the same. Pakistan hopes to orchestrate a political settlement in which the Taliban and other Pakistan-friendly Pashtuns would be given far greater influence in a new regime but would agree to share power with other communities and cut ties with al-Qaeda.
And the language from U.S. officials in recent weeks suggests that some version of Pakistan's perspective may prevail. The Karzai government has also been discreetly reaching out to the Taliban leadership for some time, and U.N. officials in Kabul are openly calling for such talks, urging the Afghan government to enable them by having the names of a number of senior Taliban leaders taken off a U.N. terrorist-watch list so they can travel. Turkey is even offering to broker regional peace talks involving the Taliban and Afghanistan's neighbors.
Still, it won't be that simple. Currently, the U.S. and the Afghan government are offering to deal with those Taliban willing to reconcile with the current political order, and it's not clear that there are going to be many takers. And the Taliban leadership has demands of its own: while Mullah Omar has lately been promising that a Taliban regime would not threaten the security of any other state in the world (translation: no sanctuary for al-Qaeda), he and those around him insist that there can be talks only when Western armies agree to leave Afghanistan. And, of course, the Taliban leaders believe they have the wind at their backs, while the U.S. is reaching for an exit strategy. U.S. officials insist the insurgents won't be interested in compromise as long as they believe they can win on the battlefield.
However, some analysts, such as the Pakistan-based veteran journalist and Taliban expert Ahmed Rashid, believe that the Taliban may be ready for a power-sharing deal because they recognize the limits of their insurgency: while they can prevent Karzai from governing most of the country, U.S. firepower can prevent them from taking control too. Moreover, he argues, the safe havens they enjoy in Pakistan may actually make them vulnerable to political pressure for compromise from the Pakistani military. And many in the region doubt that the U.S. and its allies would be willing to accept the burden of an open-ended military commitment at a rising cost in blood and treasure.
Even if a growing consensus holds that a political solution is inevitable, the fighting is likely to intensify over the next year. But it will be, fundamentally, a contest over the terms under which the Taliban are to resume a role in governing Afghanistan, not over whether they will play any role at all.
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Taliban for sale?
We still don't understand the enemy
New York Post - Wed Jan 27, 1:25 am ET
A highlight of this week's "what do we do about Afghanistan?" conference in London will be the announcement of a $500-million program to bribe low-level Taliban fighters to quit.
I'm all for any program that prevents a single IED attack on our troops, but the hoopla attending this hail-Mary play reflects our stubborn refusal to understand the enemy. In the ninth year of a war, we still don't want to know why the other guy fights.
The assumption behind this program is that three-quarters of the Taliban fight for money or because of small-time grievances. There's zero serious data behind that belief. The assumption suits us, so we rig the intel.
After almost a decade of open warfare with Islamist militants, thousands of global terror attacks in the name of Allah and even deadly Muslim turncoats in our military, we continue to deny that our enemies might be fighting for their faith -- or, in the Taliban's case, for faith, tribe, tradition and territory.
Nope, we're convinced it's about the lack of jobs. Well, sorry -- the Taliban aren't the Teamsters.
Two weeks ago, we got another cutting lesson in why aid programs won't turn the tide in Afghanistan: Valiant US Marines had spent months pacifying parts of Helmand Province; they believed they were making progress -- then, in a blink, the local people turned.
All it took was a bogus rumor that our troops had desecrated a Koran. Thousands of furious Afghans rioted in the Garmsir bazaar, a commercial hub. Their confrontation with Afghan security forces turned deadly. Eight rioters gave their lives because they believed a Koran had been abused.
The locals had never staged a protest over the lack of jobs or the need for aid. But they were willing to die for their holy book.
Shouldn't that tell us something about how Afghans think?
These weren't hardcore Taliban fighters (although the Taliban may have started the rumor). They were the villagers we insist we're saving.
We're doing exactly what we did in Vietnam, where we refused to see that the communists' program had more appeal to rural residents of an unjust society than the corrupt Saigon government did. We knew what those villagers really wanted . . .
Of course, religion isn't the sole motivator for the Taliban (although it adds the fanatic zest that stuns us). On another level, these are hillbillies who just don't want the revenuers -- any revenuers -- coming up their hollow.
Plus, in the eyes of their supporters, they're also patriots. They represent a cherished (if unfathomable to us) way of life. And -- again, like the Viet Cong -- they offer swifter and more reliable justice than Hamid Karzai's Kabul grab-ocracy.
Do some young Taliban foot soldiers fight for money? Probably. But not the majority. Nobody endures that level of suffering and sacrifice for payment alone.
Our latest well-intentioned program also fails to con- sider its potential impact on Afghan security force recruitment and retention: If ill-treated Afghan privates serving under disinterested officers see that anyone claiming to be a repentant Taliban fighter gets a job and a land-grant, wouldn't it make more sense to go Taliban for a while?
Meanwhile, our "valued ally" Pakistan protects the worst elements of the Taliban, tells begging-for-help US officials to kiss off, refuses to police its own territory and incites its citizens against us while pocketing our money.
If we can't buy the leaders of one of the world's most corrupt states with a flood of aid plus a $7.5 billion sweetener, how do we expect to make tribesmen turn from their duty to their faith for the promise of 40 acres and a mule?
Nor does it help when oblivious Western "experts" insist that the Taliban don't represent "true Islam." Who are we to say? The oppressive variant of Islam that grew up in Afghanistan's valleys over the centuries is every bit as valid as any other.
And it works for the locals. When will we figure that out?
The ease with which senators are bought on Capitol Hill has blinded us to the not-for-sale quality of men ablaze with religious zeal fighting for their land and way of life. Our generals need to ask themselves one question: If you were an Afghan tribesman, which side would you be on?
Ralph Peters' latest book is "The War After Armageddon."
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Can the US exploit divide between Taliban and Al Qaeda?
New details have emerged about the tense relationship between Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, and Mullah Omar, the head of the Taliban, in the days before 9/11. In Afghanistan, the US aims to exploit that divide.
By Caryle Murphy Correspondent The Christian Science Monitor - Tue Jan 26, 11:03 pm ET
In a bid to weaken the two forces that led US troops to invade Afghanistan eight years ago and expand their presence today, Washington and its Afghan allies have been seeking to exploit the fissures between the Taliban and Al Qaeda
With the Afghan surge ordered by President Obama underway, those sorts of efforts are likely to be redoubled in the coming months. New data points, such as a recent translation of a memoir by a former ally of both Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar, could indicate differences to exploit.
That there are ideological and personality differences between Al Qaeda and the Taliban has long been understood. The Taliban is an indigenous movement composed mostly of ethnic Pashtuns who are generally focused on power in their home base in Afghanistan and across the border in Pakistan.
Al Qaeda's leadership, by contrast, is almost entirely Arab, and its members believe they are fighting a global struggle for the supremacy and security of Islam. Afghanistan is just one of many battle fronts.
The US and its Afghan allies have been seeking to exploit the fissures between the two groups in recent years.
"We are trying to exploit the natural tensions that exist between Al Qaeda and those under Mullah Omar," a senior foreign intelligence officer in Afghanistan told the Monitor in 2008.
Now comes Vahid Brown, a research fellow at West Point's Combating Terrorism Center, with an amazingly detailed account of an episode that demonstrates that tension and reveals just how reluctant bin Laden was to work with Omar.
In the latest issue of the Center's newsletter, the CTC Sentinel, Brown has translated and analyzed the story of how bin Laden refused to give an oath of allegiance to Omar, despite the Taliban leader's hospitality to Al Qaeda.
The story was written by an Egyptian named Mustafa Hamid, who is also known as Abu’l-Walid al-Masri. He was close to both bin Laden and Omar in the days prior to 9/11. Now believed to be living in Iran, Mr. Masri has his own blog and he posted there his account of the oath episode, entitling it: The Story of the Arabs’ Pledge to the Commander of the Faithful Mullah Muhammad Omar.
"It's long been known that that period was one of strife between the two movements, and I thought this particular detail [about the oath] was emblematic of that," Brown said in a brief phone interview. As far as he knows, Brown adds, no one else has translated Masri's account of the episode.
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NATO finalizes Afghan transit deal with Kazakhstan
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO said on Wednesday it had finalized an agreement with Kazakhstan on the transit of supplies to Afghanistan, hoping it will reduce its reliance on a route through Pakistan that has been attacked by the Taliban.
The agreement should allow NATO to implement a deal with Russia for the transit of non-lethal supplies to the forces of the Western military alliance and its partners fighting a Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.
"This allows supplies for our forces to start moving from Europe to Afghanistan, beginning in the coming days, complementing the very important transit route through Pakistan," NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said.
In the same statement, Rasmussen welcomed Germany's announcement of plans to send up to 850 more soldiers to Afghanistan and what he called "a very substantial contribution" to NATO's training mission for Afghan security forces.
He also hailed Romania's announcement of 600 more soldiers for Afghanistan and said other new contributions were likely to be announced in the coming days.
"Taken together, the announcement of new forces, and a new supply route, helps to further strengthen the NATO-ISAF (International Security Assistance Force)," he said.
The announcements were made on the eve of an international conference in London which is expected to agree on a framework for the Afghan government to begin taking charge of security in line with a 2011 timetable set by President Barack Obama to start drawing down U.S. troops.
(Reporting by David Brunnstrom; Editing by Elizabeth Fullerton)
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NATO struggling to fulfill commitments for more troops in Afghanistan
By Craig Whitlock Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, January 27, 2010; A10
NATO is struggling to make good on commitments to deploy extra forces to Afghanistan, one month after the Obama administration said it was counting on the alliance to send as many as 10,000 more troops to serve alongside U.S. soldiers.
On Tuesday, Germany said it would send 500 reinforcements to Afghanistan, disappointing U.S. officials, who had been pressing Berlin for at least three times that number. German officials, facing stiff domestic opposition to the war, said they would instead double their development aid to Afghanistan and begin withdrawing soldiers in 2011.
"We have nothing to be ashamed of," Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters in Berlin. "It was not the case that the Americans asked us what we wanted to do, but rather we determined ourselves what we intend to do."
After President Obama announced his revised Afghan strategy in December, including the deployment of 30,000 more U.S. troops, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said allies had pledged about 7,000 "fresh forces." He also raised expectations that further commitments would be announced soon.
NATO leaders had been lobbying Germany and France, in particular, ahead of an international conference on Afghanistan scheduled for Thursday in London. On Monday, however, French President Nicolas Sarkozy reaffirmed his previous refusals to send additional combat forces to Afghanistan, although he held out the possibility of dispatching more military trainers and civilian aid workers.
NATO has not provided a precise breakdown of where its promised 7,000 new troops will come from. But it appears that only about 4,000 of those forces were not previously announced or deployed.
For instance, U.S. State Department officials have acknowledged that NATO is counting 1,500 troops sent to Afghanistan last year to provide security for the August presidential election; they will remain in the country, instead of returning home as originally planned.
Similarly, U.S. and NATO officials have touted the forthcoming deployment of 900 soldiers from Georgia, which is not a member of NATO, even though the government in Tbilisi had committed to the mission well before Obama announced his revised Afghan strategy.
NATO is also excluding the planned withdrawal of some forces from Afghanistan this year, including the entire Dutch contingent of about 2,000 soldiers, scheduled to leave in December.
Daniel Korski, a senior analyst with the European Council on Foreign Relations and a former adviser to the Afghan government, said NATO members routinely inflate their troop commitments.
"Every nation fibs a little, and when you aggregate all the small fibs, it's hard not to come up with a big fib," he said.
The reluctance of NATO allies to do more is a long-standing complaint in Washington, dating to the George W. Bush administration. But U.S. officials said they are increasingly frustrated by the unwillingness of European countries to provide more trainers to build up the Afghan army and national police, a cornerstone of NATO's strategy to stabilize the country.
Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Monday that NATO allies had provided only about 10 percent of the trainers promised for Afghan security forces, a situation he called "totally unacceptable."
U.S. Col. Gregory S. Julian, a NATO spokesman in Belgium, said recruiting more trainers is a high priority for the alliance. "It is clear that more contributions are required," he said in an e-mail. "I'm very hopeful we'll see another several thousand troops."
The security situation in much of Afghanistan remains dire. On the outskirts of Kabul on Tuesday, a suicide bomber struck a convoy of armored military vehicles outside a U.S. military base, wounding eight American service members and at least a half-dozen Afghan civilians.
The attack occurred near Camp Phoenix, the main U.S. base in Kabul, and the blast could be heard on the grounds of the fortified U.S. Embassy compound several miles away.
A NATO spokesman said the driver of the suicide vehicle struck a barrier outside the gate of Camp Phoenix when he detonated his explosives. He described the injuries to the eight Americans as minor.
The Taliban immediately asserted responsibility for Tuesday's attack in a telephone call to the Associated Press, the news agency reported. A Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, said the attack killed 25 foreign soldiers, but the NATO spokesman denied that assertion.
Correspondent Keith B. Richburg in Kabul contributed to this report.
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Afghan warlord re-emerges despite West's demands
By Robert H. Reid, Associated Press Writer – Tue Jan 26, 2:58 pm ET
KABUL – He is among Afghanistan's most notorious warlords, accused of widespread abuses including the massacre of thousands of Taliban prisoners. Now he's back, reinstated by President Hamid Karzai in a top army post despite Western demands for sweeping reform.
Karzai this month restored Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum as chief of staff to the commander in chief of the Afghan army — a job he lost in 2008 after failing to cooperate in an investigation into the shooting of a rival.
Although the job has little real power, Western officials and Afghan human rights groups see the appointment as a sign that Karzai remains unable to shake off his ties to warlords and regional powerbrokers despite heavy international pressure for a new beginning as the U.S. and NATO ramp up the war against the Taliban.
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said Monday he would press Karzai to rescind the appointment when he meets with the Afghan leader during this week's international conference in London aimed at building support for the weak Afghan government.
"As we have noted repeatedly in the past, the United States maintains concerns about any leadership role for Mr. Dostum in today's Afghanistan," U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said.
Among other objections, critics fear the appointment sends the wrong signal to the Taliban at a time when the government is preparing to offer the militants economic incentives to abandon the insurgency — a program expected to figure prominently at the London conference.
Human rights groups have alleged Dostum was responsible for the deaths of up to 2,000 Taliban prisoners captured by his militia early in the Afghan war — a charge that Dostum denies.
"Gen. Dostum joins a Karzai government which suffers deficiency of constitutional legitimacy, lacks vision and unity, and is mired in corruption and inefficiency," the independent Afghanistan Rights Movement said this week. "With notorious warlords such as Gen. Dostum in power, Mr. Karzai can neither send a genuine message of peace to the armed opposition, nor can he convince Afghans that they live in a just society where their lives and rights are protected by the state."
Noor Olhag Olomi, a member of parliament from Kandahar, called the Dostum appointment a "violation of human rights" of Afghans who had suffered abuse at the hands of Dostum and his forces.
Karzai and his spokesmen were outside the country Tuesday and unavailable for comment.
Dostum's role illustrates the complexity of Afghan society and politics, where power is based on forging alliances with traditional leaders — many of whom have backgrounds that Westerners and many Afghans find unsavory.
Two of Karzai's vice presidents — Mohammed Qasim Fahim and Karim Khalili — are ex-warlords, a term applied to regional leaders who rose to power in the war against the Soviets in the 1980s and in the civil war that erupted after the defeat of the Soviets.
Many of them, including Dostum, fought the Taliban after they seized Kabul in 1996 and joined with the U.S. to oust the hardline Islamic movement from power in the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.
The burly, bearded Dostum, 55, is a former Communist general and longtime leader of the Uzbek ethnic minority who delivered hundreds of thousands of Uzbek votes to Karzai in last year's presidential election. His supporters believe his continued role is crucial in helping blunt Taliban encroachment in northern provinces where his influence is strong.
"We are very happy that Karzai has appointed Dostum to this job," said Masooud Ahmad Masooud, head of the youth movement in Dostum's part of Jawzjan province. "We are proud of him because he is the man who defeated al-Qaida in the north."
Karzai's continued ties to Dostum are widely seen as a litmus test of the president's commitment to reform.
After the surrender of Taliban fighters in Kunduz in November 2001, there were allegations that Dostum's forces suffocated up to 2,000 Taliban fighters in container trucks as they were being transported to prison.
Efforts to reach Dostum were unsuccessful because he was not answering his telephone. However, a close Dostum ally, Ismail Manshi, said it was unfair to single out Dostum's followers because so many others were involved in killings and abuses over the past two decades. He said allegations against Dostum are aimed at sidelining the Uzbeks, who make up an estimated 10 percent of the population.
"Hundreds disappeared during the Taliban time and we still don't know where they are," Manshi said. "If human rights activists curse Gen. Dostum for killing the Taliban, they should launch a general investigation into everybody involved in the killings."
Afghan political analysts believe Karzai gave the military post to Dostum as a consolation prize after parliament rejected three of Dostum's candidates for Cabinet posts this month.
"Dostum was really upset. He was really vocal," said Haroun Mir, director of the Afghanistan Center for Research and Policy Studies, a Kabul-based think tank. "This is more of a political gesture to Dostum to appease him."
Mir said Karzai has been talking about making a fresh start in his second term but realized he couldn't afford to alienate warlords like Dostum.
"Now he knows that a country like Afghanistan values traditional leaders," Mir said. "I think this is a maneuver from Mr. Karzai to have no opposition inside the country."
___
Associated Press Writers Amir Shah and Kim Gamel contributed to this report.
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Q+A-What does Pakistan want in Afghanistan?
27 Jan 2010 09:29:51 GMT By Robert Birsel
Jan 27 (Reuters) - An international conference on Afghanistan in London on Thursday is aimed at setting a framework for handing security over to Afghan forces and seeking a common approach among Afghanistan's neighbours on helping stabilise the country.
NATO powers are also expected to back Afghan President Hamid Karzai's plan to reach out to Taliban insurgents. [ID:nLDE60P14Z]
The neighbour with perhaps the most influence over events in Afghanistan is Pakistan, whose foreign minster will be at the meeting.
Here are some questions and answers on Pakistan's position on Afghanistan:
WHAT DOES PAKISTAN WANT?
Pakistan wants a peaceful Afghanistan ruled by a friendly government over which it has influence and with old rival India having minimal influence. It hopes that peace in Afghanistan would help it end violence by its home-grown Taliban and bring its lawless ethnic Pashtun lands along the Afghan border under control. For years, Pakistan saw Afghanistan in terms of "strategic depth", meaning, in the event of war with India and Indian forces rolling over its eastern border, Pakistani forces could withdraw over its western border into a friendly Afghanistan, re-group and fight back from there. Pakistan says that concept is outdated. Nevertheless, Pakistan wants a friendly Kabul government that would at least stay out of any India-Pakistan war.
WHAT DOES PAKISTAN FEAR?
Most Pakistanis see India as the biggest threat to their national security. Afghanistan is seen through that prism so a major Pakistani concern is being squeezed between India and a hostile, pro-Indian Afghanistan. It is deeply suspicious of the close ties India has built with Karzai's government, which, even though Karzai is Pashtun, Pakistan sees as dominated by traditionally pro-Indian and anti-Pakistani ethnic Tajiks. Pakistan says India is supporting separatist rebels in its gas-rich Baluchistan province from Afghanistan.
While wary of U.S. involvement in the region, Pakistan is also worried about a U.S. withdrawal leaving Afghanistan in chaos, as happened after the Soviets withdrew in 1989. At the same time, it is worried that a surge in fighting in Afghanistan will spill over the border and inflame unrest in its Pashtun northwest.
A long-running Pakistani fear is Afghan irredentism. Afghans have long harboured dreams of uniting all Pashtuns on both sides of the border and Pakistan is wary of Pashtun nationalism at home lending weight to such dreams. Fueling Pakistani worry is the fact that no Afghan government, not even the Taliban, has recognised the international border, drawn by British colonialists in 1893, which divided the Pashtun lands.
WHO ARE PAKISTAN'S ALLIES IN AFGHANISTAN?
Most Afghan factions are hostile towards Pakistan, especially those drawn from its minorities such as the Tajiks. With a big Pashtun minority in Pakistan, Afghanistan's Pashtuns, including the Taliban, have long been Pakistan's natural Afghan allies. But even relations with the Taliban have suffered since Pakistan signed on to the U.S.-led campaign against militancy in 2001. Nevertheless, the Afghan Taliban still draw much support from Pakistan, although Islamabad denies any official backing, and many Taliban leaders and their families are believed to be in Pakistan. The Taliban are the only Afghan faction with which Pakistan has significant influence.
WHAT CAN PAKISTAN DO TO ACHIEVE ITS GOALS?
Given the involvement of the United Stated and other Western powers, analysts say Pakistan realises the world would not tolerate its support of a Taliban victory in Afghanistan. The best way for Pakistan to protect its interests in Afghanistan would probably be for it to use its influence over the Taliban to bring them into talks. Pakistan could then try to push through a peace agreement that would win the gratitude of the United States and preserve its influence in Afghanistan through the Taliban, who would be part of some post-agreement set-up, while it tried to mend ties with other Afghan factions. With a major role in a peace process, Pakistan would also be in a strong position to keep India out. Pakistan could undermine peace efforts if pro-Indian Afghan factions and India kept it out of any process.
(Editing by Paul Tait)
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Merkel says wrong to set date to quit Afghanistan
BERLIN, Jan 27 (Reuters) - It would be a mistake to set a concrete date for the withdrawal of German troops from Afghanistan because that would encourage the Taliban, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday.
Speaking at a news conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Merkel said there were ambitious targets for Afghanistan playing a larger role for its own security but said there should be no concrete date for a withdrawal.
(Reporting by Sarah Marsh and Madeline Chambers; writing by Erik Kirschbaum)
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Russia says ready to rebuild Afghanistan with Western funds
January 27, 2010 People's Daily
Russia is ready to help reconstruct Afghanistan provided that the West offers the money, Russian business daily Kommersant reported on Wednesday, citing the country's NATO envoy.
Kommersant quoted Dmitry Rogozin as saying that Russia could restore more than 140 industrial and infrastructure facilities built by Soviet specialists in Afghanistan.
"We consider that civil construction projects are the most effective way to fight insurgents. This gives Afghanistan the opportunity to develop a normal independent economy," Rogozin said.
Rogozin said Russia would table the proposal at an international conference on Afghanistan in London on Thursday.
He also called on countries "that have a lot of money and want to help Afghanistan, but cannot send soldiers" to finance the war-torn country's reconstruction.
The Soviet Union sent engineers to help Afghanistan build power plants, highways, electricity lines, as well as gas and oil pipeline networks between 1952 and 1988, with funds from the Soviet government, Kommersant reported.
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In London speech, will Karzai bite the hand that feeds him?
McClatchy Newspapers By Roy Gutman 01/26/2010
KABUL, Afghanistan - When 60 or more nations convene in London Thursday to discuss Afghanistan's future, the script calls for agreement on plans to split the Taliban insurgency, a process to reach an eventual political settlement, improvements in governance and the battle against corruption.
What everyone's bracing for is the unscripted — when Afghan President Hamid Karzai takes the podium.
"In the past, President Karzai has occasionally used public speeches to say things that seem pretty harsh to us," said one U.S. official in Kabul , who like others spoke anonymously because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Karzai won't be begging for more from the U.S. and the more than 40 other nations who've sent forces and treasure to Afghanistan to prevent the Islamist insurgency from regaining power. He'll ask them to do less.
"We're not going to ask for more cash. We're going to ask the international community to end nighttime raids on Afghan homes, to stop arresting Afghans, to reduce and eliminate civilian casualties. We're going to ask them not to have Afghan prisoners taken," Karzai told Al Jazeera television early in the month.
Biting the hand that feeds him won't win him popularity with Westerners wary of sending their forces here, but a confrontational stance could add to his popular appeal in a country at war since 1979, that was twice abandoned by the U.S.
"With the international community, I don't have to have their favor. They are here for a purpose, which is the fight on terror . . . " he told Al Jazeera. However, Karzai acknowledged that seeking stability in Afghanistan is a common purpose of Afghans and the world community.
At least one Afghan commentator, Haroun Amir , director of the Afghan Center for Research and Policy , thinks that Karzai "needs some rest."
"People in Afghanistan are asking: 'is this guy out of his mind?'," Amir told McClatchy .
The Afghan president seems most annoyed with U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry , Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke and other officials critical of his fraud-tainted re-election last summer, and the feeling seems to be mutual.
Eikenberry's standing could suffer still more after the leak of his secret Nov. 9 cable published Tuesday by the New York Times . Eikenberry said in the cable that Karzai is "not an adequate strategic partner," because he "continues to shun responsibility for any sovereign burden." He urged President Obama not to send 30,000 additional U.S. troops here, a stance that didn't endear him to the U.S. military or top officials in the State Department .
U.S. officials say Eikenberry and Karzai do show mutual respect and trust but acknowledged that there are "strains" in the relationship. Eikenberry will be attending the London meeting.
Rhetoric aside, there is accord in some key areas that should help shape this remote nation's future.
The most complex is dealing with the Taliban insurgency. A plan to reintegrate low and mid-level Taliban soldiers into Afghan life will be formally unveiled, which if it works could eventually cost Afghanistan's benefactors, led by the U.S., hundreds of millions of dollars.
The most controversial area is "reconciliation," shorthand for negotiating with the Taliban . Pakistan has offered to be a mediator in a power-sharing arrangement between the Karzai government and the Taliban . However, Pakistan also provides sanctuary to Afghan insurgents in its lawless tribal areas, from which they draw suicide bombers and fighters, and the ability to resupply forces in the field, and neither Karzai nor the Taliban , apparently, want to be beholden to Pakistan .
United Nations officials say Karzai is willing to bring Taliban into his cabinet and to appoint Taliban to district governorships provided they fulfill three tough conditions. They must abandon violence, accept the Afghan constitution — with its guarantees for women's rights — and break all ties with al Qaida .
For the moment only one serious advance toward peace talks will occur, and that is to end travel sanctions and freezing of assets for five former Taliban officials. Russia informed the U.N. Security Council Monday that it had agreed to lift the sanctions. They include Wakil Ahmad Mutawakil , the former Taliban foreign minister, now living in Kabul .
The problem, from the government people respective, is that the Taliban leadership, who now have named shadow governors in nearly every province of the country, have no intention of talking.
The Afghan National Security Directorate , the country's premier intelligence agency, says the only thing that will drive the Taliban to talks is pressure by Pakistan . Pakistan should arrest the leadership severely restrict the freedom of movement, and end their impunity, in order to bring that pressure to bear, a senior NDS official told McClatchy last week. He could not be identified because he is not authorized to speak to the media.
There is no sign, however, that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency or its army is willing to do anything of the kind, according to U.N. officials and Western diplomats.
Karzai intends to take the lead in trying to woo Taliban of every level into supporting the government. He added a note of confusion, however, in a BBC interview last week when he said he favored "peace at any cost" — a phrase associated with Western governments' appeasement of Hitler the late 1930s.
Despite the Western perspective on the futility of talks with the Taliban , McClatchy reported this week that Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar might be open to negotiations over a political settlement to the war.
Brigadier Sultan Amir Tarar , a former operative of Pakistan's premier spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate , told McClatchy that he was sure Omar would talk because any bellicose bid to split the Taliban insurgency would fail, said Tarar, who knows Omar personally.
The London conference is expected to discuss and approve plans prepared in the past two months by Afghan experts on ending corruption, improving governance and coordinating international development programs.
The test will be in the implementations, however. "Papers are papers," one U.S. diplomat said.
( McClatchy special correspondent Saeed Shah in Islamabad contributed to this article.)
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We invaded Afghanistan - can't we pay to rebuild it?
Foriegn aid needs to better support Britain's national interests, writes Neil O'Brien.
Telegraph.co.uk By Neil O'Brien 27 Jan 2010
There is an informal law in international relations known as the "Pottery Barn Rule". It is based on the uncompromising policy adopted by one American china shop: "If you break it, you pay for it."
Tomorrow, dignitaries from around the world will gather in London to address the future of Afghanistan and discuss how to build a stable state there. But what will go unmentioned – certainly by Britain's representatives – is that despite the desperate need, we are providing only a piddling amount of aid. In the past eight years, only 2 per cent of our total aid budget has gone to the Afghans. We invaded their country. More than 250 of our troops have died there. So why aren't we doing more to help?
The answer goes to the heart of the problems with how our aid budget is spent. Since Labour came to power, the Department for International Development has been lavished with cash, with its budget up by 80 per cent since 2003. This has been accompanied by the relative emasculation of the Foreign Office, whose spending has fallen by 5 per cent. In 1998, the Foreign Office budget was about half as large as DFID's; this year, it will be a fifth of the size.
In other words, considerations of realpolitik have been replaced by a well-meaning ambition to heal the world. Our aid budget is scattered across 102 countries: a little money sprinkled in a lot of places. The biggest donation goes to India – which itself gives aid to other countries.
Yesterday, after MPs accused the Government of failing to account for millions of pounds spent in Malawi, the Tory leadership promised a "tough and unsentimental" review of how DfID spends its budget. They have suggested focusing our efforts and reducing the number of countries we give to.
This is welcome news – but any review should start from first principles. Why do we have an overseas aid budget? One advantage of aid given by the Government, rather than say, Oxfam, is that it can be tailored to our foreign policy priorities. Yet DfID seems to have a deep aversion to doing anything that aligns with Britain's national interests.
We don't want to go back to the Cold War approach, where aid was used to prop up friendly dictators. But we have gone too far in the other direction. And in Afghanistan, in particular, there is no shortage of poor people who need help: 25 million live below the international poverty line, and 40 per cent don't have enough to eat. Surely there is a case for spending more of our budget where our moral and political objectives align so neatly?
If David Cameron is elected and keeps his pledge to ring-fence DfID spending, these questions will come right to the fore. This year the Government plans to spend £7.8 billion through DfID, up from £5.7 billion in 2008. To hit the UN target of 0.7 per cent of GDP by the end of the next parliament, we would have to spend about £13 billion – while spending on defence, among other areas, was being brutally slashed.
Unlike some, I support increasing the aid budget, even in such dire fiscal circumstances. But we need to make DfID work with Britain's interests. In particular, we need to think harder about the links between foreign aid and commerce. A single Chinese copper deal brought $3 billion into Afghanistan. So should DfID spend money on trying to alleviate poverty now, or on building serious bits of infrastructure, like rail links into China, that could build prosperity in the longer term?
There is also a military angle: in aid, we punch above our weight, spending twice as much as the US as a share of GDP. In modern warfare, the capability to wage hearts-and-minds campaigns and to rebuild economies is essential. Recently, DfID and the Armed Forces have improved their working relationship in Afghanistan. But there is a strong case, both moral and practical, for going further. We already have a stabilisation unit which is supposed to join up the work of DFID, the military and the Foreign Office. But we could build this up into a properly integrated peace-building force, capable of delivering hard-edged aid in difficult places and becoming an essential component of Nato's tool kit.
When soldiers build a road, a school or a bridge, they are doing development work. And there can be no development without freedom from conflict. Britain's most successful piece of international aid was probably our military intervention in Sierra Leone, when a one-month operation by the British Army ended 11 years of terror and chaos.
Afghanistan is no less deserving than any of the other countries we donate to. It's the second poorest country in the world. Given the invasion, it probably has a greater moral claim on us than any other country. It's time to swallow our scruples, and start joining up our foreign policy.
Neil O'Brien is the director of Policy Exchange.
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Afghan Planning Faces Grim Realities
Foreign Ministers to Discuss Foreign Role in Afghanistan, but With a Weak Government in Kabul, Hopes Are Muted
Wall Street Journal By ALISTAIR MACDONALD And VANESSA FUHRMANS JANUARY 26, 2010
Foreign ministers will meet in London on Thursday hoping to provide Afghanistan with political support to go with the military surge and convinc e war-weary publics that governments are laying the groundwork for eventual withdrawal.
But with President Hamid Karzai's cabinet incomplete and the Taliban insurgency strong, the conference will likely leave the impression that foreign forces will be in Afghanistan for a long time to come.
On Tuesday, Germany pledged an additional 500 troops to Afghanistan, taking its tally to around 5,000 but falling short of a U.S. request for 2,500 more troops. But German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said he hoped German troops could begin a "step-by-step" withdrawal starting in 2011, underscoring the urgency with which some governments want to exit an increasingly unpopular war.
Foreign ministers from 56 countries, and representatives of bodies such as the United Nations, will gather in London Thursday to coordinate international action on aiding Afghanistan's political, governance and development efforts. The conference will set out a timetable for training and mentoring Afghan troops, and outline a process and some dates for transferring security from foreign forces to Afghan troops, province by province. It will say how funds and other methods can be used to bring moderate elements of the Taliban into the political process and view Kabul's plan to begin this.
But diplomats have acknowledged that the conference won't be able to set out detailed timetables on issues such as Western troop withdrawals.
Conference negotiators have been broadly working with a four- to five-year timetable in mind, echoing comments by Mr. Karzai that it would be at least five years before Afghan security forces can take a lead role. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said the withdrawal of the American surge troops, could take as long as four years.
"The international community will have to be there for a long time. It is important to concentrate on end states, not end dates," said a British official involved in negotiations.
Attempts to get lasting Afghan commitments to issues such as corruption and development may also be hurt by the fact that the country doesn't have a government in place.
Such problems have also raised skepticism about the conference among participants, as has the fact that it presents an opportunity for host Gordon Brown, the U.K. prime minister, to present himself as a global statesman ahead of a general election.
Still, most countries, including the U.S., have come on board, according to foreign and British officials. Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs Lawrence Cannon said that 2010 is a "pivotal year" for Afghanistan and the conference is an important one. It "demonstrates the international community's will to work with the new Afghan government to deliver a coordinated political, civil and military effort to counter the insurgency and provide good governance and development for the people of Afghanistan," he wrote in an email.
For those countries with troops involved, there is hope the conference will provide them with proof that there is an endgame.
Having announced extra troops Tuesday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said "German handwriting" will be visible in the international community's strategy for Afghanistan.
Germany, which has the third-largest military contingent in Afghanistan behind the U.S. and U.K., views the conference as a key opportunity to help shape North Atlantic Treaty Organization policy in Afghanistan and believes it now has a comprehensive strategy in hand to influence its outcome. Its recent, more cautious approach—particularly since a controversial airstrike that killed civilians in the northern region of Kunduz in September—has threatened to push its voice to the sidelines.
Still, Germany's announcement of an additional 500 troops falls short of the additional 2,500 troops the U.S. and NATO had urged Berlin to supply, and more than 1,000 soldiers others in Chancellor Angela Merkel's government had proposed. —Peter Spiegel contributed to this article.
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Australian sentenced to death in Afghanistan
By Rohan Sullivan, Associated Press Writer
SYDNEY – An Australian security contractor has been sentenced to death in Afghanistan for fatally shooting an Afghan colleague and trying to blame the slaying on the Taliban, Australian and Afghan officials said Wednesday.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said his government would try to prevent the former Australian soldier from being executed — an act that could raise tensions between Afghanistan and its largest non-NATO contributor of international security forces.
Australia strongly opposes the death penalty and regularly lobbies governments to commute the sentences of Australians convicted abroad of capital crimes.
Australian Robert William Langdon, 38, was convicted of murder and sentenced to death last October in a court in Kabul, and an appeals court upheld the verdict last week, Australian officials said Wednesday. They were confirming a media report Wednesday that detailed the case for the first time.
The Australian newspaper reported that Langdon was working for U.S.-based private security company Four Horsemen International and had admitted killing the Afghan guard last May during a heated argument about security for a convoy.
The newspaper said the convoy was ambushed by suspected Taliban in Wardak province south of Kabul but escaped to the provincial capital, where the two men argued about whether to continue.
Langdon told the court he shot the Afghan guard in self-defense as he reached for his pistol, though other witnesses disputed this account, the newspaper said. The court also heard that Langdon threw a hand grenade into the truck carrying the guard's body and ordered other guards to fire into the air to simulate a Taliban attack, it said.
Abdul-Salam Kazi Zada, an official at the Kabul appeals court, gave a slightly different account to The Associated Press. He said the convoy had stopped around sundown during a trip from Kabul to volatile Ghazni province and that the Afghan guard, Mohammad Karim, had quarreled with the Australian, saying it was not safe to go on.
He said the Australian shot Karim with a Kalashnikov rifle, put the body in the back of a vehicle, and the convoy continued on. At some point, the convoy stopped again and the Australian instructed other guards to fire in the air, and threw a grenade into the back of the vehicle carrying Karim's body, Zada said.
He said Langdon reported to authorities that the convoy had come under ambush, but that other guards told authorities that the ambush was staged. The Australian was arrested at the airport as he tried to leave the country, Zada said.
Rudd said Wednesday that Australian officials were lobbying the Afghan government for clemency for Langdon, but played down the chances of success.
"I don't think it would be wise to predict or project the effectiveness of any particular intervention by me," Rudd told Fairfax Radio.
Australia has around 1,500 troops in Afghanistan battling Taliban insurgents and training Afghan security forces — the largest international contingent outside the U.S.-European alliance.
Just a handful of Australians have been executed overseas in recent years, mostly for drug crimes. Most recently, Van Tong Nguyen was hanged in Singapore in 2005 for heroin importation despite top-level appeals from the government.
Langdon's family said in a statement Wednesday he was appealing the latest ruling and his lawyers were conducting negotiations aimed at "forestalling possible serious penalties." It did not elaborate.
Langdon could escape execution by striking a deal to pay compensation to the victim's family under a principle known as ibra, or forgiveness, that is recognized in Afghanistan and some other countries governed by Islamic laws.
The family said it would not comment further on the case because it could jeopardize the negotiations and appeal.
___
Associated Press writer Amir Shah in Kabul contributed to this report.
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Afghan judge says Australian deserves death penalty
Wed Jan 27, 4:37 am ET
KABUL (AFP) – A judge who upheld a death sentence handed to an Australian for killing an Afghan security guard defended his ruling Wednesday, saying he was convinced the man was a "murderer" and deserved to die.
Abdul Salam Qazizada, chief judge at Kabul's appeals court, last week upheld an earlier primary court ruling sentencing former soldier Robert William Langdon, 38, to death for the murder in May of an Afghan citizen named Karim.
Australia's government said Wednesday it would appeal the ruling and ask Afghan authorities for clemency in the case.
Langdon, who worked for a private security firm, shot Karim after an argument with his colleague while travelling with a supply convoy through a Taliban-infested region in central Afghanistan, Qazizada told AFP.
He later loaded the corpse on a truck and set fire to it to try to disguise the crime as a militant attack, Qazizada said, adding that several Afghans testified to witnessing the killing and the burning of Karim's body.
"I'm convinced that he's a murderer. I've ruled in accordance with the laws. We gave him what he deserved," Qazizada said.
A spokesman at Afghanistan's Supreme Court said Langdon's lawyers had filed an appeal. Under Afghan law, the Supreme Court will review the rulings of two previous tribunals before making a final decision.
"They were travelling in Wardak province. It was night and the Afghan man, Karim, wanted the convoy to stay there for security reasons. The Australian wanted to move on," Supreme Court spokesman Wakil Omari told AFP.
"Then there was an argument among them. The Australian shoots dead Karim and puts (him) in the back of a truck and sets fire to it to pretend that he was killed in an ambush."
The men worked for a security company providing services to the NATO and US-led forces deployed in Afghanistan to battle a Taliban-led insurgency aimed at toppling the Western-backed government of President Hamid Karzai.
Langdon was arrested at Kabul airport in May, Omari said.
According to The Australian newspaper, Langdon told the court he pulled his pistol in self-defence after Karim reached for his own firearm during a row.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has to personally approve each death sentence handed down by the courts. Dozens of execution cases are pending, with Karzai known to be reluctant to sign off on capital punishment.
Afghanistan has executed at least 22 people since the 2001 toppling of the Taliban regime in a US-led invasion.
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Taliban kill militia leader in NW Pak: officials
KHAR, Pakistan (AFP) – Taliban fighters have killed a pro-government militia leader in northwest Pakistan's Bajaur district, where helicopters have been shelling insurgent hideouts, officials said Wednesday.
The body of Malik Manaris Khan, 47, was found riddled with bullets early Wednesday in Salarzai town, about 20 kilometres (12 miles) northeast of Khar, the main city in Bajaur, which is in the tribal belt bordering Afghanistan.
"He was kidnapped on Monday along with two other tribesmen. Today (Wednesday), we found his dead body," said Naseeb Shah, a local administrative official, blaming the Taliban movement for the abductions.
"He was leading an anti-Taliban lashkar (militia) in his village."
It was the latest in a string of such killings in Bajaur, where anti-Taliban militias are particularly strong, angering the Islamist insurgents.
Salarzai and surrounding areas also came under fire from Pakistani military helicopters, with shelling targeting suspected Taliban hideouts beginning Tuesday and continuing on Wednesday morning, security officials said.
"Helicopter gunships have been shelling Taliban hideouts in Salarzai and the adjacent town of Mamoond since Tuesday," Shah said.
Another government official said that the shelling had killed at least six militants and wounded another four in the last 24 hours.
"We have reports that at least six militants were killed and four wounded. Helicopter gunships also destroyed several hideouts and some trenches," Firamosh Khan, an administrative official, told AFP by telephone.
Bajaur was the scene of a major anti-militant operation in August 2008 and in February last year the military said the area had been secured.
But unrest has rumbled on, and the military have again been staging ground and air assaults on Bajaur, part of an ambitious new push against Taliban strongholds across the northwest launched last year.
Pakistan sent about 30,000 troops backed by fighter jets and helicopter gunships into Taliban stronghold South Waziristan in October, and says they are making progress and that militants are fleeing.
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Armed men shot dead 3 civilians in E Afghanistan
January 27, 2010 People's Daily
Unknown armed men shot and killed three civilians in Khost province east of Afghanistan Wednesday, a local official said.
"Three innocent civilians, all of them shopkeepers were going towards their shops this morning in Sabari district when unidentified armed men opened fire and killing them on the spot," Zarmayad Mukhlis the commissioner of Sabari district told Xinhua.
He blamed the attack on the enemies of peace, a term used against anti-government militants, adding investigation has been initiated to identify the culprits.
Source: Xinhua
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