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New Names in Karzai’s Second Cabinet List
Lotfullah Najafizada Quqnoos / January 9, 2010
President Karzai presented a second slate of 16 nominees to fill his Cabinet after parliament rejected 17 of his 24 first picks
Karzai names new ministers for Afghanistan cabinet
Saturday, 9 January 2010 BBC News
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has presented parliament with a 16-strong list of nominees for cabinet posts.
Afghan President Unveils New List Of Cabinet Picks
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty January 9, 2010
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has submitted a new list of cabinet nominees to parliament in his second bid to form a government, RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan reports.
Afghan Cabinet Nominees At A Glance
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty January 9, 2010
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has chosen 16 new ministerial candidates to replace ministers rejected by parliament last week, proposing little-known technocrats and snubbing former guerrillas and their allies.
Swedish diplomat to take top U.N. post in Afghanistan, Holbrooke says
Foreign Policy By Josh Rogin 01/08/2010
Swedish diplomat Staffan di Mistura has been offered the job as the top U.N. official in Afghanistan, replacing the recently departed Kai Eide, according to Richard Holbrooke.
CIA Chief Defends Agency after Afghan Attack
January 9, 2010 VOA News
The head of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency is defending his organization from charges that agency negligence led to the deaths of seven CIA officers in a suicide attack last month in Afghanistan.
'CIA bomber' video indicates Taliban's reach
By M Ilyas Khan BBC News, Islamabad Saturday, 9 January 2010
The Jordanian "double agent" who killed himself and seven American Central Intelligence Agency officials in Afghanistan's Khost province last month must have been very sure of the success of his mission.
Video links Pakistan Taliban to deadly CIA bombing
By Deb Riechmann, Associated Press Writers – Sat Jan 9, 3:39 pm ET
KABUL – In a video broadcast after his death, the Jordanian suicide bomber who killed seven CIA employees sits cross-legged on the floor next to the new chief of the Pakistani Taliban, confirming the group was behind the brazen attack in eastern Afghanistan.
UK 'paid Afghan warlord $2m to find Osama Bin Laden'
By Mike Rudin BBC, Conspiracy Files Saturday, 9 January 2010
The UK paid $2m (£1.3m) for the services of an Afghan warlord in an operation against Osama Bin Laden in 2001, it has been alleged.
Is Osama Bin Laden dead or alive?
By Mike Rudin The Conspiracy Files BBC News Saturday, 9 January 2010
Osama Bin Laden died eight years ago during the battle for Tora Bora in Afghanistan, either from a US bomb or from a serious kidney disease.
NATO soldier killed in Afghanistan
KABUL, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- A soldier of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was killed in the militancy-ridden Afghanistan on Saturday, a press release of the alliance said.
Taliban militants kill 3 civilians in N Afghanistan
KUNDUZ, Afghanistan, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- Taliban militants killed three civilians on charges of spying for government and the NATO-led forces in Kunduz province, north of Afghanistan, provincial police chief Abdul Razaq Yaqubi said Saturday.
Roadside bomb kills 1, wounds 5 outside Afghan capital
KABUL, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- A roadside bomb struck the vehicle ofa politician in Paghman district, 20 km west of Afghanistan's capital Kabul on Saturday, killing one person and wounding five others.
White House Aides Said to Chafe at Slow Pace of Afghan Surge
New York Times By ELISABETH BUMILLER and HELENE COOPER January 8, 2010
WASHINGTON - Senior White House advisers are frustrated by what they say is the Pentagon's slow pace in deploying 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan and its inability to live up to an initial promise to have all of the forces in the country by next summer, senior administration officials said Friday.
British troops set to hand frontline Afghanistan role to US
Times, UK By Jerome Starkey and James Harding in Kabul 01/08/2010
Three and a half years after British troops first arrived in Helmand the towns that line its infamous “green zone” have become household names — for all the wrong reasons.
Pakistan's support vital to Afghan solution: Miliband
January 9, 2010
(AFP) – ISLAMABAD — Foreign Secretary David Miliband said on Saturday that stability and security in war-torn Afghanistan depended on Pakistan and its own battle with Taliban militants.
In Pakistan, McCain and Lieberman offer reassurance about relations with U.S.
Washington Post By Pamela Constable Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, January 9, 2010
ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN - Two leading U.S. senators attempted Friday to depict U.S.-Pakistani relations as a crucial, permanent friendship, but their brief visit to the Pakistani capital highlighted tensions between
Traders complain traditional handicrafts being swamped by cheap competitors
Institute for War & Peace Reporting By Mohammad Shafi Ferozi in Herat 06-Jan-10
Abdol Satar, a 28-year-old carpet seller, huddles in his shop, wrapped in a blanket against the bitter cold as he waits for customers.
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New Names in Karzai’s Second Cabinet List
Lotfullah Najafizada Quqnoos / January 9, 2010
President Karzai presented a second slate of 16 nominees to fill his Cabinet after parliament rejected 17 of his 24 first picks
The new list, includes three women, nominated for the ministries of health, social affairs and women, was submitted Saturday to the Lower House of parliament by Vice-President Karim Khalili.
The Afghan president has nominated his Security Council chief, Zalmay Rasul, as the minister of Foreign Affairs -- the position remained vacant in his first list.
Today’s picks didn’t include nominees for ministers of energy and telecommunication as the parliament rejected Ismael Khan, a former Jehadi leader, and Amirzay Sangin – Karzai’s initial choices for the posts.
Fourteen of the 16 nominees are new names and the MPs are expected to check out their background over the next few days.
Names of two former ministers, Zarar Mohammad Moqbel, the ex-Minister of Interior, and Amina Afzali, a former Minister of Youth Affairs, also appear in the second list.
Lawmakers will review the candidates during the next several days before of voting expected next week.
Karzai last week ordered the parliament to cancel its winter recess so it could consider new nominations for Cabinet posts.
Nominees must present themselves to parliament and face questioning from MPs before a secret ballot for approval.
Following the rejection head of the UN mission in Afghanistan, Kai Eide, said that lawmakers' decision to reject 70 percent of President Karzai's Cabinet nominees was a “political setback”.
Kai Eide said the rejection will only delay efforts to get a functioning government up and running.
Second List of nominees for Cabinet posts
1. Minister of Foreign Affairs: Zalmai Rasul
2. Minister of Justice: Habibullah Ghaleb
3. Minister of Higher Education: Hashim Esmatullahi
4. Minister of Hajj: Yousuf Neyazi
5. Minister of Public Works: Bashir Lale
6. Minister of Public Health: Suraya Dalil
7. Minister of Economy: Abdul Hadi Arghandiwal
8. Minister of Commerce: Mohammad Hadi Hakimi
9. Minister of Rural Rehabilitation and Development: Jarullah Mansoori
10. Minister of Labour and Social Affairs: Amina Afzali
11. Minister of Transport: Abdul Rahim Oraz
12. Minister of Women Affairs: Palwasha Hasan
13. Minister of Refugees and Returnees: Abdul Rahim
14. Minister of Tribal Affairs and Border Affairs: Arsala Jamal
15. Minister of Counter Narcotics: Zarar Ahmad Moqbel
16. Minister of Urban Development:Eng Sultan Hussain
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Karzai names new ministers for Afghanistan cabinet
Saturday, 9 January 2010 BBC News
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has presented parliament with a 16-strong list of nominees for cabinet posts.
The list includes none of the 17 nominees parliament rejected last week.
Zalmay Rasul, Mr Karzai's security adviser, was named as the nominee for foreign minister, a post left vacant in the first round of voting.
Mr Karzai is hoping to finalise his cabinet before an international conference on Afghanistan in London later this month.
Second Vice-President Karim Khalili read out the list of 16 nominees to parliament.
"I request that all the lawmakers think about the national interest of the country, the current situation of the country and the desires of the Afghan people and make a good decision," said Mr Khalili.
Two of the 18 posts - that of the minister for communications and for water and energy - have been left vacant.
Mr Khalili said those posts would be announced soon, AP reported.
Three of the new nominees were women - the only woman on the first list was rejected.
The BBC's Mark Dummet says Mr Karzai has been under increasing pressure from his foreign backers to finalise the new cabinet and that it is seen to be efficient, corruption free and ready to tackle Afghanistan's many pressing problems.
Growing number of casualties have changed public opinion in the UK and US in particular, bringing many to question why their armies are backing a corrupt and disorganised government, says our correspondent.
Western officials have repeatedly emphasised that tackling corruption is key to stabilising the country, following Mr Karzai's controversial re-election last year.
Recess suspended
The more than 200 members of parliament will question each of the nominees, a process which is expected to take several days, before voting in a secret ballot.
The speaker of the house, Mohammad Younus Qanuni, told MPs: "If you work two shifts, morning and afternoon, we should be able to take a vote of confidence by Thursday," reported Reuters.
The vote is one of the few occasions when parliamentarians have genuine power to hold the executive to account, analysts say.
The list includes none of the 17 nominees who were rejected by parliament on 2 January.
Our correspondent says some had argued this was proof of a maturing democracy in Afghanistan, and an admirable attempt by the parliament to force Mr Karzai to bring new, competent people into government.
But the move effectively left Afghanistan without a fully functioning government, just weeks before the president is due to attend a donor conference in London on 28 January.
Only seven posts were approved from the first round, including Interior Minister Hanif Atmar and Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak, who was re-appointed.
Women's Affairs Minister Husn Bano Ghazanfar - the only woman in the cabinet - was among those who failed to win approval.
Energy minister nominee Ismail Khan - a Soviet-era guerrilla leader and anti-Taliban commander who was also energy minister in the last cabinet - was one of the most prominent nominees to be rejected.
On Monday, Mr Karzai ordered a six-week parliamentary recess to be suspended until the ministers were appointed.
The United Nations has said international funding for this year's parliamentary elections will depend on reform of the country's election institutions.
US President Barack Obama announced last month he would send 30,000 new US troops to Afghanistan, with a view to beating the Taliban.
Nato countries have followed up by pledging another 7,000 troops so far.
Mr Obama said he wanted to begin handing over to Afghan security forces by mid-2011.
Mr Karzai was returned for a second five-year term after last August's election, despite investigators discovering more than a quarter of votes were fraudulent.
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Afghan President Unveils New List Of Cabinet Picks
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty January 9, 2010
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has submitted a new list of cabinet nominees to parliament in his second bid to form a government, RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan reports.
No prominent former guerrilla chiefs and fewer from Karzai's inner circle appear to be among the picks, which might be expected to please both the West and many of Karzai's critics at home.
But early indications were that the list of largely unknown figures would face considerable hurdles.
Deputies last week rejected most of Karzai's initial 24 picks, dealing a major blow to the man who has led Afghanistan since U.S.-backed Afghan forces toppled the Taliban in late 2001.
In an apparent concession to lawmakers, the new list omits all 17 candidates previously rejected by parliament.
It contains 16 names, including Karzai's longtime security adviser Zalmay Rasul, nominated to the previously unfilled post of foreign minister.
Karzai did not submit a candidate to replace Ismail Khan, a Herat-based warlord who is currently the powerful minister of Water and Energy, and whose nomination had been rejected in the first vote.
The telecommunications portfolio, too, has yet to be filled.
Second Vice President Mohammad Karim Khalili, who read out the list to parliament, said nominees for those two ministries would be announced shortly.
"With your permission, the Telecommunication Minister will be introduced very soon, in a few days, maybe [on January 10] or the day after," Khalili said. "The candidate for the Ministry of Energy and Water will also be announced very soon."
Not Household Names
The new list also includes three women, up from just one in both the outgoing cabinet and Karzai's initial list.
Afghan political analyst Zia Rafat told RFE/RL's Afghan service that many of the new nominees are little known.
"On the first list, we had candidates mostly affiliated with the traditional political parties allied with Hamid Karzai, which supported him during the presidential elections," Rafat said. "Now we have candidates who may be loyal to certain political parties but are not activists or prominent figures of traditional parties -- at any rate, they are not official members of the traditional parties."
Rafat noted that the new list included just to activists or leading figures from among the so-called mujahedin parties whose origins lie in the two decades of anti-Soviet or internecine warfare.
"It looks like Karzai has picked them up from the street," Reuters quotes one parliament member, Sayed Dawood Hashimi, as saying. The lawmaker went on to predict that only a small handful of the appointees would be approved.
The agency also quotes an international diplomat as saying that "one could hardly describe the new list as an improvement over the last list," adding that some appeared to be either "completely unknown" or "known politicians who were removed in the past for corruption."
Lawmakers must question candidates before voting can take place, a process that took more than a week for the original list of 24 nominees.
Parliament speaker Mohammad Yonus Qanuni said lawmakers should be able to hold a vote of confidence on the full list by January 14, Radio Free Afghanistan reports.
The fraud-plagued presidential elections in August and the rejection of the first cabinet list have been a severe political setback for Karzai.
The Afghan president is now eager to get his administration assembled before an international conference on Afghanistan is held on January 28 in London.
On January 4, Karzai ordered the legislature to cancel its winter recess so it could consider the new cabinet list.
Ordinary Afghans hope for a cabinet that will both stand up for them and heal ethnic and political rifts that emerged during the election campaign.
The United States and other foreign donors have been calling for a cabinet overhaul that will signal Karzai's dedication to fighting corruption and introducing badly needed reforms.
written by RFE/RL correspondent Claire Bigg based on Radio Free Afghanistan reports
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Afghan Cabinet Nominees At A Glance
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty January 9, 2010
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has chosen 16 new ministerial candidates to replace ministers rejected by parliament last week, proposing little-known technocrats and snubbing former guerrillas and their allies.
There are three women on the list, which must be approved by parliament, a record number after years in which the only female minister held the Women's Affairs portfolio.
The overall selection was nonetheless greeted with skepticism by parliamentarians who said many of the candidates appeared to be hasty last-minute selections not qualified for their posts. Here are facts about some of the new nominees:
Zalmay Rasul (Foreign Minister)
Rasul is Karzai's national security adviser and served as minister of Civil Aviation and Tourism shortly after the overthrow of the Taliban by U.S.-backed Afghan forces.
In his 60s, he qualified as a medical doctor in Paris and has worked there as well as in Rome and Saudi Arabia. As well as Dari and Pashto, he speaks English, French, and Arabic.
Abdul Hadi Arghandiwal (Economy Minister)
Arghandiwal briefly served as finance minister in pre-Taliban Afghanistan. He is a leader of the breakaway, relatively moderate Islamic Party of Afghanistan but was once an ally of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a Soviet-era commander whose Hezb-i Islami group is one of the main allies of the Taliban in the current insurgency.
When elected as chairman of Islamic Party in 2008, Arghandiwal announced his party would work to bring security in the country by negotiating with all armed opposition groups, and called for the removal of the names of Taliban members from terrorist lists as a precondition to beginning peace talks.
Suraya Dalil (Public Health Minister)
Dalil has a master's degree in public health from Harvard. She stayed in Afghanistan for much of the 1990s, despite civil war, graduating from the Kabul Medical Institute in 1992.
Her family fled across the border into Pakistan when the Taliban came to power, but Dalil returned frequently to train midwives and doctors, and she returned to live in Kabul in 2002.
She has also worked for Medicins Sans Frontieres and UN children's agency UNICEF in Kabul and Somalia.
Zarar Ahmad Muqbel (Counternarcotics Minister)
Muqbel is a former interior minister under Karzai. He was offered the post of minister for refugees in a 2008 reshuffle but did not show up for his confirmation hearings and later said that he did not want the job.
He was a senior figure in the Northern Alliance, the powerful grouping of largely Tajik anti-Soviet and anti-Taliban fighters led by Ahmad Shah Mas'ud until his assassination in 2001.
Muqbel was also head of Karzai's presidential reelection campaign in northern Parwan Province.
Arsala Jamal (Borders And Tribes Minister)
Jamal, born in 1966 in eastern Paktika, is a former governor of neighboring Khost Province, one of the areas where Taliban influence is strongest. He resigned to work on Karzai's presidential campaign.
He has an economics degree and most of his work experience before entering politics was in development, including as chief program coordinator for water and sanitation at the ministry of rural reconstruction.
-- Reuters
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Swedish diplomat to take top U.N. post in Afghanistan, Holbrooke says
Foreign Policy By Josh Rogin 01/08/2010
Swedish diplomat Staffan di Mistura has been offered the job as the top U.N. official in Afghanistan, replacing the recently departed Kai Eide, according to Richard Holbrooke.
Holbrooke, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, told The Cable in a brief interview Friday that di Mistura had called him to consult with him before accepting the offer.
"I had a very good talk with him, quite a long talk, we went over every aspect of the relationship," Holbrooke said. "He wanted to discuss how he could relate to us ... I assured him that the U.S. government and the U.S. Embassy look forward to working with him."
Farhan Haq, a spokesman for the United Nations, said that no official appointment had been made and that until there was an announcement, nothing was certain.
But Holbrooke seemed confident that di Mistura would soon be named to the post, and said he is "very pleased" with the selection. "Di Mistura has the unanimous support of the U.S. government," said Holbrooke.
From 2007 to 2009, di Mistura was the U.N.'s special representative in Iraq. He left Iraq last July to become deputy executive director of the World Food Programme.
Holbrooke said that during his time in Iraq, di Mistura earned the respect of leading U.S. national security officials including National Security Advisor Jim Jones and Central Command head Gen. David Petraeus. Di Mistura also has experience working with Karl Eikenberry, the current U.S. ambassador in Kabul, Holbrooke remembered.
Di Mistura has served in Afghanistan before, as the director of fundraising and external relations for the U.N.'s office in Afghanistan from 1988 to 1991. He has also worked for the organization in Sudan, Ethiopia, Vietnam, Sarajevo, and several other places, in addition to Iraq. (Interestingly, one of Di Misura's deputies in Iraq was Siddharth Chatterjee, who happens to be U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's son-in-law.)
Di Mistura would face close scrutiny of his ability to work with both U.S. officials in Kabul and Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Eide, who was seen as too close to Karzai, left the post after a bitter feud with his former deputy, American diplomat Peter Galbraith. Galbraith was fired at Eide's behest after he accused Eide publicly of ignoring widespread election fraud perpetrated by Karzai.
The New York Times noted in an editorial last week that Ban was also considering Jean-Marie Guéhenno of France and Ian Martin of Britain for the Kabul mission.
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CIA Chief Defends Agency after Afghan Attack
January 9, 2010 VOA News
The head of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency is defending his organization from charges that agency negligence led to the deaths of seven CIA officers in a suicide attack last month in Afghanistan.
In an opinion piece published in The Washington Post Saturday, Leon Panetta says, like soldiers, CIA agents must take risks to confront a "vicious foe," sometimes "at a very high price."
He says the operatives took precautions, noting that the attacker was stopped away from other intelligence personnel and was about to be searched when he set off the explosive.
U.S. media have quoted intelligence officials who said the bomber was a Jordanian doctor and an al-Qaida double agent.
Panetta says, "The CIA cannot speak publicly about its major victories," but he says these victories are the reason "the extremists hit back."
He says the organization will honor the dead agents by continuing its "aggressive counterterrorism operations."
Friday, Jordan's foreign minister, Nasser Judeh, said his country's presence in Afghanistan will be enhanced and increased to combat terrorism and assist in the humanitarian effort.
Judeh met with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Washington Friday, and said Jordan is part of a network of countries trying to help Afghanistan fight terrorism. Judeh said his government's presence in the South Asian country is also aimed at defending Jordanians from a growing terror threat.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the December 30 attack on the U.S. base.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP.
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'CIA bomber' video indicates Taliban's reach
By M Ilyas Khan BBC News, Islamabad Saturday, 9 January 2010
The Jordanian "double agent" who killed himself and seven American Central Intelligence Agency officials in Afghanistan's Khost province last month must have been very sure of the success of his mission.
"This… attack will be the first of revenge operations against the Americans and their drone teams outside the Pakistani border, after they killed the Amir [chief] of Tehrik Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Baitullah Mehsud, may God's beneficence be upon him," he apparently said in a video broadcast released on Saturday.
The video shows the purported Jordanian suicide bomber sitting next to Baitullah Mehsud's successor and the new Pakistani Taliban, or TTP, chief, Hakimullah Mehsud, and reading from written text.
"We [the Jordanian himself and the Taliban, whom he describes as Mujahideen or the holy warriors] arranged together this attack to let the Americans understand that our belief in Allah… cannot be exchanged for all the wealth in the world," he says.
It would appear that he had already set the trap for the CIA agents at the time he made the video.
But is this really the man who carried out the 30 December bombing of Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost, which is believed to be the nerve-centre of suspected US drone strikes into Pakistani territory?
The authenticity of the video is not yet established, neither is the identity of the man in the video - although the father of the accused Jordanian has said that the man who appears on the video is definitely his son.
The Americans say the Jordanian who killed the CIA officials in Khost was named Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi.
But the man in the video introduces himself as Dr Abu Dujana al-Khorasani.
He also does not specify as to where "outside the Pakistani borders" he is going to carry out his revenge attack.
Some observers even suspect the video may have been doctored by the Pakistani Taliban - who are believed to have released it - to show their leader at the side of the bomber who greatly embarrassed both the American and Jordanian intelligence services.
Training camps
The Pakistani Taliban has claimed responsibility for the Khost attack, alongside similar claims by the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda.
All of them said that the attack was planned to avenge the 6 August 2009 killing of Baitullah Mehsud in a drone strike.
A Pakistani Taliban leader, Qari Hussain, who is known to run training camps for suicide bombers in Pakistan's Waziristan tribal region, near the border with Afghanistan, had in an audio message last week promised that they would soon release a video of the Khost bomber.
If the video is found to be authentic, then it apparently shows the level and the extent of collaboration between the al-Qaeda core, the Afghan Taliban and their Pakistani counterparts.
This is not to say that there has ever been any real divergence of views over ideology, tactics or strategy among these three entities.
Analysts say that the Taliban movement in Pakistan is essentially an offshoot of the so-called Haqqani network, which is an Afghanistan-focused organisation with close links to the al-Qaeda core and sanctuaries in Pakistan.
The network has deep reach inside Afghanistan and is believed to be behind several high-profile attacks in eastern and south-central Afghanistan, including Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan.
'Holy warriors'
An Afghan war veteran from the days of Soviet invasion, Jalaluddin Haqqani, is said to have carved out the Taliban sanctuaries in Waziristan through his close links with the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI.
Haqqani is now believed to be an ailing man, and the leadership of the network has passed into the hands of his son, Sirajuddin Haqqani.
The Haqqanis hail from Khost region, and have been based in the nearby Pakistani tribal region of North Waziristan since the Soviet invasion in 1979.
In the post-9/11 period, the Haqqanis have organised Afghan resistance from three distinct bases in Pakistan's North and South Waziristan region.
The fighters in North Waziristan are led by Hafiz Gul Bahadur, those in the western region of South Waziristan are led by Maulvi Nazir, while those in eastern parts of South Waziristan are led by Hakimullah Mehsud.
Over the years, the groups in North Waziristan and in the west of South Waziristan have struck peace deals with the Pakistani forces and have focused on Afghanistan.
The group led by Hakimullah Mehsud has, meanwhile, trained its guns on Pakistan.
The strategy is in keeping with al-Qaeda's view that both Pakistani and Afghan governments are siding with the "infidels" and deserve the wrath of the holy warriors.
If found authentic, the video released on Saturday would show that any distinction between the militants of Afghanistan and Pakistan has no value beyond academic interest.
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Video links Pakistan Taliban to deadly CIA bombing
By Deb Riechmann, Associated Press Writers – Sat Jan 9, 3:39 pm ET
KABUL – In a video broadcast after his death, the Jordanian suicide bomber who killed seven CIA employees sits cross-legged on the floor next to the new chief of the Pakistani Taliban, confirming the group was behind the brazen attack in eastern Afghanistan.
Yet multiple insurgent groups have claimed responsibility for the bombing, and a senior Pakistani militant told The Associated Press that al-Qaida and Afghan Taliban fighters also were involved in one of the worst attacks in the U.S. intelligence agency's history.
The suicide attack inside the CIA base could prompt the U.S. to further pressure the government of Pakistan to crack down on militants who operate on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border. U.S. missile strikes against targets on the Pakistan side already are on the rise.
Seven CIA employees and a Jordanian intelligence officer were killed Dec. 30 when the suicide bomber detonated his cache of explosives at Camp Chapman, a tightly secured CIA base in Khost province, a dangerous region southeast of the Afghan capital Kabul.
The CIA had cultivated the bomber — a Jordanian doctor identified as Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi — in hopes of obtaining information about al-Qaida's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahri.
Defending his agents, CIA Director Leon Panetta said the bomber was about to be searched before the blast occurred.
"This was not a question of trusting a potential intelligence asset, even one who had provided information that we could verify independently. It is never that simple, and no one ignored the hazards," Panetta wrote in a Washington Post op-ed piece posted online Saturday. "The individual was about to be searched by our security officers — a distance away from other intelligence personnel — when he set off his explosives."
Al-Balawi turned out to be a double-agent — perhaps even a triple-agent. In his 1 1/2 minute video, the bomber said he attacked the CIA to avenge the death of Baitullah Mehsud, the longtime leader of the Pakistani Taliban who was killed in August in a CIA missile strike.
"This jihadi attack will be the first revenge operation against the Americans and their drone teams outside the Pakistan border," the bomber said on the video broadcast Saturday. Al-Balawi — wearing an Afghan hat and camouflaged jacket — said the Pakistani Taliban, now under the leadership of its new chief Hakimullah Mehsud, would fight until they achieve victory.
"We will never forget the blood of our emir Baitullah Mehsud," said al-Balawi. "We will always demand revenge for him inside America and outside."
Statements by Afghan Taliban and al-Qaida leaders since the attack have confused efforts to figure out which group's fingerprints were on the blast, which struck a blow to the CIA's field expertise in Afghanistan.
A senior militant with the Pakistani Taliban told AP the suicide bomber received training from Qari Hussain, a leading commander of the Pakistani Taliban believed to have run suicide bombing camps. The militant, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of security reasons, said al-Qaida and the Haqqani network, a highly independent Afghan Taliban faction, also were involved.
Hussain's Lashkar-e-Janghvi group, a violent anti-Shiite Muslim organization, is believed to provide a reservoir of suicide bombers and has been linked to some of the more spectacular bombings in Pakistan and the death of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
Arsala Rahmani — a former minister in the Taliban government that was topped in the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — said the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban and al-Qaida often work in unison against Western forces.
"Most of the time, the Afghan Taliban, Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaida ... they are fighting together," said Rahmani.
A senior NATO intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to release the information, said all insurgent groups have subordinated themselves to the senior Afghan Taliban leadership, believed to be based in Quetta, Pakistan.
After the attack, al-Qaida's No. 3, Sheikh Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, issued a statement also saying the CIA was targeted to avenge the death of Baitullah Mehsud, as well as the killing of two al-Qaida figures — Abdullah Saeed al-Liby and Abu Saleh al-Somali.
Terrorist watchdog groups disagreed whether the message from al-Qaida claimed responsibility for the strike.
Mahmood Shah, a former security chief for Pakistan's tribal regions, said the Pakistani Taliban likely provided logistics to the bomber, but al-Qaida probably provided the recruit.
The CIA attack would be the deadliest strike on a U.S. target by the Pakistani Taliban under the 20-something Hakimullah Mehsud's watch. It is also unusual because the Pakistani Taliban rarely claim responsibility for strikes in Afghanistan.
A major Pakistani army offensive in its South Waziristan tribal region is believed to have forced many Pakistani Taliban leaders to go on the run to other parts of the lawless tribal belt along the Afghan border. Hakimullah Mehsud, for instance, is believed to be evading the Pakistani military offensive by hiding somewhere along the border dividing South and North Waziristan tribal regions.
Though the group initially appeared to be in disarray after the August missile strike and the offensive, it and related militant groups are suspected in a rising tide of violence in Pakistan. More than 600 people have died in suicide bombings and other attacks across the nuclear-armed country since October.
The release of the al-Balawi footage gives the U.S. proof that Pakistani elements are involved in attacks on its security apparatus in Afghanistan, observers said. Already since the CIA attack, the U.S. has accelerated its use of drone-fired missiles to take out militant targets in Pakistan's tribal regions.
At least six such strikes have hit North Waziristan, where the Haqqanis have strongholds, in recent days, including two missiles fired into a home Saturday in Data Khel that killed two people and wounded three, two Pakistani intelligence officials said.
____
Associated Press writers Maamoun Youssef in Cairo, Jamal Halaby in Amman, Jordan, Nahal Toosi and Kathy Gannon in Islamabad, and Rasool Dawar in Peshawar, Pakistan contributed to this report.
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UK 'paid Afghan warlord $2m to find Osama Bin Laden'
By Mike Rudin BBC, Conspiracy Files Saturday, 9 January 2010
The UK paid $2m (£1.3m) for the services of an Afghan warlord in an operation against Osama Bin Laden in 2001, it has been alleged.
BBC Two's Conspiracy Files heard claims from a US special forces commander that both the Americans and British paid substantial sums to Afghan warlords.
Dalton Fury added that the UK-backed warlord, Haji Zaman Gamsurek, went on to agree a ceasefire with al-Qaeda.
The Foreign Office has said it does not comment on intelligence matters.
Mr Fury told the BBC significant amounts of money were spent on procuring the services of Afghan warlords.
"General Hazrat Ali was paid $4 million to rent his leadership and his men. Haji Zaman Gamsurek supported by the United Kingdom was paid $2 million," said Mr Fury.
When the Taliban regime collapsed, Osama Bin Laden was cornered in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, but Mr Fury said that only a tenth of the promised Afghan troops arrived.
The Afghan warlord the UK backed went on to organise a ceasefire with al-Qaeda, he said.
The CIA's head of operations in Afghanistan at the time, Ambassador Hank Crumpton, alleged some Afghan warlords were later paid off by al-Qaeda to let Bin Laden escape from Tora Bora and into Pakistan.
"Sadly, with only a handful of American forces, we relied on some of our Afghan forces.
"Some of those in retrospect we know were influenced by al-Qaeda, some were paid off and Bin Laden was allowed to escape," Mr Crumpton said.
The CIA advised against trusting the two warlords because of possible links to Bin Laden.
Backup support 'denied'
After 9/11, the Bush administration had a new military strategy for Operation Enduring Freedom.
They wanted to rely on a small number of special forces on the ground and their massive air superiority. They insisted local fighters should front the war in Afghanistan.
The strategy had worked well. Afghanistan fell in just over two months.
With Bin Laden cornered, the objective of the war was in sight, but the then US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and commander of US forces Tommy Franks insisted on sticking to the strategy, despite repeated requests for US ground troops.
The special forces on the ground and the CIA called for backup but it was denied on several occasions.
Mr Fury also claims they were denied mines and mortars, and that some troops, planes and other assets were actually withdrawn from the country just when they needed them.
"Those things collectively I think, constrained us operationally to the point where we were almost destined to failure," he says.
Instead the US and the UK relied on and paid for the services of local warlords. And it seems the world's most wanted man slipped away into Pakistan.
"There's really not a day that goes by that I don't think about the missed opportunity at Tora Bora, but it really bothers me and I really think about that hard, about what it could have been," says Mr Fury.
"Would it have stopped terrorism? No, absolutely not. Would it have stopped al-Qaeda? Possibly."
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Is Osama Bin Laden dead or alive?
By Mike Rudin The Conspiracy Files BBC News Saturday, 9 January 2010
Osama Bin Laden died eight years ago during the battle for Tora Bora in Afghanistan, either from a US bomb or from a serious kidney disease.
Or so the conspiracy theory goes.
The theory that has developed on the web since 9/11 is that US intelligence services are manufacturing the Bin Laden statements to create an evil bogeyman, to justify the so-called war on terror in Afghanistan, Iraq and back at home.
So is the world's most wanted man still alive?
For a decade, Osama bin Laden has managed to evade the world's superpower and the biggest manhunt in history.
Bruce Riedel, who chaired President Barack Obama's Afghanistan/Pakistan policy review, and who has seen the intelligence on Bin Laden, says the trail has not so much gone cold as "frozen over".
"We don't have a clue where he is," he says.
In the absence of any concrete intelligence, Bin Laden has become shrouded in myth and rumour.
'Certainly fake'
Numerous audio and video statements purporting to be from Bin Laden have been released, but their authenticity has been continually questioned.
The veracity of all of the videos is questioned by David Ray Griffin, a former theology professor and member of the 9/11 Truth Movement, which also questions mainstream accounts of the attack on the World Trade Centre.
"None of them can be proven to be authentic," he says. "At least three of them can be shown to be almost certainly fake.
"And if somebody is faking Bin Laden videos, then that leads to the suspicion that all the videos and audio tapes have been faked."
His first example is a video released by the US Department of Defense in December 2001. In it, Bin Laden confesses to 9/11, yet Mr Griffin points out that al-Qaeda has only rarely admitted responsibility for terrorist attacks.
He also maintains that the Bin Laden figure looks very different to previous footage - fatter, with shorter fingers, and that he is even writing with the wrong hand.
Most of Bin Laden's statements are audio only. Only two that show Bin Laden speaking have been issued since 2001.
Griffin claims both are fakes.
He argues that a video released in October 2004 - just days before the presidential election - lacks the religious rhetoric contained in previous statements.
This video, he says, helped George W Bush secure a second term.
But it is the last video, released in September 2007, that has attracted most attention.
'Western conspiracy'
Mr Griffin calls it "Blackbeard: the terrorist tape". Bin Laden's trademark grey beard has been replaced with a neat, jet-black beard, and there are a number of frames in the video, where Bin Laden carries on speaking but the picture of him freezes.
One former CIA agent also questions its authenticity. Robert Baer dismisses the suggestion of a conspiracy by Western intelligence but thinks that al-Qaeda may have faked the video.
"[al-Qaeda has] an interest in manipulating it to look like current tapes," he says. "You can digitally manipulate voice to say anything. You can change months, years, you can tape vowels and syllables and put it into a recording and change it."
Andy Laws, a former military imaging analyst for the RAF, was asked by the BBC to forensically test an undisputed Bin Laden tape from 1998 against the 2001 so-called "confession tape" and the 2007 "blackbeard tape".
He says the fact that Bin Laden appears fatter in the 2001 tape is down to the editing process, when subtitles were added and the image was squashed. His conclusion is that all the videos are of the same person - Bin Laden.
Furthermore, Mr Laws says it is not realistic to think that the US military would fake such tapes.
"Technologically in this day and age, those kinds of things can be done, but not quietly," he says.
"There would be a number of people involved and word of it would have spread by now."
Bin Laden has issued around 40 statements since 9/11, and many include clear contemporaneous date references. Two recent statements released last year mentioned US President Barack Obama.
Mike Scheuer, the former CIA officer who set up and ran the agency's Bin Laden unit, thinks Bin Laden is still alive.
'Difficult reality'
"Whenever he speaks on audio tape, he always says something in there that's fairly current. Also, the US National Security Agency (NSA) and UK Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ) are very good at voice prints," he says.
Mr Scheuer concludes that if it was not Bin Laden's voice, these organisations would make sure governments were well aware that the tapes were fakes.
Another former CIA agent, Art Keller, is more damning:
"I think those conspiracy theories that he is dead are pretty much laughable," he says.
"It's easier to explain things away with a conspiracy than to face up to the difficult reality.
"In this case, the difficult reality is that we're trying to operate in possibly the worst area in the world and track someone who's very crafty and elusive and putting considerable effort to stay off our radar."
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NATO soldier killed in Afghanistan
KABUL, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- A soldier of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was killed in the militancy-ridden Afghanistan on Saturday, a press release of the alliance said.
"An ISAF service member was killed this afternoon in an IED (Improvised Explosive Devise) strike in southern Afghanistan," the press released added.
However, it did not say the exact place of the incident.
Kandahar, Helmand, Zabul and Uruzgan provinces in south Afghanistan commonly known as the hotbed of Taliban militants have been the scene of increasing insurgency over the past couple of years.
NATO-led forces casualties had been registered 512 in 2009, according to reports, while militancy is predicted to increase this year.
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Taliban militants kill 3 civilians in N Afghanistan
KUNDUZ, Afghanistan, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- Taliban militants killed three civilians on charges of spying for government and the NATO-led forces in Kunduz province, north of Afghanistan, provincial police chief Abdul Razaq Yaqubi said Saturday.
"The militants shot dead two civilians in Gur Tepa area and another in Chardara district on Friday on charges of spying for Afghan and international troops," Yaqubi told Xinhua.
However, Yaqubi added that the victims were ordinary people and had no links with the government.
Taliban militants who often target government interests have not made comment. A relatively peaceful province until early 2009, Kunduz has been the scene of spiraling militancy over the past several months.
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Roadside bomb kills 1, wounds 5 outside Afghan capital
KABUL, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- A roadside bomb struck the vehicle ofa politician in Paghman district, 20 km west of Afghanistan's capital Kabul on Saturday, killing one person and wounding five others.
The explosion targeted the vehicle of Mohammad Rafi Tahiri, a candidate for the provincial council of Wardak province, at 10:30 a.m. local time, killing one of Tahiri's bodyguards and injuring five others, but Tahiri escaped unhurt," a press release issued by the interior ministry said.
In the press release, the interior ministry blamed the attack on "the enemies of peace", a term used against Taliban militants.
A similar attack in the same district last month against a parliamentarian left six bodyguards dead.
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White House Aides Said to Chafe at Slow Pace of Afghan Surge
New York Times By ELISABETH BUMILLER and HELENE COOPER January 8, 2010
WASHINGTON - Senior White House advisers are frustrated by what they say is the Pentagon's slow pace in deploying 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan and its inability to live up to an initial promise to have all of the forces in the country by next summer, senior administration officials said Friday.
Tensions over the deployment schedule have been growing in recent weeks between senior White House officials — among them Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Gen. James L. Jones, the national security adviser, and Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff — and top commanders, including Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the senior commander in Afghanistan.
A rapid deployment is central to President Obama's strategy, to have a jolt of American forces pound the Taliban enough for Afghan security forces to take over the fight. Administration officials said that part of the White House frustration stemmed from the view that the longer the American military presence in Afghanistan continued, the more of a political liability it would become for Mr. Obama. But beyond the politics, the speeded up deployment — which Mr. Obama paired with a promise to begin troop withdrawals by July 2011 — is part of Mr. Obama's so-called “bell curve” Afghanistan strategy, whereby American troops would increase their force in Afghanistan and step up attacks meant to quickly take out insurgents.
One administration official said that the White House believed that top Pentagon and military officials misled them by promising to deploy the 30,000 additional troops by the summer. General McChrystal and some of his top aides have privately expressed anger at that accusation, saying that they are being held responsible for a pace of deployments they never thought was realistic, the official said.
The officials declined to be identified because they were discussing internal administration disagreements.
Other White House officials said to be frustrated by the deployment pace include Thomas E. Donilon, the deputy national security adviser, and Denis R. McDonough, the national security chief of staff. “Gates and Mullen made a clear statement that this would be achieved by summer's end,” a senior administration official said, referring to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Mr. McDonough denied that there was any frustration with the Pentagon. “We have every confidence that our colleagues in the military are doing their absolute best to meet the commitment and the plans that the president laid out,” he said Friday night.
On Dec. 1, when President Obama announced the deployment of the 30,000 additional troops, a senior administration official told reporters that the forces were part of a short-term, high-intensity effort to regain the initiative from the Taliban and that they would all be in place by May. Within days, White House and Pentagon officials had amended that to say that the bulk of the forces would be in place by the summer, but that it would take a few months after that to get all the troops in place.
Last month in Kabul, Lt. Gen. David M. Rodriguez, the deputy commander of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, did not back away from that schedule, but he told reporters of the difficulties he faced even in getting all the forces in by fall. He said that bad weather, limited capacity to send supplies by air and attacks on ground convoys carrying equipment for troops from Pakistan and other countries presented substantial hurdles.
“There's a lot of risks in here, but we're going to try to get them in as fast as we can,” he said at the time. “There's a lot of things that have to line up perfectly.”
On a visit to Afghanistan last month, Admiral Mullen pressed military logisticians on how they would be able to meet the schedule. But even Admiral Mullen, who said he was “reasonably confident” that the logistics would work out, acknowledged the tall order before the military, saying, “I want a plan B because life doesn't always work out.”
Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, said Friday that the military was moving as rapidly as it could and that reports of tension with the White House amounted to a “fabricated and contrived controversy.” Mr. Morrell said that “the preponderance of the forces will be there by the middle of the summer and we are moving heaven and earth to get all of them there by the end of the summer.” He added that the Pentagon anticipated “that 92 percent of them will be there by the end of August and we hope to even improve upon that.”
But military officials acknowledged that they were taken aback by the president's initial insistence that the troops be in place within six months. Last fall, military officials repeatedly said that it would take as long as a year to 18 months for all the troops to be in place.
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.
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British troops set to hand frontline Afghanistan role to US
Times, UK By Jerome Starkey and James Harding in Kabul 01/08/2010
Three and a half years after British troops first arrived in Helmand the towns that line its infamous “green zone” have become household names — for all the wrong reasons.
On June 11, 2006, the town of Sangin claimed its first British life when Captain Jim Philippson was shot trying to rescue an injured comrade. Two months later Musa Qala claimed its first victims when a rocketpropelled grenade destroyed an armoured car. By September Kajaki was on the map as well: Lance Corporal Mark Wright was killed in an unmarked minefield.
All three towns, and the poppy fields around them, have become synonymous with British casualties. The bulk of Britain's 243 dead and the hundreds more who have suffered life-changing injuries fought in the upper reaches of the Helmand valley.
It is these killing fields that British troops may be on the verge of leaving.
As thousands of Americans pour into southern Afghanistan as part of President Obama's surge, defence chiefs are considering plans to cede control, such as it is, to US Marines so that the British can concentrate on securing the centre of the war-torn province.
Most of Helmand's population lives in the five districts around Lashkar Gah. This is the area British troops were supposed to focus on when they first deployed to Helmand in 2006, but they abandoned the plan under pressure from President Karzai, who was eager to see his Government's flag flying in towns as far apart as Now Zad and Garmsir. Since then, the violence has increased and government control all but evaporated outside the embattled district centres.
Under the new counter-insurgency strategy of the US General Stanley McChrystal, Nato troops are shifting their focus from fighting the insurgents back towards protecting the population.
“There is now a mismatch between the proportion of Nato forces, between the US and the UK, in Helmand, and the proportion of the population that they are trying to protect,” said William Hague, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, who was briefed on the plans during a two-day visit to Afghanistan. “The British [have] one third of the forces but they [are] trying to protect 70 per cent of the population.”
Military officials said British commanders were prepared to leave Kajaki, home to a massive hydroelectric power station to which they brought a turbine in a memorable and daring operation in 2008; and Musa Qala, which was the scene of a botched peace deal in 2006. But they are uncomfortable leaving Sangin because of the district's symbolic importance. The area around Sangin's district centre, at the junction of two rivers in the deadly green zone, has exacted the highest toll of British Forces. Senior military officers are also concerned that handing responsibility for Sangin to the Americans would echo the British withdrawal from Basra, which precipitated a massive US and Iraqi operation to clear the city of insurgents, the Charge of the Knights — an operation the British were almost entirely frozen out of.
Cabinet ministers have been briefed about the Helmand plans and a decision is expected within the next six weeks.
At present there is a company protecting the dam at Kajaki and a battlegroup in and around Musa Qala. If both districts were handed over to the Americans it would free approximately 1,100 troops for the centre of the province.
The timetable for the redeployment will depend on the availability of thousands of US Marines, deploying as part of Mr Obama's 30,000-strong surge, as well as the Afghan forces who would accompany them. But if it is approved British Forces could leave for the last time when the current six-month deployment starts to leave this spring.
That would mean them returning to the areas first envisioned more than four years ago, when conventional forces went into southern Afghanistan for the first time since the doomed Anglo-Afghan wars of the 1840s.
“The plan was basically very simple,” said Minna Jarvenpaa, a Finnish consultant, who was one of its architects. “The idea was you secure Lashkar Gah and Gereshk and the road in between them and you create a general area of security there.”
This plan was agreed by the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development. But within weeks of taking over from a handful of Americans who had been hunting Osama bin Laden, Britain's 16 Air Assault Brigade was pinned down in positions strung out along the length of the province.
Under pressure from Kabul and the provincial governor, British troops found themselves protecting government outposts from swarms of Taleban insurgents. The first mission into Sangin was to rescue government officials besieged by the insurgents.
“The whole idea is that you focus on the urban centres and you create the space for improving governance,” Ms Jarvenpaa said.
“We were saying it back then as well. The only way for this to work is for the Afghan Government to be in the lead and at the moment there isn't much of an Afghan Government, so you have to incubate it.
“Sangin was meant to be a 72-hour operation. That has been extended until now. It was like a honeypot. By putting all those troops in northern Helmand it drew the Taleban from all around — and it created more Taleban, because every cousin and uncle you killed, more people felt aggrieved. The Taleban just exploded.”
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Pakistan's support vital to Afghan solution: Miliband
January 9, 2010
(AFP) – ISLAMABAD — Foreign Secretary David Miliband said on Saturday that stability and security in war-torn Afghanistan depended on Pakistan and its own battle with Taliban militants.
Miliband made the comments during a visit to the Pakistani capital Islamabad for talks with the government about security and cooperation on Afghanistan, ahead of a January 28 summit in London on Afghanistan's peace and security.
"Pakistan is a vital partner in finding solutions and progress in Afghanistan," Miliband told a joint press conference after holding talks with Pakistani counterpart Shah Mehmood Qureshi.
"Stability, security, prosperity in Afghanistan depend in some part on stability, security and prosperity in Pakistan," he said.
"The London conference on Afghanistan will look at Afghanistan's security needs, it will look at its development and government's needs and it will look at the regional contribution."
Miliband said that the international community should give Islamabad more effective support in tackling the Taliban insurgency in the country's northwestern tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.
"In terms of commitment of the international community, I think we can always do better and we should always be seeking to do better in respecting Pakistan's independence and vitality but also recognising its growing needs," he said.
"The people and the government and security forces of Pakistan I think recognise the shared threat that exists internally and need to unite behind it and that has given significant comfort to the international community," he added.
More than 2,900 people have been killed in Pakistan since July 2007 in attacks by insurgents fighting to impose Islamic Sharia and who also oppose Islamabad's alliance with the United States in the eight-year war against the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan.
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In Pakistan, McCain and Lieberman offer reassurance about relations with U.S.
Washington Post By Pamela Constable Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, January 9, 2010
ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN - Two leading U.S. senators attempted Friday to depict U.S.-Pakistani relations as a crucial, permanent friendship, but their brief visit to the Pakistani capital highlighted tensions between the anti-terrorist allies, especially a sharp disagreement over strikes by unmanned aircraft against suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda targets.
"Friends don't always agree on every issue," Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said at a news conference in Islamabad, adding that the United States will "try to find common ground" with Pakistani leaders on the drone issue but that "we have to do everything we feel is necessary to protect Americans from the attacks of terrorists who may be based here."
On Thursday, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari asked McCain and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), who traveled here with two other senators, to seek a halt to the drone attacks. He said they are undermining domestic support for the war against Islamist militants and asked that the United States give Pakistan the technology to carry out such strikes on its own.
Washington has stepped up its use of the controversial strikes near the Afghan border since the suicide bombing at a U.S. base in eastern Afghanistan on Dec. 30 that killed seven CIA officers and contractors.
In the latest raid Friday, suspected U.S. missiles killed four people and injured three in the North Waziristan tribal area, the sixth attack in the region in a little more than a week, the Associated Press reported. Two Pakistani intelligence officials said a pair of missiles struck a house and a vehicle in a village near the town of Miran Shah. They did not identify the victims.
The drones sometimes kill civilians as well as the targeted militants, but they are considered a highly effective weapon against the elusive Islamist guerrillas in a rugged area that is legally off limits to U.S. ground forces. Pakistani army and civilian leaders privately accept the drone attacks but face strong opposition from the public. ad_icon
Lieberman stressed the importance of bilateral cooperation against Islamist extremism and tried to reassure Pakistanis that the United States will not abandon them as it did after Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989. He said the two countries are "bound together forever" by common values and a "shared determination to defeat the evil of terrorism and extremism."
McCain also played down the disagreements as "respectful differences among friends" and said that "all of us are aware that we cannot succeed in Afghanistan unless we succeed in Pakistan." He was referring to the new U.S. plan for a surge in troops and civilian experts over the next 18 months, which the Obama administration hopes can turn around the flagging war against Afghan Taliban forces.
But the senator from Arizona took a tough stance on the drone issue, brushing aside a journalist who asked whether he understood that fatal drone attacks soured Pakistani opinions of the United States. McCain said some "elements" operating in Pakistan would like to "go to Afghanistan and kill Americans" and "reestablish Afghanistan as a base for attacks on the United States and our allies. That's what I understand."
Several other recent sources of friction between the two countries arose during the visit, highlighting the uneasy nature of their partnership. The issues included Pakistani resentment of conditions on a $7 billion aid package that the United States has pledged over the next five years.
Lieberman said that he understood why some Pakistanis are "troubled" by the reporting requirements on the aid but that they include "nothing meant to be offensive or mistrustful." He described the aid package, known as the Kerry-Lugar bill, as "a very costly expression," at a difficult economic time, of the long-term U.S. commitment to the relationship with Pakistan.
Lieberman and McCain were accompanied by Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and John Thune (R-S.D). The group visited Afghanistan this week and left Pakistan late Friday.
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Traders complain traditional handicrafts being swamped by cheap competitors
Institute for War & Peace Reporting By Mohammad Shafi Ferozi in Herat 06-Jan-10
Abdol Satar, a 28-year-old carpet seller, huddles in his shop, wrapped in a blanket against the bitter cold as he waits for customers.
"Come on, brother," he calls out to everyone who passes his shop in the city of Herat in western Afghanistan. "I have all kinds of top-quality carpets."
But not many people take him up on the offer.
"Until three years ago, when there were fewer imports of foreign carpets and poor-quality raw materials, I would sell around 50 carpets in a day," Abdol Satar told IWPR.
In those days, he says, his shop was so busy that he never had a chance to sit down and have lunch until four in the afternoon. These days, he is lucky if he sells ten or 15 carpets in a month.
Weavers and traders say that the market in Afghan carpets, which are well-regarded for their designs and natural materials such as silk, wool and plant dyes, is under threat from cheaper, machine-made imports from Turkey and Iran.
Hand-woven rugs once provided one of Afghanistan's major exports. But the trade declined during the conflicts of the 1980s and 1990s, with many weavers shifting their businesses to Pakistan after settling there as refugees.
Some 80 per cent of the weavers are women, making the trade a vital source of income for many families.
Among them is Zarmina, 38, who has spent almost half her life weaving carpets. She complains there are no longer customers for the items she produces. Even though she is the main breadwinner for a family of seven, she is considering giving up weaving.
"In the past, the buyers would pay me in advance for still uncompleted carpets. Today, I take my carpets to the market many times a week, but they will only buy at prices that don't even cover my outlay," she said.
"I am so fed up that I may leave the industry if I can find another job, because I can't earn enough to cover my family's costs through carpet weaving."
The traders who sell the raw materials for rug-making are unhappy with the collapse in the trade. One such shopkeeper, Mohammad Yunus, says most weavers buy their materials from him on credit and pay him only after they have sold their carpets.
The weak state of the market means his repayments are being delayed.
"When the weavers used to borrow the materials from me, their carpets would sell quicker and at better prices [than now], and they'd pay me back on time,” he said. “However, the weavers haven't been making good sales recently, so they've been unable to pay me for months. When I ask them for my money, they complain that their carpets haven't sold. And I am making a loss. I know I am about to go bankrupt.”
Roughly three out of every five carpets made in Afghanistan are exported.
On the domestic market, imported machine-made rugs are sidelining the more expensive Afghan carpets. And the Afghan rug industry faces its own quality issues because of the increasing use of inferior materials, which again come in from abroad.
Khalil Ahmad Yarmand, deputy head of the chamber of commerce in Herat, says it is up to Afghanistan's quality standards agency to monitor the quality of such imports. But the only office is far away in the capital Kabul.
"To curb imports of low-quality products and fake goods, we have asked the commerce and finance ministries several times to set up standards offices in provinces that have borders and trade routes, but unfortunately these requests have been ignored," said Yarmand.
Torialai Ghawsi, deputy head of the carpet industry association in Herat, says that despite the complaints made by weavers and sellers, sales are actually improving.
"Carpet exports from Herat province were more than 250,000 square metres last year, while the figure for this year [2009] was 450,000 square meters," he said.
Herat carpets went to Germany, the United States, Belgium, India and Tajikistan, among other countries, he said.
At the same time, he said, government could be doing more to promote the rug trade.
“Our policymakers are still neglecting the expansion of the industry," he said.
Yarmand is among those who believe a dose of protectionism could help sustain Afghan carpet makers, through the imposition of high import tariffs on items that can be produced domestically.
It is a view shared by economist Mohammad Ibrahim Foruzesh, who says the absence of customs controls and quality standards encourages traders to bring low-grade, cheap goods.
"If high taxes are imposed on imports of Iranian and Turkish carpets, they will be priced higher than Afghan carpets," he said. "People will then go back to hand-made Afghan carpets again and traders will refrain from importing foreign ones."
As well as protectionist measures on the border, Foruzesh wants the agriculture and commerce ministries to cooperate to support traditional handicrafts and prevent them from dying out.
Mohammad Shafi Ferozi is an IWPR-trained journalist in Herat.
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