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Hillary Clinton to visit Afghanistan next week for conference
By the CNN Wire StaffJuly 17, 2010
Washington (CNN) -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is heading to Afghanistan on Saturday on a mission that will take her to a major international conference in Kabul focusing on the problems and the future of the war-torn nation.
Roadside bombs kill 5 NATO troops in Afghanistan
By Kay Johnson, Associated Press Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan – Five NATO troops died in roadside bombs in Afghanistan, the alliance said Saturday, as international forces announced that they had foiled a terrorist attack on an upcoming conference in Kabul to be attended by leaders from more than 60 nations.
Clash leaves 4 Taliban fighters dead in northern Afghan province
KUNDUZ, Afghanistan, July 17 (Xinhua) -- Four Taliban militants were killed on Saturday as troops launched a cleanup operation in Dand-e-Ghori district of Baghlan province in north Afghanistan, spokesman for police in the province said.
Ethnic divide threatens in Afghanistan
Memories of a devastating civil war along ethnic lines have been heightened and fears raised by President Hamid Karzai's bid to reach out to the largely Pashtun Taliban.
Los Angeles Times By Laura King July 17, 2010
Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan - The sunbaked, shell-pocked ruins of west Kabul stand as silent testament to what happened the last time Afghanistan splintered along ethnic lines.
Troops detain Taliban fighter planning to target Kabul
KABUL, July 17 (Xinhua) -- Afghan and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) captured a Taliban militant who was planning to attack Afghan capital Kabul, ahead of international conference set for July in Kabul, ISAF said in a press release on Saturday.
Afghanistan condemns Iran mosque bombing
July 17, 2010 AFP
Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai today condemned a twin suicide bombing which killed 27 people in neighbouring Iran and called for a "regional fight against terrorism". Sunni militant group Jundallah has said it carried out the bombings which targeted members of the elite Revolutionary Guard
Army reports 32 suicides in June, highest number since early 2009
By Greg Jaffe Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, July 17, 2010
The U.S. Army suffered 32 suicides in June, the highest number for a single month since January 2009, when the suicide rate in the Army began to spike.
Most in south Afghanistan believe NATO operations are bad for locals
Canada.com By Andrew Duffy, Postmedia News July 17, 2010
OTTAWA - An unusual new survey in southern Afghanistan suggests NATO's eight-year campaign to win hearts and minds in the embattled region is in serious trouble.
White House orders review of Afghan reconstruction reviewers
The Washington Post By Karen DeYoung July 16, 2010
The White House announced Thursday afternoon that it had requested a panel of inspectors general across the government "review" the operations of the congressionally-mandated Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction.
Poor grades to watchdog for Afghan reconstruction
The Associated Press By LARRY MARGASAK 17/07/2010
WASHINGTON - The inspector general investigating fraud, waste and abuse in the $51 billion Afghanistan reconstruction program has received a failing grade from his peers.
Taliban's Mullah Omar orders attacks on women, U.S. says
By Dion Nissenbaum and Saeed Shah | McClatchy Newspapers
ARGHANDAB, Afghanistan — U.S. intelligence officials say they have intercepted new orders from the Taliban's spiritual leader that call on insurgents to target women and Afghan civilians helping American-led forces.
Secretary of state to press Afghanistan on security, corruption as concerns about war deepen
The Canadian Press By Matthew Lee 17/07/2010
WASHINGTON - Amid growing worries about the war in Afghanistan, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was travelling to South Asia on Saturday on a mission aimed at refining the goals of the nearly 9-year-old conflict.
Taliban attacks in Afghanistan show growing sophistication
Canada.com By Dion Nissenbaum, McClatchy-Tribune July 15, 2010
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - The attack this week on a major Afghan police base in Kandahar that killed nine — including three American soldiers — was the best planned and most advanced that U.S. soldiers who fought it off have seen in the past year, U.S. military officials said Thursday.
People suspected of al Qaeda, Taliban links can appeal U.N. blacklist
By Mick B. Krever, CNN July 15, 2010
United Nations (CNN) -- The avenue of appeal is now open for people who believe they are unfairly on a U.N. Security Council blacklist of individuals with suspected connections to al Qaeda or the Taliban.
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Hillary Clinton to visit Afghanistan next week for conference
By the CNN Wire StaffJuly 17, 2010
Washington (CNN) -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is heading to Afghanistan on Saturday on a mission that will take her to a major international conference in Kabul focusing on the problems and the future of the war-torn nation.
The visit is part of a voyage through Asia that includes stops in South Korea and Vietnam. But it will begin with the Kabul conference on Tuesday, a gathering that will deal with economic development, governance, security and reconciliation across Afghanistan.
The Afghan government and the United Nations will be chairing the conference. Clinton, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, foreign ministers and top officials from more 70 countries and organizations will be attending the meeting, described as the first conference of its kind in Afghanistan.
It is the latest step in what Western and Afghan officials call the Kabul process -- the transition to more Afghan responsibility for running the nation. Earlier this year, two other high-profile meetings dealt with the issue -- an international conference in London, England, last January and a "peace jirga," a meeting of tribal and religious leaders in June.
"With its tremendous resources in terms of its people, minerals, water and agriculture, Afghanistan is poised to enter a period of great hope. International investment in developing these resources will lead to many benefits in the lives of ordinary Afghans," the conference website says of Tuesday's meeting.
"This international conference is all about how to enable greater Afghan involvement in the country's development, governance and security and how this will make a positive impact across the entire country," the site says.
Staffan de Mistura, Ban's special representative in Afghanistan, told the U.N. Security Council recently that the conference's main objective is to promote "public contract between the Afghan Government and the Afghan people" and social and economic improvements.
"It will give an opportunity for the international community to support Afghan-led priorities including fighting corruption, building up self-reliant Afghan national security forces, and undertaking reconciliation and reintegration activities to reach out to opposition and to encourage combatants to lay down their arms," de Mistura said in a news release.
Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, touched on the issues at the Kabul conference during an appearance on Wednesday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
One of the issues he focused on was reintegrating Taliban fighters into society. Holbrooke said the plan, which Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced in London, will be unveiled fully in Kabul next week.
"The Kabul conference is going to have several focuses, but the one I want to draw attention to is the reintegration program, which has finally been announced and which is now the money has been assembled, a good chunk of money, and
we all agree there's no final military solution to this war. There has to be a way to get how about fighters off
the battlefield, and this is the route.," Holbrooke said.
"if the reintegration program gets off the ground and if it's successful, it will have a huge effect."
Holbrooke also stressed the importance of dealing with the militants in neighboring Pakistan and improving the relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
"You cannot succeed in Afghanistan without Pakistan's involvement," said Holbrooke.
"We set out the goal of improving that relationship and in recent months there has been that first narrowing of the distance between Kabul and Islamabad."
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Roadside bombs kill 5 NATO troops in Afghanistan
By Kay Johnson, Associated Press Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan – Five NATO troops died in roadside bombs in Afghanistan, the alliance said Saturday, as international forces announced that they had foiled a terrorist attack on an upcoming conference in Kabul to be attended by leaders from more than 60 nations.
Security is being tightened across the capital for Tuesday's conference, which is attracting the heads of NATO, the United Nations and top diplomats, including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. In May, Taliban fighters had a gunbattle with security forces and militants launched a rocket that landed with a thud about 100 yards (meters) from the site of a national peace conference in the capital; three civilians, but no conference delegates, were wounded.
Acting on intelligence, a combined international and Afghan commando force captured a Taliban bomb-making expert Friday night in Kabul, NATO said.
Neither Afghan nor NATO officials would not identify the suspect, give details of the plot or say how advanced the planning was. But the Afghan Defense Ministry said several "enemies of the people" were killed in the raid and 26 suspected insurgents were arrested.
The ministry said a special Afghan army commando unit based with U.S. special forces outside Kabul carried out the raid in the southwestern district of Wasel Abad of Kabul.
Elsewhere, three international service members were killed by homemade bombs Saturday, including an American in eastern Afghanistan and a British soldier in the south, NATO and Britain's Defense Ministry said. A third service member died Saturday in the south, but NATO did not disclose the nationality or any details of the attacks.
Two others — a British marine and an American service member — died in an explosion Friday in the south, the alliance and the U.K. government said. Britain also said one of its airmen died in a traffic accident Friday.
In Kandahar, an Afghan policeman was shot and killed Saturday evening, said Mohammad Shah Farooqi, head of crime and investigation department of the province's police.
The deaths added to a summer of escalating violence as Afghan and coalition forces step up patrols in the Taliban-dominated south in a push to wrest control of the traditional insurgent stronghold. Last month was the deadliest of the nearly 9-year-old war for international troops, with 103 killed, including 60 Americans. So far in July, 54 international troops have died, 39 of them American.
Homemade bombs — many planted in roads by insurgents — are the leading cause of death to both troops and civilians.
To counter the threat, the U.S. is sending $3 billion worth of detection equipment and bomb-resistant vehicles to Afghanistan, the Defense Department said earlier this month. The equipment includes tethered surveillance blimps to give troops a bird's eye view of certain areas, plus unmanned surveillance planes and Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles.
Separately, NATO reported that Afghan and foreign troops found nearly 2 tons (1.8 metric tons) of processed heroin, 1,800 pounds (800 kilograms) of opium and 200 pounds (90 kilograms) of ammonium nitrate Friday that could have been used to make 25 roadside bombs in the southern province of Helmand.
The drugs had a street value in the United States of more than $38 million before taking into account the common practice of cutting them with other ingredients, which would exponentially increase the value, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.
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Clash leaves 4 Taliban fighters dead in northern Afghan province
KUNDUZ, Afghanistan, July 17 (Xinhua) -- Four Taliban militants were killed on Saturday as troops launched a cleanup operation in Dand-e-Ghori district of Baghlan province in north Afghanistan, spokesman for police in the province said.
"The operation involving NATO and Afghan forces and commenced early this morning and wrapped up in the afternoon during which four rebels were killed and five others sustained injuries," Ahmad Jawed Basharat told Xinhua.
He also said that the operation covered Asghari village 25 km away from provincial capital Pul-e-Khumri 280 km north of capital city Kabul.
There were no casualties on the troops, he added.
Taliban militants have yet to make comment.
Baghlan a relatively peaceful province until last year has been the scene of increasing Taliban-linked insurgency since January this year.
In a related development, in Lakan district of Afghanistan's eastern Khost province, some unknown armed men opened fire on a car of a local construction company on the same day Saturday wounding six persons, all the victims are Afghans, provincial police chief Abdul Hakim Ishaqzai said.
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Ethnic divide threatens in Afghanistan
Memories of a devastating civil war along ethnic lines have been heightened and fears raised by President Hamid Karzai's bid to reach out to the largely Pashtun Taliban.
Los Angeles Times By Laura King July 17, 2010
Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan - The sunbaked, shell-pocked ruins of west Kabul stand as silent testament to what happened the last time Afghanistan splintered along ethnic lines.
The country's disastrous civil war in the early 1990s — a conflict that killed at least 100,000 people and helped set the stage for the Taliban's rise to power — reduced whole swaths of the capital to rubble, leaving scars on the landscape that reconstruction efforts have yet to erase.
Memories linger too — stirred, these days, by steadily rising ethnic tensions amid President Hamid Karzai's bid to reach out to the Taliban.
Unconvinced of the United States' staying power in Afghanistan, Karzai is seeking a rapprochement with the Taliban movement, with the ultimate goal of drawing it into the political process. But his overtures have raised alarm among those who fear such a result could realign power along ethnic lines.
The Taliban movement is drawn almost solely from Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, the Pashtuns. And leaders of the country's other significant minorities — Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras — are worried they may be left out in the cold as Karzai moves to woo insurgents and consolidate his base of support among fellow Pashtuns.
"I think Karzai feels that his power is not 100% stable anymore, and for that reason, he needs to reach out to the armed opposition," said lawmaker Shukria Barakzai. "That seems to be the motivation."
It is a change in strategy for the Afghan leader who, last summer, sought reelection by trying to forge alliances across the ethnic spectrum. But massive election fraud tainted his victory, and in his weakened state, he has found himself unable to deliver on campaign promises.
Some of those allies are now distancing themselves — or breaking outright with the Afghan leader. This month, the influential Hazara politician Haji Mohammed Mukhaqiq, a onetime backer, delivered a blistering condemnation of Karzai at a rally, calling his presidency illegitimate.
Mukhaqiq's immediate ire was raised by Karzai's inability to push through the confirmation of two Hazara Cabinet nominees. But Hazaras, who were the target of communal massacres during the Taliban's reign, have for months listened with alarm to the president's increasingly conciliatory references to the Taliban as "disaffected brothers."
The Afghan leader has promised to seek talks only with insurgent figures who renounce violence, reject ties to groups such as Al Qaeda and pledge to respect the Afghan Constitution and its enshrinement of principles such as the rights of women.
But Western diplomats question whether those tenets are enforceable in the type of back-channel contacts that have been taking place for at least a year, and it is widely recognized that a Western troop drawdown will probably hinge on movement toward some kind of political settlement with the Taliban.
American influence over Karzai's actions has been weakened by a perception that the U.S.-led military effort is floundering, as exemplified by delays in a much-vaunted effort to reassert government authority in the key southern city of Kandahar, and the abrupt change in command of North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces.
Amid a growing sense of a power structure in flux, ethnic politics have moved to the fore. One pointed recent example was Karzai's ouster of intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh, who was well regarded by the West. Saleh, an ethnic Tajik, had voiced serious qualms about Karzai's courting of the Taliban with measures such as releases of jailed Taliban suspects, a plan that won the endorsement of a peace jirga, or assembly, convened last month.
Those prisoner releases, which have begun, horrified many in Afghanistan's security establishment, who believed that Karzai was granting the insurgents a major concession while getting nothing in return. Moreover, some of those who have walked out the prison gates, or are slated to do so soon, were captured at considerable risk to the lives of Afghan and coalition forces.
Another leading critic of Karzai's reconciliation strategy is Abdullah Abdullah, the former foreign minister who is now the informal leader of the opposition. Abdullah, the second-place vote-getter in August's polling, qualified for a runoff with Karzai, but quit the race in disgust, declaring there was no way the presidential balloting could be conducted fairly.
On Karzai's recent visits to Kandahar, his home province, the president's references to the Taliban had gone well beyond the fraternal, Abdullah said.
"It's not just the language he has used for months about 'disaffected brothers'; now he says, 'Talib-jan,' which is like calling them 'darling,'" said Abdullah, who is half-Pashtun but has a primarily Tajik political identity. "To me, it shows the lack of a sense of direction and vision."
Just as the Karzai-Abdullah election struggle had ethnic overtones, tensions may reemerge with the current campaign for parliamentary elections, which are to be held in September. This month, an oversight body ejected 31 candidates from the races because of ties to armed groups.
Some, like Pashtun lawmaker Daoud Sultanzoy, believe ethnic-based electioneering is a cynical ploy by power brokers eager to exploit divisions to claim a share of patronage spoils for themselves.
"Much of the time, ordinary Afghans from different groups, different tribes, can get along, because there is a sense of commonality in the hardship of their lives," Sultanzoy said. "But there is what I call a 'merchant class' of politicians who want to fan the ethnic fires for their own benefit."
Ethnic rivalries are mirrored too in the ranks of the country's armed forces, which are crucial to Western hopes that Afghanistan can one day assume responsibility for its own security and foreign troops can withdraw.
The Afghan army's officer corps is dominated by Tajiks, who made up the core of the Northern Alliance, the U.S.-allied group that helped bring down the Taliban — and to this day are deeply mistrustful of Pakistan, whose intelligence service helped create and nurture the Taliban movement.
Many see the hand of Pakistan in Karzai's efforts to bring the Taliban to the bargaining table, and believe the Islamabad government is meddling in policy decisions, such as Karzai's removing of Saleh, the intelligence chief, who was a harsh critic of Pakistani ties to insurgent figures.
The wariness is particularly pronounced among non-Pashtuns, who fear that Pakistan will try to broker a peace deal with the Taliban that will guarantee its own continuing influence and counter that of India.
"Mr. Karzai has been unable to reduce Pakistani interference, and now it seems he welcomes it," said lawmaker Fazal Karim Aymaq, a member of the minority Aymaq ethnic group in northern Afghanistan. "So once again we will see Afghanistan used as a pawn."
laura.king@latimes.com
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Troops detain Taliban fighter planning to target Kabul
KABUL, July 17 (Xinhua) -- Afghan and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) captured a Taliban militant who was planning to attack Afghan capital Kabul, ahead of international conference set for July in Kabul, ISAF said in a press release on Saturday.
"An Afghan-international force captured a Taliban Improvised Explosive Device (IED) facilitator in Kabul last night after intelligence report indicated he was involved in coordinating an attack in Kabul during the upcoming Kabul Conference," the press release said.
The combined security forces went to a compound in the capital city Friday night and Afghan forces used a loudspeaker calling on all occupants to peacefully exit the building, it said.
"After the compound was cleared and secured, the combined force detained the facilitator along with several other suspected insurgents," the press release said.
The Kabul Conference is the ever-biggest international forum where representatives from over 70 nations and international organizations, including more than 30 foreign ministers, will attend the conference to deliberate and endorse an Afghan government-led plan to improve security, ensure good governance and crack down on corruption.
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Afghanistan condemns Iran mosque bombing
July 17, 2010 AFP
Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai today condemned a twin suicide bombing which killed 27 people in neighbouring Iran and called for a "regional fight against terrorism". Sunni militant group Jundallah has said it carried out the bombings which targeted members of the elite Revolutionary Guard at a Shiite mosque Friday night in Zahedan, capital of the restive province of Sistan-Baluchestan.
"President Karzai expressed his deep grief, called this awful terrorist crime an attack against God's house and emphasised the effective struggle and regional fight against terrorism," Karzai's office said.
"The President strongly condemned the attacks," it said in a statement.
Afghanistan itself is gripped in an increasingly bloody insurgency being combatted by tens of thousands of US and NATO troops.
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Army reports 32 suicides in June, highest number since early 2009
By Greg Jaffe Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, July 17, 2010
The U.S. Army suffered 32 suicides in June, the highest number for a single month since January 2009, when the suicide rate in the Army began to spike.
The boost in the number of suicides in June was likely driven by the "continued stresses on the force" caused by the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, said Col. Chris Philbrick, the director of the Army's suicide prevention task force. The Army has poured money and other resources into getting a handle on the suicide rate and, until last month, had begun to see some tentative signs that the rate was trending downward among active-duty troops.
The June numbers, however, represent a disappointing setback and suggest that, after nine years of combat, the Army is showing some serious signs of strain. The results from the first two weeks of July suggest that the suicide rate for this month will not be as high.
In the first six months of the year, 80 active-duty soldiers committed suicide or are suspected of having committed suicide, down from 88 in the same period last year. The Army National Guard, by contrast, had 65 suicides in the first six months, up from 42 in that period last year.
The Army's suicide rate in 2009 exceeded the rate among civilians for the first time in decades.
The total number of Army suicides in June was about the same as the number of Army troops killed in Afghanistan last month, the deadliest month of the war for U.S. and NATO forces.
U.S. Army officials are at a loss to explain the increase in National Guard suicides, which could be linked to the combined stress of the war and the growing strain on the U.S. economy. "There is no indication that the National Guard's operational tempo has increased," Philbrick said.
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Most in south Afghanistan believe NATO operations are bad for locals
Canada.com By Andrew Duffy, Postmedia News July 17, 2010
OTTAWA - An unusual new survey in southern Afghanistan suggests NATO's eight-year campaign to win hearts and minds in the embattled region is in serious trouble.
Field researchers with the International Council on Security and Development, a policy think-tank with an office in Afghanistan, last month interviewed 532 men in mostly rural parts of Kandahar and Helmand provinces.
The survey found a significant majority, 70 per cent, of southern Afghans felt military operations were bad for the Afghan people and NATO forces did not protect the local population.
A total of 75 per cent said foreigners did not respect their religion and traditions; a similar number, 74 per cent, believed it was "wrong" to work with international forces.
A total of 59 per cent opposed a new military offensive against the Taliban in Kandahar.
"These results are troubling and demonstrate the mistrust and resentment felt towards the international presence in Afghanistan," concludes the council's report entitled: 'Afghanistan: The Relationship Gap,' published Friday.
The opinion survey was conducted as 30,000 U.S. troops "surge" into southern Afghanistan, which has been the scene of heavy fighting between Taliban and NATO forces.
Since 2002, 150 Canadian soldiers have died serving in Afghanistan, most of them in Kandahar province.
It is estimated the military mission could cost Canadian taxpayers $18.1 billion by the time it concludes in 2011.
Norine MacDonald, president and lead researcher with the International Council on Security and Development, said the survey highlights the communication gap that exists between NATO forces and the Afghan communities they've been deployed to protect.
The survey found most Afghans thought foreign forces were in the country to occupy or destroy it, 44 per cent, or to harm Islam, 12 per cent.
"We are failing to explain ourselves or our objectives to the Afghan people," said MacDonald, a Canadian lawyer who has worked in Kandahar for much of the past five years. "There's a lot of disinformation about why we're there and who we are."
Those failings, MacDonald said in a telephone interview Friday, have allowed the Taliban to sow its anti-Western propaganda.
Among the survey's other findings:
- a sizable majority, 65 per cent, of southern Afghans supported the idea of the Taliban and its leader, Mullah Omar, joining the national government.
- a remarkable number, 64 per cent, said local government officials have links to the Taliban insurgency.
- many interviewees, 39 per cent, said their town was under Taliban control as opposed to Afghan government, 38 per cent, or NATO, 11 per cent, control
Research teams with the international think-tank put 50 questions to more than 500 men in southern Afghanistan in June.
Most of the face-to-face interviews lasted about an hour.
Women were not surveyed, MacDonald said, due to logistical problems — it requires specialized research teams — and on-the-ground realities. "Unfortunately, their opinions are of limited relevance to what's going to happen in Afghanistan in the short term," she said.
Given the nature of the survey, MacDonald said she was pleasantly surprised to find a majority of Afghan men, 57 per cent, supported girls' education.
There were other encouraging signs in the results: 40 per cent of Afghans said democracy was important to them, and when given the choice between an elected government and the Taliban, a strong majority, 72 per cent, favoured the democratic option.
MacDonald said the findings suggest the battle for hearts and minds is not over particularly when a majority, of Afghans, 55 per cent, still believe NATO is winning the war.
"We have not been very good at understanding what their needs are and responding to that," she said. "But that's something that can be fixed without more troops or a lot more money."
She argues more must be done to address the basic needs of Afghans for food, health care and jobs. Many Afghan men, 74 per cent, reported worrying about how to feed their families.
"We've been completely unable to come to grips with the fact that this is an extremely poor part of the world," MacDonald said.
Finding a way to deliver food aid to rural communities, she said, would be a simple and effective step in winning local support.
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White House orders review of Afghan reconstruction reviewers
The Washington Post By Karen DeYoung July 16, 2010
The White House announced Thursday afternoon that it had requested a panel of inspectors general across the government "review" the operations of the congressionally-mandated Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction.
The announcement gave no explanation other than stating that "strong and effective IG operations in Afghanistan are important" to its efforts to "fight waste, fraud and abuse" in Afghanistan.
A senior administration official said that "there were concerns about SIGAR," as the office is called.
The review, to be conducted by the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, follows a letter sent to President Obama last December by three Senators -- Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Susan Collins (R-Me.) -- asserting that "SIGAR currently may be unable to perform its mission at a time when the need for aggressive, independent oversight is greater than ever." The Senators described what they said was SIGAR's difficulty in recruiting qualified staff, especially among those leaving its sister organization, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.
The letter -- and the new IG review -- highlight a running competition between the SIGAR and SIGIR, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. The latter organization's mandate is running out along with U.S. reconstruction money in Iraq, and some officials in the Afghan office have worried that their Iraq counterparts are interested in taking over both organizations.
Although SIGIR has been hailed for uncovering massive amounts of waste and fraud in Iraq, SIGAR was slow to get off the ground after it was established in 2008, in part because Congress initially failed to fully fund it.
In addition to issuing quarterly reports, SIGAR has conducted dozens of audits and investigations of the $51.5 billion Congress has appropriated for Afghanistan reconstruction since 2002. More than half of that money has gone to support building the Afghan security forces.
Among other reviews, three SIGAR audits of garrisons built to house the rapidly growing Afghan national army found that the Afghan government was unable to maintain and operate the U.S.-funded facilities. A new Defense contract of $800 million is being awarded to operate the garrisons for the next five years. The administration has asked for an additional $20 billion in reconstruction funds for 2011.
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Poor grades to watchdog for Afghan reconstruction
The Associated Press By LARRY MARGASAK 17/07/2010
WASHINGTON - The inspector general investigating fraud, waste and abuse in the $51 billion Afghanistan reconstruction program has received a failing grade from his peers.
The council of government auditors who reviewed the work asked Attorney General Eric Holder to consider suspending or rescinding law enforcement powers of the Afghanistan reconstruction watchdog.
The United States has committed $51 billion to Afghanistan reconstruction since 2001, and plans to raise the amount to $71 billion over the next year.
The review found the Afghanistan reconstruction inspector general did not train investigators in use of firearms and deadly force, did not even have a policy on firearms, and lacked an electronic filing system to collect important information — including data to measure investigators' performance.
The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) is led by retired Marine Maj. Gen. Arnold Fields. Fields told the review group, the inspectors' general Council on Integrity and Efficiency, that he accepted the findings and promised improvements were under way.
That didn't satisfy Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who heads a committee that investigates government contracting.
"This report proves that SIGAR's performance is inept," she said in a statement. "It is time for a house-cleaning at SIGAR, including new leadership. For the sake of our soldiers and the American taxpayer, time is of the essence."
Fields' top deputy, John Brummet, disagreed in an interview with the recommendation to remove the office's law enforcement powers.
"The areas of noncompliance are administrative," he said. "There's no malfeasance. Of course we need one (a firearms policy) but we do not have agents who are armed. We're waiting to have a policy on firearms use before arming our agents."
Since May 2009, the office has completed 17 audits and has 14 under way.
The letter to Holder was signed by Richard Moore, who conducted the peer review of the Afghanistan watchdog's investigative section. Moore, who is the inspector general of the Tennessee Valley Authority, did say that it's likely Field's operation will improve in the coming months.
The review looked separately at the investigative work — which involves criminal and civil law enforcement investigations — and the conduct of audits that search for fraud, waste and abuse.
The Afghanistan inspector general's office did not meet professional standards for investigators, the review said.
The audit operation fared slightly better, getting a passing grade but with deficiencies. Among them: the watchdog was not monitoring the quality of its work, was inconsistent in following its own audit plan and, in about half its reports, failed to clearly state their objective.
Brummet characterized the Afghanistan watchdog office as a "young and growing organization" that is encountering huge obstacles in the war zone.
The State Department only allows the office to have 20 people in Afghanistan, although they're augmented by people on temporary assignment. The office is negotiating for an additional 12 staff members in Afghanistan.
But regardless of the number, getting around Afghanistan presents massive problems in security and transportation, Brummet said. One of the most difficult tasks is reaching locations outside Kabul to assess the U.S. training of Afghan forces.
Brummet said that in one of his own visits, he needed an escort of five armored vehicles and 30 U.S. soldiers to leave a provincial base.
In another instance, because of transportation bottlenecks, he needed five days to reach, and return from, a meeting that took two hours.
He said of the review, which his office requested: "It's good we had these things pointed out to us. We began taking actions to remedy deficiencies."
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Taliban's Mullah Omar orders attacks on women, U.S. says
By Dion Nissenbaum and Saeed Shah | McClatchy Newspapers
ARGHANDAB, Afghanistan — U.S. intelligence officials say they have intercepted new orders from the Taliban's spiritual leader that call on insurgents to target women and Afghan civilians helping American-led forces.
One year after issuing a detailed code of conduct that called on Taliban fighters to protect Afghan civilians, NATO officials say, Mullah Omar has issued new directives to his commanders that appear to represent a tougher stance.
Release of the directives comes as Afghan and U.S.-led forces are preparing for a looming new military confrontation with insurgents in the Taliban's spiritual heartland of Kandahar province.
A Taliban spokesman dismissed the report as American propaganda and some Afghan analysts expressed doubts that the Taliban leader would specifically single out Afghan women as targets.
"This sounds weird, but possible," said Sami Kovanen, senior Information Analyst for Indicium Consulting, a Kabul-based research analyst firm. "I have not heard anything like this before and have not seen incidents like this."
Civilian deaths are a potent issue in the Afghan war.
Last year, Mullah Omar released a detailed rulebook that called on Taliban fighters to minimize civilian casualties and choose suicide attacks carefully to avoid needless deaths.
At the time, the code of conduct was seen as an attempt by the Taliban leadership to win over Afghans by actively working to protect civilians.
Over the past year, the U.S.-led military coalition in Afghanistan also has issued new military rules meant to contain civilian deaths.
As the Taliban ramped up its insurgent campaign this spring, U.S. intelligence officials said that Mullah Omar issued his new directives to field commanders.
The orders call on fighters to "capture and kill any Afghan women who are helping or providing information to the coalition forces" and to target Afghans working with the Afghan government and U.S.-led military.
In the first six months of this year, about 1,074 civilians were killed in Afghanistan, according to the Afghan Rights Monitor, an independent research firm.
Taliban fighters and their allies were responsible for 60 percent of the deaths, according to the report. Afghan government forces and members of the international military coalition were responsible for about 30 percent of the civilian deaths.
The single most deadly incident took place last month when a young suicide bomber killed 40 civilians — including young boys — at a wedding party in Arghandab. Some of the victims had been part of an anti-Taliban force operating in the area, which may have made them a particular target of the bombing.
"This sort of outright targeting of innocent Afghan men and women working for the betterment of their country flies in the face of any alleged 'code of conduct'
propaganda that the Taliban may have produced for public consumption," said U.S. Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale, a spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.
One top NATO official in Afghanistan said that the military coalition's focus on protecting major population centers had forced the Taliban to bring the fight into densely populated areas.
"In the past, we were operating in the hinterlands," said the military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity so he could more freely discuss the orders. "Now we're staying inside the population — it's a risk they are taking and they're screwing it up. Their own tactics are working against them."
Meanwhile, Taliban spokesman Qari Yusef rejected the report as American disinformation.
"This kind article has not been issued by the supreme leader of the Taliban to the media yet," he said. "This is something that the infidels are making up."
Reports of the change in Taliban tactics comes as Afghan and American-led soldiers are poised to launch a new offensive against insurgents in Arghandab, the fertile valley on the edge of Kandahar city.
On Saturday, the top military leaders held a two-hour meeting in Arghandab with their Afghan partners to fine-tune plans to target an estimated 150 to 200 hardcore insurgents who have destabilized the river valley.
Military officials and Afghan leaders in Kandahar said they intend to put Taliban fighters on the defensive before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins in four weeks.
"Arghandab — right now 50 percent, plus or minus — is under government control," said U.S, Army Brig. Gen. Ben Hodges, the director of coalition operations in southern Afghanistan, before the meeting. "We would really like to — and I think it's feasible — by the time Ramadan comes around, have it at 80-85 percent."
But U.K. Maj. Gen. Nick Carter, the commander of coalition forces in southern Afghanistan, sought to dampen expectations about what might be accomplished by the beginning of Ramadan.
"These things take time and you've got to persuade people," said Carter, who estimated that the Afghan government currently had control over 20-to-40 percent of Arghandab. "I'm not expecting to see anything particularly different by Ramadan."
Dion Nissenbaum reported from Arghandab. McClatchy special correspondent Saeed Shah reported from Islamabad, Pakistan. McClatchy special correspondent Muhib Habibi contributed to this report from Kandahar, Afghanistan.
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Secretary of state to press Afghanistan on security, corruption as concerns about war deepen
The Canadian Press By Matthew Lee 17/07/2010
WASHINGTON - Amid growing worries about the war in Afghanistan, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was travelling to South Asia on Saturday on a mission aimed at refining the goals of the nearly 9-year-old conflict.
Clinton's visit comes as American lawmakers are increasingly questioning the course of the war, with a rising death toll of U.S. and international forces, and expressing greater misgivings about corruption and the utility of massive assistance to both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
She will attend next week's international conference in Kabul, where the Afghan government is expected to outline plans to bolster deteriorating security conditions, reintegrate militants into society and crack down on corruption. She also will stop in Pakistan to push greater co-operation between Islamabad and Kabul.
Clinton plans to travel to South Korea, where she will join Defence Secretary Robert Gates for talks on dealing with renewed tensions over North Korea in the aftermath of the sinking of a South Korean warship blamed on the North. She will finish in Vietnam for discussions with regional leaders likely to focus on elections coming in Myanmar.
U.S. officials are keeping specific details of her South Asia itinerary secret for security reasons but say she will lead the American delegation to the July 20 Kabul Conference. There she will renew Washington's commitment to support Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government but press him to follow through on reform pledges he made earlier this year.
Richard Holbrooke, President Barack Obama's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, has said the conference "will be a very important international demonstration of support" for Karzai and his administration.
Holbrooke acknowledges concerns that the war and the reconstruction effort are not proceeding as hoped or planned.
He told Congress this week that "there are significant elements of movement forward in many areas, but I do not yet see a definitive turning point in either direction."
Last month was the deadliest of the war for international forces, with 103 coalition troops killed, despite the infusion of tens of thousands of new U.S. troops. So far in July, at least 47 international troops have been killed, at least 35 of them American.
At the same time, international troops working with Afghan forces say they have killed or captured dozens of senior insurgent figures since April as they aggressively step up operations against Taliban leaders. However, those successes have not slowed the pace of militant attacks, which continue daily, killing dozens of people each month.
The administration has said it will review its Afghan strategy, which was announced last winter, at the end of this year. Slow progress against the Taliban, however, plus the disruptive effects of the firing of the outspoken American commander there last month, has stirred a growing unease among many in Congress, including leading members of Obama's Democratic party.
While many lawmakers have spoken of misgivings about Obama's plan to begin withdrawing U.S. troops next year, some powerful members of Congress also have begun to raise serious doubts about the way the war is going forward, complicating the administration's effort to maintain support for the endeavour.
On Wednesday, Democratic Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said it is not clear that the administration has a solid strategy for prevailing, and the panel's ranking Republican, Sen. Richard Lugar, decried "a lack of clarity" about U.S. war goals.
And Sen. Carl Levin, Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has said that while there remains "solid support" for the war among Democrats, "there's also the beginnings of fraying of that support."
In the House of Representatives, Democratic Rep. Nita Lowey, has put a hold on nearly $4 billion in assistance to Afghanistan, demanding that allegations of corruption be addressed and that the Afghan government be held accountable.
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Taliban attacks in Afghanistan show growing sophistication
Canada.com By Dion Nissenbaum, McClatchy-Tribune July 15, 2010
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - The attack this week on a major Afghan police base in Kandahar that killed nine — including three American soldiers — was the best planned and most advanced that U.S. soldiers who fought it off have seen in the past year, U.S. military officials said Thursday.
"It was definitely well-planned and co-ordinated much better than anything we've seen before," said Capt. Steven J. Davis, 26, of Lansing, Mich., as U.S. and Afghan forces worked to repair the damage. His unit, the 82nd Airborne's 508 Parachute Infantry Regiment, based at Fort Bragg, N.C., arrived about a year ago.
The assault began Tuesday night when at least three attackers blew up the rear wall of the elite police compound in a Taliban-saturated part of Kandahar. Although it was initially thought to be a car bomb, Davis said explosives planted alongside the compound wall caused the first blast.
As Afghan and American forces inside the base rushed to fend off the attack, Taliban fighters fired rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns during a half-hour battle that killed three American soldiers, one Afghan police officer and five Afghans working with the U.S.-led coalition forces, NATO officials said.
The assault — which involved at least three Taliban suicide bombers — was the latest in a series of well-planned Taliban strikes that are forcing American and Afghan forces to adapt.
In the past two months, Taliban fighters have used similar tactics to hit major coalition military bases in Kandahar, Bagram and Jalalabad.
"Obviously we are going towards these fairly sophisticated complex attacks," said Sami Kovanen, senior information analyst for Indicium Consulting, a Kabul-based research firm that analyzes trends in the Afghan war.
Tuesday's target was a burgeoning base housing members of the Afghan National Civil Order Police, an elite unit dispatched to Kandahar to set up a new ring of checkpoints around Kandahar city.
The checkpoints had been operating about two weeks when the Taliban hit the central command base.
"It's very difficult, unless you are on an island, to lock down a city," Davis said. "What we've done is take away their main routes of entry and forced them into more open areas. I wouldn't say that we're going to eradicate all enemy presence in Kandahar city, but the SRPF (security ring protection force) is providing an immediate and lasting increase to security here."
Davis praised the elite Afghan force for responding quickly to the attack and co-ordinating with American forces to fend off the persistent Taliban assault.
As the summer unfolds, battles in and around Kandahar are expected to escalate. U.S.-led forces are gradually clamping down on Taliban-controlled areas as they try to support American-backed Afghan politicians.
Senator Carl Levin, D-Mich., the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Wednesday that the operation to clear the area of insurgents will take place at the end of July and early August and involve some 10,000 troops altogether — 5,160 from the Afghan 205th corps and 4,430 with the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force.
That effort has been hobbled by another persistent Taliban tactic: Murder and intimidation.
The assassination campaign continued Thursday as gunmen shot to death a tribal elder in Kandahar city, officials said. At the same time, Afghan leaders called on the Taliban to release five health ministry workers kidnapped in Kandahar province on Wednesday.
Among the victims of the campaign was 24-year-old Mohammed Ibrahim, who was shot 36 times and hanged by the Taliban in March because his brother works as an interpreter for Western forces, friends and family said Thursday.
"If the Americans leave, things will get worse," said Ibrahim's 70-year-old father, Ghulam Sakhi, said Thursday.
Sakhi lives in an Afghan no-man's-land between the Afghan base that came under attack this week and sprawling orchards on the outskirts of Kandahar where the Taliban roam freely.
Two Afghan police posts overlook the contested orchards. However, Sakhi said that they rarely challenge Taliban fighters who routinely set up temporary checkpoints within a few hundred yards of the Afghan forces.
"They can't protect us," he said. "They just stay in their posts."
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People suspected of al Qaeda, Taliban links can appeal U.N. blacklist
By Mick B. Krever, CNN July 15, 2010
United Nations (CNN) -- The avenue of appeal is now open for people who believe they are unfairly on a U.N. Security Council blacklist of individuals with suspected connections to al Qaeda or the Taliban.
A United Nations official, who will review requests to get off the list, appeared before reporters in New York Thursday, for the first time since being appointed last month. Kimberly Prost has the title of "ombudsperson" for the highly sensitive position with the controversial list, which was established in 1999.
Prost said that she views the creation of the job as a "good faith, serious effort" by a U.N. sanctions committee to answer the "serious concerns" raised about due process regarding the list.
Those on the blacklist are subject to asset freezes and restrictions on international travel. The list was created by the Security Council in 1999, in the wake of al Qaeda bombings of two American embassies in East Africa.
Prost will receive direct appeals from those wishing to be de-listed. She will review cases and present her findings to the sanctions committee. But she will not include a recommendation on whether the person be de-listed. It will be up to the sanctions committee, composed of Security Council members, whether to remove the petitioner.
Prost is a former Canadian prosecutor who has since 2006 served as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Austrian Ambassador Thomas Mayr-Harting, who heads the Security Council sanctions committee that manages the list, described her as "the most qualified candidate we could think of."
The opening of the ombudsperson's office comes at a time when Afghan President Hamid Karzai has sent the Security Council ten names he wants removed from the list.
Diplomats who recently met with Karzai in Kabul say that he would like even more names removed, as the Afghanistan government seeks inroads with Taliban sympathizers.
Ambassador Mayr-Harting thought that the public outcry on the blacklist was growing too large to ignore. "It was the [sanctions] regime where the lack in due process was criticized most strongly by courts, by political structures, and also within the U.N. system," he said at a press conference Thursday. The creation of the ombudsperson position was mandated by a Security Council resolution that was passed last year.
Prost acknowledges that there is much work to be done for her office to be effective.
Perhaps most importantly is simply publicizing its existence. "This office will be of little value if it's not known, if it's not visible, and if it's not easily accessible," she said. Many of those on the list do not speak English, and may have a hard time navigating the United Nations system.
To that end, Prost said that she will set up an independent website that will show potential petitioners how to get in contact with her office. She promised to meet with "relevant representatives of countries where those issues of accessibility will be significant." And she added that submissions via a representative would be accepted, even if that representative was not a lawyer, as long as she was convinced of the application's legitimacy.
There were no specific criteria for de-listing laid out in the Security Council resolution. But Mayr-Harting said that there was an understanding among committee members on at least three: renouncing violence, breaking all ties with al Qaeda and the Taliban, and -- in the case specifically of Afghanistan -- accepting the Afghan constitution.
Prost conceded that she may face roadblocks trying to gather all the information on why an individual was put on the list, especially if that information came from national intelligence agencies. But she said she would make the review process as thorough as possible.
"I'm not simply going to sit back and say, 'Bring me your application and Ill check it off,' you know, yes or no. I'm going to work with the individuals with a view to getting all of the information and doing a thorough analysis," she said.
It is not clear that the establishment on an "ombudsperson" will completely satisfy President Karzai, who views reconciliation with the Taliban as an important step towards peace in his country. Prost will only review petitions that come directly from individuals or organizations on the list, not from governments. Those appeals will continue to go directly to the sanctions committee.
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