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Afghanistan Jail Break: Taliban Claim Responsibility For 11 Escaped Prisoners
KABUL, Afghanistan (Associated Press) -- A blast from smuggled-in explosives at a prison in western Afghanistan killed a guard and allowed 11 inmates to escape early Sunday, officials said. One prisoner was shot and killed while fleeing.
Clinton in Pakistan on Key Mission
July 18, 2010 VOA News
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in Pakistan at the start of a tour of South Asia aimed at refining the goals of the nearly 9-year war in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan, Pakistan sign border trade pact
Reuters via Yahoo! UK & Ireland News - Jul 18 10:16am
Afghanistan and Pakistan signed a long-awaited trade deal on Sunday, which the United States hopes will help boost cooperation between the neighbours and open more Afghan trade routes to regional powerhouse India. Skip related content
Karzai 'sets withdrawal timeline'
July 18, 2010 Al Jazeera
Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, is preparing to announce an official timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops from his country, a British newspaper has reported.
NATO Says Taliban Orders Attacks on Civilians
July 18, 2010 VOA News
NATO says Taliban leader Mullah Omar has ordered fighters to kill Afghan civilians, contradicting orders he issued last year.
Taliban kill over 180 Afghan civilians since June: NATO
KABUL, July 18 (Xinhua) -- The spokesman for NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) on Sunday said that more than 180 Afghan civilians have been killed by Taliban insurgents since last June as Taliban Mullah Mohammad Omar ordered his men to attack specific targets.
Obama will pull out of Afghanistan for economic reasons: Gul
[ANI] - Islamabad, July 17 : A former director-general of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has said that U.S. President Barack Obama will pull out American troops from Afghanistan for economic reasons rather than for strategic ones because his administration would find the ongoing surge unsustainable.
King of Kandahar on friends, enemies, and CIA rumours
Janis Mackey Frayer, South Asia bureau chief, CTV News Sat. Jul. 17 2010 10:31 PM ET
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — The most powerful man in Kandahar is alone in his reception room with two mobile phones and a string of prayer beads pinched between his finger and thumb.
Qureshi makes sorry call for Kabul meet
The Asian Age Neena Gopal Jul 18th, 2010
Bengaluru - Pakistan foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, whose criticism of external affairs minister S.M. Krishna at the conclusion of their two-hour-long talks in Islamabad drew flak, has reportedly called and all but apologised to his Indian counterpart for any perceived insults thrown at him while he was on Pakistani soil.
Foreign aid diverted to stabilise Afghanistan
International development secretary, Andrew Mitchell, will announce plans to boost aid funding to Afghanistan by 40%, while the likes of Russia and China will lose out
The Guardian Toby Helm and Tracy McVeigh Sunday 18 July 2010
Britain is to cut aid worth hundreds of millions of pounds to countries around the world to help pay for projects aimed at speeding the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, the Observer can reveal.
Longtime fixture at Afghan base found murdered
The Canadian Press July 18, 2010
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — He had lived and worked on what is now the provincial reconstruction team base in Kandahar city since he was a small boy.
Unlikely tutor gives advice to military
‘Three Cups of Tea’ author offers help
New York Times By Elisabeth Bumiller July 18, 2010
WASHINGTON - In the frantic last hours of General Stanley A. McChrystal’s command in Afghanistan, when the world wondered what was racing through his mind, he reached out to an unlikely corner of his life: the author of the book “Three Cups of Tea,’’ Greg Mortenson.
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Afghanistan Jail Break: Taliban Claim Responsibility For 11 Escaped Prisoners
KABUL, Afghanistan (Associated Press) -- A blast from smuggled-in explosives at a prison in western Afghanistan killed a guard and allowed 11 inmates to escape early Sunday, officials said. One prisoner was shot and killed while fleeing.
A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the jailbreak, saying it freed insurgent comrades being held there.
The explosives detonated shortly after 2 a.m., destroying a gate and allowing 23 prisoners to run out of the building, Farah province's deputy governor Yonus Rasouli said. One prisoner died and three were wounded in an ensuing gunbattle with guards. Eight other inmates were recaptured, but 11 escaped.
Gen. Abdul Makhtar, deputy for Afghanistan's prison department, said one seriously wounded guard later died.
"The prisoners managed somehow to bring explosives inside the prison," Rasouli said. "It was a strong explosion. Everything was set up from inside the prison."
The Farah prison held a mix of suspected insurgents and common criminals because the province has no funds to build separate detention facilities, Rasouli said.
He said 347 prisoners were being held in a building meant for only 86. He acknowledged that conditions were poor at many prisons around the country, but said there was no money to build better facilities.
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Clinton in Pakistan on Key Mission
July 18, 2010 VOA News
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in Pakistan at the start of a tour of South Asia aimed at refining the goals of the nearly 9-year war in Afghanistan.
She arrived Sunday in Islamabad where she will underscore the need for cooperation between Pakistan and Afghanistan in winning the war.
Clinton will meet with top military and civilian leaders during her 2-day visit. She also is expected to announce new development programs for Pakistan.
The $7.5 billion package, approved by the U.S. Congress last year, triples non-military aid to the country over a five-year period. The aid is part of an initiative to temper anti-American sentiment in Pakistan by strengthening infrastructure in water, energy, agriculture and health.
After Pakistan, Clinton will attend an international conference on Afghanistan in Kabul Tuesday. U.S. officials hope it will highlight the Afghan government's plan to improve governance and stability in the war-torn country.
The conference will be attended by representatives from 70 countries.
It is to focus on steps the Afghan government is taking to reintegrate insurgents into society and crack down on widespread corruption.
During the meeting, Britain is expected to announce a 40 percent increase in development aid to Afghanistan.
The meeting comes as security conditions deteriorate in Afghanistan, and Afghan and U.S.-led coalition forces struggle to control a rising Taliban insurgency.
Meanwhile, a British newspaper reports that coalition forces will soon formally agree to hand over security in the country to Afghan forces by 2014.
The Independent on Sunday says its report is based on a leaked communiqué sent to senior diplomats by the United Nations special representative in Afghanistan. British or U.S. defense officials have not confirmed the report, but Britain's defense secretary has said previously that Afghan forces should take over security control by 2014
Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.
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Afghanistan, Pakistan sign border trade pact
Reuters via Yahoo! UK & Ireland News - Jul 18 10:16am
Afghanistan and Pakistan signed a long-awaited trade deal on Sunday, which the United States hopes will help boost cooperation between the neighbours and open more Afghan trade routes to regional powerhouse India. Skip related content
The Afghan and Pakistani commerce ministers signed the pact in Islamabad during a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who is on a visit seeking to bolster both Pakistan and Afghanistan in their joint struggle against militant insurgents.
"Bringing Islamabad and Kabul together has been a goal of this administration from the beginning. This is a vivid demonstration of the two countries coming closer together," Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said after the signing ceremony.
The pact, which has to be ratified by the parliaments of both countries, marks an effort to resolve Afghan demands to use Afghan trucks to transport exports to India via Pakistan by the sensitive Wagah land route.
Pakistan has fought repeated wars with India and remains deeply suspicious of its larger neighbour, and will not permit Indian exports to Afghanistan through the Wagah route, although both sides agreed to discuss this further.
U.S. officials said the final deal was reached in part after the Pakistani military signed off on the transit plan despite persistent fears of weapons smuggling.
More exports would help President Hamid Karzai counter a Taliban insurgency by improving economic conditions, which is also an important goal for Washington as it looks ahead to President Barack Obama's July 2011 target date to begin withdrawing U.S. troops.
Almost 50 percent of Afghanistan's trade is with its five neighbours Pakistan, Iran, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Trade between Afghanistan and Pakistan is worth more than $1 billion.
But the World Bank says trade remains very one-sided in favour of Pakistan, with Afghanistan exporting little to its more populous neighbour.
The trade deal comes ahead of an international conference in Kabul on Tuesday at which donor countries and Karzai's government will try to chart a path forward for the conflict-torn country.
Afghanistan, due to its strategic geographic position, hopes to become a regional transit hub for trade with Central Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and China, if the security situation in the country can be stabilised.
Both Afghanistan and Pakistan have agreed on the need for a new agreement to give Afghanistan sea access and provide Pakistan with direct routes to Central Asia.
U.S. officials say the new deal will reduce average transit costs between the two countries by half, lower import costs and make exports more competitive, along with helping employment prospects on both sides of the border.
The agreement also sets up a joint Chamber of Commerce between the private sectors of the two countries, which U.S. officials say will help further strengthen their tentative alliance as they seek to turn back al Qaeda-linked Taliban insurgents and modernise their economies.
(Reporting by Andrew Quinn; Editing by Jon Hemming)
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Karzai 'sets withdrawal timeline'
July 18, 2010 Al Jazeera
Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, is preparing to announce an official timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops from his country, a British newspaper has reported.
International forces fighting in Afghanistan are set to agree to hand over control of security in the country to Afghan forces by 2014, The Independent on Sunday reported, citing leaked documents.
Karzai is expected to announce the timetable for a "conditions-based and phased transition" at an international security conference in Kabul, the Afghan capital, on Tuesday.
"The international community expressed its support for the president of Afghanistan's objective that the Afghan National Security Forces [ANSF] should lead and conduct military operations in all provinces by the end of 2014," the document read, according to the paper.
Cautious approach
However, Joe Biden, the US vice-president, took a more cautious approach in remarks the planned US military drawdown in Afghanistan next July.
He told ABC television's "This Week" on Sunday that the number of US troops leaving Afghanistan "could be as few as a couple of thousand troops".
Barack Obama, the US president, ordered 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan last December, bringing the US total to about 100,000.
Biden said it is still too early to determine whether the US strategy in Afghanistan will succeed, but he said there is progress.
Al Jazeera's Zeina Khodr, reporting from the capital, said security will be among the issues discussed at Tuesday's gathering of Afghanistan's international partners.
"Particularly when the Afghan government plans to eventually take over security," she said.
"More than 70 international representatives, including some 40 foreign ministers will be listening to the Afghan government's plan on how they intend to do that."
Afghan and foreign forces have stepped up security ahead of the conference, with the deployment of thousands of additional forces on the streets.
Despite the increased efforts, three people were killed and at least 30 others injured on Sunday when a suicide bomber detonated explosives in central Kabul.
'High infiltration'
Afghan officials said the bomber may not have reached his intended destination due to tight security.
"He was trying to get to a specific area but because of high security the bomber was forced to detonate on a street where there is little activity," Zemarai Bashary, a spokesman for the interior ministry, said.
Haroun Mir, the co-founder and deputy director of Afghanistan's Centre for Research and Policy Studies, in Kabul, said there is a huge risk that the conference could be disrupted by another such attack.
"There is a high level of infiltration by the Taliban inside the Afghan security forces," he told Al Jazeera.
"In a number of attacks, Afghan officers were involved in helping the Taliban and other terrorist networks in executing these attacks.
"This is something the Afghan security forces are unable to prevent."
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NATO Says Taliban Orders Attacks on Civilians
July 18, 2010 VOA News
NATO says Taliban leader Mullah Omar has ordered fighters to kill Afghan civilians, contradicting orders he issued last year.
In a statement Sunday, NATO says it intercepted orders that Mullah Omar gave to subordinate commanders at the beginning of June. It says he instructed fighters to kill Afghans who work with NATO or the Afghan government, and to kill women who provide information to coalition forces.
There was no immediate reaction to the claim from Taliban leaders. Last November, Mullah Omar called on militants to avoid causing civilian deaths when attacking government and foreign troops.
NATO blamed the Taliban for a suicide bombing that killed at least three people Sunday in the capital, Kabul. Authorities say at least 35 people were wounded.
The attack occurred despite heavy security imposed ahead of an international conference about Afghanistan's future. The Afghan capital is set to host a major gathering of the country's international partners Tuesday.
NATO says it captured a "Taliban facilitator" who it called a direct threat to the conference. It also says a combined Afghan-international security force killed several insurgents and detained another in Kandahar province Saturday.
NATO says one of its troops was killed by a bomb in southern Afghanistan Sunday. It gave no details on the blast or the identity of the soldier.
In Afghanistan's western Farah province Sunday, Taliban guerrillas staged a series of raids on four police posts and simultaneously blew up the entrance of a jail.
Yonus Rasouli, an official of Farah province, said while the police were responding to the attacks on the stations, the Taliban blew up the gate of Farah's jail, allowing 23 prisoners to escape.
Rasouli said several of the inmates were captured, but some remain at-large. He said one guard was killed in the attack.
The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the jailbreak.
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Taliban kill over 180 Afghan civilians since June: NATO
KABUL, July 18 (Xinhua) -- The spokesman for NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) on Sunday said that more than 180 Afghan civilians have been killed by Taliban insurgents since last June as Taliban Mullah Mohammad Omar ordered his men to attack specific targets.
"Since June 1, 188 civilians have been killed by insurgents," Josef Blotz told reporters at weekly press briefing in ISAF fortified headquarters.
"Today I want to share with you a recently declassified message that was intercepted in June. The message was from Mullah Omar, who is hiding in Pakistan, ordered his subordinate commanders in Afghanistan to fight NATO-led troops and kill Afghans who support Afghan government.
The spokesman of over 130,000-strong NATO-led ISAF forces also said that many of these deaths were caused by insurgents' use of indiscriminate IEDs (Improvised Explosive Device), automatic machine gun fire and suicide bombers.
In this regard he named three Afghan officials -- Gul Mohammad, Hayatullah Agha and Mohammad Reza -- had been assassinated by Taliban militants in Logar, Kandahar and Ghazni provinces over the past couple of weeks.
NATO's spokesman also emphasized that Taliban fugitive leader had ordered his men to specifically target NATO-led forces, capture or kill any Afghan who is supporting and working for international troops, capture or kill any Afghan women who are helping or providing information for foreign troops.
Taliban militants have not made comment over the report.
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Obama will pull out of Afghanistan for economic reasons: Gul
[ANI] - Islamabad, July 17 : A former director-general of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has said that U.S. President Barack Obama will pull out American troops from Afghanistan for economic reasons rather than for strategic ones because his administration would find the ongoing surge unsustainable.
Speaking in an interview to ANI, Hamid Gul, who was the ISI chief from 1987 to 1989, said:"I think by the end of the year Obama will come up with another policy, and they are going to pull out of Afghanistan because it is not sustainable economically, casualty-wise and Taliban are winning on every front."
Gul further opined that those fighting the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan, should not be referred to as the Taliban, but as champions of a national resistance.
"They are not Taliban, this is Afghan national resistance, and any case, they have dropped the word Taliban already. They call it the Emirate of Islamic Afghanistan. So, that is what their official name is," he said.
So, when that thing happens, that monumental, historical event takes place, then we will be left with no choice, both India and Pakistan, to remove our friction and all these things," he added.
President Obama's AFPAK strategy was announced in 2009, and the cornerstone of it is adopting a regional approach.
The strategy aims to treat Afghanistan and Pakistan as two countries, but with one challenge in one region.
The strategy focuses more intensively on Pakistan than in the past, and calls for more significant increases in U.S. and international support, both economic and military, linked to performance against terror.
It also intends to pursue intensive regional diplomacy involving all key players in South Asia and engage countries in a new trilateral framework as - at the highest levels of the countries, being Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United States.
Together, this trilateral format hopes to enhance intelligence sharing, military cooperation along the border, and address common issues such as trade, energy and economic development.
From a military aspect, the strategy has approved the sending of an additional17,000 troops to Afghanistan, besides deploying approximately 4,000 more U.S. troops to help train the Afghan National Security Forces so that they can increasingly take responsibility for the security of the Afghan people themselves, which is Washington's ultimate goal.
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King of Kandahar on friends, enemies, and CIA rumours
Janis Mackey Frayer, South Asia bureau chief, CTV News Sat. Jul. 17 2010 10:31 PM ET
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — The most powerful man in Kandahar is alone in his reception room with two mobile phones and a string of prayer beads pinched between his finger and thumb.
He rises to greet his visitors, shakes hands, and sits again with a slight sigh. He checks his very gold watch. Then, in keeping with some unspoken routine, Ahmed Wali Karzai begins a ritual discussion of weather and war as they both make Kandahar a harsh place this time of year.
"Mainly the Taliban want to have an address," he explains from an armchair, "they want to show something this summer. To show they are still around. That is why there is a good need for a military operation."
I ask him if the best way to beat an insurgency is to kill.
"You have to show muscles," he says, with a fist pump. "You have to hit them hard, as hard as you can because they have no mercy for anyone."
Karzai's detractors might say the same of him. The indisputable don of Afghanistan's hostile south, he has been called a lot of things: a drug profiteer, a thug, a warlord's heavy who threatens critics (or worse). Karzai's well-nurtured notoriety spawns a list of accusations that include paying off the Taliban to grease an empire built around convoys and private security with international contracts from countries like Canada.
There is also that business of the CIA and reports that Karzai, the younger half-brother of the country's president, has been on the payroll for years in part to mount a U.S.-funded paramilitary force to kill Taliban.
Is any of it true?
"My problem is never a legal problem," says Karzai. "It's always a political problem … those international media, they are doing it for some political reason."
In the assessment of one coalition official: "Nothing in Afghanistan is clean."
Any attempt to reveal incriminating evidence against Ahmed Wali Karzai has so far failed. No government or intelligence agency has ever produced the smoking gun or least nobody has dared.
"There is always politics," Karzai says of the accusations leveled against him.
"Everybody wants to be in front. Some people, they spread rumours, they stab you in the back."
What has been proven over years is that real power in Afghanistan is less a function of government or public service than a spoil of private fiefdom. Guns, money, and control of foreign support are the true benchmarks. To that end, Ahmed Wali Karzai is unstoppable and NATO has no choice but to need him.
In diplomatic circles and among the military leadership here, the younger Karzai and his unanswered questions are distilled to the initials ‘AWK' and words like ‘issue' or ‘problem'.
"AWK is a concern," sighed a diplomat, "but he is a fact of life."
It is an open secret that the international community would like Hamid Karzai to rein him in. AWK is said to be a common worry of the U.S. president and other foreign sponsors whose countries bear the financial and human costs of the war.
Karzai the president dismisses any criticism of his brother as baseless, but at times does so at a cost to his own credibility.
"It is hard to listen to one and look at the other and be convinced of a virtuous leader," a senior official told me. When most people are asked about AWK, their opinions are shared in hushed voices on the condition they will not be named.
Among Afghans, Ahmed Wali Karzai is regarded with complementary doses of respect and fear.
On the day I visit his home, men with long beards and hard stares sit quietly in the unofficial waiting room. Their shoes -- I count 37 pairs -- are parked neatly at the steps near the door. They wait with their concerns and needs on the blue-carpeted floor until fate might yield the chance to see him. Karzai is a ‘fixer'. In Kandahar, that can mean a lot of things.
"I'm very close to the people, the tribes," says Karzai. "I earn it. I work hard… this is the major thing that I am doing is to keep these things… calm."
The Karzai hold on Afghans is firm. His control of for-hire security businesses has effectively created a private army that has thwarted the growth of a viable Afghan National Police force.
While patrolling the muddy warrens of a Kandahar neighbourhood, Canadian soldiers walked past the funeral of a young man shot dead that day in the market.
Through an interpreter a group of male relatives said he was "killed by one of AWK's men." They told the story of armed security guards looking to settle a score, and that their cousin was hit with a stray bullet.
Will they go to police? No, it's AWK, they said. They seemed shocked both by the suggestion they would utter a word and that police would actually listen.
Collaborating with Ahmed Wali Karzai is among NATO's bigger gambles in the south. Yet now, more than ever, he is crucial to the mission if it hopes to win anything close to stability in Kandahar.
In a report titled ‘Politics and Power in Kandahar', the Institute for the Study of War (www.understandingwar.org) concluded that, "Ahmed Wali Karzai's influence over Kandahar is the central obstacle to any of ISAF's governance objectives, and a consistent policy for dealing with him must be a central element of any new strategy."
Its author, Carl Forsberg, went on to predict that Karzai's behaviour and waning popularity among locals will only stir the sort of unrest and vacuum that allows space for the Taliban to exist.
Sources hint that Karzai and the need to remodel him form part of the reason why military operations slated for the summer are now effectively delayed until September.
There has been an off-the-cuff comparison to the prohibition era of 1930s America, where family cartels thrived on illicit trade and then looked to polish their image to the veneered appearance of legitimacy.
It is a trickier venture in Afghanistan. Yet it appears Ahmed Wali Karzai now sees himself as a dean of tribal dynamics and unofficial envoy to international players.
"We are winning," Karzai says, with an emphasis on the inclusive. "Taliban is no longer a movement that can threaten the stability of Afghanistan. They can create problems. But I'm not worried sitting in Kandahar with my family that the Taliban will take over."
(He claims nine assassination attempts against him in the past three years.)
In our interview that stretched nearly an hour, Karzai commended Canada for its efforts, and for bearing the challenges of serving in "the capital of Taliban and Al Qaeda." He raves especially about Brig.-Gen. Jon Vance, who has returned as Commander of Canadian Forces for a few months.
"I really hope to see General Vance," he says, "maybe he will come for lunch."
I asked Karzai if 2011 was too early for Canadian troops to be leaving Afghanistan. He explained that with 30,000 American troops here now it is no longer the concern of numbers that it was in 2006. Still, he believes it sends the wrong message about commitment, and the Taliban benefits.
"It's up to them," Karzai says of Canada's political decision-makers. "If they know the war is over they can leave. The war is still going on. War is still happening."
According to some estimates, the war has meant a billion dollar commercial network for the Karzai family through businesses dealing in food, fuel, construction, and security. Canada has one of his firms on contract to guard the Dahla Dam project.
As for being a paid operative of the CIA, Karzai never flatly denies the allegation. He says he meets with everyone -- Americans, British, Iranians, Pakistanis, Indians, Dutch.
"We are partners in this war, you know," he says. "I didn't sign a paper with a contract that I work for this agency or this person or this organization. I met with your Special Forces, I met with your military, I met with your generals. Can someone accuse me tomorrow that I was working for the Canadians?"
At the end of our discussion, Ahmed Wali Karzai wished us well. His next guests were already waiting on the couch. He checked his very gold watch and shifted his attention. We left Karzai's villa, walking past the barefoot men still waiting, and returned to the weather and war that make Kandahar a harsh place this time of year.
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Qureshi makes sorry call for Kabul meet
The Asian Age Neena Gopal Jul 18th, 2010
Bengaluru - Pakistan foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, whose criticism of external affairs minister S.M. Krishna at the conclusion of their two-hour-long talks in Islamabad drew flak, has reportedly called and all but apologised to his Indian counterpart for any perceived insults thrown at him while he was on Pakistani soil.
Mr Qureshi’s call comes ahead of the donors conference in Kabul on July 20 which both are slated to attend. Mr Qureshi has reportedly requested a one-on-one meeting with Mr Krishna.
Indian officials said Pakistan’s foreign minister had climbed down after he received a rap on his knuckles for his personal attack on Mr Krishna from his own Prime Minister, Mr Yousuf Raza Gilani, and, later, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who is heading for the Kabul conference, billed as the largest gathering of foreign leaders in the Afghan capital since the 1970s.
Ms Clinton, who spoke to Mr Krishna on Saturday, said she wanted to meet him separately at the summit, while making clear that she “disapproved” of the tone and tenor of Mr Qureshi’s language and behaviour during his interaction with the Pakistani media.
Ms Clinton told Mr Krishna that she wanted to see the resumption of talks between the two nations and for Pakistan to be seen to be taking “credible action” against those who unleashed the terror attack on Mumbai.
Officials at the talks told this newspaper the acrimony during the negotiations between the foreign ministers spilled over into the joint press conference. Mr Qureshi wanted all mention of 26/11 removed from the joint statement, trotting out the new-found ISI mantra that “Pakistan is as much a victim of terrorism as India is; you have had one 26/11, we have a 26/11 every day”. Mr Qureshi was insistent that Jammu and Kashmir and Balochistan be included in the joint statement, to which Mr Krishna, fearing a fallout akin to that of Sharm el-Sheikh, said a firm no.
India insisted that calls for action against the perpetrators of 26/11, given the Headley interrogation, be incorporated into the statement, leading to Pakistan’s accusations that India was dictating the terms of the agenda. Pakistan wanted nothing more than a mention of forthcoming interactions on commerce and culture.
Mr Krishna’s meeting with the chief minister of Punjab, Mr Shahbaz Sharif of the rival Pakistan Muslim League (N) and a known Army-baiter, is said to have upset the Makhdoom from Multan n Turn to Page 3
(Mr Qureshi). Mr Krishna presented a chadar to be laid at Lahore’s celebrated Data Darbar, the recent target of a suicide bomber.
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Foreign aid diverted to stabilise Afghanistan
International development secretary, Andrew Mitchell, will announce plans to boost aid funding to Afghanistan by 40%, while the likes of Russia and China will lose out
The Guardian Toby Helm and Tracy McVeigh Sunday 18 July 2010
Britain is to cut aid worth hundreds of millions of pounds to countries around the world to help pay for projects aimed at speeding the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, the Observer can reveal.
Detailed plans to boost aid funding to Afghanistan by 40% as part of a re-ordering of global priorities will be outlined tomorrow by the international development secretary, Andrew Mitchell.
The news emerged on another bloody day of conflict as four British servicemen were killed in separate incidents in Afghanistan in 24 hours, bringing the military death toll in the country to 322 since 2001.
Mitchell will cite Afghanistan as the main beneficiary of a review of aid to around 90 countries that benefit from the Department for International Development's £2.9bn aid budget.
Countries already expected to experience cuts in UK aid include long-term beneficiaries turned economic powerhouses such as Russia and China. It is understood that the review will also look at cutting or ending aid to a number of countries in South America and eastern Europe. Sources said money would continue to be channelled as a matter of priority to the poorest countries, many in Africa.
But the search for other cuts will range far more widely. Overall, the number of countries receiving UK bilateral aid is likely to be more than halved to well under 50.
Mitchell, whose DfID budget has been "ringfenced" from the government's austerity drive, is under intense pressure from sections of his own party to justify its special status while other departments, including the Home Office and Department for Work and Pensions, face cuts of 25% to 40%.
The coalition government has also promised to meet the legally binding target, set by Labour, of providing an aid budget of 0.7% of national output, which will mean real-terms increases. This has placed DfID under an even greater obligation to deliver value.
Mitchell will stress that an aid expansion to Afghanistan from £500m to £700m over the next four years will help the country stand on its own feet – improving stability, the economy and government, and allowing UK troops to come home within David Cameron's target of five years.
That target appeared a long way off yesterday when an airman for the RAF Regiment died in a road accident near Camp Bastion in Helmand, a marine from 40 Commando Royal Marines died in an explosion in Sangin, and a member of the Royal Dragoon Guards died in a blast in the Nahr-e Saraj district of Helmand. A soldier from the Royal Logistics Corps was last night also killed in another blast in Nahr-e Saraj. Next of kin have been informed.
The Royal Logistics Corps soldier was part of a bomb disposal team clearing a route in southern Nahr-e Saraj so that local people could move more freely, according to a spokesman for the Army's Task Force Helmand, Lieutenant Colonel James Carr-Smith. "He was a very brave and courageous man and he will be missed by us all," he added.
The soldier from the Royal Dragoons, whose death was announced earlier in the day, was part of a patrol providing security to enable new roads and security bases to be constructed north-east of Gereshk.
The two other deaths – of the marine killed in an explosion while on patrol with US marines, supported by the Afghan army, in Sangin, and the airman who died in a road accident north of Camp Bastion, the main British military base – occurred on Friday. The latest fatalities come as a massive hunt continues for a rogue Afghan soldier who killed three UK troops.
"Using the UK's aid budget to secure progress in Afghanistan will be my number one priority," Mitchell will say tomorrow.
The new emphasis at DfID would appear to be at odds with recent comments by the defence secretary, Liam Fox, who said: "We are not in Afghanistan for the sake of the education policy in a broken, 13th-century country. We are there so the people of Britain and our global interests are not threatened."
Mitchell's approach will please many in his own party who dislike the ringfencing of the aid budget, but is proving controversial with some aid agencies, which do not want the aid budget to be used for what they see as military-related goals.
"Aid should be about helping the most needy, but it's not any more," one charity head told the Observer. "It's about backing up the country's political leaders, and I don't think taxpayers expect money taken to help the world's poor to be propping up the government's military affairs."
Mitchell will insist, however, that by pumping in more aid to Afghanistan the goals of stability and a UK withdrawal can be achieved more quickly. "I am determined to back up the efforts of our armed forces as we work towards a withdrawal of combat troops," he will say. "Nowhere is the case clearer of why well-spent aid overseas is in our national interest than in Afghanistan. The UK is there to prevent the Afghan territory from again being used by al-Qaida as a base from which to plan attacks on the UK and our allies. While the military bring much-needed security, peace will only be achieved through political progress backed by development."
Alongside an increase in the size and pace of UK aid efforts, Mitchell will set out steps to ensure the UK's work in Afghanistan is more effective. President Hamid Karzai will announce a timetable for a "conditions-based and phased transition" at the international conference on Afghanistan to be held in Kabul on Tuesday. British troops are to pull out by 2014, according to a leaked communiqué obtained by the Independent on Sunday.
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Longtime fixture at Afghan base found murdered
The Canadian Press July 18, 2010
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — He had lived and worked on what is now the provincial reconstruction team base in Kandahar city since he was a small boy.
And now Fida Mohammed, a jack of all trades affectionately nicknamed "Popeye" by American soldiers several years ago, is dead. He was believed to be 60.
Mohammed's body was found outside the base in Kandahar city by his son Saturday. He had been murdered.
The affable maintenance man watched as his father helped build what was originally a fruit cannery at the base and eventually ended up working there in a number of jobs over more than 35 years.
The PRT was originally a prosperous fruit cannery built by Czech investors in the early 1970s, a time of prosperity in Afghanistan. As many as 1,400 workers showed up for work each day to can pomegranates, apples and grapes for export.
The operation was scaled back when the Russians invaded in 1979 and shut down for good when the mujahedeen warlords took over in 1992.
All through those years Mohammed was there.
"First I was shocked and then I was saddened by it. Popeye was quite simply a good man," said Maj. Dave Muralt, the public affairs officer at the PRT in 2006.
Popeye was always working said Muralt, who said he left the base only to visit his four wives and other members of his family.
"One of my memories of him was one night I came out of the TOC (tactical operations centre) and he was there putting bottles of water into the fridge so they would be frozen for the troops to use," he said.
Mohammed lived on the base in a plywood shack but medics scrounged up a bunch of building materials and had the engineers at the time build him a new house.
"We all gathered around and had to chase a cat and a kitten out who had set up housekeeping and we gave him the key to his new house for him and his son," Muralt said.
Although he was unable to read or write, Mohammed was a walking historian.
He watched governments and their armies come and go -- the former Afghan monarchy, followed by the government of Mohammad Sardar Daoud Khan (which abolished the monarchy in a bloody coup), the Communists, the warlords, the Taliban and now the U.S.-and NATO-backed administration of President Hamid Karzai.
"While working with different people in the past I have not been working for government. I'm working for this country," he said, speaking through an interpreter in an interview with The Canadian Press four years ago.
"Whoever comes, whoever goes, it's not my problem," he shrugged.
Mohammed said all previous regimes, with the exception of Daoud, had one thing in common. "Except for Daoud, all the kings were corrupt, the Taliban was so corrupt, everybody was corrupt and everybody was thinking about themselves," he said .
News of his death was a blow for the residents of the PRT, who plan a memorial in his honour.
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Unlikely tutor gives advice to military
‘Three Cups of Tea’ author offers help
New York Times By Elisabeth Bumiller July 18, 2010
WASHINGTON - In the frantic last hours of General Stanley A. McChrystal’s command in Afghanistan, when the world wondered what was racing through his mind, he reached out to an unlikely corner of his life: the author of the book “Three Cups of Tea,’’ Greg Mortenson.
“Will move through this and if I’m not involved in the years ahead, will take tremendous comfort in knowing people like you are helping Afghans build a future,’’ McChrystal wrote to Mortenson in an e-mail message, as he traveled from Kabul to Washington. The note landed in Mortenson’s inbox shortly after 1 a.m. Eastern time June 23. Nine hours later, the general walked into the Oval Office to be fired by President Obama.
The e-mail message was in response to a note of support from Mortenson. It reflected his broad and deepening relationship with the US military, whose leaders have increasingly turned to Mortenson, once a shaggy mountaineer, to help translate the theory of counterinsurgency into tribal realities on the ground.
In the past year, Mortenson and his Central Asia Institute, responsible for the construction of more than 130 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, mostly for girls, set up some three dozen meetings between McChrystal or his senior staff members and village elders across Afghanistan.
The collaboration, which grew in part out of the popularity of “Three Cups of Tea’’ among military wives who told their husbands to read it, extends to the office of Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Last summer, Mullen attended the opening of one of Mortenson’s schools in Pushghar, a remote village in Afghanistan’s Hindu Kush mountains.
Mortenson — who for a time lived out of his car in Berkeley, Calif. — has also spoken at dozens of military bases, seen his book go on required reading lists for senior American military commanders, and had lunch with General David H. Petraeus, McChrystal’s replacement. On Friday he was in Tampa to meet with Admiral Eric T. Olson, the officer in charge of the US Special Operations Command. Mortenson, 52, thinks there is no military solution in Afghanistan — he says the education of girls is the real long-term fix — so he has been startled by the Defense Department’s embrace.
“I never, ever expected it,’’ Mortenson, a former Army medic, said in an interview from Florida, where he had paused between military briefings, book talks for a sequel, “Stones Into Schools,’’ and fund-raising appearances for his institute.
Mortenson, who said he had accepted no money from the military and had no contractual relationship with the Defense Department, was critical of the armed forces in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as “laptop warriors’’ who appeared, he said, indifferent to the civilian casualties inflicted by the American bombardment of Afghanistan.
In its early days “Three Cups of Tea,’’ the story of Mortenson’s efforts to build schools in Pakistan, was largely ignored by the military, and for that matter by most everyone else. Written with a journalist, David Oliver Relin, and published in hardcover by Viking in March 2006, the book had only modest sales. Most major newspapers did not review it.
But the book’s message of the importance of girls’ education caught on when women’s book clubs, church groups, and high schools began snapping up the less expensive paperback published in January 2007. Sales to date are at 4 million copies in 41 countries, and the book’s yarn is well known: Disoriented after a 1993 failed attempt on Pakistan’s K2, the second-highest mountain in the world, Mortenson took a wrong turn into the village of Korphe, was nursed back to health by the villagers and, in gratitude, vowed to build them a school.
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