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Afghanistan plans ambitious vision for the future
By Sayed Salahuddin
KABUL (Reuters) – Afghanistan will seek greater control of billions in development funds at a major international meeting on Tuesday, promising in return to take on more responsibility for security as well as generate economic growth.
Kabul conference marks transition to Afghan leadership
by Lynne O'donnell – Mon Jul 19, 1:38 am ET
KABUL (AFP) – Afghanistan is set to host a key international conference in Kabul on Tuesday, aiming to chart a course for the war-torn country's future and show supporters it is acting on past pledges.
UN strives for "big success" at Kabul conference, official says
UNITED NATIONS, July 19 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations will try its best to ensure the upcoming international conference on Afghanistan "a big success", said a senior UN official.
Hillary Clinton arrives in Kabul
KABUL (AFP) – US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Kabul Monday for talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai ahead of an international conference on the future of the war-torn country.
Kabul Wants To Change The Way Foreign Aid Is Spent
July 19, 2010 By Zarif Nazar, Charles Recknagel Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
When the Afghan government and its international partners meet in Kabul on July 20, there will be a dramatic change in their relationship.
Beyond "empty promises"?
KABUL, 19 July 2010 (IRIN) - A high-profile international donor conference in Kabul on 20 July will not immediately end Afghanistan’s deep and long-standing problems but, if managed properly, could help identify key challenges and solutions, aid workers and diplomats say.
Clinton Reaffirms US Commitment to Pakistan
VOA News July 19, 2010 Ayaz Gul | Islamabad
Concluding a second round of the so-called U.S.-Pakistan strategic dialogue in Islamabad, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton on Monday announced more than $500 million in several new aid programs for Pakistan.
U.S. hopes Afghanistan-Pakistan trade deal boosts cooperation in war effort
By Karen DeYoung Washington Post staff writer Monday, July 19, 2010
ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN - Like an anxious matchmaker nudging a nervous couple together, the Obama administration has persuaded Afghanistan and Pakistan to take their first tangible step toward bilateral cooperation -- a trade agreement that will facilitate the ground shipment of goods between and through the two countries.
Washington Brokers Major Afghan-Pakistani Trade Breakthrough, Boosts Aid To Civilians
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty July 19, 2010
Following years of negotiations, Pakistan and Afghanistan signed a landmark deal in Islamabad on July 18 that could provide a major boost to regional trade while building much-needed trust in a historically rocky relationship.
Roadside Bombs Kill 6 Afghan Police, 2 US Troops
July 19, 2010 VOA News
Six Afghan police officers and two U.S. soldiers have been killed in separate roadside bombings in southern Afghanistan.
22 Taliban militants killed in W Afghanistan
HERAT, Afghanistan, July 19 (Xinhua) -- Twenty-two Taliban insurgents, including two commanders, were killed as aircraft pounded their hideout in Farah province west of Afghanistan on Monday, police said.
Roadside bomb wounds 4 German soldiers in northern Afghan province
DUZ, Afghanistan, July 19 (Xinhua) -- Four German soldiers were injured as a roadside bomb struck their vehicle in Afghanistan's northern Kunduz province on Monday, spokesman with the NATO-led forces in the province Lieutenant Colonel Webber said.
Finland offers 250,000 euros supporting Afghan election
HELSINKI, July 19 (Xinhua) -- Finland has granted 250,000 euros to support the organization of Afghanistan's upcoming parliamentary election in September, said the Finnish Foreign Ministry on Monday.
The failed-state conundrum
Washington Post By Fareed Zakaria Monday, July 19, 2010
"What happened in Kampala is just the beginning!" So warned Abu Zubeyr, the leader of al-Shabab, which claimed responsibility for the bombings in the Ugandan capital that killed more than 70 people who had gathered to watch the World Cup soccer finals. In the bombings' wake
Afghanistan Electricity: After Years Of Rebuilding, Most Afghans Lack Power
The Huffington Post - Jul 18 11:44pm
KABUL, Afghanistan (Associated Press) -- The goal is to transform Afghanistan into a modern nation, fueled by a U.S.-led effort pouring $60 billion into bringing electricity, clean water, jobs, roads and education to this crippled country. But the results so far -- or lack of them -- threaten to do more harm than good.
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Afghanistan plans ambitious vision for the future
By Sayed Salahuddin
KABUL (Reuters) – Afghanistan will seek greater control of billions in development funds at a major international meeting on Tuesday, promising in return to take on more responsibility for security as well as generate economic growth.
The ambitious pledges will be made at the Kabul Conference, where President Hamid Karzai will plead for more say in $13 billion in international funding to use on programs he hopes will boost economic growth and help end the insurgency.
With governments anxious to withdraw from the 150,000-strong NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) sooner than later, they are keen too for assurances the country won't slide back into the isolation that allowed al Qaeda to flourish and launch the September 11, 2001 attacks.
But the Taliban, treating any talk of withdrawal timetables as signs of weakness, have spurned any peace overtures and insist they will fight until all foreigners leave.
Some rights groups fear that as the west disengages, the government will try to cut a peace deal with the Taliban that will sacrifice gains made since the 2001 overthrow of hardline Islamist group.
"Amnesty International fears that human rights, including women's rights, will be compromised as the Afghan government and its US/NATO partners seek a quick solution to the conflict," said Sam Zarifi, the group's Asia-Pacific director.
A security blanket has been thrown over the city for the conference, Afghanistan's biggest in over three decades and attended by representatives from over 60 countries or international organizations, including U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The streets of the capital were deserted on Monday as even foreign diplomats found themselves unable to pass through scores of checkpoints that mushroomed overnight.
The Taliban frequently target prestigious government events and last month attacked a national peace meeting being addressed by Karzai, leading to the resignations of the country's interior minister and intelligence chief.
DISRUPTIONS
Ordinary Afghans complained of the disruption to life in a capital that already can seem like an endless security check.
"Whatever is happening tomorrow is not going to help us," said Raz Mohammad, reduced to walking to an appointment after his car was turned away.
"It is between the government and foreigners, we are not involved," he said.
A recent poll found 75 percent of Afghans believed foreigners disrespect their religion and traditions, 74 percent believe working with foreign forces was wrong, 68 percent believed foreign forces did not protect them and 65 percent wanted the Taliban and its leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, to join the government.
Karzai will be seeking international support for exploring peace talks with Taliban leaders, but Clinton warned some remain personae non gratae.
"We would strongly advise our friends in Afghanistan to deal with those who are committed to a peaceful future," she said in a townhall-style meeting in Pakistan earlier.
Clinton said, however, that history showed that sometimes peace forays work and thus should be tried.
"We would never reject that. We just caution, you need to enter into it very realistically," she said.
Tuesday's gathering will hear the Afghan government present a grand vision that contains commitments to both its own people and the international community and divided into five areas: funding, governance and law, economic and social development, peace and reconciliation, security and international relations.
Some analysts and diplomats say the commitments are long on hope and short on details, but all agree they come at a crucial time for Afghanistan.
Highlights include:
- Asking donors to increase aid through government channels from the current 20 percent to 50, promising better accounting in return and stepped up prosecution of graft and corruption cases involving officials through special courts.
- Expanding the army to a strength of over 170,000 by October 2011, and the national police to 134,000 as well as the formation of a new local police force in insecure areas.
- Introducing a program that aims to reintegrate up to 36,000 ex-combatants within five years.
- Increasing collection of domestic revenues to 9.4 pct of GDP by March next year.
(Additional reporting by Andrew Quinn and Hamid Shalizi)
(Writing by David Fox; Editing by Sugita Katyal)
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Kabul conference marks transition to Afghan leadership
by Lynne O'donnell – Mon Jul 19, 1:38 am ET
KABUL (AFP) – Afghanistan is set to host a key international conference in Kabul on Tuesday, aiming to chart a course for the war-torn country's future and show supporters it is acting on past pledges.
The July 20 conference is being billed as a bid by the Afghan government to start a process of transition from dependence on Western backers to running the country alone and responsibly.
"The conference has two major goals -- one is to demonstrate Afghan political will and a concrete programme of action," Ashraf Ghani, conference organiser and a former presidential candidate, told AFP in an interview.
"The second is to ask for realignment of the assistance so generously provided by the international community, to achieve our common objectives of a stable, secure and democratic Afghanistan."
President Hamid Karzai and UN chief Ban Ki-moon are to chair the conference, to be attended by up to 70 international representatives, including about 40 foreign ministers -- led by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
While officials are adamant it is not a donors' conference, officials have said the United States, Britain and Japan could add billions of dollars to their existing commitments.
Karzai is expected to lay out a timeframe for Afghan police and military to take responsibility for security, allowing foreign combat troops to withdraw by the end of 2014, Western diplomats said.
Afghan officials are set to present proposals covering governance, economic and social development, rule of law and justice, human rights, peace and reconciliation, regional and global partnerships, and aid effectiveness.
Diplomats have said the Afghan government will also present progress reports, outlining achievements using international donor funds to rebuild the country since the Taliban regime was overthrown in late 2001.
The conference would mark another phase in what is now being called the "Kabul process", a series of conferences and other milestones such as elections charting the transition to Afghan leadership, a Western diplomat said.
"This process will help articulate a vision for Afghanistan, living in peace with itself and its neighbours," he said.
"The aspiration is to take the lead in identifying what Afghanistan has and what potential it has," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Central to this process, Ghani said, is a commitment from the international community to grant the Afghan government control of 50 percent of all donor funds within two years.
"This of course requires significant changes in public financial management, accountability and transparency from the Afghan government's side," he said.
Since the Taliban regime was overthrown, only 20 percent of pledged funds -- of an estimated total of 40 billion dollars -- had been channelled through the Afghan budget, leading to profound levels of corruption among the rest.
Ghani said Afghan corruption, while "intolerable and unacceptable," did not involve aid money but drugs, land and commodities imports.
"Eighty percent has been the responsibility of donors, they have spent the money. There has been a lot of inefficiency in the use of that money.
"Where is the accountability of the UN agencies, where is the disclosure of what they have spent their money on? It's not a blame game, it's a question of accountability," he said.
Trust funds would be set up and managed by international financial institutions to ensure adequate monitoring, he added.
Western nations are under increased public pressure to justify their aid and military commitments to one of the world's most corrupt countries.
US President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron have said they want to pull out troops, the Americans from July next year, the British within five years.
Recent revelations that billions of dollars had been transferred out of the country -- much of it in suitcases declared to customs at Kabul airport -- have further unnerved Western leaders with their eyes on public opinion polls.
Ghani said Afghanistan was seen in the West through a prism of violence and corruption, while advances in areas such as health, education and infrastructure were overlooked.
"The other Afghanistan, the Afghanistan of hope, of entrepreneurship, of decency doesn't get reflected," he said.
"We are at a time of unique opportunity to get Afghanistan right."
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UN strives for "big success" at Kabul conference, official says
UNITED NATIONS, July 19 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations will try its best to ensure the upcoming international conference on Afghanistan "a big success", said a senior UN official.
"We are very honored that (Afghan) President (Hamid) Karzai has asked the United Nations to co-chair this conference," Wolfgang Weisbrod-Weber, Director of the Asia and Middle East Division, Department of Peacekeeping Operations, told Xinhua in a recent interview ahead of Tuesday's conference in Kabul.
"It shows the strong bond between the United Nations and Afghanistan and we will do our best to make this conference a big success."
Over 60 envoys, among them some 40 foreign ministers including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, are expected to attend the event co-chaired by Karzai and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
The conference follows the London Conference held in January, at which the Afghan government and its international partners endorsed a strategy to transfer greater responsibility into the hands of Afghans.
As the first major international event of its kind hosted by Afghanistan, the Kabul conference is of great significance, Weisbrod-Weber said.
"We've had conferences in London, the Hague, Paris, and Bonn. They were all somewhere else," he said. "But this one is organized by and prepared for the Afghans. It is a conference about Afghan people themselves."
Weisbrod-Weber said the United Nations expects Afghan authorities and ministries to present their views for the future of their country at the conference, including governance, security and economic and social development.
"This is not a dialogue between the international community and the Afghans, but a dialogue between the Afghan government and its people," he said. "The role of the international community is to align behind the government."
Top UN envoy in Afghanistan Staffan de Mistura said last week the main objective of the conference is to foster confidence in a "public contract between the Afghan government and the Afghan people" and to promote the delivery of social and economic improvements.
The international community, he added, will not be expected to bring new funds to the meeting but to re-align the resources which they have already allocated for Afghanistan with the country's own priorities.
"It is very important to point that this is not a pledging conference," said Weisbrod-Weber. "Frankly there is enough money being spent. The challenge is how to spend and what it is to spend for."
According to a joint news release issued by the United Nations and the Afghan government, the conference will be 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.
Talking about the relations between the United Nations and Afghanistan, Weisbrod-Weber said that the two have maintained "strong ties."
The United Nations has been with the Afghan people for many years in good times and bad times. "We have never left the Afghans alone," he said.
"This is a treasure of goodwill accumulated by previous generations of UN people,"Weisbrod-Weber said. "I think that is what makes the relations between the United Nations and Afghans so strong. It is the long history of reliability."
He said the United Nations will continue to contribute to the good relations with Afghanistan and remain at the side of the Afghan people.
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Hillary Clinton arrives in Kabul
KABUL (AFP) – US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Kabul Monday for talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai ahead of an international conference on the future of the war-torn country.
Clinton was due to meet Karzai on Monday evening, as well as the new commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus.
The conference, starting on Tuesday, aims to chart a future of peace and development for Afghanistan and show supporters the country is acting on past pledges.
"An enormous amount of ... preparation has been done by the Afghans. They have a good team working on it. It's going to be very substantive and demonstrate more Afghan leadership," Clinton said during her flight to Kabul.
The meeting is being billed as a bid by the Afghan government to follow a process of transition from dependence on Western backers to running the country alone and responsibly after tens of thousands of US-led NATO troops go home.
Karzai and UN chief Ban Ki-moon are to chair the conference, and Ban urged the Afghan leader to unveil "concrete" steps to improve governance and promote national reconciliation.
Clinton said all sides had a role to play in fighting corruption.
"We've asked for steps to be taken. We also have to get a hard look at ourselves," she said.
"Our presence, all of our contracting, has fed this problem. It's an international issue. We have to do a better job in channelling our aid."
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Kabul Wants To Change The Way Foreign Aid Is Spent
July 19, 2010 By Zarif Nazar, Charles Recknagel Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
When the Afghan government and its international partners meet in Kabul on July 20, there will be a dramatic change in their relationship.
For the first time, the Afghan government will present its more than 70 foreign partners with its own plans for how to spend the bulk of foreign aid the country is receiving. Specifically, Afghan ministers will present 23 programs and ask donors to direct funding that now goes to NGOs and contractors to these programs instead.
That is in line with the new buzz word in Afghan development: alignment.
Simply put, "alignment" means assuring that international money supports more Afghan national programs and fewer foreign-determined priorities. The adjustment is seen as essential for helping Kabul win greater legitimacy among the Afghan population and for setting back the Taliban.
Kabul hopes to flip the current balance in how foreign aid is spent on its head at the Kabul conference.
"What we are asking is that all aid that comes to Afghanistan -- whether it is through the government's national budget or outside -- that 80 percent of this over the next two years should be aligned with the priorities of the Afghan government and of the Afghan people," Afghan Finance Minister Omar Zakhilwal told RFE/RL last week.
According to the Finance Ministry, some 77 percent of the $29 billion in international aid spent in Afghanistan since 2001 has been disbursed on projects with little or no input from Afghan government officials.
Whether the international community will agree to so radically change its spending pattern remains to be seen.
Commitment Still Stands
The Kabul conference follows up on the January 28 London Conference, where all sides agreed the Afghan government should directly take control of 50 percent of spending over the next two years, contingent on Kabul's progress in creating better public financial systems and curbing corruption.
Since then, top international officials have repeatedly said the commitment still stands.
NATO's senior civilian representative in Afghanistan, Ambassador Mark Sedwill, recently told RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal and Radio Free Afghanistan that, "At the moment, only 20 percent of the aid goes through Afghan government systems."
"We've agreed [at the London Conference] to increase that to 50 percent in the next two years, and what we want to do with the rest of it, as well, is align it with Afghan government priorities," Sedwill said.
But the Kabul conference also comes as concerns about the levels of corruption in Afghanistan have reached a high point. That exerts enormous pressure upon the participants at the meeting to proceed cautiously. In recent weeks, both Afghan and foreign officials have traded highly public charges blaming each other for the rampant corruption surrounding aid spending.
'Wipe Their Dirty Hands'
Afghan officials say most of the corruption is due to the fact that foreign contractors and NGOs control the aid. Afghan Justice Minister Habibullah Ghalib recently told reporters in Kabul, "The foreigners come here and wipe their dirty hands on our clean clothes."
But international officials generally defend the foreign NGOs' record and transparency. "International aid is generally well spent," Sedwill said. "There are good audit controls in place to ensure that it meets the needs of the people."
That same level of transparency, many say, is sorely lacking within the Afghan government itself.
Ramazan Bashar Dost, who ran as a candidate in last year's presidential campaign, said the Afghan authorities are deeply associated with corruption.
"If the government of Afghanistan and the government offices from the presidential palace to the provinces and districts were not involved in corruption, no NGO, whether local or foreign, and no company and no organization of the United Nations would be able to misuse the assistance for Afghanistan," Dost said.
'Checks And Balances'
Both European Union officials and some U.S. lawmakers have increasingly signaled their unhappiness with delivering new aid until better anticorruption systems are in place. The EU's envoy to Afghanistan said on July 13 that the bloc would postpone delivery of a $252 million aid package until it sees the results of the July 20 conference.
Vygaudas Usackas said that extending the aid to Afghanistan would be "conditional on a memorandum signed between the parties to ensure there are checks and balances."
Similarly, a key panel in the U.S. House of Representatives blocked $4 billion in aid to Kabul late last month, demanding that Washington investigate charges that huge amounts of foreign aid are being embezzled with the complicity of top Afghan officials.
In a bid to still the mounting criticism, the office of Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced on July 13 that the cabinet had approved a bill which would allow government ministers and senior officials accused of corruption to be put on trial before a special tribunal. Under Afghan law, ministers currently are immune from prosecution in ordinary courts.
How much aid money disappears illegally in Afghanistan is beyond anybody's ability to estimate. Afghan Finance Minister Zakhilwal sought to put at least a partial figure to it when he reported recently that some $4.2 billion has been transferred overseas from Afghanistan.
But what is clear is that anger in Afghanistan over such massive corruption has become one of the Taliban's strongest allies in the conflict.
Nathan Hoepner, chief of the Anticorruption and Stability Directorate of NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), told RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan earlier this month that in surveys his organization does every quarter "one of the things that comes out very strongly is that corruption is one of the leading reasons that causes people to join the insurgency."
"It is not necessarily because of radicalization; it is because of the frustration they feel," Hoepner said.
No New Funds Pledged
Hoepner said the international community will be looking for new commitments in Kabul to make the workings of the government and how it spends money more transparent to the public.
"The Afghan government made a commitment back in the London Conference and will reaffirm that with a more specific plan here in Kabul regarding how mid- and senior-level civil-service people are, in fact, hired," Hoepner said.
"They have said that they also want a transparent hiring process so people can see how it is done and people can see the merit that brings people into position, because how a person takes authority very much determines how they use that authority."
The July 20 conference will not see donor nations and organizations pledging any new funds. Instead, the focus will be on financial aid that has already been committed.
The meeting will be the first time the Afghan government meets with its international partners on Afghan soil. Among the key attendees will be UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as well as more than 40 foreign ministers.
The conference is intended to discuss the whole range of issues facing Afghanistan, including peace and reconciliation, aid effectiveness, and regional and global cooperation.
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Beyond "empty promises"?
KABUL, 19 July 2010 (IRIN) - A high-profile international donor conference in Kabul on 20 July will not immediately end Afghanistan’s deep and long-standing problems but, if managed properly, could help identify key challenges and solutions, aid workers and diplomats say.
Officials say the conference will not be a pledging event but the government will ask donors to spend at least half of their funds through national channels. Donors have disbursed about US$40 billion on assistance to Afghanistan over the past eight years but the government has said it only received about 20 percent of the funds.
“So many of the previous conferences have promised the world, but ended up delivering very little,” Ashley Jackson, head of policy and advocacy with Oxfam International in Kabul and author of a report addressed to participants at the conference, told IRIN.
The 19 July report entitled Promises, Promises reminds donors and the government that Afghans need action not “empty promises”.
“Afghans are tired of conferences,” Oxfam said in a press release adding that it was the ninth major international conference about Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001.
The government and some donors, however, back the conference and point out that progress has been made in various areas over the past eight years.
“It’s an Afghan-led and Afghan-organized [conference] in which the government will define the future and we, the international community, will realign our support behind the government’s plans,” Vygaudas Usackas, ambassador and special representative of the European Union (EU) in Afghanistan, told IRIN.
The conference would be the beginning of an “Afghan process” in which the government would not only assume greater authority but offer a new “social contract” to its citizens on good governance, accountability and better services, Usackas said.
“It’s not just promises,” he said, adding that the EU was satisfied with aid spending in the country.
Realistic?
“Holding yet another one-day conference is not the way to solve the long-term problems facing Afghanistan. It creates the illusion of action but it is actually what happens after the conference that matters most,” said Oxfam’s Jackson.
Security has been worse than at any time since 2001 and development activities have increasingly been inhibited by insurgent attacks on government employees, according to aid agencies. The government plans to lure fighters away from insurgency with financial and political incentives through a controversial integration strategy.
Ahead of the arrival of dozens of foreign dignitaries, among them the UN Secretary-General and US secretary of state, thousands of Afghan and US/NATO forces have been drafted in to ensure security during the event. A suicide bombing in the city on 18 July left three dead and over 40 wounded, according to health officials.
“The Kabul Conference cannot do magic and solve all problems. There are solid challenges ahead which cannot be solved overnight or by the government alone,” said Shukria Barakzai, a member of parliament.
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Clinton Reaffirms US Commitment to Pakistan
VOA News July 19, 2010 Ayaz Gul | Islamabad
Concluding a second round of the so-called U.S.-Pakistan strategic dialogue in Islamabad, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton on Monday announced more than $500 million in several new aid programs for Pakistan.
The string of new projects unveiled by Clinton during a joint press conference with Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Memood Qureshi are designed to help Pakistan meet its energy needs and boost power generation, health and agricultural development. The programs are the first to be launched under U.S legislation passed last year tripling civilian aid for Pakistan to $7.5 billion during the next five years.
Secretary Clinton said the United States hopes the new aid will translate into real life improvements for families and communities, describing them as long-term investments in Pakistan's future.
"We are committed to building a partnership with Pakistan that of course strengthens security and protects the people of Pakistan, but goes far beyond security," Clinton said. "We want to help you drive economic growth and prosperity, strengthen your democratic government institutions and expand access to the tools of opportunity."
Pakistan is playing a key role in the international fighting against Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan. But public opinion in Pakistan still views U.S. motives with a considerable amount of suspicion. The skepticism stems from the U.S decision to abandon support for Pakistan after Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan.
But Secretary Clinton says she can see positive change resulting from what she called deeper and broader bilateral engagements in recent years.
"We have moved beyond a standoff of our misunderstandings that were allowed to fester and not addressed… to a position where we are engaged in the most open dialogue that I think our two countries have ever had," she said.
Foreign minister Qureshi also agreed that the enhanced U.S cooperation in various fields such as energy, power, health, agricultural and education sector is critical for changing the public perception in Pakistan.
"The opinion of the United States will change when the people of Pakistan see that their lives have changed," said Mr. Qureshi.
Sunday, Clinton attended the signing of a landmark trade deal reached by Pakistan and Afghanistan, after years of negotiations. The United States has been pushing Afghan and Pakistani leaders to improve bilateral relations it says will contribute to the fight against extremists.
Secretary Clinton's next stop as part of her Asia trip will be Kabul, where she will attend an international conference on Tuesday.
At the news conference in Islamabad, she reiterated that insurgents who wish to reconcile must lay down their arms, renounce partnership with al-Qaida and accept Afghanistan's constitution.
"It seems to us that there will be some who are willing to meet those conditions and others who are not. And we would strongly advise our friends in Afghanistan to deal with those who are committed to a peaceful future where their ideas can compete in the political arena through the ballot box, not through the force of arms."
Taliban insurgents have stepped up attacks against Afghan and U.S-led coalition forces in recent months. More than 50 foreign troops have died in July while the previous month was the deadliest for international forces since the war against Taliban and its allies began nine years ago.
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U.S. hopes Afghanistan-Pakistan trade deal boosts cooperation in war effort
By Karen DeYoung Washington Post staff writer Monday, July 19, 2010
ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN - Like an anxious matchmaker nudging a nervous couple together, the Obama administration has persuaded Afghanistan and Pakistan to take their first tangible step toward bilateral cooperation -- a trade agreement that will facilitate the ground shipment of goods between and through the two countries.
The accord has been under negotiation for years; Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari promised President Obama more than a year ago that it would be completed by the end of 2009. During marathon talks between the two sides that began last week, U.S. officials helped forge a deal in time to announce it Sunday night, just hours after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived for a two-day visit.
On Monday, Clinton and the Pakistanis will unveil their own bilateral agreement pledging an initial $500 million in new U.S. economic assistance to Pakistan. The aid, primarily for water and energy projects, is part of a $7.5 billion, five-year development package approved by Congress last fall.
The trade and aid agreements are part of the administration's ongoing efforts to facilitate Obama's Afghanistan war strategy. It hopes that a long-term investment here, along with repeated visits from senior officials, will persuade Pakistan to more solidly align its interests with those of the United States.
Most immediately, the Obama administration would like the Pakistani military to take more aggressive action against Taliban groups that use Pakistan as their headquarters and base of operations for attacks in Afghanistan. The groups, including the Haqqani network based in the Pakistani tribal areas along the Afghan border and the Quetta Shura based in the southern province of Baluchistan, have historically close ties with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence directorate.
After the Times Square bombing attempt in May, U.S. intelligence concluded that confessed bomber Faisal Shahzad had been trained and directed by the Pakistani Taliban, a domestic extremist group allied with those active in Afghanistan. Administration officials warned Pakistan that a successful attack in U.S. territory emanating from Pakistan would have a "devastating impact on our relationship," Clinton said in an interview with the BBC on Sunday. "I worry about it all the time, and so do the Pakistanis," she said.
Islamabad is at least as important as Kabul, Richard C. Holbrooke, the administration's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said Sunday. Pakistan is "one of the most critical countries in the world," he said.
Historical adversaries Pakistan and India have long competed for influence in Afghanistan, and the administration has tried to juggle its relations with the three while encouraging resolution of differences among them. Over the past year, it has pushed for dialogue between Islamabad and Kabul as part of its war effort. The new trade accord, an expansion of a limited agreement signed in 1965 and the subject of sporadic and unsuccessful negotiations since then, will boost Afghan exports by regularizing customs and transit permit arrangements, giving Afghanistan easier access to Pakistani seaports and allowing Pakistan greater access to Central Asia.
Afghan trucks, which have had to offload goods onto Pakistani vehicles on their joint border, will be able to deliver goods directly to Pakistani destinations and ports, and to travel across Pakistan to the Indian border, where the items will be offloaded onto Indian trucks. Full cross-border transit has been put off until Pakistan and India resolve their own differences.
Administration officials have been divided on other aspects of Pakistan-Afghanistan cooperation, including the prospect that Karzai, with Pakistani encouragement, might move too quickly to cede political power to the Taliban that they have not won on the battlefield.
Both governments have grown leery of the strength of the U.S. commitment, with concerns about waning popular and political support for the war in the United States and Obama's pledge to begin troop withdrawals in July 2011.
Clinton will travel from Islamabad to Kabul to attend a conference where Karzai is expected to announce concrete plans for reintegration of low-level Taliban fighters, anti-corruption measures, a new community defense program and other initiatives that the international community has agreed to fund.
The trip to Pakistan is Clinton's second as secretary of state, following a visit in October marked by hostile questioning from student, media and civil society groups.
After meetings Sunday night with Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani and Zardari, Clinton and Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Monday will convene the second session of a bilateral "strategic dialogue" begun in Washington in the spring. Since the initial session, representatives of the two governments have drawn up lists of agreed projects, with the United States seeking programs that will be visible to the greatest number of Pakistanis.
"We think you're going to find a different situation here" in terms of anti-American feeling compared with Clinton's last visit, Holbrooke said. "The fact that we are delivering is producing change in Pakistani attitudes, first within the government and gradually, more slowly, within public opinion." Recent polls have indicated only a slight improvement in Pakistani opinion toward the United States.
Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's ambassador to the United States, said in Islamabad on Sunday that his government had cleared a backlog of 450 visa requests for U.S. officials, a third of them for military officials. The backlog has long been an irritant in U.S.-Pakistan relations.
Haqqani said Zardari had given Clinton a letter for Obama, inviting the president and his wife to Pakistan. Obama has scheduled a visit to India in November.
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Washington Brokers Major Afghan-Pakistani Trade Breakthrough, Boosts Aid To Civilians
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty July 19, 2010
Following years of negotiations, Pakistan and Afghanistan signed a landmark deal in Islamabad on July 18 that could provide a major boost to regional trade while building much-needed trust in a historically rocky relationship.
The agreement, witnessed by visiting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, will open an eastbound route for Afghan exports to reach India by way of Pakistan. Islamabad, meanwhile, gains access to Central Asian markets via Afghanistan to the west.
The bilateral deal, however, falls short of allowing Indian goods to be sent overland to Afghanistan via Pakistan. That prospect had been suggested but met with opposition among Pakistanis who feared that a flood of cheap Indian goods would harm them economically.
Once the political leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan grant their formal approval of the bilateral deal, the agreement should replace an outdated trade agreement worked out in the 1960s. The new deal is expected to provide a major boost to the nearly $2 billion annual trade between the two counties, much of which goes unrecorded, by facilitating transport and investment and reducing bureaucratic procedures.
"Bringing Islamabad and Kabul together has been a goal of this administration from the beginning," Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said after the signing ceremony. "This is a vivid demonstration of the two countries coming closer together."
Freer Trade
The agreement has been hailed as a huge step for Washington's efforts to stabilize the region, with the thinking being that greater cooperation between Pakistan and Afghanistan will undermine extremists in both countries.
Speaking to RFE/RL Radio Mashaal, former Pakistani Finance Minister Sartaj Aziz said that the new trade agreement has the potential to boost both the Pakistani and Afghan economies by giving them greater access to new markets.
The two countries, Aziz said, are still negotiating the details of a comprehensive bilateral trade agreement to determine the types and volume of goods it will cover. Under the old agreement, Islamabad blocked the import of certain consumer goods to Afghanistan via its ports, claiming such items were smuggled back into Pakistan, leading to the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in customs revenue.
"We still don't have a comprehensive trade agreement. This is just a partial agreement allowing Afghan exports to India," Aziz said. "They have formed a joint working group to discuss what items will be allowed under the Afghan transit. Some of these items are brought back to Pakistan. It damages us and we call it smuggling."
But the mood is Kabul is more optimistic. Afghan President Hamid Karzai's administration hopes that that the agreement is a step closer to its dream of transforming their country into a "land bridge" in the heart of Asia. "[President] Karzai congratulated people of both countries on the signing of the agreement and called it a major step for the regional trade and for the path of its development," a statement from his office said on July 18.
Turning toward improving bilateral relations between U.S. and Pakistan, Clinton on July 19 announced $500 million in new civilian-aid projects for Pakistan. Washington hopes the move can help convince skeptical Pakistanis that Washington's interest in their country extends beyond fighting Islamic extremists.
Engaged With Islamabad
The projects are part of the multiyear $7.5 million aid effort for Pakistan and will focus on health care and the building of new hydroelectric dams to ease the ongoing crippling energy crisis in the country of 165 million people. U.S. legislators approved the aid package last year.
Clinton also concluded the second round of the U.S.-Pakistan "Strategic Dialogue" with Pakistani officials. These comprehensive bilateral negotiations began in March this year and cover a broad spectrum of strategic, military, and development cooperation. These talks also aim at minimizing mistrust between the two sides.
Speaking to journalists in Islamabad before the start of the latest negotiations, Clinton said that Washington was looking to deepen its engagement with Islamabad.
"We know that there is a perception held by too many Pakistanis that America's commitment to them begins and ends with security. But in fact, our partnership with Pakistan goes far beyond security. It is economic, political, educational, cultural, historical, and rooted in family ties," Clinton said. "That this misperception has persisted for so long tells us that we have not done a good enough job of connecting our partnership with concrete improvements in the lives of Pakistanis, and with this dialogue, we are working very hard to change this perception."
The trade agreement and civilian aid to Pakistan is expected to contribute to the success of a major international conference in Kabul on July 20. Major international leaders -- including the secretary-general of the United Nations and foreign ministers of 40 countries -- are expected to participate in the Kabul event.
The conference is expected to showcase Afghanistan's resolve to take responsibility for its future, while Secretary Clinton is expected to underscore Washington's renewed commitment to helping Kabul stand on its own two feet.
compiled from agency reports
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Roadside Bombs Kill 6 Afghan Police, 2 US Troops
July 19, 2010 VOA News
Six Afghan police officers and two U.S. soldiers have been killed in separate roadside bombings in southern Afghanistan.
Afghan officials say the police officers were killed and four others wounded Monday when a bomb ripped through their vehicle in the Khakrez district of Kandahar province. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.
Two American soldiers were killed in separate bomb attacks in the south Monday. NATO did not give details.
Militants have stepped up attacks as U.S.-led NATO and Afghan forces work to clear Kandahar and surrounding areas of Taliban insurgents.
The latest violence comes as the Afghan government prepares to host a major international conference on Afghanistan in Kabul Tuesday.
Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.
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22 Taliban militants killed in W Afghanistan
HERAT, Afghanistan, July 19 (Xinhua) -- Twenty-two Taliban insurgents, including two commanders, were killed as aircraft pounded their hideout in Farah province west of Afghanistan on Monday, police said.
"A group of Taliban rebels were in meeting to in a house in Khashrod district this afternoon when intelligence report identified their hideout and NATO-led forces aircraft raided the house, killing 22 militants," provincial police chief, Faqir Ahmad Askar told Xinhua.
Two Taliban commanders, namely Mullah Bari and Mullah Agha Jan, are among those killed in the air raid, he further said.
The air raid was carried out while militants were planning on how to fire rockets on government interests, the official added.
Taliban militants have yet to make comment.
Inflicting casualties on Taliban outfit took place just a day before the opening of the international conference on the war- ravaged Afghanistan -- the Kabul Conference in the capital city Kabul on Tuesday amid tight security.
Anti-government militants carried out a suicide attack in the capital city Kabul on Sunday, killing two civilians and injuring more than 20 others.
However, the militants by organizing roadside bombings elsewhere in the country left nine Afghan police dead, killed two NATO soldiers and injured four others soldiers on Monday.
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Roadside bomb wounds 4 German soldiers in northern Afghan province
DUZ, Afghanistan, July 19 (Xinhua) -- Four German soldiers were injured as a roadside bomb struck their vehicle in Afghanistan's northern Kunduz province on Monday, spokesman with the NATO-led forces in the province Lieutenant Colonel Webber said.
"The incident occurred in Ali Abad district at 05:30 a.m. local time as a result three or four German soldiers were injured," Webber told Xinhua.
Meantime, governor of Kunduz province Mohammad Omar also said that the blast took place in Lala Maidan village of Ali Abad district this morning injuring four German soldiers.
On the other hand, a Taliban purported spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid in talks with media via telephone from undisclosed location claimed that Taliban is responsible for the bomb attack, adding that the four German soldiers were killed in the blast.
However, provincial governor Omar rejected the claim as baseless, saying no soldiers were killed in the blast.
A relatively peaceful province Kunduz has been the scene of increasing insurgency since early this year.
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Finland offers 250,000 euros supporting Afghan election
HELSINKI, July 19 (Xinhua) -- Finland has granted 250,000 euros to support the organization of Afghanistan's upcoming parliamentary election in September, said the Finnish Foreign Ministry on Monday.
According to a statement released by the ministry, the purpose of the support is to contribute to a successful electoral process in Afghanistan through the UNDP (United Nations Development Program) Electoral Fund.
The ministry said that supporting democratic development in Afghanistan is integral to the achievement of sustainable peace and stability in the country.
At the same time, the funds granted will be conducive to the development of good administration, which is one of the main goals set for Finland's development cooperation with Afghanistan.
The election set for Sept. 18 will be the second parliamentary election since the fall of Taliban in 2001.
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The failed-state conundrum
Washington Post By Fareed Zakaria Monday, July 19, 2010
"What happened in Kampala is just the beginning!" So warned Abu Zubeyr, the leader of al-Shabab, which claimed responsibility for the bombings in the Ugandan capital that killed more than 70 people who had gathered to watch the World Cup soccer finals. In the bombings' wake, al-Shabab has drawn renewed attention for its murky links to al-Qaeda, and analysts once again are warning that failed states are a mortal threat to American national security. In fact, the case of Somalia and al-Shabab proves precisely the opposite.
That Somalia is a failed state is beyond dispute. Foreign Policy magazine just published its annual Failed States Index, and for the third year running Somalia ranks No. 1. Somalia has had no functioning government since 1992, longer than probably any other present-day state. This is a tragic situation, but U.S. policymakers seem convinced it's also one that poses a grave danger to American national interests. "Dealing with such fractured or failing states is, in many ways, the main security challenge of our time," Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said. Hillary Clinton has voiced strong support for this view. When Condoleezza Rice was secretary of state, she used to call failed states the worst threat to American security, as did a host of scholars, U.N. officials and pundits.
The chief exhibit for this far-reaching claim was, of course, Afghanistan, which descended into chaos in the 1990s and became a staging ground for al-Qaeda as it prepared to attack America. But Afghanistan's story is a bit more complicated. The Taliban came to power there with support from the Pakistani military, which had long supported radical Islamists. The group also received private and public support from Saudi Arabia, which viewed it as a convenient dumping ground, far from home, for its radicals. Today there are very few al-Qaeda members in Afghanistan -- 60 to 100, says CIA head Leon Panetta -- and al-Qaeda operates out of Pakistan. As scholar Ken Menkhaus has pointed out, global terrorism seems to profit less from failed states and more from weak ones, such as Pakistan, where some element of the regime is assisting the terrorists. After all, many drastically failed states (Burma, Congo, Haiti) pose no global terrorist threat. ad_icon clear pixel
The trouble with trying to fix failed states is that it implicates the United States in a vast nation-building effort in countries where the odds of success are low and the risk of unintended consequences is very high. Consider Somalia. In 1992, after the government's collapse, U.S. troops were sent into the country as part of a U.N. mission to avert famine, but they soon became entangled in local power struggles, ending in a humiliating withdrawal. About a decade later, worried by the rising strength of a radical movement called the Islamic Courts Union, Washington began funding rival Somali factions and finally gave tacit backing to an Ethiopian intervention. The Islamic Courts Union was destroyed but regrouped under its far more radical, violent arm, al-Shabab, which is on the rise.
Somalia highlights the complexity of almost every approach to failed states. If Washington goes after the militants aggressively, it polarizes the political landscape and energizes the radicals, who can then claim to be nationalists fighting American imperialism. If it talks to them, it is accused of empowering jihadis. The real answer, many argue, is to strengthen the state's capacity so that the government has greater legitimacy and the opposition gets discredited. But how easy is it to fast-forward political modernization, compressing into a few years what has taken decades, if not centuries, in the West? All these dilemmas are on full display in Afghanistan.
What to do in Somalia? In a thoughtful report, Bronwyn Bruton of the Council on Foreign Relations makes the case for "constructive disengagement." The idea is to watch the situation carefully for signs of real global terrorism -- which so far are limited. Al-Shabab's "links" with al-Qaeda seem to be mostly rhetoric on both sides. But if they become real and deadly, be willing to strike. This would not be so difficult. Somalia has no mountains or jungles, making it relatively hospitable for counterterrorism operations. Just be careful not to become a player in the country's internal political dynamics. "We have a limited capacity to influence events in Somalia, to influence them positively," says Bruton. "But we have an almost unlimited capacity to make a mess of things."
Fareed Zakaria is editor of Newsweek International. His e-mail address is comments@fareedzakaria.com.
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Afghanistan Electricity: After Years Of Rebuilding, Most Afghans Lack Power
The Huffington Post - Jul 18 11:44pm
KABUL, Afghanistan (Associated Press) -- The goal is to transform Afghanistan into a modern nation, fueled by a U.S.-led effort pouring $60 billion into bringing electricity, clean water, jobs, roads and education to this crippled country. But the results so far -- or lack of them -- threaten to do more harm than good.
The reconstruction efforts have stalled and stumbled at many turns since the U.S. military arrived in 2001, undermining President Barack Obama's vow to deliver a safer, stable Afghanistan capable of stamping out the insurgency and keeping al-Qaida from re-establishing its bases here.
Poppy fields thrive, with each harvest of illegal opium fattening the bankrolls of terrorists and drug barons. Passable roads remain scarce and unprotected, isolating millions of Afghans who remain cut off from jobs and education. Electricity flows to only a fraction of the country's 29 million people.
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EDITOR'S NOTE -- The United States has made an enormous and costly commitment to building a new Afghanistan, but an Associated Press investigation finds that the results have been paltry. First in an occasional series, "Fixing Afghanistan."
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Case in point: a $100 million diesel-fueled power plant that was supposed to be built swiftly to deliver electricity to more than 500,000 residents of Kabul, the country's largest city. The plant's costs tripled to $305 million as construction lagged a year behind schedule, and now it often sits idle because the Afghans were able to import cheaper power from a neighboring country before the plant came online.
What went wrong?
The failures of the power plant project are, in many ways, the failures of often ill-conceived efforts to modernize Afghanistan:
The Afghans fell back into bad habits that favored short-term, political decisions over wiser, long-term solutions. The U.S. wasted money and might by deferring to the looming deadline and seeming desirability of Afghan President Hamid Karzai's 2009 re-election efforts. And a U.S. contractor benefited from a development program that essentially gives vendors a blank check, allowing them to reap millions of dollars in additional profits with no consequences for mistakes.
Rebuilding Afghanistan is an international effort, but the U.S. alone has committed $51 billion to the project since 2001, and plans to raise the stakes to $71 billion over the next year -- more than it has spent on reconstruction in Iraq since 2003.
Roughly half the money is going to bolster the Afghan army and police, with the rest earmarked for shoring up the country's crumbling infrastructure and inadequate social services.
There have been reconstruction successes, such as rebuilding a national highway loop left crumbling after decades of war, constructing or improving thousands of schools, and creating a network of health clinics.
But the number of Afghans with access to electricity has only inched up from 6 percent in 2001 to an estimated 10 percent now, well short of the development goal to provide power to 65 percent of urban and 25 percent of rural households by the end of this year.
Too many major projects are not delivering what was promised to the people, and rapidly dumping billions of reconstruction dollars into such an impoverished country is in some ways making matters worse, not better, Afghan Finance Minister Omar Zakhilwal says.
The U.S and its partners have wasted billions of dollars and spent billions more without consulting Afghan officials, Zakhilwal says.
All of that has ramped up corruption, undermined efforts to build a viable Afghan government, stripped communities of self-reliance by handing out cash instead of real jobs, and delivered projects like the diesel plant that the country can't afford, he says.
"The indicator of success in Afghanistan has been the wrong indicator ... it has been spending," Zakhilwal says. "It has not been output. It has not been the impact."
That's certainly true when it comes to electricity. Afghanistan consumes less energy per person than any other country in the world, even after years of reconstruction efforts, according to data compiled by the U.S. government.
Satellite pictures taken at night are startling: The country is a sea of darkness, dotted with only flyspecks of light.
The $305 million diesel power plant represents the biggest single investment the U.S. has made thus far to light up the country. It has been dubbed the most expensive plant of its type in the world, sitting in one of the world's poorest countries.
In 2007, the U.S. had rushed to build the plant in time to help Karzai win re-election, a hectic and unrealistic timetable embraced by the Afghan president that led to the jarring cost increases.
Complaints had piled up about Karzai's inability to deliver reliable power to Kabul, let alone the rest of the country. Afghan voters became increasingly frustrated as they watched billions of dollars flowing into the country for reconstruction, but still couldn't power their homes, hospitals, schools and businesses.
"That question became very loud in many people's mind, and the media and the press, 'They haven't been able to bring power to Kabul,'" says Ahmad Wali Shairzay, Afghanistan's former deputy minister of water and energy.
The U.S. and other international donors had spent years helping Afghanistan develop an energy strategy, one focused on reducing the country's reliance on diesel as a primary power source, since it was too costly and too hard to acquire.
The goal was to buy cheaper electricity from neighboring countries and develop Afghanistan's own natural resources, such as water, natural gas and coal.
All of that was abandoned by the decision by U.S. and Afghan officials to build the diesel plant on the outskirts of Kabul.
Never mind that the plant would make the country more, not less, reliant on its fickle neighbors for power. Never mind that Karzai's former finance minister pleaded with U.S. officials to drop the idea.
The U.S. plowed ahead, turning the project over to a pair of American contractors, including one already scolded for wasting millions in taxpayer dollars on shoddy reconstruction projects. The U.S. team paid $109 million for 18 new diesel engines to be built -- more than the original cost of the plant -- only to discover rust and corrosion in several of them.
"The Kabul diesel project was sinful," says Mary Louise Vitelli, a U.S. energy consultant who focused on power development in Afghanistan for six years, working with the U.S., the World Bank and as a special adviser to Karzai's government.
James Bever, the U.S. Agency for International Development's director of the Afghanistan-Pakistan task force, says it's unfair to label the project a failure. Even with the problems, he notes, the plant provides Afghanistan with an additional power source.
"You know, there's a formula in this business. You can have it fast, you can have it high quality, and you can have it low cost. But you cannot have all three at the same time," Bever says.
For Afghans, each nightfall is a reminder of promises not kept.
When darkness comes, there is not much Abdul Rahim and others living in southwest Kabul can do. Without lights, they cannot work, and their children cannot play. Rahim's children sometimes sit around a kerosene lamp to do their homework, their books laid flat in a circle around the flame's flickering light.
"The people who are living in this area, they don't have electricity and it is dark everywhere," Rahim says. "Day and night, we are counting the minutes to when we will finally get electricity."
The setbacks stretch far beyond Kabul.
Despite spending millions of dollars over more than six years studying the nation's natural gas fields in the north, no plan is in place to tap that substantial resource for power. And a huge project to expand hydropower in the south that already has cost about $90 million is delayed by continued fighting in the region, which has long been a Taliban stronghold.
An estimated nine out of 10 Afghans still live without access to power, which is concentrated in highly populated areas like Kabul and Herat in the west.
Only 497,000 of the country's 4.8 million households are connected to what passes for a national power grid, despite more than $1.6 billion already spent on energy projects, according to data from the country's utility corporation.
The system is more like a disconnected patchwork of pockets of available electricity, serving different regions of the country, some with hydropower, some with power imported from nearby countries and some with diesel-generated power.
So Afghans improvise at home, and many hotels and businesses -- even embassies and international agencies -- rely on their own generators for power. And some sell electricity to their neighbors.
Take Qurban Ali's old, crank-operated diesel generator, which coughs and belches black smoke before the engine starts running. Ali's generator provides electricity to more than 100 houses in the Dasht-i-barchi neighborhood in Kabul, where Rahim lives.
He estimates about 1,000 small, private diesel generators like his keep the lights on in more than 4,000 homes in the area. And they'll keep using the generators until transmission lines are in place and the Afghan government follows through on a promise to streamline power hookups for customers.
So the citizens of Kabul wait.
"Right now, we are hopeless to have electricity," Ali says.
Afghans who can afford it pay private generator owners like Ali by the light bulb, about $2.60 a month for each bulb hanging from the ceiling. It costs nearly $11 a month to power a television. The average income in Afghanistan is a little more than a dollar a day.
"We don't have the ability and cannot afford to pay more money for each light we use," says Rahim, whose wife and nine children share a home with his brother, sister-in-law and their nine children.
When Ronald Neumann, then-U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, signed an agreement with the Afghan government to use diesel to bring more electricity to Kabul, the city wasn't completely without power. But it was close.
In the winter, Afghans resorted to burning tires and goat dung to keep warm, experiencing a scant six hours of daylight each day.
Some Afghan leaders, led by then Minister of the Economy Jalil Shams, had pushed for additional generator power in Kabul. The U.S. rejected that approach, Neumann says, because it considered generators a costly, short-term solution.
Building transmission lines to carry inexpensive imported power from Uzbekistan and other northern neighbors would be a much better investment, Neuman says he initially thought. But he changed his mind after a study by Black & Veatch, a U.S. contractor that builds power plants around the world, argued the transmission lines wouldn't bring enough electricity to Kabul or be completed soon enough.
As it turned out, those transmission lines were finished first and provide the main source of power, instead of the $305 million plant.
Shams says the U.S. warmed to the idea of the diesel project after he told Neumann that Iran had agreed to cover most of the cost of a used diesel plant the Afghan government hoped to buy and reassemble in Kabul.
"I had offers in hand that were $90 million," Shams says. "On that basis of that offer of $90 million, we were thinking of having a good, used plant -- not a 100 percent new one."
But Neumann and Karzai's government reached their own agreement, which called for $100 million to buy the new diesel engines. The Afghans would cover $20 million and commit to developing a reliable way to collect utility payments from customers.
Karzai was briefed on the project and gave it his full support, even though it contradicted his country's energy strategy by nearly doubling the amount of the country's power generated by diesel engines.
Bringing 100 million watts of power to Kabul could certainly help turn public opinion in Karzai's favor. The diesel engines and generators would be installed by December 2008, U.S. officials said, in plenty of time for Karzai to take credit for the added power before voters cast their ballots.
"We wanted people feeling optimistic and hopeful going into the elections process," says William Wood, who became U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan after Neumann departed in early 2007.
Today, the diesel plant -- which was not ready to be turned over to the Afghan government until May 2010 -- runs mostly for short periods, producing only a fraction of its promised 105 million watts of power.
"This power plant is too expensive for us to use," says Shojauddin Ziaie, Afghanistan's current deputy minister of water and energy. "We will only use it in special cases when the main power supply gets cut off or if we face problems with that supply."
Black & Veatch, the U.S. contractor that swayed Neumann, oversaw the project for USAID as part of a joint $1.4 billion contract with The Louis Berger Group, another American contractor.
As the plant's costs and schedule veered wildly off course, the payouts to Black & Veatch also ballooned.
USAID refused to disclose the amounts paid as costs increased, but contract records obtained by The Associated Press show expenses and fees paid to the company tripled from $15.3 million in July 2007, when the project was estimated at $125.8 million overall, to $46.2 million in October 2009, when the price tag reached $301 million.
Among the costs: $7.8 million to clear and prepare the project site picked by Karzai. Building housing for workers: $2.7 million. Building a substation to connect the power to Kabul's grid: $15 million. Building the main plant: $62 million. And another $20 million went to transport materials, including flying the massive diesel engines in from Germany, an expense not included in the original project estimate.
Greg Clum, a Black & Veatch vice president, defended the project, calling the plant a "critical piece in our ability to help Afghanistan get its legs under itself and to be able to become a sustainable, growing economic player in the region."
Black & Veatch and The Louis Berger group landed the contract in 2006.
The next year, congressional investigators chastised Berger's work on an earlier contract to build schools and health clinics, accusing the company of poor performance and misrepresenting work.
USAID also found problems with the two companies under their current contract, which an internal assessment found put too much risk on the agency and too little on the contractors, who had no incentive to control spending.
In March 2009, with more than half of the $1.4 billion already committed, the agency said it had "lost confidence" in the companies' abilities to do reconstruction work in Afghanistan. Yet the contract continues, with both the agency and the contractors saying management has improved.
"We had a rough patch," says Larry Walker, president of Louis Berger. He defended his company's record in Afghanistan "in the face of heavy security challenges."
Neumann says it's too early to argue that the diesel project was a mistake.
"If the Afghans are able to handle distribution and handle the costs of running the plant and maintaining it then, in the long term, it may very well be judged a success. If they fail on that, then clearly it will not be," he says.
Shairzay, the former deputy energy minister, says Afghans view the diesel plant as a nice, expensive gift.
"Instead of giving me a small car, you give me really a Jaguar," he says. "And it will be up to me whether I use it, or just park it and look at it."
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