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Karzai: Target militants outside Afghanistan
By Deb Riechmann, Associated Press Writer – Thu Jul 29, 4:45 am ET
KABUL, Afghanistan – Afghan President Hamid Karzai pushed his international partners on Thursday to take stronger action against terrorist sanctuaries outside of Afghanistan. In a clear reference to havens in Pakistan, Karzai said: "The international community is here to fight terrorism, but there is danger elsewhere and they are not acting."
FBI and military investigating source of leaked Afghan war documents
By Ellen Nakashima Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, July 29, 2010
The FBI and the Justice Department are working with the military to investigate the source of the leak of tens of thousands of classified military documents on the Afghan war to WikiLeaks.org, U.S. officials said Wednesday.
Biden: Pakistan spy agency 'changing' on Afghanistan
Thu Jul 29, 11:04 am ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – US Vice President Joe Biden said in an interview aired Thursday that Pakistan's intelligence agency was "changing" in its behavior towards Afghanistan, following leaked claims it aided extremists.
Pakistan saddened by British PM's allegation
ISLAMABAD, July 29 (Xinhua)-- Pakistan Thursday angrily reacted to remarks by British prime minister that Islamabad is exporting terrorism to the outside world.
1 Soldier or 20 Schools?
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF July 28, 2010 The New York Times
The war in Afghanistan will consume more money this year alone than we spent on the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War and the Spanish-American War — combined.
For General Petraeus, battling corruption in Afghanistan is a priority
Washington Post By Joshua Partlow Thursday, July 29, 2010
KABUL - Every day, Gen. David H. Petraeus meets with senior NATO officials at headquarters for a 7:30 a.m. update, and at nearly every session, he returns to an issue that has bedeviled the U.S. campaign for years: Afghan corruption.
Second U.S. sailor's remains found in Afghanistan
Thu Jul 29, 10:49 am ET
KABUL (Reuters) – The body of a second U.S. sailor who went missing in Afghanistan last week has been recovered, an Afghan police chief said on Thursday.
Former Taliban group commander assassinated at home by militants
KUNDUZ, Afghanistan, July 29 (Xinhua) -- Taliban commander Mullah Abdullah who joined government two months ago was killed at his home in northern Kunduz province, provincial governor Mohammad Omar said Thursday.
Local strongman is U.S. troops' most reliable friend in Kandahar province
By Karin Brulliard Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, July 29, 2010; A01
NOW RUZI, AFGHANISTAN -- Haji Ghani is an illiterate, hashish-growing former warlord who directs a semiofficial police force and is known to show his anger through beatings. In this Taliban nest west of Kandahar, he is also U.S. forces' main partner.
Men in burqas hide in east Afghanistan: US general
Wed Jul 28, 6:39 pm ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – Male insurgents are hiding among villagers in eastern Afghanistan dressed in burqas in an attempt to avoid detection, the US regional military commander said Wednesday.
Afghan Women Fear Their Fate Amid Taliban Negotiations
By Aryn Baker – time.com Thu Jul 29, 12:15 pm ET
The Taliban pounded on the door just before midnight, demanding that Aisha, 18, be punished for running away from her husband's house. Her in-laws treated her like a slave, Aisha pleaded. They beat her. If she hadn't run away, she would have died. Her judge, a local Taliban commander
Tajikistan Sees Decline In Afghan Drug Volumes
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty July 28, 2010
Tajikistan is expecting a decline in the volume of drugs trafficked from Afghanistan this year due to better policing and a fungus that has attacked the opium poppy crop, according to Khalimdjon Makhmudov, who heads the operations and search department at Tajikistan's Drug Control Agency.
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Karzai: Target militants outside Afghanistan
By Deb Riechmann, Associated Press Writer – Thu Jul 29, 4:45 am ET
KABUL, Afghanistan – Afghan President Hamid Karzai pushed his international partners on Thursday to take stronger action against terrorist sanctuaries outside of Afghanistan. In a clear reference to havens in Pakistan, Karzai said: "The international community is here to fight terrorism, but there is danger elsewhere and they are not acting."
Pressure is building on Pakistan to escalate the fight against militants on its soil, especially since the release of more than 90,000 leaked U.S. military documents posted Sunday on the Web by WikiLeaks. The trove of U.S. intelligence reports alleged close connections between Pakistan's intelligence agency and Taliban militants fighting Afghan and NATO troops in Afghanistan.
Pakistan called the accusations malicious and unsubstantiated, but the push to persuade Pakistan to do more to eliminate Islamic extremists on its soil continues.
In a wide-ranging news conference, Karzai said Afghanistan has deep ties with "our brothers" in Pakistan. He didn't mention Pakistan by name. But Karzai said while Afghanistan is working diplomatic channels to prevent nations from training, protecting and giving sanctuary to terrorists outside Afghanistan, only the international community has the capability of actually doing something about them.
"The question is, why are they not doing it?" Karzai said.
British Prime Minister David Cameron said Thursday that Pakistan needs to make progress against terrorist groups on Pakistani soil.
"To be fair, the Pakistan government — they have taken action against these groups," he said.
But refusing to back down from comments he made this week in India, Cameron added: "We need them to do more and we will support and help them as they do more."
Karzai told reporters he ordered his Cabinet ministers to study the war papers, especially those that address Pakistan and civilian casualties in Afghanistan. He also said documents that disclosed the names of Afghans who have worked with the NATO-led force were "shocking" and "irresponsible."
"Their lives will be in danger now," he said. "This is a very serious issue."
Karzai also was asked about the Obama administration's decision last week to target key leaders of the Afghan Taliban with new financial sanctions — a move that could complicate relations with Pakistan and the Karzai government's efforts to try to talk with some insurgent factions.
The action by the Treasury Department freezes the militants' assets, bans travel and triggers an arms embargo against three financial kingpins, including a key member of the al-Qaida linked Haqqani network, which directs operations against U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan from Pakistan.
It follows similar action by the United Nations earlier this week, and it comes after calls from Gen. David Petraeus, the top military commander in Afghanistan, and Sen. Carl Levin, Democrat-Michigan, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, for sanctions against Afghan insurgent commanders operating in Pakistan.
Taken together, the U.S. and U.N. sanctions prohibit any financial transactions of terrorist leaders in U.N. member countries, putting additional pressure on Pakistan to take broader actions against Taliban militants.
U.S. officials have urged Pakistan to crack down on the al-Qaida-linked Haqqani network, saying Islamabad's reluctance to move into the group's base in North Waziristan is hampering the Afghan war effort.
Pakistan has moved cautiously, but has been slow at times to take on militants that Islamabad does not believe pose a direct threat. Pakistan has had historic relations with some of the Afghan insurgents, and analysts suggest Islamabad perceives them as useful allies in Afghanistan when international forces withdraw.
Karzai did not comment directly on the new sanctions, saying they were decisions by the U.S. and international community. He said only that Afghanistan did not and would not have a so-called blacklist.
"We want to take a step toward the peace," he said, adding his government is reaching out to militants who want to lay down their weapons, sever ties with terrorists and embrace the Afghan government and its constitution. "Bullets firing from their guns are targeting their children, their property, their lives," he said.
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FBI and military investigating source of leaked Afghan war documents
By Ellen Nakashima Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, July 29, 2010
The FBI and the Justice Department are working with the military to investigate the source of the leak of tens of thousands of classified military documents on the Afghan war to WikiLeaks.org, U.S. officials said Wednesday.
WikiLeaks, an anti-secrecy group, posted all but 15,000 documents of what it is calling "The Afghan War Diary" on Sunday. WikiLeaks has declined to name its source, but the probe initially is focused on Army Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, a 22-year-old from Potomac, a Pentagon spokesman said, and may include others who have helped him. "They would look wherever the evidence leads," Col. Dave Lapan said.
Manning, an Army intelligence specialist, was charged this month with passing classified information to an "unauthorized source" while stationed in Iraq. Though the source was not named by the military, a former hacker in whom Manning confided has asserted that Manning passed documents and videos to WikiLeaks.
In an interview Sunday, the former hacker, Adrian Lamo, said "the overwhelming probability" is that Manning was WikiLeaks' source for the documents, which consist of more than 91,000 field intelligence reports and threat assessments. They were mostly classified as "secret," a relatively low classification level, but nonetheless contained information that could put lives at risk, officials said.
A note on the WikiLeaks site touted the records as "the most significant archive about the reality of war to have ever been released during the course of a war." The note added that WikiLeaks was delaying the release of the additional 15,000 documents "as part of a harm minimization process demanded by our source."
Yet the names of Afghan informants are identifiable in the online database, as the Times of London reported Wednesday. That raises the question of whether militants will retaliate against them. WikiLeaks' founder, Julian Assange, a 39-year-old Australian who also used to hack computer networks, said in an interview with The Washington Post on Wednesday that the site posted 76,000 records and that none of the information WikiLeaks has released in the past has led to physical injury of any person, as far as he knows.
A collaboration
In a break from past practice, WikiLeaks provided the files in advance to three news organizations: the New York Times, the Guardian in Britain and Der Spiegel in Germany. The newspapers had about a month to digest the data and write their own reports -- a news event spurred by the dogged efforts of a Guardian journalist who sold Assange on the idea of the collaboration, the Columbia Journalism Review reported Wednesday.
The three news outlets all committed to withhold information that could put lives at risk. None put the entire database online, instead posting a selection of significant documents. None knew the identity of WikiLeaks' source.
Lamo, 29, who lives in Sacramento, said that the Afghan war documents are "basically a large dump of battlefield intelligence systems that Manning had access to."
He said, however, that Manning lacked the technical expertise to obtain and transmit all the data and received help from people who worked with WikiLeaks. "There was overlap between people who were his friends and people working with WikiLeaks," Lamo said.
"They made him feel real cool by putting him in touch with Assange," he said. "They were WikiLeaks' 'shopper' for classified information. There are at least two people in his social circle who are in contact with WikiLeaks."
Lamo said he does not know how Manning's friends came to know or work with WikiLeaks. "At some point he was either induced, or of his own volition, decided to contact [WikiLeaks]," Lamo said.
On Wednesday, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III told a congressional panel: "We're currently supporting the Department of Defense investigation into that leak. . . . I can't say as to where that particular investigation will lead."
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., traveling in Cairo, told reporters Wednesday that "whether any criminal charges will be brought depends on how the investigation goes."
Army leading the probe
Manning's case is proceeding within the military justice system, with the Army Criminal Investigation Command leading the probe. The next step is a preliminary hearing to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to recommend a court-martial, Lapan said. If individuals not connected to the military are found to be involved in the leak, "then that's when Justice and the others would potentially get involved," he said.
The case was opened in relation to other material that Manning is suspected of having passed to WikiLeaks, including a classified video of an Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed unarmed civilians and more than 150,000 diplomatic cables.
Now, Lapan said, "they have expanded that to take a look at these latest documents."
The Army has assigned Manning a lawyer, but his family is trying to raise money to hire a private lawyer. Separately, WikiLeaks has said it unsuccessfully tried to send a private team of lawyers to meet with Manning.
Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
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Biden: Pakistan spy agency 'changing' on Afghanistan
Thu Jul 29, 11:04 am ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – US Vice President Joe Biden said in an interview aired Thursday that Pakistan's intelligence agency was "changing" in its behavior towards Afghanistan, following leaked claims it aided extremists.
Biden downplayed documents which suggested that between 2004 and 2009, elements of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), armed, trained and financed the Taliban despite Islamabad's anti-terror alliance with Washington.
"I'm getting very close to what I shouldn't be talking about in terms of classification," said Biden on NBC's "Today" show.
"But what was talked about in those leaks were the intelligence community within the ISI. That is the sort of the CIA of Pakistan. That has been a problem in the past. It is a problem we're dealing with and is changing."
Pakistan has denounced the leak of the secret files on the Afghan war as "irresponsible" and said it was committed to fighting extremists alongside the United States, and some Pakistani analysts said the documents were out of date.
Biden argued that documents leaked by the web whistleblower Wikileaks, published by three news organizations on Sunday, predate the new US Afghan policy announced by President Barack Obama in December.
"There are not monies being diverted from the public works and economic projects that are needed to sustain a democracy in Pakistan to the bad guys that exist within Pakistan," he said.
"There's not money being diverted from the military purposes that are designed to deal with counter-terrorism to those areas."
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Pakistan saddened by British PM's allegation
ISLAMABAD, July 29 (Xinhua)-- Pakistan Thursday angrily reacted to remarks by British prime minister that Islamabad is exporting terrorism to the outside world.
Speaking in the Indian city of Bangalore, British Prime Minister David Cameron also accused Islamabad of double dealing by both making an alliance with the West and helping terrorist groups.
"Pakistan is saddened by British Prime Minister David Cameron's remarks in Bangalore," Pakistan Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit said.
"These remarks are contrary to the facts on the ground and they have been prompted by reports of the Wikileaks website," Basit told weekly press briefing.
Wikileaks published some 90,000 secret U.S. Afghan war memos, saying that Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI) has direct contact with Afghan Taliban insurgents and its representatives attended Taliban meetings.
Basit pointed out that no one can draw right conclusions from such misguided reports that themselves are based on raw intelligence.
"It is important that we should not be creating unnecessary hype around these reports and get distracted. The world knows very well how Pakistan is contributing in the on-going fight against terrorism and continues doing that in its own interest."
The spokesman also dismissed as incomprehensible remarks by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who said Thursday in Kabul that avoiding targeting hideouts of terrorists on the other side of the border is questionable.
Basit said Pakistan and Afghanistan have been cooperating closely with each other against terrorism and "we don't see any reason as to why these remarks should have been made by the Afghan President."
He said Pakistan has asked its ambassador in Kabul to seek clarifications from the Afghan government.
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1 Soldier or 20 Schools?
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF July 28, 2010 The New York Times
The war in Afghanistan will consume more money this year alone than we spent on the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War and the Spanish-American War — combined.
A recent report from the Congressional Research Service finds that the war on terror, including Afghanistan and Iraq, has been, by far, the costliest war in American history aside from World War II. It adjusted costs of all previous wars for inflation.
Those historical comparisons should be a wake-up call to President Obama, underscoring how our military strategy is not only a mess — as the recent leaked documents from Afghanistan suggested — but also more broadly reflects a gross misallocation of resources. One legacy of the 9/11 attacks was a distortion of American policy: By the standards of history and cost-effectiveness, we are hugely overinvested in military tools and underinvested in education and diplomacy.
It was reflexive for liberals to rail at President George W. Bush for jingoism. But it is President Obama who is now requesting 6.1 percent more in military spending than the peak of military spending under Mr. Bush. And it is Mr. Obama who has tripled the number of American troops in Afghanistan since he took office. (A bill providing $37 billion to continue financing America’s two wars was approved by the House on Tuesday and is awaiting his signature.)
Under Mr. Obama, we are now spending more money on the military, after adjusting for inflation, than in the peak of the cold war, Vietnam War or Korean War. Our battle fleet is larger than the next 13 navies combined, according to Defense Secretary Robert Gates. The intelligence apparatus is so bloated that, according to The Washington Post, the number of people with “top secret” clearance is 1.5 times the population of the District of Columbia.
Meanwhile, a sobering report from the College Board says that the United States, which used to lead the world in the proportion of young people with college degrees, has dropped to 12th.
What’s more, an unbalanced focus on weapons alone is often counterproductive, creating a nationalist backlash against foreign “invaders.” Over all, education has a rather better record than military power in neutralizing foreign extremism. And the trade-offs are staggering: For the cost of just one soldier in Afghanistan for one year, we could start about 20 schools there. Hawks retort that it’s impossible to run schools in Afghanistan unless there are American troops to protect them. But that’s incorrect.
CARE, a humanitarian organization, operates 300 schools in Afghanistan, and not one has been burned by the Taliban. Greg Mortenson, of “Three Cups of Tea” fame, has overseen the building of 145 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan and operates dozens more in tents or rented buildings — and he says that not one has been destroyed by the Taliban either.
Aid groups show that it is quite possible to run schools so long as there is respectful consultation with tribal elders and buy-in from them. And my hunch is that CARE and Mr. Mortenson are doing more to bring peace to Afghanistan than Mr. Obama’s surge of troops.
The American military has been eagerly reading “Three Cups of Tea” but hasn’t absorbed the central lesson: building schools is a better bet for peace than firing missiles (especially when one cruise missile costs about as much as building 11 schools).
Mr. Mortenson lamented to me that for the cost of just 246 soldiers posted for one year, America could pay for a higher education plan for all Afghanistan. That would help build an Afghan economy, civil society and future — all for one-quarter of 1 percent of our military spending in Afghanistan this year.
The latest uproar over Pakistani hand-holding with the Afghan Taliban underscores that billions of dollars in U.S. military aid just doesn’t buy the loyalty it used to. In contrast, education can actually transform a nation. That’s one reason Bangladesh is calmer than Pakistan, Oman is less threatening than Yemen.
Paradoxically, the most eloquent advocate in government for balance in financing priorities has been Mr. Gates, the defense secretary. He has noted that the military has more people in its marching bands than the State Department has diplomats.
Faced with constant demands for more, Mr. Gates in May asked: “Is it a dire threat that by 2020 the United States will have only 20 times more advanced stealth fighters than China?”
In the presidential campaign, Mr. Obama promised to invest in a global education fund. Since then, he seems to have forgotten the idea — even though he is spending enough every five weeks in Afghanistan to ensure that practically every child on our planet gets a primary education.
We won our nation’s independence for $2.4 billion in today’s money, the Congressional Research Service report said. That was good value, considering that we now fritter the same amount every nine days in Afghanistan. Mr. Obama, isn’t it time to rebalance our priorities?
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For General Petraeus, battling corruption in Afghanistan is a priority
Washington Post By Joshua Partlow Thursday, July 29, 2010
KABUL - Every day, Gen. David H. Petraeus meets with senior NATO officials at headquarters for a 7:30 a.m. update, and at nearly every session, he returns to an issue that has bedeviled the U.S. campaign for years: Afghan corruption.
In his first month on the job, Petraeus has intensified efforts to uncover the scope and mechanics of the pervasive theft, graft and bribery in the Afghan government, examine U.S. contracting practices, and assist Afghan authorities in arresting and convicting corrupt bureaucrats, according to U.S. and NATO officials.
"It is his drumbeat that he started on Day One," said a NATO military official who participates in the morning "stand-up" meeting. Petraeus sees corruption "as an enemy. It is counter to our strategy. And it is readily apparent to me . . . there is a new sense of urgency."
The issue was also a central concern for Petraeus's predecessor, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, as the U.S. military has come to realize that its counterinsurgency goals depend on fighting corruption. NATO surveys have found that anger at corruption is the top reason Afghans support the Taliban over the government.
From police shakedowns to profits from drug trafficking, NATO officials put the yearly price tag of corruption and black-market business at $12.3 billion, just shy of Afghanistan's gross domestic product. Citing U.N. statistics, they estimate that about half of that comes from the smuggling industry and illicit taxes levied on trucks crisscrossing the country. About $2.5 billion is paid in bribes each year, stolen Afghan government revenue tops $1 billion, and billions more is pilfered from foreign aid and NATO contracts, according to a briefing prepared by NATO's anti-corruption task force.
"It has progressively gotten worse. It's at all levels," said one senior NATO official who works on corruption issues. Reversing the situation is "a moral imperative, and it's an operational imperative."
The NATO officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Turning up the pressure
Petraeus has asked his subordinates to brief him more often on progress on this front -- twice a week, instead of once -- and is considering naming a one-star general to oversee anti-corruption work. In his first three weeks in Afghanistan, Petraeus has met with President Hamid Karzai at least 20 times, and corruption has been a regular topic of discussion, the NATO officials said.
In addition to fielding two new teams in Afghanistan to study how American money is spent through reconstruction and security contracts, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul is preparing a proposal that would require the Afghan government to meet anti-corruption benchmarks to receive U.S. funds.
"We expect they will live up to their commitments, and we will give them incentives to live up to their commitments," a Western diplomat said.
At an international conference in Kabul this month, the Afghan government pledged to meet several goals within the next year, including publishing the assets of all senior government officials, regulating cash that leaves the country in bulk and drafting laws to help prosecute corrupt bureaucrats.
But some of the government's earlier commitments have not been met. For example, Afghan ministries failed to meet a June deadline to draft an anti-corruption action plan naming three reforms each could undertake.
Western diplomats are concerned that the country's premier anti-corruption body, the High Office of Oversight, suffers from weak leadership and a lack of independence from Karzai. International officials also have long worried that high-level political pressure has prevented indictments of senior Afghan officials suspected of corruption.
"There is no political will on the government side to do anything that is meaningful, although everybody knows they have to say the word 'corruption' every time they talk about Afghanistan," said one Western official who works on the issue in Kabul.
A series of arrests
NATO officials see some hopeful signs -- particularly a string of arrests of senior Afghan army and police officials for drug trafficking, corruption and aiding the Taliban.
In June, Afghan authorities arrested Brig. Gen. Malham Pohanyar, the border police commander in the western province of Herat, on accusations that he was trafficking drugs out of the airport there.
This followed the arrest last October of a senior border police commander in Kandahar, Brig. Gen. Saifullah Hakim, who was charged with collecting the salaries of nonexistent officers and stealing money from a "martyr's fund" for families of slain police officers. A border police official from Paktika province, Col. Ali Shah, has also been arrested, for allegedly stealing and reselling supplies and collecting taxes at illegal checkpoints.
Brig. Gen. Aziz Ahmad Wardak, the Paktia province police chief, was arrested this year on corruption charges and is awaiting trial, according to Afghan officials, and so is the deputy police chief of Kapisa province.
"The recent arrests of corrupt Afghan police and army officers are heartening and represent important steps as the Afghan government works to carry out President Karzai's commitments in recent months to combat corruption," said a senior NATO military officer.
Despite little tangible progress, the senior officer said that Karzai has been "very firm regarding corruption."
Special correspondent Javed Hamdard contributed to this report.
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Second U.S. sailor's remains found in Afghanistan
Thu Jul 29, 10:49 am ET
KABUL (Reuters) – The body of a second U.S. sailor who went missing in Afghanistan last week has been recovered, an Afghan police chief said on Thursday.
Logar provincial police chief Ghulam Mustafa told Reuters that his captors had probably dumped the body after the sailor died from wounds received in the incident that led to his capture.
"The body was spotted by villagers," he said.
A U.S. defense official in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity, earlier also reported the recovery and it comes two days after officials announced they had the remains of the first sailor.
The two U.S. Navy service members went missing on Friday after failing to return in a vehicle they had taken from their compound in Kabul, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said on Saturday.
The alliance had no immediate comment on the latest report.
On Sunday, the Taliban said they were holding prisoner one of the two sailors, who had strayed into territory controlled by the insurgents just south of the capital, and that the other had been killed.
ISAF scrambled helicopters and planes to look for the pair after they went missing, but officials have declined to give anything but scant details since, prompting speculation that the two had been acting outside the chain of command.
Leaflets depicting photos of the men were distributed in Logar province where the two went missing, less than 100 km (60 miles) south of Kabul and announcements on local radio stations offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to a rescue.
On Sunday, a spokesman for the Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahid, told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location that the group's leadership would decide later on the fate of the second sailor.
It was not immediately possible to get comment from the Taliban.
The only other foreign service member believed held by the Taliban is Idaho National Guardsman Bowe Bergdahl, whose capture in June last year triggered a massive manhunt. His captors have issued videos of him denouncing the war, in what the U.S. military has called illegal propaganda.
Last month was the deadliest of the nine-year war in Afghanistan for foreign troops, with more than 100 killed.
(Additional reporting by Phil Stewart in WASHINGTON; Editing by Sugita Katyal)
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Former Taliban group commander assassinated at home by militants
KUNDUZ, Afghanistan, July 29 (Xinhua) -- Taliban commander Mullah Abdullah who joined government two months ago was killed at his home in northern Kunduz province, provincial governor Mohammad Omar said Thursday.
"Unknown armed men, possibly Taliban militants entered the house of Mullah Abdullah in Imam Sahib district on Tuesday night and shot him dead," Omar told Xinhua.
Mullah Abdullah who used to serve as a group commander of Taliban fighters in Kunduz province switched side and joined government along with 20 of his men in early May.
Taliban militants have not made comment.
Kunduz has been the scene of Taliban-linked increasing militancy since beginning this year.
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Local strongman is U.S. troops' most reliable friend in Kandahar province
By Karin Brulliard Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, July 29, 2010; A01
NOW RUZI, AFGHANISTAN -- Haji Ghani is an illiterate, hashish-growing former warlord who directs a semiofficial police force and is known to show his anger through beatings. In this Taliban nest west of Kandahar, he is also U.S. forces' main partner.
Never mind that the district governor says Ghani, 44, works against him, or that U.S. soldiers describe him as Godfather-like and his police as vaguely crooked. In an area rife with insurgents who stalk soldiers' every move, Ghani's militia has carved out a four-square-mile bubble of tranquillity. Farmers can safely collect U.S.-funded seeds, and children will soon attend a new American-backed school.
"What's his is ours. What's ours is his," Lt. John Paszterko, 29, said of Ghani, a onetime anti-Soviet commander who now rules his tribal forefathers' lands. "He's a good friend to have."
As coalition forces struggle to weaken the Taliban, they insist that the key to doing so lies in bolstering Afghan institutions. Yet with government rule confined to certain densely populated areas, U.S. officials rely on strongmen who can maintain order in the most treacherous locales, even if their commitment to formal governance is dubious.
That inconsistency is causing unease in Washington, where Congress is scrutinizing payments of U.S. tax dollars to warlords who protected NATO convoys, and in Kabul, where critics fear that a U.S.-backed plan for village defense groups could spawn rogue militias or undermine government authority.
"In that scenario, the Afghan government doesn't gain any strength or legitimacy," one U.S. official working in Kandahar province said of alliances with strongmen who operate independently of the state. But, the official said, "we're on such a short timetable that people are looking and going, 'Oh, well. That area's stable -- full stop.' "
Common mission
The dynamic is present across this long-embattled nation, where former warlords are a dime a dozen and power is typically won with guns or money. Against that backdrop, Ghani is a minor player. With an AK-47 slung over his bony shoulder, he lords over 3,000 acres of his ancestors' farmland.
But Ghani's area, which includes three villages along the fertile Arghandab River, has suddenly become the focus of U.S. forces' latest push to defeat the Taliban. It lies along a critical entry point into Kandahar city used by the Taliban as a supply route, and government leadership here has long been feeble.
So Ghani and his force of about 40 "soldiers" -- he has about 50 more in reserve -- are vital partners, according to U.S. troops, who said the force might eventually be incorporated into the new village defense plan.
American soldiers and the district governor say that only some of Ghani's men have law enforcement training but that the local police chief, an ally of Ghani, equips them all with uniforms and weapons anyway. On a recent day at Ghani's leafy compound, a few uniformed fighters cleaned tables and served lunch to guests.
They are the closest thing in this area to an Afghan security force. The Afghan army soldiers set to share the U.S. outpost near Now Ruzi had not been deployed by early July. So when the Taliban ambushed Pazsterko's soldiers in late June, Ghani's police helped fight them off. After a roadside bomb detonated near the village, Ghani called in elders and menacingly told them to make sure it did not happen again.
Ghani is "one of the few people who does feel that responsibility" to fight the Taliban, said Capt. Paul N. DeLeon, 29, commander of Combat Outpost Durkin.
That is partly because his lifestyle would be fairly incompatible with Taliban rule. On Ghani's land is a vast field of hashish, which he insists he does not smoke. He offers guests whiskey, though his preferred drink is Red Bull imported from Thailand. He shows off scars from 30 years battling the Soviets and the Taliban under the command of Abdurrab Rasul Sayyaf, a former Northern Alliance leader whose fighters have been accused of committing atrocities in the 1990s.
He parades a white horse that he says belonged to Taliban founder Mohammad Omar until 2001, when he fled U.S. forces. One of Omar's laborers passed it to a cleric, who gave it to Ghani as a spoil of war.
"I am the only one who can keep this horse. Only people who have a weapon can keep this horse," Ghani said of the animal, whose mane and tail, like Ghani's hair, are streaked with henna. "If the Taliban sees this horse with anyone else, they will shoot him."
'It's not Switzerland'
Ghani says his wealth comes from his land, which he leases to farmers, and from the "security services" he provides to a Japanese company operating the large gravel quarry on his property. Gravel blankets the U.S. outpost nearby -- a gift from Ghani.
His partnership has been rewarded. U.S. soldiers make sure his fighters have ammunition. Flowing through Ghani's carefully tended garden is a gurgling canal, a project recently completed by the U.S. Agency for International Development that beautified a public park on his land. Outside, construction on the schoolhouse -- which U.S. troops refer to as "Haji Ghani's school" -- is almost done.
Yet DeLeon said the builders regularly complain that Ghani beats them when he is dissatisfied with their work. Farther west on Highway 1, Afghan army Capt. Safi Ahmad, 36, said truckers complain that Ghani's police demand illegal tolls and "torture" those who cannot pay. "By working with him, we're essentially enabling him," DeLeon said.
But DeLeon and NATO officials said they hold out hope that Ghani and others like him will serve as links between the population and the government, even though true government authority would probably work against the strongmen's interests.
"This is southern Afghanistan. It's not Switzerland," said Richard Berthon, the Kandahar-based director of stability for international forces in Afghanistan. "This place is always going to be a combination of the new constitutional and traditional tribal structures and mechanisms. And when things work they tend to be a bit of an amalgam of those two playing off each other."
So far, that does not appear to be happening. Ghani says the district governor, Karim Jan, is too "inexperienced" to be taken seriously as a leader. Jan, for his part, said Ghani spreads rumors denigrating leaders of rival tribes.
Even so, in this Taliban-riddled area, the unorthodox power dynamics are better than the alternative. Soldiers at an outpost visible across the river are ambushed almost daily, and their local power broker is ambivalent about helping.
Over slices of watermelon on a recent afternoon, Ghani pleaded with DeLeon to allow his militia to clear Taliban fighters from the area west of his land to Combat Post Ashoque, which he insisted he could do in one day.
DeLeon assured him U.S. soldiers wanted that, too, but said first they must make sure there were enough Afghan soldiers or police to set up checkpoints in the cleared area.
"I'd like to take it slow, so they feel pressure from all sides," DeLeon said. "Then we'll take them out all at once."
Ghani reluctantly agreed, but then he pressed again. He had just one condition.
"I will clear this area, I guarantee," Ghani said with a smirk. "But during the operation, just don't ask me, 'Why did you arrest somebody? Why did you kill somebody?' "
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Men in burqas hide in east Afghanistan: US general
Wed Jul 28, 6:39 pm ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – Male insurgents are hiding among villagers in eastern Afghanistan dressed in burqas in an attempt to avoid detection, the US regional military commander said Wednesday.
Major General John Campbell, in charge of a large area of eastern Afghanistan that includes Kabul, said the new tactics there follow the first use of a female suicide bomber in the country.
Male insurgents dressed in women's all-cover burqa dresses have struck in southern Afghanistan -- including a failed suicide attack in March -- but never in the east.
"One of the tactics that has changed over the years is that you now see men dressed up in burqas going through villages, something that we had not seen in years past," Campbell told reporters at the Pentagon via satellite from Afghanistan.
US and NATO forces typically overlook women in their hunt for insurgents, but that is likely to change following a June 22 attack by a female suicide bomber against a US-Afghan army patrol in the eastern Kunar province. The attack killed 10 US soldiers.
The Taliban claimed credit for the attack, saying in a statement that it was carried out by an Afghan woman named "Halima."
There have been some 450 suicide attacks in Afghanistan over the last nine years, Campbell said, but this was the first involving a female suicide bomber.
Campbell is in charge of Regional Command East, an area of 14 provinces surrounding Kabul that has a 450 kilometer (280 mile) long border with Pakistan.
In the first half of 2010 the number of attacks in his region "has risen about 12 percent," Campbell said, adding that US and NATO forces are bracing for more.
"We expect and we know that we're going to have a tough summer. The insurgents will not allow us to bring in additional forces without making a statement themselves."
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Afghan Women Fear Their Fate Amid Taliban Negotiations
By Aryn Baker – time.com Thu Jul 29, 12:15 pm ET
The Taliban pounded on the door just before midnight, demanding that Aisha, 18, be punished for running away from her husband's house. Her in-laws treated her like a slave, Aisha pleaded. They beat her. If she hadn't run away, she would have died. Her judge, a local Taliban commander, was unmoved. Aisha's brother-in-law held her down while her husband pulled out a knife. First he sliced off her ears. Then he started on her nose. (See managing editor Richard Stengel's message to readers about this week's cover.)
This didn't happen 10 years ago, when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan. It happened last year. Now hidden in a secret women's shelter in Kabul, Aisha listens obsessively to the news. Talk that the Afghan government is considering some kind of political accommodation with the Taliban frightens her. "They are the people that did this to me," she says, touching her damaged face. "How can we reconcile with them?" (See pictures of Afghan women and the return of the Taliban.)
In June, Afghan President Hamid Karzai established a peace council tasked with exploring negotiations with the Taliban. A month later, Tom Malinowski from Human Rights Watch met Karzai. During their conversation, Karzai mused on the cost of the conflict in human lives and wondered aloud if he had any right to talk about human rights when so many were dying. "He essentially asked me," says Malinowski, "What is more important, protecting the right of a girl to go to school or saving her life?" How Karzai and his international allies answer that question will have far-reaching consequences, not only for Afghanistan's women, but the country as a whole. (Watch TIME's video on photographing Aisha for the cover.)
As the war in Afghanistan enters its ninth year, the need for an exit strategy weighs on the minds of U.S. policymakers. Such an outcome, it is assumed, would involve reconciliation with the Taliban. But Afghan women fear that in the quest for a quick peace, their progress may be sidelined. "Women's rights must not be the sacrifice by which peace is achieved," says parliamentarian Fawzia Koofi. (Comment on this story.)
Yet that may be where negotiations are heading. The Taliban will be advocating a version of an Afghan state in line with their own conservative views, particularly on the issue of women's rights. Already there is a growing acceptance that some concessions to the Taliban are inevitable if there is to be genuine reconciliation. "You have to be realistic," says a diplomat in Kabul. "We are not going to be sending troops and spending money forever. There will have to be a compromise, and sacrifices will have to be made." (Watch TIME's video "Portraits of the Women of Afghanistan.")
For Afghanistan's women, an early withdrawal of international forces could be disastrous. An Afghan refugee who grew up in Canada, Mozhdah Jamalzadah recently returned home to launch an Oprah-style talk show in which she has been able to subtly introduce questions of women's rights without provoking the ire of religious conservatives. On a recent episode, a male guest told a joke about a foreign human-rights team in Afghanistan. In the cities, the team noticed that women walked six paces behind their husbands. But in rural Helmand, where the Taliban is strongest, they saw a woman six steps ahead. The foreigners rushed to congratulate the husband on his enlightenment - only to be told that he stuck his wife in front because they were walking through a minefield. As the audience roared with laughter, Jamalzadah reflected that it may take about 10 to 15 years before Afghan women can truly walk alongside men. But once they do, she believes, all Afghans will benefit. "When we talk about women's rights," Jamalzadah says, "we are talking about things that are important to men as well - men who want to see Afghanistan move forward. If you sacrifice women to make peace, you are also sacrificing the men who support them and abandoning the country to the fundamentalists that caused all the problems in the first place."
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Tajikistan Sees Decline In Afghan Drug Volumes
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty July 28, 2010
Tajikistan is expecting a decline in the volume of drugs trafficked from Afghanistan this year due to better policing and a fungus that has attacked the opium poppy crop, according to Khalimdjon Makhmudov, who heads the operations and search department at Tajikistan's Drug Control Agency.
Makhmudov said that in the first six months of this year, Tajikistan seized nearly one-third less drugs than in the same period of last year.
He said his agency expects a decline of around 25 percent this year in the flow of drugs from Afghanistan through Tajikistan.
Afghanistan produces most of the world's opium, from which heroin is processed.
compiled from Reuters reports
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