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NATO admits killing 2 civilians in S. Afghanistan
KABUL, July 3 (Xinhua) -- The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in a press release on Saturday confirmed that troops during an operation killed two civilians including a woman in Afghanistan's southern Kandahar province.
U.S. Defense Secretary Gates Tightens Interview Rules
July 3, 2010 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has ordered top military officials to tell the Pentagon's public affairs branch before giving interviews.
Republican chair: Afghan "war of Obama's choosing"
BEIJING, July 3 (Xinhuanet) -- U. S. Republican chairman Michael Steele faced heavy critcism including calls for his resignation on Friday, after saying the Afghanistan war was a "war of Obama's choosing," media reported.
Sweating blood to make Helmand a garden of peace
By Caroline Wyatt BBC News, Helmand July 3, 2010
British troops are working hard to train Afghan police and soldiers in the heat and dust of Helmand, but with mixed results - and Afghans themselves worry that foreign troops will lose patience before the job is done.
Afghanistan war: Taliban attack in north targets civilian organization
Friday’s attack in Kunduz was another example of the fading distinction for insurgent groups between military and civilian targets in the Afghanistan war.
Christian Science Monitor By Howard LaFranchi, Staff writer July 2, 2010
Washington - The suicide bombers who blasted their way Friday into the northern Afghanistan compound of a US Agency for International Development (USAID) contractor used a method perfected by insurgents in the Iraq war: blow up a car or truck bomb at a walled compound’s gate, and in the ensuing confusion, send armed fighters streaming inside.
Pakistan weighs up chances in post-McChrystal era
By M Ilyas Khan BBC News, Islamabad July 2, 2010
The sacking of Gen Stanley McChrystal by US President Barack Obama last week has sparked both fears and possibilities for various players in the Afghan conflict.
Afghan Minister Cracks Down On Illegal Mining
July 2, 2010 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
KABUL -- The Afghan mines minister is calling for increased government efforts to stop the illegal trading of Afghanistan's mineral wealth, RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan reports.
The challenge of Kandahar
Nearly nine years into the U.S.-led war, it remains a Taliban stronghold, ill-served by corrupt Afghan officials, and patrolled by Western forces just now getting around to governance and development issues.
Los Angeles Times By David Zucchino July 2, 2010
Reporting from Kandahar, Afghanistan - Rahmatullah, a slender Afghan engineer who lives in Kandahar city, tried to be polite when young Shawn Adams of Digby, Nova Scotia, offered to help in his efforts to build a local school.
Michael Steele under fire over Afghanistan remarks
The Republican National Committee chairman is caught on video saying the conflict is a 'war of Obama's choosing' and implying that the U.S. effort is doomed. Conservatives call for his resignation.
Los Angeles Times By Michael Memoli, Tribune Washington Bureau July 2, 2010
Reporting from Washington - Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele is facing a new test of his leadership over comments he made that appear to question America's military effort in Afghanistan.
'Casablanca Rick's Bar of Kabul' serves up its last drink
Washington Post By Ernesto Londoño Friday, July 2, 2010
KABUL - The nearly naked swimmers and the pounding disco music might have left the impression that Wednesday night's crowd at the storied U.N. guesthouse bar was a routine gathering of expats blowing off steam in this war-weary town.
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NATO admits killing 2 civilians in S. Afghanistan
KABUL, July 3 (Xinhua) -- The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in a press release on Saturday confirmed that troops during an operation killed two civilians including a woman in Afghanistan's southern Kandahar province.
"During the course of an operation conducted by an Afghan international force searching for a Taliban subcommander responsible for ambushes, suicide bombings and assassinations in Kandahar area, a joint force accidentally killed two civilians, including a woman, and wound another,"the press release said.
It also said that, during the raid in Amin Kalacheh area of Kandahar province the Taliban birthplace, a Taliban commander was detained an insurgent was killed and another wounded.
"Afghan and coalition forces realize innocent bystanders' lives are put at risk when insurgents deliberately conduct activities within their communities," it said, adding"the joint security force, along with local elders and government officials, are working together to review this unfortunate incident."
However, the press release did not mention the exact date of the incident.
"We take accidents such as this very seriously, and we remain fully committed to protecting the people of Afghanistan and take every precaution to prevent civilian casualties,"said Navy Capt. Jane Campbell ISAF Joint Command spokesperson in the press release.
The latest civilian casualties reported by NATO took place a day after Gen. David Petraeus arrived in Afghanistan to take command of U.S. and NATO forces in the country. The newly appointed commander who replaced General Stanley McChrystal last week has vowed to avoid or to bring to its minimum level the civilian casualties as his first priorities in Afghanistan.
Meantime, police chief of Kandahar province Sardar Mohammad Zazai said that NATO-led troops during operation in Daman district Friday night killed three civilians including a woman.
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U.S. Defense Secretary Gates Tightens Interview Rules
July 3, 2010 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has ordered top military officials to tell the Pentagon's public affairs branch before giving interviews.
The Pentagon said Gates was "fed up with leaks."
Gates said in a three-page memorandum that officers and Defense Department civilian leaders must consult with the Pentagon's assistant secretary for public affairs on interviews "with possible national or international implication," "The New York Times" reported after receiving a copy of the memo from an official.
The move comes after General Stanley McChrystal was fired as the commander in Afghanistan for making negative comments about Obama administration officials to a magazine.
But the Pentagon said the move to tighten control on information was in the works long before that.
compiled from agency reports
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Republican chair: Afghan "war of Obama's choosing"
BEIJING, July 3 (Xinhuanet) -- U. S. Republican chairman Michael Steele faced heavy critcism including calls for his resignation on Friday, after saying the Afghanistan war was a "war of Obama's choosing," media reported.
At a Republican fundraiser in Connecticut, Steele was videotaped while criticizing President Barack Obama and his handling of the Afghan war and suggesting the war cannot be won.
"This was a war of Obama's choosing," said Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee. "This is not something the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in."
"If he's such a student of history, has he not understood that, you know, that's the one thing you don't do is engage in a land war in Afghanistan? All right? Because everyone who's tried, over a thousand years of history, has failed," Steele said. "And there are reasons for that. There are other ways to engage in Afghanistan."
As criticism swelled, Steele issued a statement stressing his support for U.S. troops, but he did not acknowledge his factual error about a war launched by former President George W. Bush in response to the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. A senior official in Bush's administration said it would be impossible for the Republican National Committee to speak with credibility on foreign policy if Steele remained chairman.
Democrats pounced on the comments by Steele, who is trying to help lead Republicans to major gains in November's congressional elections.
"It's simply unconscionable that Michael Steele would undermine the morale of our troops when what they need is our support and encouragement," said Democratic National Committee spokesman Brad Woodhouse.
(Agencies)
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Sweating blood to make Helmand a garden of peace
By Caroline Wyatt BBC News, Helmand July 3, 2010
British troops are working hard to train Afghan police and soldiers in the heat and dust of Helmand, but with mixed results - and Afghans themselves worry that foreign troops will lose patience before the job is done.
Every day inside the British military headquarters at Lashkar Gah, an elderly Afghan gardener tends a remarkable garden. He does not say much when I pass by, just nods good morning or good afternoon.
But he is there most of the day, working in the sweltering Helmand heat.
For several years now, he has lovingly sown the seeds for the flowers, and watered and nurtured them, eventually coaxing luxuriant red, white and pink blooms out of the thin, sandy soil.
His garden is at the heart of the camp, an unlikely but powerful reminder of home and normality under the harsh glare of the Afghan sun.
All around it are the usual sand-coloured tents and the gravelled car park nearby, where the heat-haze blurs the sharp metallic edges of the military vehicles.
But anyone taking that walk through the garden can be transported for a few brief minutes by the summer scent of mint and the buzz of insects taking the pollen.
On parade
I had forgotten how much Afghans love flowers until we went to see the latest police recruits graduate from the Helmand Police Training Centre.
After an eight-week course, they stood smartly to attention on the parade ground, while their British trainers watched.
As the recruits left for the police stations and spartan checkpoints where they will serve, some had hung painted hearts and flowers around their necks, smiling and posing for the cameras.
It was hard to imagine that the police, in too many places, are still very much part of the problem, often corrupt and addicted to drugs, their behaviour driving some into the arms of the Taliban.
Several policewomen had just graduated too. We met them in a separate room at the headquarters.
One of them, Islambibi, was a feisty woman, with a ready laugh. She told me she had been married at 10 to a man who was 43, and had had the first of her five children when she was just 15.
I must have looked aghast, because the women simply laughed.
"We have our tradition, and our culture," she told me.
One of her colleagues told me she had single-handedly squashed a would-be suicide bomber by throwing herself on top of him when he resisted arrest - a rather foolhardy thing to do, I thought, but apparently it worked.
Islambibi told us she had joined the police to try to create a safer future for her children. But her smile faded when I asked what security was like now.
The day before, insurgents had blown up a local bank on police payday.
"Security is worse again," she said. The others nodded. Yet they seemed to accept that violence was simply something that ebbed and flowed here. None of the women in this small stuffy room had known peace for very long in their lifetime.
Roast chicken
The next day we drove in an armoured vehicle to Highway 601, one of the main roads through Helmand, sweat dripping from the British soldiers' faces.
They are trying to make the roads more secure, because if people can move safely, that might just encourage some farmers to plant crops other than the opium poppy, one of the few things to grow well in this soil.
Living, sleeping, eating and working in a sandy base by the road, British troops were helping the Afghan police man to the checkpoints.
Their presence seems to ensure the police do their job properly and do not take bribes or intimidate, at least not when the soldiers are watching.
An overloaded van passes by with a wedding party inside, children smiling and waving as the adults play celebratory drums. Another van, laden with disgruntled goats passes by, the driver looking nervously at the police.
Right next to the small British base, where the heat has risen uncomfortably to the mid 50s, is the Afghan police station, where the police chief invites us in for lunch.
He has a tired face, perhaps from a lifetime of fighting. But he produces a feast of roast chicken and salad, and we eat cross-legged, the plates laid out on a blanket on the floor.
"How long do British troops need to stay here?" I asked the colonel.
"For as long as we need their help," he told me. "We still do not have enough police, and they do not yet have enough weapons or ammunition."
I ask what would happen if British and other Nato troops left Afghanistan soon. The Afghan colonel was unequivocal. The bloodshed would start again, rival tribes would vie once more to be the most powerful.
It did not worry him that the man at the top of the coalition forces had changed. Whether Gen McChrystal or Gen Petraeus, that was up to the Americans.
The main thing for him was the help their forces gave while the Afghans themselves tried to sort out their rivalries and create a government that worked enough of the time.
Unyielding soil
We visited to another patrol base the next day, where Afghan army recruits are being mentored by British forces. "They are not there yet, the Afghans," one soldier told me.
For most of the recruits, this is just a job and it is about daily survival. They have survived the wars that have raged throughout their lives, he said, and they just want to stay alive as long as they can, earn enough money for three bowls of rice a day, and at the end of their military service, go home to their families.
The soldier gestures towards the recruits. Some are good and the people here like them, but others do not even want to go out of the gate to go on patrol.
I knew exactly how they felt. The day before we came, a British soldier lost his legs to a Taliban roadside bomb not far from here.
As we walked apprehensively on a path between the fields, I looked over at the young faces of the soldiers with us, British and Afghan, and at the kit that weighed them down in the morning heat, sweat already soaking through their shirts and their heavy body armour.
It was with relief that we returned to the nearest British camp in Nad Ali. It is built on the site of an old British fort, its crumbling clay walls all that remain of these soldiers great-great-grandfathers efforts.
The walls are a reminder that foreign armies have come and gone, and that the British have been here many times before. This time, British soldiers are trying to turn this hot dusty province into something that has at least a chance to flourish.
They are trying hard to sow those seeds into stubborn, unyielding soil and nurture the results, eager to point out a few small green shoots just beginning to peek above the sand.
But nothing in the Afghan garden seems to grow to a Western clock and the Afghans know that our patience is running out. And they fear we may not be the constant gardeners they need.
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Afghanistan war: Taliban attack in north targets civilian organization
Friday’s attack in Kunduz was another example of the fading distinction for insurgent groups between military and civilian targets in the Afghanistan war.
Christian Science Monitor By Howard LaFranchi, Staff writer July 2, 2010
Washington - The suicide bombers who blasted their way Friday into the northern Afghanistan compound of a US Agency for International Development (USAID) contractor used a method perfected by insurgents in the Iraq war: blow up a car or truck bomb at a walled compound’s gate, and in the ensuing confusion, send armed fighters streaming inside.
The early-morning attack on the compound of Development Alternatives Inc. in the northern city of Kunduz resulted in a six-hour battle that left three foreign aid workers dead: a Briton, a Filipino, and a German.
One Afghan police officer also died in the attack, while two dozen other Afghan security officers and civilians were reported wounded. The car bomber and five other attackers who entered the compound after the blast also died, according to Afghan officials.
The Taliban claimed the attack, part of an upswing in offensives against both military and civilian footprints of the Western presence in Afghanistan. The attacks appear to be part of the Taliban’s response to the uptick in US and other Western activities – both military and civilian in nature – since President Obama announced his new counterinsurgency strategy in the Afghanistan war last fall.
Indeed, Friday’s attack on the compound of a civilian, nongovernmental organization was another example of the fading distinction for insurgent groups between military and civilian targets, as the military has taken on more humanitarian duties.
“This attack highlights one of the inherent problems with a counterinsurgency strategy, which is the blurring of the lines between the civilian and military aspects of the war,” says Malou Innocent, a foreign-policy analyst at the Cato Institute in Washington who focuses on the Afghanistan and Pakistan. “When you have the military digging wells and performing other civilian humanitarian tasks, one result is that the NGO community is gradually deemed to be part of the war effort.”
The Washington-based Development Alternatives, which contracts with USAID to work on governance, community development, and agricultural projects in postconflict environments, had opened its Kunduz compound relatively recently.
The United Nations, which operates a number of civilian programs in Afghanistan including elections planning and oversight, was devastated last October by an attack on a Kabul guesthouse that left five UN workers dead. Just this week, insurgents firing on a UN vehicle in Kabul killed a UN employee.
The Taliban have another goal in extending their attacks to civilian operations, Ms. Innocent says: discouraging average Afghans from cooperating or working with foreigners, be they military or civilian.
“They are sending a two-part message with this kind of attack,” she says. “One is, beware if you cooperate with them; they cannot protect you. And two, if you work for them or otherwise associate with them, we will know and you and your family are in danger.”
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Pakistan weighs up chances in post-McChrystal era
By M Ilyas Khan BBC News, Islamabad July 2, 2010
The sacking of Gen Stanley McChrystal by US President Barack Obama last week has sparked both fears and possibilities for various players in the Afghan conflict.
Before his successor, Gen David Petraeus, settles in his job, the Americans may feel compelled to make an assessment of why their "big push" in Helmand province is seen by many to have failed and the one in Kandahar has so far not materialised.
Any revised US strategy would inevitably make demands on both the Afghan government and the Pakistani military.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai appears to be already focusing on broader reconciliation, including talks with the Taliban.
In June, a peace conference he convened in Kabul recommended the removal of Taliban leaders from a UN blacklist and the release of Taliban fighters from prisons to pave the way for such talks.
Confusing signals
For Pakistan, analysts say, it means yet another opportunity to create realities on the ground that Gen Petraeus would find hard to ignore.
Pakistani intelligence officials have been recently leaking information to the press suggesting that Pakistan is brokering talks between President Karzai and the Haqqani group, a long-time protege of Pakistan's ISI intelligence service.
But just four months ago, the Pakistanis arrested one of their favourite guests and a top Taliban commander, Mullah Baradar, for reportedly talking to the Karzai government behind their back.
These are confusing signals, indicative of Pakistan's murky geostrategic problem-solving mechanisms.
Pakistan is a narrow strip of land - in some places just over 300 miles (483km) across - and feels vulnerable against its much larger eastern neighbour India, with whom it has fought two wars over the disputed region of Kashmir.
To the west, it has a long and disputed border with Afghanistan, a traditional ally of India.
The domination of the military establishment in Pakistani politics prevented the country from exploring diplomatic solutions to these issues.
In 1980s, an international coalition led by the US funded an ISI programme to raise Islamist militant groups to fight the Soviet troops in Afghanistan.
These groups, and after them the Taliban, inherited Afghanistan.
Under them, Pakistan was able to keep Indian influence in Afghanistan under check for nearly two decades.
This period also gave a boost to the Pakistani idea of ensuring "strategic depth" in Afghanistan against a possible Indian invasion.
After the Soviet withdrawal in 1988, the ISI also used these groups to spark an insurgency in the Indian-administered Kashmir.
When the September 2001 attacks took place, Pakistan was faced with the impossible task of protecting these groups while at the same time siding with the international alliance against al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
This has been achieved at considerable cost to the country.
'Calculated' ambiguity
Elements within the Pakistani intelligence services are widely suspected of "working" with the very militant groups that are involved in killing thousands of Pakistanis - both military and civilian.
Reliable witnesses in Waziristan say in recent months they have seen truckloads of armed Punjabi Taliban - known for their spectacular attacks on Pakistani military targets - pass through dozens of security checkpoints every day to reach the border towns.
They claim having seen both Punjabi and local militants using military transport to move in the border areas.
But the policy of turning these militant sanctuaries into no-go areas for civilian government, journalists and other civilian observers has cast a pall of doubt on the activities there.
"What we have to always figure out with Pakistan is: are they working with the Taliban to support the Taliban or to recruit sources in the Taliban?" Gen Petraeus stated during his confirmation hearing before a panel of the US senate on Tuesday.
Many believe this "calculated" ambiguity has repeatedly helped the Pakistani military to buy time and demand money from its Western allies without delivering results in the Afghan conflict.
But this has also sapped the strength of the Pakistani state.
The concept of institutional accountability has lost its meaning, public governance has become chaotic, the economy has gone haywire and political alienation has taken hold of nearly the entire country.
Exacting any further domestic price for strategic aims is becoming perilous at a time when the Americans have already laid down a roadmap for their Afghan operations and must enact an exit plan that ensures the elimination of the al-Qaeda threat.
Many quarters in Pakistan express the fear that this could descend into a dangerous game.
These quarters suspect that recent leaks of a Pakistan-backed reconciliation in Afghanistan may be yet another Pakistani ploy to confuse the situation.
They believe that any power-sharing deal in Afghanistan in which pro-Pakistan forces do not have the last word does not fit in with its objectives.
The riddle that the Americans and the rest of the Western powers now need to solve is how to persuade Pakistan to deliver in Afghanistan without putting a gun to its own head.
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Afghan Minister Cracks Down On Illegal Mining
July 2, 2010 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
KABUL -- The Afghan mines minister is calling for increased government efforts to stop the illegal trading of Afghanistan's mineral wealth, RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan reports.
Mines Minister Wahidullah Shahrani said at a press conference in Kabul on July 1 that many of the country's mines are being illegally excavated and the output is being smuggled out of the country, mostly through Pakistan.
Shahrani called for additional security at established mines as well as the prevention of illegal digging by unauthorized groups.
The minister also highlighted the need for foreign investment in Afghanistan's mining industry. He said the right to manage Afghanistan's mines will be determined in a tender.
Shahrani said such a strategy will not only generate revenue for Afghanistan but also develop the country's mining sector and create jobs.
On June 25, the Afghan government hosted a London conference aimed at attracting foreign investment in the country's mining sector.
Recent media reports have highlighted Afghanistan's potentially immense mineral wealth after a U.S. government memo reported by "The New York Times" on June 13 said Afghanistan has nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits.
It said Afghanistan could turn into the "Saudi Arabia of lithium," a metal essential to produce batteries for electronic devices.
According to the Afghan Constitution, the government owns the country's mines and other natural resources.
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The challenge of Kandahar
Nearly nine years into the U.S.-led war, it remains a Taliban stronghold, ill-served by corrupt Afghan officials, and patrolled by Western forces just now getting around to governance and development issues.
Los Angeles Times By David Zucchino July 2, 2010
Reporting from Kandahar, Afghanistan - Rahmatullah, a slender Afghan engineer who lives in Kandahar city, tried to be polite when young Shawn Adams of Digby, Nova Scotia, offered to help in his efforts to build a local school.
Sgt. Adams, 23, was leading a Canadian foot patrol when he encountered Rahmatullah, who complained that he and his neighbors had donated land for a school that the Afghan government has refused to build.
Adams promised to pass the complaint up the chain to his military superiors. But Rahmatullah simply sighed and said: "I'm sorry, sir. I've been here six years. I've heard these promises so many times I don't believe them anymore."
The recent encounter exposed the limits of good intentions in Kandahar, a province dominated by the Taliban, ill-served by a corrupt government, and patrolled by foreign forces just now getting around to governance and development, nearly nine years into the longest war the United States has ever fought.
In the struggle to win over Kandahar civilians and weaken the Taliban, U.S. commanders have ordered NATO troops to join with civilian development experts to create a competent government where none exists. But the effort has so far seen few concrete results.
Development projects have been modest and plagued by insurgent attacks or threats against Afghan workers. Residents complain of shakedowns by Afghan police. Many U.S. soldiers say they don't fully trust their nominal allies in the Afghan police or army, who are scheduled to take responsibility for security by next summer.
What little government exists in Kandahar is overshadowed by a cabal of Afghan hustlers who have milked connections to high government officials to earn illicit fortunes. Last month, a congressional subcommittee said Afghan warlords have siphoned off millions of dollars through protection rackets involving security escorts for North Atlantic Treaty Organization convoys.
All this weighs down U.S. efforts to bring Kandahar under control. The province is the focus of the "surge" of 30,000 troops ordered by President Obama in December, but the heavy combat sweeps promised by top U.S. commanders in briefings to reporters in the winter have not taken place. Those commanders now say there will be no massive military operation here, instead describing a sustained effort designed to establish security bit by bit to pave the way for development and proper governance.
Most of the added troops have been patrolling Kandahar for weeks, pumping residents for information on insurgents while promising development and a responsive government. An accompanying civilian surge — specialists in government, development, agriculture, policing — is cranking out various community projects from their air-conditioned office redoubts.
The Taliban have responded with an onslaught of assassinations, rocket attacks, car bombings and homemade bombs. The NATO toll of 103 in June made it the deadliest single month for Western troops since the war began in 2001.
This is the landscape that greets Gen. David H. Petraeus as he takes command following the resignation of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who was at the helm for just a year. Petraeus has his own short timetable: He is under pressure to show swift results in order to meet Obama's determination to begin drawing down U.S. troop levels by August 2011.
The leadership change reinforces the sense here that the United States has been engaged in a series of one-year wars since toppling the Taliban regime in 2001. Because the typical troop rotation is about 12 months, each year brings a new approach that often is at odds with the previous effort.
Kevin Melton, an American contractor who heads civilian operations in Arghandab district, northwest of Kandahar city, said the United States began making a concerted effort in the province only a year ago. From 2001 to 2006, there was no significant Western troop presence in Kandahar.
"Why has it taken eight years to commit the resources to do what we really need to do here?" Melton said. "We took our eyes off the ball. So we've really been at this for a year, not eight years."
In Arghandab, Melton works in the same heavily guarded building on a U.S. military base as four Afghan district officials struggling to create a local government. Afghans who wish to visit the district office must first pass through three security posts — a search by Afghan police, then the Afghan army and finally by U.S. forces.
The tight security underscores the frailty of the fledging local government whose officials must take refuge on U.S. military bases. When the Arghandab district governor, Abdul Jabar, ventured out June 15, he was killed in a car bombing.
Corruption is another corrosive problem. The national government of President Hamid Karzai is riddled with officials who have enriched themselves through bribes, government contracts and the lucrative drug trade.
At Camp Nathan Smith in downtown Kandahar, the secured offices of U.S. development officials feature a chart of the Karzai family tree. Laid out like a prosecutor's crime family operation, the chart documents the expansive business empire of Karzai's extended family. Western officials have accused Karzai's brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, of parlaying family connections into an enterprise that controls trucking, security, drug and protection operations.
The president and his brother, who heads the Kandahar provincial council, have called the accusations false and politically motivated.
For soldiers charged with driving the Taliban from Kandahar, convincing ordinary Afghans that their government and security forces are honest and capable is daunting, especially because U.S. troops spend a lot of their time trying to avoid roadside bombs and ambushes.
"Our focus right now is on staying alive," said Sgt. 1st Class Jeremiah Mason, an 82nd Airborne Division paratrooper whose platoon has encountered nearly 50 roadside bombs during several hundred foot patrols in Arghandab.
The platoon has built good relations with villagers, but has been able to mount only small aid efforts. There is virtually no local government presence — only farming villages with no plumbing or electricity.
U.S. officers here carry "talking point" cards issued by the U.S. military. The message: The Afghan army and police are taking the lead. The Afghan government is ready to serve the people.
But for all the attempts to put an Afghan face on the future, it is clear to all that this is an American show. Even illiterate villagers know that the U.S. provides the money, the troops and the leadership for what is called "Operation Hamkari," or "cooperation" in Pashto and Dari.
"We're the funders, the people in charge, and the Afghans know that," said an American aid official in Kandahar. "But we have to act like the government until the actual government is able to take over."
Nor is U.S.-Afghan cooperation running smoothly on security operations. Afghan army and police units are housed in separate compounds next to U.S. bases. Soldiers say they fear the Afghans will steal supplies and weapons or leak information to the Taliban. Officers say they do not tell Afghan security forces of impending missions.
One hot afternoon in Kandahar city, U.S. military police mentoring Afghan police arrived at a police sub-station for a scheduled foot patrol. The Afghans had disappeared. Police from a different unit had to be roused from mid-day naps and dragooned into patrolling.
The Afghan police "is only good for five or six hours," said Capt. Michael Thurman, commander of the 293rd Military Police Company. "They take a long break at mid-day and they won't stay out overnight."
First Lt. Justin Kush, who commands a platoon with the 82nd Airborne Division in Arghandab, said the Afghan army unit posted next to his base is far better than the previous unit. Those troops wanted to stay on their base and play volleyball, he said, and their commander demanded favors — food, fuel, water — as the price to go on patrols.
The new unit actually patrols on its own and reports back on intelligence it has gathered, Kush said.
But other soldiers in Arghandab say Afghan army units rely on U.S. forces for logistics, supplies and direction.
"`They're always begging for generators, fuel, water, supplies," said a senior non-commissioned officer. "They use their people and vehicles to forage for supplies, so they're not available for missions."
He added: "They can't function on their own. But at the same time, we couldn't operate without them. We don't have the manpower."
For all the challenges, civilian officials in Kandahar insist that progress is possible.
Bill Harris, the top U.S. reconstruction civilian for Kandahar province, said the 2011 withdrawal target should convince Afghans that this is their last chance.
"Now is the time," Harris said. "We've never had the troop strength here we have now. We've never had the resources we have now. If we'd had this strategy two or three years ago, things would look a lot better than they do now," he said.
In Arghandab, Melton pointed to signs of progress. Seventeen "clusters"' of local leaders representing 75 villages have been created, he said. They meet weekly at the district center on the U.S. base to air grievances. Village elders have signed agreements promising to cooperate with U.S. and Afghan forces against the Taliban. Agricultural and irrigation projects have helped create 16,000 jobs. Local officials are predicting the best pomegranate harvest in seven years.
"For the first time, people are telling me: Yes, this is what we want," Melton said.
Even so, he said, security remains tenuous, and many in Arghandab have asked how long the U.S. will remain committed here, given Obama's August 2011 deadline.
"We are at the tipping point," Melton said. "My two pillars of governance and economic development are going in. Now we'll see if the table can stand."
david.zucchino@latimes.com
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Michael Steele under fire over Afghanistan remarks
The Republican National Committee chairman is caught on video saying the conflict is a 'war of Obama's choosing' and implying that the U.S. effort is doomed. Conservatives call for his resignation.
Los Angeles Times By Michael Memoli, Tribune Washington Bureau July 2, 2010
Reporting from Washington - Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele is facing a new test of his leadership over comments he made that appear to question America's military effort in Afghanistan.
Video footage that emerged Friday shows Steele referring to the conflict as "a war of Obama's choosing" and implying that the effort is doomed to fail.
"If he's such a student of history," Steele said, referring to President Obama, "has he not understood that, you know, that's the one thing you don't do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan? Everyone who has tried, over 1,000 years of history, has failed."
He described the events surrounding the dismissal of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal as the top commander in Afghanistan as "comical."
The video, which appears to have been filmed surreptitiously, was shot at a fundraising event Thursday for the Connecticut Republican Party, a party spokesman confirmed.
Democrats quickly seized on the remarks.
"It's simply unconscionable that Michael Steele would undermine the morale of our troops when what they need is our support and encouragement. Michael Steele would do well to remember that we are not in Afghanistan by our own choosing — that we were attacked," Democratic National Committee spokesman Brad Woodhouse said in a statement.
Two prominent conservatives also called for Steele's immediate resignation.
William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, called Steele's remarks "an affront, both to the honor of the Republican Party and to the commitment of the soldiers fighting to accomplish the mission they've been asked to take on by our elected leaders."
Erick Erickson, writing at the conservative blog RedState, said Steele had "lost all moral authority to lead the GOP."
A party spokesman defended Steele's comments, saying that they were made in the context of speaking to the party's candidates about how the issue could be discussed on the campaign trail.
In a statement clarifying his remarks Friday afternoon, Steele called winning the war in Afghanistan "a difficult task," but "a necessary one."
"The stakes are too high for us to accept anything but success in Afghanistan," he said in the statement.
The episode is the latest in a series of off-message moments that have caused prominent Republicans to question whether Steele is the right person to lead the party.
Steele's chief of staff resigned earlier this year amid allegations of fiscal mismanagement, following a report that nearly $2,000 in party funds was paid to a sex-themed Hollywood club.
Doug Heye, the RNC's communications director, denied that Steele's leadership was at risk and said Democrats were misrepresenting the comments.
michael.memoli@latimes.com
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'Casablanca Rick's Bar of Kabul' serves up its last drink
Washington Post By Ernesto Londoño Friday, July 2, 2010
KABUL - The nearly naked swimmers and the pounding disco music might have left the impression that Wednesday night's crowd at the storied U.N. guesthouse bar was a routine gathering of expats blowing off steam in this war-weary town.
But the ruckus and revelry were a swan song for the country's oldest watering hole, the only place in Afghanistan where the booze flowed generously during the dogmatic years of Taliban rule.
The privately owned guesthouse has been used primarily, and at times exclusively, by U.N. staff. But it has fallen on hard times, and soon a developer will take over the property.
Early Thursday, as the crowd finally began to fade, Abdul Hamid, Afghanistan's unofficial dean of bartending, served one last round. It marked the end of an establishment that since the late 1970s had served countless spies, diplomats and journalists during decades of war and intrigue.
"You know those foreigners," Hamid said. "They like to enjoy their drinks. It's important for their relationships and their work."
Hamid landed his job at the bar in 1987. He was barely making ends meet as a government engineer when his sister-in-law, who worked at the compound, told him about an opening there.
Afghanistan's Soviet-backed communists were in power then, the customer base was heavily Russian and the drink of choice was vodka.
There were a handful of other pubs at hotels in Kabul, but the U.N. bar was the main haunt for people seeking to trade in gossip, political chatter and secrets.
"The best days were the communist days," Hamid said recently, leaning against the bar. "This was the central place to exchange information and news."
There were dozens of embassies in Kabul back then, and the bar's patrons were a sophisticated, genteel bunch.
"All the people were so polite," he said. "They came in, enjoyed themselves and left."
The Soviet withdrawal two years later and the civil war that followed gradually forced out the international community. The United States closed its embassy in 1989, and others soon followed.
As the city descended into war and the diplomatic community became tiny, the bar became even more of a magnet.
In the summer, the die-hard expatriates that stuck around drank by the outdoor pool. In the winter, they huddled around the bar's large wood-burning fireplace.
By the early 1990s, it became increasingly clear to the U.N. employees who resided at the compound that Islamists were poised to take power. The issues were very complicated, of course. But one thing was clear: They needed to truck in booze to last a couple of decades. Seriously. Literally. Now.
The last shipment of alcohol that made it to the guesthouse was obscenely large. It arrived in the spring of 1992, aboard three trucks filled with Red and Black Label Johnnie Walker scotch, thousands of cases of beer and hundreds of bottles of wine.
Hamid and his colleagues hid the bottles in several stashes around the compound, some buried underground. Two weeks later, the city officially went dry.
But the party didn't stop at the bar, not even when the Taliban gained control of Kabul in 1996. By then, procuring a drop of alcohol anywhere else was dangerous and nearly impossible. Hamid grew a beard and began wearing a turban when he wasn't behind the bar. He didn't tell his wife or children what he did for a living.
"For the foreigners, it wasn't a problem," he said. "But for me, it was dangerous."
One day in the late 1990s, after the bar had run out of beer and wine, Hamid was serving scotch when a colleague barged in looking terrified. Six Taliban members were at the door and walking toward the bar. There was no time to hide the booze.
Hamid ran toward them and met the men in an adjacent television room where a few smashed patrons lingered.
Smelling the guests' breath, one of the Taliban guys demanded to know what the scent was.
"All non-Muslims smell like this," Hamid responded matter-of-factly.
The Taliban members nodded, turned back and left.
In the years since U.S.-led troops toppled the Taliban, Westerners have again poured into Kabul by the thousands.
Although there are plenty of other places to drink in Kabul today, the guesthouse retained an inexplicable charm.
"It wasn't cool, it wasn't funky; at a glance there were so many things wrong with it," said Ana Kravic, who ran the compound from 2007 to early 2009. "But if you took the time to notice, you were struck by an ageless, slightly decadent atmosphere unlike any other in the city. It was the Casablanca Rick's Bar of Kabul for many years."
In a transient and volatile city, the guesthouse's only constant was Hamid. He became famous for his mojitos, bloody marys, margaritas and White Russians.
"He was the perfect bartender," said Mark Ward, a U.N. official who completed an assignment in Kabul this week. "Always in good cheer with a laugh on hand after a tough day in Kabul."
Hamid said he never tried alcohol because he sees it as a crutch for happiness.
"I don't want to make myself happy by drinking," he said. "I want to be happy normally."
During his last night pouring drinks, he didn't seem forlorn. He danced, snapped his fingers to the beat of the music and kept beer cans crackling and wine glasses full.
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