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No official confirmation about Taliban chief arrest in Pakistan
ISLAMABAD, July 6 (Xinhua) -- The news of capturing the Taliban chief in Afghanistan Mullah Omar has spread confusion all around the world since Monday when American media claimed about his arrest by Pakistani forces.
NATO: Joint Force Captures Afghan Taliban Commander
VOA News July 6, 2010
NATO says a joint international and Afghan force has captured a Taliban commander in southern Afghanistan.
Sharif urges Pakistan neutrality on Afghanistan
By Asif Shahzad, Associated Press Writer – Tue Jul 6, 8:36 am ET
ISLAMABAD – Pakistan should stop trying to influence affairs in Afghanistan, the opposition leader said Tuesday, while admitting that the pro-Afghan Taliban policy he pursued when he was prime minister in the 1990s was a failure.
Afghanistan urges Pakistan to act against terror groups
by Lynne O'Donnell July 6, 2010
KABUL (AFP) – Afghanistan's national security adviser has called on the Pakistani government to "take serious measures" against Islamist groups launching attacks on Afghan targets from secure havens inside Pakistan.
INTERVIEW-Afghanistan gets first 24-hour news TV
06 Jul 2010 09:01:17 GMT By Rob Taylor
KABUL, July 6 (Reuters) - From something resembling a small armed camp in a closed-off Kabul street, Afghanistan has just begun receiving its first look at home-grown, 24-hour news courtesy of Saad Mohseni, the country's biggest media mogul.
Roadside bomb kills 3 Afghan police, wounds 3
PUL-E-ALAM, Afghanistan, July 6 (Xinhua) -- Three policemen were killed and three others injured when a roadside bomb struck a police van in Logar province 60 km south of capital Kabul on Tuesday, an official said.
Taliban militants kill 6 employees of Afghan firm
GHAZNI, Afghanistan, July 6 (Xinhua) -- Taliban militants killed six employees of a local construction company in Ghazni province, south of Afghanistan, an official with the company said Tuesday.
Premature explosion kills 3 militants in N. Afghanistan
KABUL, July 6 (Xinhua) -- Three Taliban militants were killed as their mine exploded prematurely in Afghanistan's northern Kunduz province, the Afghan Interior Ministry said in a press released on Tuesday.
Kabul Factory Gearing Up to Make Boots
VOA News July 6, 2010 Jennifer Glasse
Kabul - Milli Boot Factory in Kabul could be a model for the future of Afghanistan. Its owners have invested millions of dollars developing a sturdy boot with the hope of becoming a supplier to the fledgling Afghan security forces. The family-run company has been around since 1979. The factory illustrates NATO's wider strategy of sustainability - if Afghans have jobs, they won't fight.
Petraeus’s impossible mission in Afghanistan: armed nation-building
By Gian P. Gentile – The Christian Science Monitor via Yahoo! News - Tue Jul 6, 9:45 am ET
West Point, N.Y. – The problem in Afghanistan isn’t poor generalship, nor is it any uncertainty about the
Pakistan, Afghanistan begin talks on transit trade agreement
ISLAMABAD, July 6 (Xinhua) -- The finance ministers of Pakistan and Afghanistan Tuesday opened two-day talks intended to reach understanding on a proposed transit trade agreement, according to local news media APP.
Interview: Photojournalist Looks Back At How Afghanistan Has Changed
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty July 6, 2010
Steve McCurry is a well-known photojournalist whose photograph of a young Afghan girl during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 became an iconic image of the plight of refugees.
Afghanistan power station on hold because of security fears
A hydroelectric turbine escorted through Afghanistan in the biggest military operation of its kind since the Second World War may not be in operation until 2014 because the route to the power station is too dangerous.
Ben Farmer in Kabul 05 Jul 2010 Daily Telegraph (UK)
The materials needed to complete the project to bring power to southern Afghanistan cannot be delivered because British troops have been unable to secure the roads through the Taliban stranglehold on the Sangin Valley and the convoys fear attack.
Who is running the show in Afghanistan?
Los Angeles Times By Doyle McManus Tue, Jul. 06, 2010
When I visited Kabul this spring, a diplomat from a country that has sent thousands of troops to our war there asked a simple question that was actually an indictment. "Tell me," he said, "who's in charge of U.S. policy on Afghanistan?"
Innovative program helps Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans get engineering degrees and jobs
The Partnership for Public Service Tuesday, July 6, 2010; 2:54 PM The Washington Post
Kevin Smith believes in win-win situations.
What the Taliban Think of McChrystal's Ouster
Newsweek
To them, it means they're winning
Pakistanis, particularly the large ethnic Pashtun population living in the country’s violence-prone northwest near the Afghan border, were transfixed by the unfolding McChrystal saga, launched by a profile of the general by NEWSWEEK alumnus Michael Hastings in Rolling Stone.
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No official confirmation about Taliban chief arrest in Pakistan
ISLAMABAD, July 6 (Xinhua) -- The news of capturing the Taliban chief in Afghanistan Mullah Omar has spread confusion all around the world since Monday when American media claimed about his arrest by Pakistani forces.
Pakistani secret agencies, government officials and other sources refused to verify or deny the news.
"This is an act to strengthen earlier Western blames on Pakistan that the Taliban leadership is controlling the war against NATO forces while sitting in Pakistan," said Aslam Khan, a senior journalist.
"The original matter is totally different, actually Taliban are now reluctant to believe in Pakistan then how can they take risk to sit in Pakistan's most populated city," Khan, an expert in war against terrorism told Xinhua.
The American authorities have also refused to comment on the news.
The discussion started in the media after an American blogger claimed that the Taliban chief was captured from Pakistani coastal city Karachi on March 27, 2010.
Omar is wanted by the U.S. for sheltering Osama bin-Laden and his Al-Qaeda network in the years prior to and after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in America.
He is believed to be leading the Taliban fighters in their war against the Afghan government and NATO troops in Afghanistan.
Pakistan had arrested Mullah Brather, Taliban Chief No.2, earlier this year from the same city of Karachi.
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NATO: Joint Force Captures Afghan Taliban Commander
VOA News July 6, 2010
NATO says a joint international and Afghan force has captured a Taliban commander in southern Afghanistan.
The alliance said Tuesday that the Taliban "shadow" government chief of Nawah-ye Barakzai district and two other insurgents were detained late Monday during a search operation near the city of Lashkar Gah in Helmand province. Militants were also detained during separate operations in eastern Logar and Ghazni provinces, according to NATO.
Elsewhere in the south, NATO said a bomb explosion killed two of its service members Tuesday.
The latest violence comes as General David Patreaus assumed command of around 140,000 U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan following the ouster of General Stanley McChrystal. General Petraeus has said President Barack Obama's counterinsurgency war strategy for Afghanistan will remain in place as troops prepare to clear southern Kandahar province, the spiritual homeland of the Taliban.
Meanwhile, the British Defense Ministry says a British soldier died Monday of injuries sustained during a roadside bombing the day before in the Nahr-e Saraj district of Helmand. Another British soldier was killed Monday in a explosion while on patrol in the same district.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy's office said Tuesday that a French soldier has died from injuries sustained during a roadside bombing near Kabul. The death brings the number of French troops killed in Afghanistan since 2001 to 45 and the number of British troops killed to 312.
Britain has the second largest foreign military contingent in Afghanistan, after the United States.
Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.
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Sharif urges Pakistan neutrality on Afghanistan
By Asif Shahzad, Associated Press Writer – Tue Jul 6, 8:36 am ET
ISLAMABAD – Pakistan should stop trying to influence affairs in Afghanistan, the opposition leader said Tuesday, while admitting that the pro-Afghan Taliban policy he pursued when he was prime minister in the 1990s was a failure.
Nawaz Sharif's comments come as he tries to gain political traction and deflect criticism that his party is beholden to extremist elements. Just last week, he pushed the government to open talks with elements of the Pakistani Taliban, and the ruling party agreed to his proposal to hold a national conference on stopping terrorism.
The remarks also come as Pakistan tries to weigh in on reconciliation efforts between Afghanistan's government, the U.S. and the Afghan Taliban. Pakistan's historical interest in Afghanistan is largely a result of its desire to assert itself in the region and attain a strategic advantage over archrival India.
In an interview with Pakistan's Dunya TV that aired Monday and Tuesday, Sharif appeared to renounce a policy he pursued with vigor while twice prime minister in the 1990s. Back then, Pakistan openly supported the Afghan Taliban movement as it pushed out other armed factions such as the Northern Alliance and gained control of Kabul.
"Pakistan should abandon this thinking that Pakistan has to keep influence in Afghanistan," said Sharif, who heads the Pakistan Muslim League-N party. "Neither will they accept influence, nor should the pro-influence-minded people here insist on it."
"Our policy in the past has failed. Neither will such a policy work in future. We have a centuries-old relationship, and we can maintain this relationship only when we remain neutral and support the government elected there with the desire of the Afghan people."
It was unclear where Sharif would stand on the reconciliation efforts in Afghanistan. The role Pakistan would play will likely fall primarily to its military, which operates largely independent of the civilian government anyway and which could be instrumental in bringing some armed Afghan factions to the table.
Sharif's party, which controls the government of Punjab province but sits in opposition in the federal government, is considered more conservative and aligned with pro-Taliban parties than the national ruling Pakistan People's Party.
The PML-N has been criticized in recent months for not going after militant outfits in Punjab, a stance analysts say is driven by its reliance on banned militant groups to deliver key votes during elections. The frustration over the party's dawdling has grown more acute since a bombing at a popular Sufi shrine in Punjab's capital, Lahore, last week killed 47 people.
During Sharif's tenure as prime minister, he not only supported the Taliban regime in Afghanistan but also tried to vastly increase the powers of his office while pushing aside Pakistan's penal code in favor of an Islamic justice system. Many saw these ill-fated moves as an attempt to "Talibanize" Pakistan, and they eroded his popularity further.
Sharif was overthrown in a 1999 coup by then-Gen. Pervez Musharraf. As the leader of the opposition now, Sharif has tried to walk a careful line, making it hard to pin him down as being either pro- or anti-Taliban or pro- or anti-American.
While proposing Saturday for peace talks with militants in Pakistan, Sharif said Islamabad should take the initiative instead of waiting for directives from Washington. But he also said the negotiations should be with militants "who are ready to talk and ready to listen."
The government has brokered peace deals with Taliban fighters along the Afghan border in the past, but they have usually collapsed and have often given the militants time to regroup and consolidate their control.
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani announced later Saturday that he'd agreed to Sharif's proposal that an all-parties conference be held on ways to defeat militancy. No date has been announced, and the potential impact is unclear. At least one past such gathering has already been held.
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Afghanistan urges Pakistan to act against terror groups
by Lynne O'Donnell July 6, 2010
KABUL (AFP) – Afghanistan's national security adviser has called on the Pakistani government to "take serious measures" against Islamist groups launching attacks on Afghan targets from secure havens inside Pakistan.
Rangin Dadfar Spanta spoke to AFP in an interview a week after the Al-Jazeera television network said Afghan President Hamid Karzai had met the man who runs the Al-Qaeda-linked Haqqani network, in talks mediated by Pakistan.
Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Taliban have all denied any such meeting.
Spanta's comments signal an about-turn by the Afghan government after months of overtures to Islamabad in efforts to prompt Pakistan to deal with militant groups, including Al-Qaeda and the Taliban based along the Afghan border.
Spanta told AFP on Monday that Afghanistan had "tremendous evidence" that Pakistani authorities allowed Al-Qaeda and other terror organisations to operate on the country's soil and had presented it to Islamabad "many times".
Islamabad had failed to act against the groups based in Pakistan's tribal areas on the Afghan border, he told AFP.
"My expectation is that Pakistan after nine years -- because theoretically Pakistan is part of the anti-terror alliance -- they have to begin to take some serious measures against terrorism," he said.
"They have to hand over the leadership of the terrorist groups, they have to give a list of the people they have arrested and are holding in the detention centres in Pakistan."
Afghan officials have blamed a number of major attacks on Pakistani-based groups whom they say are supported by Pakistan's intelligence and military.
Such militants were blamed for blowing up the Serena Hotel in Kabul in 2008, attacking the Indian embassy, other Indian targets and a UN guesthouse in October that led to a mass withdrawal from Afghanistan of UN staff.
"They have their base and sanctuaries behind our border and this is a serious problem," Spanta said. "We have to address the menace of terrorism."
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Tuesday told a visiting Afghan trade delegation that his country is part of the solution to Afghanistan's security problems, according to a statement issued by his staff.
Gilani supports "cooperation beyond the existing collaboration in security matters including intelligence sharing so as to develop a comprehensive strategy to combat terrorism and militancy," the statement said.
Pakistani military consistently denies supporting militant groups and points to the losses of more than 2,000 Pakistani soldiers fighting homegrown Taliban since 2002.
Relations between Kabul and Islamabad have been traditionally marked by distrust, but there had been growing signs of rapprochement.
Karzai had been seen as trying to reach an arrangement with Pakistan -- possibly including a power-sharing deal with the Taliban -- that would help bring an end to the war in Afghanistan, now in its ninth year.
This was also seen as a way of giving Pakistan a stake in Afghanistan's future, despite broad opposition among Afghan politicians and the public.
Karzai's spokesman said Spanta's comments were a reiteration of Kabul's position that Pakistan must be involved in the process of "bringing peace and stability not only in Afghanistan but also in Pakistan and in the region".
Reaching peace would not be possible, Waheed Omar told reporters, "without an active and honest role by the Islamic Republic of Pakistan".
Spanta -- a former foreign minister and the senior cabinet-level advisor to Karzai on security issues -- said senior Pakistani military and intelligence officials had visited Kabul in recent months on goodwill visits.
"I hope we can begin a constructive dialogue with a serious agenda during the next meeting in Islamabad, or in Kabul... maybe next month," he said.
Spanta said Pakistan had failed to act against Al-Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban leadership known as the Quetta Shura, the Haqqani network, the minor Hekmatyar group, Hizb-u-Tahrir, as well as "Uzbek and Chechen terrorist groups".
He denied Karzai had met Sirajuddin Haqqani, who runs the Haqqani network, which often launches attacks in Afghanistan, or the Taliban, "through mediation of Pakistan forces or otherwise".
Pakistani security officials indicated last month on condition of anonymity that they were planning to help broker peace efforts in Afghanistan by acting as a bridge between the Kabul government and powerful Haqqani network.
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INTERVIEW-Afghanistan gets first 24-hour news TV
06 Jul 2010 09:01:17 GMT By Rob Taylor
KABUL, July 6 (Reuters) - From something resembling a small armed camp in a closed-off Kabul street, Afghanistan has just begun receiving its first look at home-grown, 24-hour news courtesy of Saad Mohseni, the country's biggest media mogul.
The politically connected Moby Media Group chairman last week launched a CNN-style news feed to what he expects to be about 1 million viewers shaping Afghanistan's future, from government to foreigners and even the resurgent Taliban.
"For me, 24-hour news was a no brainer," Mohseni told Reuters in an interview.
"In Afghanistan, you need to know what's going on. If there's a bomb blast in Karte-Seh and you've got your kids going to school there, you need to know which roads are closed, if security forces are in control of the area."
A strong critic of President Hamid Karzai, Mohseni and his brother Jahid control a modest but growing media empire based out of a cluster of dilapidated houses at the end of a barricaded cul-de-sac, guarded by a dozen men armed with AK-47s.
From a small upstairs office walled with flatscreens and curtained off from the street, the fast-talking ex-banker has in 5 years gone from owning a single Kabul FM radio station to cutting deals with News Corp's Rupert Murdoch to beam-in Persian-language programmes to 120 million people in Iran and central Asia.
But with a diet of Indian soap operas showing unveiled women and pixilated cleavage, American Idol-style "Afghan Star" talent shows and uncompromising exposure of government corruption, including election vote-rigging, Mohseni has also built a formidable array of political and religious critics.
"TOUGH NEIGHBOURHOOD"
"It's a tough neighbourhood. There are times when relations with individual institutions and our organisation is tense and it can even lead to violence. We've had people arrested and beaten," he said.
Mohseni's Tolo (Dawn) 24 began broadcasting at a vital time in Afghanistan, with new U.S. and NATO forces commander General David Petraeus arriving to take command of the fight against a Taliban at their strongest since their 2001 overthrow.
At the same time, Karzai is under pressure to match a U.S. troop surge meant to turn the tide of the war with improved governance and development, including a crackdown on the entrenched corruption driving support away from his government.
Mohseni, once on close terms with Karzai before a falling out over coverage of government graft and ineptitude, said he had lost faith in the president's ability to deliver on the reforms needed for Afghanistan to find stability. "It doesn't look good right now. We have to see signs that the government is going to take on these challenges and to tackle these problems, and at the moment we are not very optimistic," he said.
"It's all about beginning the momentum. Ultimately people would like to see change, positive change, so if the government takes the right steps, you'd be amazed how quickly they could regain the momentum. It's still ours to lose."
Mohseni, raised largely in Australia and a strong supporter of the American presence in the country, said the new channel aimed to inform Afghans and allow debate, providing the public with different policy alternatives and possibilities.
Afghanistan's 30 million population is on track to reach 100 million by 2050, with 60 percent under the age of 20 and rapidly urbanising. The capital is set to grow from 5 million people to 8 million by 2014, bringing new opportunities for Mohseni's Tolo.
"We are going to be grappling with a very young nation, much bigger than it is now, and we have to move forward," he said.
"Corruption is a major issue, but we all have a role to play in that. We have all made mistakes. People bribe on a daily basis. Ultimately I'm optimistic, or I wouldn't be investing all this money here." (Editing by David Fox)
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Roadside bomb kills 3 Afghan police, wounds 3
PUL-E-ALAM, Afghanistan, July 6 (Xinhua) -- Three policemen were killed and three others injured when a roadside bomb struck a police van in Logar province 60 km south of capital Kabul on Tuesday, an official said.
"The incident occurred in Baraki Barak district at 03:00 p.m. local time as a result three policemen were killed on the spot and three others were injured," governor of Baraki Barak district Mohammad Rahim Amin told Xinhua.
All the injured men are in critical condition, he added.
He also blamed Taliban militants for organizing the attack but the insurgents have yet to make comment.
Conflicts in the neighboring Wardak province, also left four Taliban insurgents dead a day earlier on Monday.
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Taliban militants kill 6 employees of Afghan firm
GHAZNI, Afghanistan, July 6 (Xinhua) -- Taliban militants killed six employees of a local construction company in Ghazni province, south of Afghanistan, an official with the company said Tuesday.
"Taliban militants abducted six employees of Faizullah Construction Company two days ago in Ghazni province and killed them yesterday. Their bodies were found today," director of the company Hajji Didar told Xinhua.
He also said that the ill-fated persons were going home from Paktia province but Taliban militants on the way abducted them in Andar district of Ghazni province and after killing them abandoned their bodies.
Taliban militants have not made comment.
However, the Taliban insurgents who have intensified their activities in the past targeted construction companies involved in road building in Afghanistan.
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Premature explosion kills 3 militants in N. Afghanistan
KABUL, July 6 (Xinhua) -- Three Taliban militants were killed as their mine exploded prematurely in Afghanistan's northern Kunduz province, the Afghan Interior Ministry said in a press released on Tuesday.
"A group of militants were busy in planting a mine on the road in Nahr-e-Sufi village, Chardara district Monday afternoon when the device went off prematurely killing three on the spot," the press release added.
Taliban militants have yet to make comment.
Chardara district in Kunduz province has been regarded as the hotbed of Taliban militants in north Afghanistan.
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Kabul Factory Gearing Up to Make Boots
VOA News July 6, 2010 Jennifer Glasse
Kabul - Milli Boot Factory in Kabul could be a model for the future of Afghanistan. Its owners have invested millions of dollars developing a sturdy boot with the hope of becoming a supplier to the fledgling Afghan security forces. The family-run company has been around since 1979. The factory illustrates NATO's wider strategy of sustainability - if Afghans have jobs, they won't fight.
For owner Ihsan Saffi, it's a return to what he knows. He started making boots in Afghanistan in 1979. He fled when the Taliban arrived and returned in 2002 to find everything destroyed.
"I want to help my own country," Saffi said. "I want to help my own people. There are many poor people. I want to bring them here and give them jobs."
Saffi employs 450 people at his Kabul Milli Factory, paying them between $400 and $900 per month, which is well above the average wage here. He is hoping he will get a big contract to supply boots to the Afghan military.
The sewing machines are quiet now, but soon the owners hope, 3,000 pairs of boots a day will be produced here. This is not just about getting boots on the ground. This is part of NATO's strategy for getting Afghanistan back on its feet.
All over the country, Afghans are working on projects to help build their country's infrastructure. Ten billion dollars a year is earmarked to develop Afghanistan's security forces. NATO officials say they are trying to spend as much of that as possible inside Afghanistan.
Colonel John Ferrari says the policy seems to be working. "By letting the local economy and the local vendors know that we are going to be buying things locally, manufacturing has increased," he said.
At the boot factory, the owners are so worried about their competitors that they didn't want their new modern injection molding machine shown in full. They think it will give them an edge over other businesses. Improving the quality of the boots was a requirement to be able to bid for the military contract. Afghanistan's hot and harsh terrain can be hard on footwear. And NATO wants boots that will last.
At Kabul Milli, the owners have invested about $4 million in improvements, new machinery and expanding the warehouse so there's somewhere to store all the boots. Saffi says it is worth it.
"If every businessman invested here and opened a factory, people would have work," he says, "and everyone knows if people had jobs, there wouldn't be fighting. Everyone would be busy earning money for their children, so they wouldn't fight."
That sums up much of NATO's strategy for Afghanistan: Get Afghans working so they can sustain their own country. Its success will depend on whether people like this bootseller of Kabul prosper.
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Petraeus’s impossible mission in Afghanistan: armed nation-building
By Gian P. Gentile – The Christian Science Monitor via Yahoo! News - Tue Jul 6, 9:45 am ET
West Point, N.Y. – The problem in Afghanistan isn’t poor generalship, nor is it any uncertainty about the
basics of counterinsurgency doctrine by the US Army and the US Marines – they “get it.”
Better generals in Afghanistan will not solve the problem. The recently relieved commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, was put in place because he was the better general of counterinsurgency, sent there to rescue the failed mission. Now we’ve placed our hopes in an even better general, his successor, Gen. David Petraeus.
But no one, no matter how brilliant, can achieve the impossible. And the problem in Afghanistan is the impossibility of the mission. The United States is pursuing a nation-building strategy with counterinsurgency tactics – that is, building a nation at the barrel end of a gun.
Might armed nation-building work in Afghanistan? Sure, but history shows that it would take a very, very long time for a foreign occupying power to succeed. Are we willing to commit to such a generational effort, not just for mere months or years?
The US military tried to do nation-building in Vietnam with major combat forces from 1965 to 1972. It failed because that mission was impossible, too. Muddled strategic thinking, however, caused Washington to commit to a major military effort in South Vietnam when its vital strategic interests did not demand such a maximalist effort. The war was simply not winnable based on a moral and material cost that the American people were willing to pay.
Yet once Washington committed itself to Vietnam, it failed to see in the closing years that the war was lost. Instead it doggedly pursued an irrelevant strategy that got thousands more US soldiers killed.
Afghanistan today eerily looks more and more like Vietnam.
Alternatives to nation-building
There are alternatives to nation-building in Afghanistan. Columbia University scholar Austin Long recently offered an operational method that would reduce significantly the size of the US military in Afghanistan by transforming its mission from building up Afghan society to destroying and disabling Al Qaeda, along with limited training and advising to the Afghan military. This smaller force would focus on the areas most likely to harbor potential links and alliances with Al Qaeda.
Unfortunately, Washington is caught in a cycle of thinking that sees each setback in the war in Afghanistan as a failure of the US military. Such thinking tends to exacerbate bad policy.
Petraeus often used the phrase “hard is not hopeless” when referring to the challenges he faced in Iraq during the troop surge in 2007. To be sure, at the tactical level the values of persistence, positivism, and strength of will are essential qualities for an army and its leaders.
But at the level of strategy, where military operations should be linked to achieving policy objectives, sometimes the qualities of subtleness, reflection, and flexibility are needed. A good strategist will recognize whether the military means are sufficient and proper to achieve the desired political ends.
President Obama has given the American military the mission of disrupting, dismantling, and defeating Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan so that it cannot carry out strikes against the US from those locations. Contrary to common belief, this is a limited policy objective. Yet US military leaders have embraced the president’s limited objective expansively by attempting to reconstruct governments and reshape entire societies.
Here is a serious mismatch between a limited political objective and the method employed to achieve it.
History offers examples of policy objectives being matched with good military strategy.
In one of the most brilliant and far-sighted acts of statesmanship in the 20th century, French President Charles de Gaulle decided in 1961 to withdraw French troops from Algeria and grant that country its independence from French colonial rule. De Gaulle’s decision was anything but easy. He faced stinging political and military criticism, doomsday predictions about the consequences of abandoning Algeria, and an attempted military coup. Nonetheless, he recognized that staying in Algeria was destroying the French Army and dividing French society. It had become an impossible mission for France.
Dangers of selective reflection
Afghanistan is to America in 2010 what Algeria was to the French in 1961. Yet instead of accepting the impossibility of nation-building in Afghanistan and adjusting accordingly, the US Army and the greater defense establishment continue to see the problem not in the impossibility of the mission but in its own inability to carry out the tactics of the mission on the ground. The answer, the solution, the key to victory rests with us and what we do or don’t do.
So the thinking goes: If things don’t progress accordingly, senior generals can be quickly removed for not applying correctly the proper principles of counterinsurgency and nation-building. Or the Army can be labeled a failure due to its so-called institutional resistance to fighting irregular wars of counterinsurgency.
Such selective reflection – the kind that fails to question the premise of the mission – sets the stage for a future round of “new and improved” (yet still futile) effort: The Army finds better methods for building schools and bridges in the flatlands of Kandahar or the mountains of the Hindu Kush, and with fresh generals supercharged with expert advice, it feels confident of success and even victory. And then if success doesn’t happen, the cycle kicks in again: Blame the US military and its generals but then offer the hope that future success rests with us.
But imagine the possibility that the US Army and its generals at this point after eight years and more of counterinsurgency warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan actually do understand the basics of counterinsurgency and nation-building and are reasonably proficient at it on the ground in Afghanistan. Then what? Where do analysts and experts and even military officers turn to place the blame for lack of progress in Afghanistan?
By focusing on the American military and the promise of better tactical methods and generals, we neglect the true nature of the impossibility of nation-building at the barrel of a gun in the graveyard of empires.
Gian P. Gentile is a serving Army officer and has a PhD in history from Stanford University. In 2006, he commanded a combat battalion in West Baghdad.
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Pakistan, Afghanistan begin talks on transit trade agreement
ISLAMABAD, July 6 (Xinhua) -- The finance ministers of Pakistan and Afghanistan Tuesday opened two-day talks intended to reach understanding on a proposed transit trade agreement, according to local news media APP.
In May 2009, Pakistan and Afghanistan signed a memorandum of understanding to begin talks on a transit trade agreement which is also likely to allow India to use Pakistan's land route for trade with Kabul. Pakistan has not been willing to grant India land route access to Kabul.
They had agreed to finalize the agreement by the end of 2009, but differences over several issues delayed the agreement and it is expected to be signed during an international conference in Kabul.
Last month, Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi at a joint press conference with his Afghan counterpart called for early finalization of a transit trade agreement.
Afghan Finance Minister Hazrat Omar Zakhilwal is leading his country's delegation in talks with Pakistani counterpart Dr. Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, said an official, adding that Afghan Minister for Mines is also a member of the Afghan delegation.
"We enter into negotiations today with an open mind and positive attitude with the intention to address the outstanding issues and find solutions," Pakistan Finance Minister said in his opening statement at the talks.
Pakistan and the landlocked Afghanistan signed transit trade agreement in 1960s and they want to sign a new one Afghanistan- Pakistan Transit Trade Agreement (APTTA).
Officials said that currently the bilateral trade is around 1.5 billion dollars, and with this new arrangement in place bilateral trade could easily be enhanced to five billion dollars by 2015.
Pakistan Finance Minister said that the Joint Working Group, representing the stakeholders of both the countries, have so far held 6 rounds of talk to finalize new transit trade agreement.
"Significant progress has been made so for during the 6 rounds, "he said.
But sources said that Pakistan is still concerned about the smuggling to Pakistan of the items imported under the transit trade and wants measures to curb this practice.
Sources said Pakistani side will urge Afghan delegation to place major smuggling prone items in negative list under new APTTA.
Pakistanis are of the view that several items including tea, tyres, electronic equipment and fabrics are smuggled back to Pakistan.
Officials said Pakistan has also proposed a new mechanism to check smuggling under the new APTTA by imposing quantitative restriction on transit goods on the basis of actual consumption in Afghanistan.
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Interview: Photojournalist Looks Back At How Afghanistan Has Changed
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty July 6, 2010
Steve McCurry is a well-known photojournalist whose photograph of a young Afghan girl during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 became an iconic image of the plight of refugees.
McCurry spoke to Muhammad Tahir of RFE/RL's Turkmen Service about his experiences in Afghanistan and how it has changed since he first visited the country over 30 years ago (see below for audio of full interview).
RFE/RL: You've taken hundreds of photographs in Afghanistan, and you said you actually started in Afghanistan, so why did one photo of this little Afghan girl, Sharbat Gula, touch so many people?
Steve McCurry: Well, that's a very good question, and maybe I'm not the best person to ask that. I know that we had thousands of letters and requests and inquiries about, you know, who was she and how could they help her. People wanted to send her clothes and help, and people wanted to adopt her.
I think there is a quality to her expression which has many different emotions, and she seems -- it's a bit ambiguous, too, what is actually.... But I think that her amazing eyes are probably the main thing which attracts people, and she has these very riveting, beautiful, almost haunted eyes looking at the viewer. So I think that's possibly the thing which attracts people to that picture.
RFE/RL: After many years, you went back to find this girl. What took you back to find her again?
McCurry: The reason we went back to try and find this girl was because we had received so many letters and inquiries about her. The cover [for "National Geographic" magazine] had been so important and so popular, I was also curious myself if there was some way to find her and try and help her and do something good for her.
So, we went back in 2002 to try and locate her and it was almost like a miracle that we were able to find her.
RFE/RL: Tell me, if you can, what kind of experiences you went through when you were searching for Sharbat Gula.
McCurry: Well, it was very difficult to find her, because we didn't have her name, we didn't know her tribe, we didn't know where she was living, we virtually knew nothing about this girl.
The only thing we had was the photograph, which we took back to the camp where I had photographed her originally and showed it to virtually everybody we could talk to. We were very lucky when one man we talked to remembered her brother, and he was the one who actually led us to her.
RFE/RL: You have a lot of emotions attached to Afghanistan. Can you tell me what this country means to you?
McCurry: Well, the Afghan people are a wonderful people. They have a great sense of humor and they're very resilient. They're a very handsome race, and they live in an extremely beautiful country.
I have many Afghan friends and have traveled through, I would say, almost the whole country, many times. And so I have a great affection for Afghans, and I have a great admiration for their heritage and their traditions.
And they have this very beautiful landscape, very dramatic landscapes, from the deserts of the south to the mountains of Nuristan and Badakhshan. It's really just one of the most beautiful regions in the world.
RFE/RL: How is Afghanistan today compared to when you were there the first time?
McCurry: To compare Afghanistan today to the way it was in 1978 when I first had gone there, in many ways it's exactly the same in the sense that the people living in the villages and the mountains -- their lives have not dramatically changed and their farming and grazing of their animals is still pretty much untouched by this modern world that we live in.
But the cities -- Kabul, Jalalabad -- with cell-phone technology and the Internet and cable television and all that, all the traffic. I remember 15 years ago there were just a few cars in Kabul, now it's basically bumper-to-bumper traffic there. Modern restaurants and shopping centers and even new hotels -- it's dramatically changed from when I went there.
It's become sort of a modern city, Kabul, and the people now have become more -- the outside world has a big influence on Afghanistan and they're no longer an isolated country. Now they've really become part of the community of that sort of West Asian neighborhood.
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Afghanistan power station on hold because of security fears
A hydroelectric turbine escorted through Afghanistan in the biggest military operation of its kind since the Second World War may not be in operation until 2014 because the route to the power station is too dangerous.
Ben Farmer in Kabul 05 Jul 2010 Daily Telegraph (UK)
The materials needed to complete the project to bring power to southern Afghanistan cannot be delivered because British troops have been unable to secure the roads through the Taliban stranglehold on the Sangin Valley and the convoys fear attack.
The machinery is packed in containers at the Kajaki dam. Power lines and a substation have also yet to be refurbished to carry the electricity, the British commander of international forces in southern Afghanistan told The Daily Telegraph.
The five-day mission to deliver the turbine in September 2008 was hailed as a British victory to solve Helmand and Kandahar's power needs.
Four thousand Nato troops, including 3,000 British, escorted the two-and-a-half mile, 100-vehicle convoy, in Britain's largest route clearance operation since the Second World War.
Two hundred militant fighters were killed during the operation and Gordon Brown said the mission was a reminder of Nato's "fundamental purpose" in Afghanistan.
Since then not one construction convoy has been able to travel the route according to the American aid official in charge of the dam project.
Major General Nick Carter said costly and inefficient farms of diesel generators would now be needed to power the critical southern city of Kandahar until the road from Durai in Helmand province, through Sangin to the dam, was made safe.
He said: "Let's say you had the upper Sangin Valley in a better place in terms of security by autumn 2011, then about three years, two-and-a-half years downstream you would have power coming in adequate megawattage to Kandahar.
"That means we are talking about an interregnum of between three and four years where you are not going to have adequate power coming from Kajaki." Kajaki's failure to power Kandahar city has contributed to the residents' deep disillusionment with Hamid Karzai's regime.
Improving conditions in Kandahar, home of the Taliban movement, is a priority of the coalition's centrepiece operation to reverse the insurgents' momentum in the province this summer.
The city centre has only alternate days of power and rural districts have virtually nothing.
John Smith-Sreen, USAID's head of energy and water in Afghanistan, said a Chinese contracting firm, CMIC, engaged to install the Kajaki turbine quit soon after it arrived saying the area was too dangerous to work.
Two existing 1970s turbines have been refurbished, but installation of the new turbine was on hold.
The Taliban stranglehold on the Sangin Valley has made it impossible to transport 900 tonnes of concrete and aggregate needed, he said. An airlift is too expensive. Existing power lines have been cut six times this year alone.
Mr Smith-Sreen said: "We intend to tender the installation [of the new turbine] at some point in the future. It's yet to be defined when that will be." Almost one third of all British deaths in Afghanistan have been in Sangin – 99 out of the 311 fatalities so far.
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Who is running the show in Afghanistan?
Los Angeles Times By Doyle McManus Tue, Jul. 06, 2010
When I visited Kabul this spring, a diplomat from a country that has sent thousands of troops to our war there asked a simple question that was actually an indictment. "Tell me," he said, "who's in charge of U.S. policy on Afghanistan?"
The same question came up in Washington, D.C., as officials sorted through the impact of President Obama's decision to replace his commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, with Gen. David Petraeus.
"We still have one problem," one official told me. "Who's running the show?"
From the beginning, the Obama administration has had too many chiefs running its war effort in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, and too many voices explaining it. The president and his aides hoped to end the dissension by settling on an 18-month surge of troops in December, but different players interpreted the policy in different ways: Vice President Joe Biden said it guaranteed a significant withdrawal of U.S. troops in July 2011, but Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the policy meant no such thing.
The U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan, retired Army Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, is brilliant and ferociously hardworking, but he has collided repeatedly with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, with McChrystal and with his own State Department staff. Obama's super-envoy for the region, Richard Holbrooke, is brilliant and ferociously hardworking, but he has collided repeatedly with Karzai, with Eikenberry and even with the White House. Who's in charge here? Nobody's sure.
In order for Petraeus, the nation's savviest "political general," to succeed militarily, he will have to help the president answer that nonmilitary question. He's fixed a similar problem before — in Iraq, where he served as U.S. military commander from 2007 to 2008.
Before Petraeus arrived in Baghdad, the U.S. command and the U.S. Embassy frequently clashed. But Petraeus and a new U.S. ambassador appointed at the same time, Ryan Crocker, ended the chaos by working deliberately on a seamless partnership — in adjoining offices.
In Afghanistan, Petraeus actually faces three nonmilitary problems: First, he must help repair the military command's relationship with the White House, which was frayed by the disclosures of disrespect and dissension on McChrystal's staff.
Second, he must persuade Obama to fix the unhappy military-civilian partnership in Kabul. That probably means replacing Eikenberry, whose relationship with Petraeus has not been notably close in the past.
Should Holbrooke be pushed out, too? Insiders are divided on that question. But the special envoy is the State Department's most accomplished negotiator — and if negotiations with the Taliban are coming up, there's an argument for keeping him in his job as long as the lines of authority can be made clearer.
And finally, Petraeus' third nonmilitary job: Get more out of Karzai. When Petraeus was in Iraq, officials said, he relentlessly nudged Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to do what the United States wanted by offering favors if he helped and withdrawing them if he didn't. That task would be easier in Afghanistan if Obama sends a new ambassador to Kabul, given Eikenberry's rocky relationship with Karzai.
One of Petraeus' first actions the day he was nominated was to telephone Crocker, now dean of the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. Neither Petraeus nor Crocker would talk about their conversation, although Crocker told me emphatically that he has no interest in becoming the U.S. ambassador in Kabul.
But Crocker did spell out the problem. In Baghdad, the Iraqis needed to know that "they couldn't game one of us against the other. Working together is a necessary condition for success — but not a sufficient one," he said. "We are not going to win the big fight if we spend our time on little fights with each other."
Obama said that he had confidence in his current team, and aides said that meant no immediate changes were planned. Yet the president surely knows that by naming Petraeus, he has solved only one part of his problem. He filled the unexpected opening in the job of military commander, but he didn't end the confusion over who is running the policy as a whole.
If Petraeus can help him find an answer to that question, he will deserve the job other officers think he wants: not president of the United States, but chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. That post comes open in September 2011 — shortly after Obama's Afghanistan decision point of July 2011.
Doyle McManus is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times.
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Innovative program helps Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans get engineering degrees and jobs
The Partnership for Public Service Tuesday, July 6, 2010; 2:54 PM The Washington Post
Kevin Smith believes in win-win situations.
As a manager with the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) in Oak Ridge, Tenn., Smith has seen the pressing need for engineering talent in his home state, and has been acutely aware that returning veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan can use a helping hand to find a career path.
In 2009, Smith started America's Veterans to Tennessee Engineers, an innovative program that meets both goals.
"The GI Bill is great, but it doesn't give vets everything they need to succeed, especially if they have families," Smith said. "One guy I met was working three different part-time jobs to make ends meet and trying to go to school at the same time. He just couldn't do it."
America's Veterans to Tennessee Engineers is designed to provide educational and employment opportunities to former members of the armed forces, including those with disabilities.
A former commander of the U.S. Air Force Stealth Fighter Group, Smith created a consortium of schools in Tennessee with engineering programs, local government agencies and 17 employers in the Tennessee Valley region.
The consortium helps qualified veterans apply to engineering programs, offers relocation support, arranges part-time work in engineering fields while they are in school and provides the students with mentors. Upon completing the college program, each participant is guaranteed a job as an engineer.
Just in the infant stages, the program currently has 20 veterans enrolled in Tennessee colleges. So far, one has graduated, but many more are on the way.
One of the earliest entrants to the program was John Brasher, a single father and veteran of the Army Third Infantry¿the first division to enter Iraq in 2003. With Smith's help, Brasher is now studying civil engineering at the University of Tennessee and working part-time with a company involved in nuclear waste clean-up.
Brasher said he is grateful to Smith for creating a program that is providing him with an excellent educational opportunity, hands-on work experience and hope for the future.
"Kevin is a one-of-a-kind guy, above and beyond," Brasher said. "He just hard-core cares about veterans."
While the emphasis is on helping veterans, companies in the Tennessee Valley region benefit as well.
"It takes trustworthy, disciplined people to handle nuclear materials, and that's the kind of people we can get through this program," said Darrel Kohlhorst, the president of B&W Y-12, Inc., a company that is part of Smith's consortium and manages a defense facility for the NNSA.
Even the academic communities have been impressed with the veterans from Smith's program.
"I've heard professors comment on how unusually disciplined they are," said Gary Goff of Roane State Community College in Tennessee.
Besides Roane State, Pellissippi State Technical Community College, Tennessee Technological University and the University of Tennessee system are participating in the veterans initiative. The schools use their normal admissions processes, but will consider the students' participation in this program as an additional factor.
As he began to develop the program, Smith worked closely with Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and personally met with hundreds of patients. Smith continues to recruit through the Wounded Warrior Project, but most applicants hear about America's Veterans to Tennessee Engineers through word of mouth.
One of the biggest draws for veterans is the guarantee of an engineering job. But to make that guarantee, Smith had to secure promises from companies that they would have positions available for recent program graduates.
"In a down economy, it was hard to get companies to commit to hiring the participants," he said. "Some of these companies went through layoffs, and they were reluctant to sign the contracts."
Among the employers participating are B&W Y-12, Uranium Services Enrichment Corporation, Energy Solutions, Science Applications International Corporation, Bechtel Construction, Information International Associates and the Tennessee Valley Authority.
Kohlhorst said that Smith has been the catalyst and the driving force behind the program that over time should have a significant impact.
"He understood everything from the military experience to the academics to the employers' perspective. It took him to make the whole thing work," said Kohlhorst.
This article was jointly prepared by the Partnership for Public Service, a group seeking to enhance the performance of the federal government, and washingtonpost.com. Visit www.ourpublicservice.or for more about the organization's work to recognize the men and women who serve our nation.
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What the Taliban Think of McChrystal's Ouster
Newsweek
To them, it means they're winning
Pakistanis, particularly the large ethnic Pashtun population living in the country’s violence-prone northwest near the Afghan border, were transfixed by the unfolding McChrystal saga, launched by a profile of the general by NEWSWEEK alumnus Michael Hastings in Rolling Stone. Their eyes and ears were glued to round-the-clock television and radio news coverage of the general’s gaffes and the resulting political fallout in both Kabul and Washington.
Of course, no one is more mesmerized than the Taliban themselves, who, if they don’t have access to television, followed the drama and the minute-by-minute coverage of McChrystal’s Pentagon and White House meetings on the Pashto-language services of the BBC and VOA. “We are enjoying every minute of it on TV and the radio,” says a senior Afghan Taliban official and former cabinet minister in Mullah Mohammed Omar’s defunct government, who spoke on the condition that he not be quoted by name. “All the talk about this being America’s longest, most expensive, and most unpopular war—and about the tension between McChrystal and Obama—is music to our ears.” The Taliban official, who spoke with NEWSWEEK along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and even naively asked about the possibility of a military coup in Washington, sees the apparent insubordination (and the backbiting) in the U.S. ranks as the latest sign of America’s impending defeat in Afghanistan. “What we are seeing is the mindset of a U.S. general and other commanders who are getting mentally ready for failure, so they criticize and make jokes about the president.”
He points to Gen. David Petraeus’s fainting the other day during congressional testimony, the video of which is being featured on a Taliban Web site, and to the McChrystal flap as clear signs that the stress of the war is seriously affecting the U.S. command. “Generals are losing trust in colonels, colonels in majors, and the West is losing trust in [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai.” But while American generals and politicians seem to be divided and blaming each other for the lack of progress, the Taliban leadership and its fighters have never been more united, despite the insurgency’s heavy battlefield losses, he says. “McChrystal calls Marja ‘a bleeding ulcer,’” the Taliban commander says. “We have lost much more blood than America has. But whether our fighters are 14, 40, or 60, and know they can be martyred at any time, we are convinced we are going to win.” (The commander paints a much-too-rosy picture of the insurgency, which is deeply divided about whether to enter into peace talks with Karzai.)
The Taliban didn’t care whether McChrystal resigned or retained his position, the official said, because either way the momentum is on the guerrillas’ side. “The U.S. may have the most modern and destructive weapons in the world, but our fighters are gaining ground day by day.” “There were generals before McChrystal in the past 10 years, and there will be generals after him, who, like their predecessors, will all retire without achieving success,” the Taliban official says.
Only Karzai will be unhappy by McChrystal’s removal, the Taliban official says: “Karzai likes McChrystal because he pushed for bringing more troops and money to Afghanistan.” Indeed, McChrystal and Karzai seem to have gotten along well, whereas the Afghan president and the U.S. ambassador, Karl Eikenberry (the former military commander here), reportedly have an uneasy relationship. “Karzai clearly sees Eikenberry as being unsympathetic to him,” says one of the Afghani president’s cabinet ministers, who asked not to be quoted by name because of the sensitivity of the subject.
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