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Afghan Corruption 'Doubled' Since 2006
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty July 8, 2010
Corruption in Afghanistan has doubled in two years since 2007, according to a survey by an international nonprofit corruption watchdog published today.
Afghan citizens paid $1bn in bribes for public services last year, study finds
Survey shows more than half of population believes endemic corruption in police and judiciary helps Taliban's expansion
guardian.co.uk Aunohita Mojumdar in Kabul Thursday 8 July 2010
Afghans paid nearly $1bn (£658m) in bribes last year, according to a new survey that reveals that corruption in the country has doubled since 2007.
As a foreign refuge closes in Kabul, local mosques are at risk, too
By Pamela Constable Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, July 9, 2010
When I read in the paper last week that the United Nations guesthouse in Kabul would soon be closing its doors forever, I felt a twinge of regret and nostalgia for a time and place that would never come again, where a foreign do-gooder or a journalist like me could find refuge from a conflicted
Senior Afghan Police Official Assassinated
VOA News July 8, 2010
Afghan officials say gunmen have shot and killed a senior Afghan police intelligence chief and his bodyguard. Gunmen ambushed Mohammad Gul, police intelligence director for western Kabul, Thursday as he returned home from his office in the Afghan capital.
Taliban kidnap 2 local Afghan officials to change for 10 comrades: Official
HERAT, Afghanistan, July 8 (Xinhua) -- Taliban militants in a bid to secure the release of their comrades in northwest Ghor province of Afghanistan have kidnapped two local officials, spokesman for provincial administration Abdul Hai Khatibi said Thursday.
Analysis: Humanitarian space easing in Afghanistan?
KABUL, 8 July 2010 (IRIN) - Humanitarian agencies are seeing promising signs of regaining space and acceptance from Taliban insurgents while attacks against NGO workers have reduced significantly over the past six months.
Explosion rocks Herat city in W Afghanistan
HERAT, Afghanistan, July 8 (Xinhua) -- An explosion rocked Herat city in west Afghanistan Thursday morning, police said.
Afghanistan is a catastrophe. But we will have to wait for a new Chilcot to admit it
Our leaders would rather avoid embarrassment than be honest about the horrific futility of the wars we are fighting
guardian.co.uk Simon Jenkins Thursday 8 July
As British troops retreat from the fortress of Sangin in south Afghanistan, a sleepy room in Westminster again plays host to the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war. The British establishment is strangely dotty. Chilcot is like reviewing Passchendaele during the Battle of Britain, or Boudicca's
Senior Afghan police official assassinated
The Associated Press July 8, 2010
KABUL, Afghanistan - A senior Afghan police intelligence chief was assassinated and his bodyguard killed near the capital, an official said Thursday, the latest government figure to be targeted as violence spirals in the country.
Italy trains 650 Afghan Border Policemen
KABUL, July 8 (Xinhua) -- Munir Mangal, the Deputy to Afghan Interior Ministry on Thursday, said that Italian government has provided training to 650 Afghan Border Police servicemen over the four years. "With the financial support of Italy and providing trainers 650 Afghan Border
Former British soldier out of jail in Afghanistan
July 8, 2010
LONDON (AFP) – A former British soldier acquitted of bribery in Afghanistan has been released from jail but it is not yet clear if he is free to come home, his daughter said Thursday.
Interview: Groups That Create Militias Are Not Acceptable To Pakistan
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty July 7, 2010
Pakistan's ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, says that Islamabad sees the Taliban as a threat to its security, both in Afghanistan and, increasingly, in Pakistan itself.
British combat role in Afghanistan 'could be over in three years'
Ambassador Sir William Patey sees need for long-term partnership between the two countries
The Guardian Richard Norton-Taylor Thursday 8 July 2010
British troops could end their combat role in Afghanistan even sooner than the five years the government has suggested, the UK's top diplomat in the country said today.
US to buy Russian helicopters for Afghan air force
The Pentagon plans to buy ten Russian military helicopters for Afghanistan's fledgling air force at a cost of $180 million (£119 million), ignoring protests from Congressmen who say US aircraft should be considered.
Telegraph.co.uk - International News Alex Spillius in Washington 08 Jul 2010
Defence Department officials have argued that purchasing the M-17s would accelerate the handover of control to Afghan forces.
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Afghan Corruption 'Doubled' Since 2006
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty July 8, 2010
Corruption in Afghanistan has doubled in two years since 2007, according to a survey by an international nonprofit corruption watchdog published today.
The group, Integrity Watch, said Afghans paid nearly $1 billion in bribes in 2009.
In a poll of some 6,500 Afghans, almost one-third of those surveyed said they had to pay a bribe to receive a public service.
More than half said the Taliban was gaining in strength because of state corruption.
Integrity Watch said corruption had become so entrenched that it threatened the multibillion-dollar efforts of the international community to help end nearly nine years of conflict, and rebuild Afghanistan after 30 years of war.
compiled from agency reports
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Afghan citizens paid $1bn in bribes for public services last year, study finds
Survey shows more than half of population believes endemic corruption in police and judiciary helps Taliban's expansion
guardian.co.uk Aunohita Mojumdar in Kabul Thursday 8 July 2010
Afghans paid nearly $1bn (£658m) in bribes last year, according to a new survey that reveals that corruption in the country has doubled since 2007.
The study by the monitoring group Integrity Watch Afghanistan showed that the average value of bribes paid in 2009 was $156. The average per capita income is $502 per year.
Almost a third of civil servants said they have been forced to pay a bribe to obtain a public service, while 13% of households said that they had paid bribes to secure their own sources of income
The survey also showed that more than half the country's population feels that corruption is helping the Taliban's expansion.
Equally worrying for Nato forces combating the insurgency is the finding that the judiciary and the police were identified as the two most corrupt institutions in Afghanistan.
While most respondents said they hoped that state institutions would tackle the problem of corruption, there was an increasing tendency to turn to non-state actors to solve their problems, a trend that could further bolster support for the insurgency.
"Corruption is weakening the legitimacy of the state," said Lorenzo Delesgues, a founder and co-director of IWA.
The survey sampled 6,498 people in 32 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces over November and December 2009.
More than a quarter of Afghans (26%) felt deprived of access to justice and security because of corruption. Half (50%) of those surveyed said that corruption within the state was helping expansion of the Taliban either absolutely (36%) or a little (14%).
Weak law enforcement was identified as a major cause for corruption with as many as 28% of civil servants saying they had to pay bribes to secure or retain their jobs. However donor money was also identified as a major cause of corruption
President Hamid Karzai – criticised regularly by the international community for his apparent unwillingness to tackle graft – was seen as the best bet for countering corruption (80% identified the presidency as the best institution to deal with the problem), though more than half the people said he had not performed on this issue.
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As a foreign refuge closes in Kabul, local mosques are at risk, too
By Pamela Constable Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, July 9, 2010
When I read in the paper last week that the United Nations guesthouse in Kabul would soon be closing its doors forever, I felt a twinge of regret and nostalgia for a time and place that would never come again, where a foreign do-gooder or a journalist like me could find refuge from a conflicted, alien environment in a familiar oasis of hot showers, cold beer and the reassuring drone of a BBC newscast.
I also felt anger, because I knew why the old lodge was closing. Kabul, a dusty but intriguing capital where aid workers and others had survived periods of communist rule and Taliban repression, was now a de facto war zone. Any foreign facility was now vulnerable to bombings or commando attacks, and most U.N. workers were confined to fortified compounds.
Then I turned the page and read that the Data Shrine in Lahore, Pakistan, the country's most popular gathering place for followers of a Sufi saint known as Data Ganj Bakhsh, had been struck by suicide bombers, leaving scores of people dead and maimed. The victims were all Pakistani Muslims, and the religious setting seemed light-years from a Western watering hole. But my reaction was virtually identical, and I realized after a moment that the guesthouse and the shrine had a great deal in common.
There are virtually no public bars in Muslim countries; few places for people to let off steam, relax and unwind; and fewer where women are allowed to mingle with men. Mosques, especially of the increasingly influential Wahhabi or Deobandi strains imported to Pakistan by foreign wars and Middle Eastern clerics, can be as stern and silent as tombs. Their calls to prayer are shrill rather than inviting; their messages are exclusive, bellicose and misogynistic. Young men in their 20s, who might pour out of a sports bar flush with victory from a World Cup match, could just as easily rush out of radical prayer services looking for infidels to attack.
For millions of Muslims, the alternative to this militant ideology -- and the welcoming refuge from daily cares and burdens -- is the Sufi shrine. If a Deobandi mosque is a place of priestly order and genuflection and whispers, a Sufi shrine is the opposite: a messy free-for-all, a place where everyone is welcome to pray or sing or take a nap or hold a picnic; a pageant of humanity where beggars and addicts mingle with pilgrims and penitents, where families bring newborns in swaddling clothes and the newly dead in coffins to be blessed.
During the past decade, I have been to Sufi shrines all over Pakistan, and I always have felt totally welcome and at ease. The atmosphere is heady with spiritual ecstasy. Volunteers sit behind huge kettles, doling out free rice and bread to endless lines of poor men, women and children. Pickpockets lurk and exotic creatures -- transvestite dancers or shrunken-headed children -- startle. But no one is harassed or lectured or ejected, and everyone's shoes are carefully guarded and returned at the door.
The Sufi saints -- long-dead Persian mystics buried inside these shrines -- inspire fervent but languid devotion. They are believed to be direct descendants of the prophet Muhammad and to have special powers of healing and intervention. At various shrines, I have met women praying to become pregnant, polio victims hoping for a cure, farmers blessing a new tractor, and families giving away sweets in gratitude because a relative, falsely accused of murder, was released from prison. If this is superstition, so are Catholicism, Hinduism and many other faiths.
Many Sufi saints were famous poets in their lifetimes, and their couplets or sayings were usually paeans to love, explorations of the soul, or wise maxims for life with a Socratic twist that answered questions with riddles. The most famous of all is Jalalladin Rumi, a 13th-century Persian poet, whose search for spiritual enlightenment and a direct, passionate relationship with God -- free from material needs or clerical oppression -- inspired him to write thousands of essays and verses, including this one:
God's purpose for man is to acquire a seeing eye and an understanding heart.
Some of these saints' current-day descendants in Pakistan, known as pirs, have become powerful or corrupt politicians who use their religious stature for selfish ends. But the nonviolent, mystical message of Sufism also represents a strong challenge to the morally rigid vision of the Taliban and other extremist Islamic groups. Today, some of Pakistan's most successful pop groups offer music and lyrics with a Sufi theme, and the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad is pointedly helping to refurbish some of the older and more run-down shrines.
Extremist groups have responded by attacking and threatening numerous shrines. The tomb of Rahman Baba, a leafy sanctuary in Peshawar whose walls are covered with paintings of flowers and candles, was bombed last year. A shrine near the Swat Valley was commandeered by Taliban fighters for weeks, and many other shrines were put under special alert after receiving threats. The last time I visited the Data Shrine in May, police commandos guarded its cool stone pavilions and visitors were shunted through a maze of metal security chutes. Last week, despite such precautions, bombers killed at least 42 worshipers and left another 150 injured.
Today life in Lahore, a city rich in history and vibrant with activity, has been violently disrupted and perhaps changed forever. In the past two years alone, extremists have attacked crowded markets, police academies, cricket teams, college campuses, moderate clerics and mosques of minority sects. Their message is clear: The real clash of civilizations is between moderate and radical Muslim beliefs. No place is sacred, no person is safe and no form of governance acceptable except the most simplistic, punitive brand of Islam.
In Kabul, we know what that brand would look like. Taliban clerics held formal sway there from 1996 to 2001, infamously banning women from school and work, enforcing religious rules with cruel punishments and outlawing harmless pastimes from chess to kite flying. There was law and order for the first time in years, but there was no joy or freedom, and foreigners were viewed with suspicion. It was a harsh, hostile place to be an American reporter -- hot and dusty, lonely and nerve-racking. But at the end of a frustrating day or a hard journey from the countryside, there was always a hot shower, a lawn chair and a gin and tonic at the U.N. guesthouse, with the BBC News theme music wafting from the bar.
Now the Taliban is back, fighting its way toward power, fiercely challenging Western troops in the south and controlling some areas within an hour's drive of the capital. There are also tens of thousands of Westerners in the country and dozens of international facilities in Kabul. They represent a more direct threat to the forces of fanaticism, and a more understandable target: Westerners bring not only weapons but alcohol, women's rights, corrupting aid dollars and foreign faiths to a conservative, insular Muslim society, pushing it to rebel against the authority and traditions of its elders.
Determined to drive out these foreign influences, the Afghan Taliban has attacked foreign symbols from embassies to hotels to military bases, as well as U.N. facilities all over the country. Last October, militants assaulted and blew up a small guest house for U.N. workers in the heart of Kabul, leaving six people dead. The soon-to-be-closed U.N. guest complex had so far escaped harm, but the last time I went there to meet a friend for a glass of wine, I had to navigate past half a dozen roadblocks, and the bar was almost empty. My friend, an attorney with the U.N., had to get special security clearance and be escorted from her compound in an armored car.
It was only a matter of time before that foreign oasis, too, fell victim to the predations of war, as it is only a matter of time before the West withdraws its forces from the region. Ultimately, the nearly 200 million people of Pakistan and Afghanistan must chart their own course and define what it means to be Muslim in the modern world. In that struggle for hearts and minds, between the tolerant pacifism of the Sufi saints and the hateful militancy of the Taliban, I surely hope dear Rumi prevails.
Constable, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, is on leave from The Post to work on a book about contemporary Pakistan. She has reported frequently from Pakistan and Afghanistan since 1998.
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Senior Afghan Police Official Assassinated
VOA News July 8, 2010
Afghan officials say gunmen have shot and killed a senior Afghan police intelligence chief and his bodyguard. Gunmen ambushed Mohammad Gul, police intelligence director for western Kabul, Thursday as he returned home from his office in the Afghan capital.
NATO also said two of its service members were killed in separate attacks in Afghanistan Thursday. Officials said an American soldier died in an insurgent attack in the country's east, and another soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in the south.
The news comes a day after five Afghan government soldiers were accidentally killed and two others wounded in a NATO airstrike. The latest incident of "friendly fire" took place in eastern Ghazni province. Afghan officials condemned the deaths, saying it was not the first time international troops have mistakenly killed Afghan soldiers.
Also Wednesday, Britain announced it would withdraw its troops from one of the most violent areas in southern Afghanistan. British Defense Secretary Liam Fox told Parliament that British soldiers will hand over control of the Sangin district of Helmand province to U.S. forces later this year.
He said he wants to bring some 9,500 British forces home from Afghanistan within five years.
British forces have suffered heavy losses in Sangin. One-third of the 312 British soldiers killed in Afghanistan since 2001 have died there.
Some information for this report was provided by AP and AFP.
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Taliban kidnap 2 local Afghan officials to change for 10 comrades: Official
HERAT, Afghanistan, July 8 (Xinhua) -- Taliban militants in a bid to secure the release of their comrades in northwest Ghor province of Afghanistan have kidnapped two local officials, spokesman for provincial administration Abdul Hai Khatibi said Thursday.
"Taliban rebels abducted a prosecutor and a teacher from Ghor' s provincial capital Cheghcheran on Wednesday and threatened to kill them if their comrades are not released," Khatibi told Xinhua.
Ten Taliban militants were arrested by security forces couple of days ago, the official further said.
However, he did not say if the provincial administration was ready to exchange the detained Taliban fighters with the kidnapped government employees.
Taliban militants have yet to comment.
In a related development, Taliban militants abducted four employees of an aid agency in the neighboring Herat province Wednesday. "The insurgents kidnapped four local employees of a relief organization from Shindand district and took them to unknown locations,"Lal Mohammad Omarzai the governor of Shindand district told Xinhua.
He did not give the name of the aid agency but added it provides services to the locals in the field of health.
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Analysis: Humanitarian space easing in Afghanistan?
KABUL, 8 July 2010 (IRIN) - Humanitarian agencies are seeing promising signs of regaining space and acceptance from Taliban insurgents while attacks against NGO workers have reduced significantly over the past six months.
Up to 1,200 security incidents were recorded in June - more than in any month since the fall of the Taliban - but attacks on NGOs by armed opposition groups in the first half of 2010 were 35 percent lower than in 2008-2009, according to the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office (ANSO).
ANSO, which provides free safety analysis and advice to member NGOs, said attacks on NGOs had diminished due to their own enhanced security measures, and also because the insurgents appear to have stopped targeting NGOs.
“At a strategic level the armed opposition are in many cases acting more like a government in waiting and so see a convergence of interests in maintaining NGO services. However, it is still possible for mistakes to be made at the tactical level and for an NGO to become targeted,” Nic Lee, director of ANSO, told IRIN.
Unlike previous years when the armed opposition abducted aid workers and held them for 6-8 weeks, only releasing them in exchange for money or prisoners, this year the detention period has dropped to 6-8 days; abductees have been released quickly and often unconditionally, ANSO said.
What ANSO describes as a shift in the armed opposition’s approach to aid workers has been interpreted by NGOs as a positive sign in terms of the regaining of humanitarian operating space in the country, particularly in insecure areas.
A purported Taliban spokesman, Qari Yusuf Ahmadi, had earlier told IRIN the insurgents would ensure security for aid agencies in areas under their control provided aid workers liaised with them first. However, he warned aid used for political and military gains would not be tolerated, and insurgent fighters were instructed to attack aid distributions by government and foreign forces.
Ahmadullah Ahmadi, provincial director of the Afghan Red Crescent Society in the volatile southern province of Helmand, said the insurgents were not targeting “well-established and recognized” aid agencies.
“They know NGOs and agencies which have operated in Afghanistan for a long time, before the Karzai government was established,” he said, adding that the insurgents were also thinking of their own interests in terms of “to what extent an aid agency was beneficial to them”.
About two-thirds of the country has been deemed either inaccessible or high-risk by most international aid organizations, as well as UN agencies, and dozens of aid workers have been attacked in the past four years.
Improved situation?
“The situation for truly humanitarian NGOs has improved recently,” Dirk R. Frans, executive director of International Assistance Mission (IAM), which has been operating in Afghanistan since 1966, told IRIN.
He said there is an increased understanding by the warring parties, including the Taliban, of the role of NGOs in helping vulnerable people.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) indicated that humanitarian space was slowly expanding: “While security has deteriorated, we have expanded our presence in the conflict-affected and insecure areas,” said Bijan Fredric Farnoudi, an ICRC spokesman in Kabul.
The ICRC attributed this to behind-the-scenes dialogue with the Taliban on humanitarian needs, and a sense of enlightened self-interest by the insurgents who may be realizing that civilian casualties alienate the population.
The ICRC has been criticized for fostering contacts with Taliban insurgents, but the fact is that it has been able to deliver humanitarian services in areas which are no-go zones for others.
Humanitarian principles
Not all aid agencies fully adhere to humanitarian principles. Some are accused of supporting government efforts to combat insurgents; others operate in cahoots with NATO and US forces’ “hearts and minds” projects.
Such agencies have fuelled misgivings about aid work, and NGOs have expressed concerns about the “militarization” of aid and the blurring of civil-military lines.
“What the ICRC and other truly humanitarian organizations reap from their impartiality, neutrality and independence is not available to those who violate these principles,” said one foreign aid worker in Kabul who preferred anonymity.
Despite the decline in attacks on NGOs by armed opposition groups, the country has remained a hostile environment for aid work: 45 security incidents involving NGOs were recorded from January to June 2010 of which 31 were attributed to armed opposition groups and 14 to criminals.
Criminal gangs have attacked NGOs primarily for monetary gain, ANSO said.
Negotiating access
Over 1,200 national and international NGOs are currently registered in the country and involved in various development and humanitarian activities. Many say one credible agency, such as the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), should negotiate access on behalf of the humanitarian community.
NGOs have called for an enhanced OCHA presence in Afghanistan to fulfil its mandate. OCHA reopened its office in Afghanistan in 2009 but, along with other UN agencies, does not have a presence in most of the insecure southern provinces.
On the other hand, the ICRC has managed to negotiate access denied others in the past: For example, it helped get “support letters” from the armed opposition leadership for a polio vaccination campaign in 2009.
Since the insurgents are reportedly active in almost 80 percent of the country, talking to them about the impartial and independent nature of aid work is no longer an option but an obligation, experts say.
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Explosion rocks Herat city in W Afghanistan
HERAT, Afghanistan, July 8 (Xinhua) -- An explosion rocked Herat city in west Afghanistan Thursday morning, police said.
"It was a roadside bomb apparently targeted a police vehicle as a result a police officer was injured," a police officer in Herat city the capital of Herat province told Xinhua but declined to be identified.
He also said that the blast occurred on the road leading to Herat airport.
Meantime, police spokesman in western region Abdul Rauf Ahmadi said that the director of police recruitment department was injured in the blast.
"The bomb planted on a motorbike and targeted the head of police recruitment center injuring him and damaged his vehicle," Ahmadi told Xinhua.
He also put the attack on the enemies of peace, a reference used against Taliban insurgents, but the outfit that largely rely on suicide attacks and roadside bombings has yet to make comment.
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Afghanistan is a catastrophe. But we will have to wait for a new Chilcot to admit it
Our leaders would rather avoid embarrassment than be honest about the horrific futility of the wars we are fighting
guardian.co.uk Simon Jenkins Thursday 8 July
As British troops retreat from the fortress of Sangin in south Afghanistan, a sleepy room in Westminster again plays host to the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war. The British establishment is strangely dotty. Chilcot is like reviewing Passchendaele during the Battle of Britain, or Boudicca's charioteering after the charge of the Light Brigade. American congressmen tear their generals apart when fighting stupid wars. The British prefer to avoid embarrassment.
Sangin should now, after three years of "hearts and minds", be safe in the hands of Afghan army and police units. It is not, any more than is the rest of Helmand, the province allotted to British troops to pacify in summer 2006. Instead it is a forward operating base under perpetual siege, one that the Americans must abandon to the enemy or defend at battalion strength.
The Helmand fiasco was both predictable and predicted. When I (and others) spoke to the Nato commander, General David Richards, in Kabul in early June 2006, his blithe self-confidence was unnerving. He was about to implement the order of the then defence secretary, John Reid, to send 3,000 British troops south to "establish the preconditions for nation-building". Richards was dismissive of such US operations as Enduring Freedom and Mountain Thrust. They just bombed villages and recruited Taliban. He promised to win hearts and minds by "creating Malayan inkspots".
His listeners were incredulous. Had he heard or read nothing of the Pashtun Taliban, of their reputation as insurgents and their obsession with fighting anyone and everyone? We were airily waved aside as whingeing no-hopers. Britain would triumph because "the Afghans basically hate the Taliban". This was the time of Reid's notorious "not a shot fired" remark. It led to a woeful lack of troops, armoured cars and helicopters, and an appalling attrition rate of one in four soldiers killed or wounded.
Helmand has been a classic of generals telling politicians what they want to hear – as before Iraq that function was performed by spies. In three and a half years, 312 British soldiers have died as their exposed patrols offered nothing but target practice for the Taliban. Sangin, Musa Qala and Marjah are blazoned across Britain's front pages, not as victories but as intractable hell-holes. The once-booming settlement of Sangin has reportedly been reduced to a squalid drugs entrepot and ghost town, like a battlefield which each side must keep recapturing to save face. The Americans now seem intent on restaging the battle of Dien Bien Phu.
There is simply no good news out of Afghanistan. Iraq was always easy in comparison. It would eventually exhaust itself and consent to some form of brutal authority, allowing the west to "declare victory and retreat". Afghanistan is quite different. Its innate xenophobia should, in 2001, have been exploited to drive a wedge between the Taliban and al-Qaida. Instead, invasion and occupation have thrown them together, while the nation-building ambition of liberal interventionism has gone potty.
Everyone involved in this wretched war knows it has failed, yet leaders must tell us the contrary. In London last month the hero of the hour, General David Petraeus, declared "progress is being made", that "Marjah is in reasonably good shape" and that Afghanistan was "enjoying a rising tide of security".
David Cameron and his defence secretary, Liam Fox, dare not tell the truth while their troops are in the battlefield. They talk of leaving "when the Afghan forces can defend themselves", which is moonshine, or "when the streets of London are safe", which is never. Yet he also talks about withdrawing by 2015. Whitehall showers the Afghan regime with aid, knowing that most is stolen within days. It is in the grip of Orwell's crimestop, or protective stupidity. The foreign secretary, William Hague, forgets the warning of Chatham, father of his hero, Pitt, against a nation betraying itself "by its own credulity, through the means of false hope, false pride and promised advantages of the most romantic and improbable nature".
What is intriguing is no longer the catastrophe itself but rather how it came to pass. How did two democracies, operating in a climate of open debate, find themselves trapped in a decade of bloodshed, extravagance and mendacity? How did they accept the deaths of hundreds of their young men and thousands of non-combatant foreigners in a cause they could articulate only in irrelevant cliches about democracy, security and female emancipation?
A stab at an answer comes in a book by Garry Wills, Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State. It was the advent of nuclear terror, according to Wills, that allowed democracies to grant their leaders extraordinary power to "push buttons", in effect to declare "one-man wars" without the customary deliberation. Given that power, presidents (and prime ministers) inevitably abused it. Nixon could assert during Watergate that a crime, "when the president does it, is not a crime". Dick Cheney and George Bush could bring kidnap, detention, assassination and torture within the discretion of "commander in chief". If domestic politics required it, the president would find and wage a war. Cheney made eight trips to the CIA's headquarters to demand it prove a link between Iraq and 9/11. When evidence of Iraq WMD was not forthcoming, Cheney – like Tony Blair – simply asserted it: "There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."
We no longer need Chilcot to tell us that there was no shred of intellectual honesty in the claim that Iraq posed a military threat to the west. Yet the period is fast acquiring similarities with Weimar Germany. People knew what was happening but dared not say. The normal ramparts of democracy – courts, habeas corpus, civil liberty, freedom of speech, fearless intelligence – fell down before "national security" as defined by a political cabal. Politics ceased to be the lubricant of democracy and became the source of its poison.
The question now is how soon politics can supply its own antidote – or have these wars drifted so far from the cognisance of ordinary people as to form a self-sustaining estate of the realm? The first glimmer of an exit strategy is emerging from Washington and London. Both Barack Obama and David Cameron are talking not of victory but of money and withdrawal dates. There are desperate cries of "talk to the Taliban", when such cries are manifestly self-defeating. Why should the Taliban talk when we are about to run?
An eventual deal between the Pakistanis, the Taliban and the ever-scheming Hamid Karzai is the only talk that matters. There comes a point in any conflict, as in Bosnia and in Iraq, where sheer exhaustion on the ground draws the feuding participants to some accommodation. In Afghanistan, continued occupation and killing merely delays this moment.
Nato's generals will eventually retreat to Kabul. There they will build a Baghdad-style "green zone" of fortifications and blast walls. The city will become a western client statelet of stunning venality, floating on an ocean of corruption-fuelling dollars. It will last as long as liberal interventionists care to enjoy a lethal cocktail of incoming mortars and outgoing pie in the sky. When it is over, and another war begins, we shall have a new Chilcot inquiry.
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Senior Afghan police official assassinated
The Associated Press July 8, 2010
KABUL, Afghanistan - A senior Afghan police intelligence chief was assassinated and his bodyguard killed near the capital, an official said Thursday, the latest government figure to be targeted as violence spirals in the country.
Elsewhere, the international security force said it had captured a suspected Taliban-linked supplier of bomb-making materials overnight in an eastern province, as the coalition steps up operations in the south and east, boosted by thousands of new American troops sent to try to turn around the nearly 9-year-old war.
Mohammad Gul, police intelligence director for western Kabul, was ambushed by gunmen Wednesday night as he returned home from his office, said the city's criminal investigations chief, Abdul Ghfar Sayed Zada. One of his two bodyguards was also killed.
Gul was in charge of preventing terrorist attacks and tracking down suspected insurgents in the western quarter of the capital, Zada said.
Taliban and other insurgents often target Afghan officials to undermine government support and sow fear. More than 100 government figures were targeted last year, at least half of them killed.
In the eastern province of Khost, a combined Afghan-international force captured a suspected explosives supplier for the Haqqani network, a powerful militant group with links to both the Taliban and al-Qaida, NATO said in a statement.
The security force also arrested several other insurgents in Terayzai district, where they found a cache of automatic weapons, ammunition and grenades, the alliance said, adding that no shots were fired and no civilians were harmed.
International forces have stepped up offensive operations to fight the entrenched Taliban insurgency nine years after U.S.-backed forces toppled the Islamist movement's hard-line government for sheltering the al-Qaida terrorist leaders. The war effort has been bolstered by 30,000 more American troops ordered to Afghanistan late last year by President Barack Obama.
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Italy trains 650 Afghan Border Policemen
KABUL, July 8 (Xinhua) -- Munir Mangal, the Deputy to Afghan Interior Ministry on Thursday, said that Italian government has provided training to 650 Afghan Border Police servicemen over the four years. "With the financial support of Italy and providing trainers 650 Afghan Border Police servicemen have received training at home and Rome since 2006," Mangal told a joint press conference with Italian ambassador to Afghanistan Claudio Glaentzer in Italian embassy here.
Out of these, 20 Afghan border policemen including six customs police officers had received training in Italian capital Rome while the remaining had been trained in Herat, west Afghanistan where more than 2,300 Italian soldiers are stationed within the framework of NATO-led International Security Assistance Force ( ISAF) to help stabilize security there.
Italian ambassador at the press conference said that Italian government would continue to provide advanced training to Afghan Border Police Servicemen and Afghan Customs personnel.
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Former British soldier out of jail in Afghanistan
July 8, 2010
LONDON (AFP) – A former British soldier acquitted of bribery in Afghanistan has been released from jail but it is not yet clear if he is free to come home, his daughter said Thursday.
"We understand that he has been released from Pul-e-Charkhi prison but exactly where he's been taken to and the next step we're still really uncertain on at the minute," Bill Shaw's daughter Lisa Luckyn-Malone told AFP in London.
She added: "We're still waiting for absolute confirmation of exactly what's happening in the country."
Shaw, 52, a manager of a security firm in Kabul, was sentenced in April to two years in a notorious prison after being found guilty of bribing an Afghan official. But on Sunday an Afghan appeals court acquitted him of the charges.
A British embassy spokesman welcomed the ruling but said he could not be released from prison until the decision was approved by Afghanistan's attorney general and then confirmed by the supreme court.
Shaw told the BBC that his experience in prison at Pul-e-Charkhi, a jail on the outskirts of Kabul infamous for its squalor and the influence of Taliban inmates, was the "lowest part of my life".
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Interview: Groups That Create Militias Are Not Acceptable To Pakistan
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty July 7, 2010
Pakistan's ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, says that Islamabad sees the Taliban as a threat to its security, both in Afghanistan and, increasingly, in Pakistan itself.
Visiting RFE/RL in Prague, Haqqani spoke to correspondent Charles Recknagel.
RFE/RL: There are three Talibans, to judge by media use of the terminology. One is outside Pakistan: the Afghanistan Taliban. The two others are inside Pakistan: the Pakistani Taliban in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), and the Punjabi Taliban, in Pakistan's province of Punjab. How does Pakistan regard these groups and the challenges they pose for the country?
Husain Haqqani: The government led by President Asif Ali Zardari has consistently maintained that we consider all Taliban, whether their sphere of operations is Afghanistan or Pakistan, and other militant groups that are affiliated with or associated with the Taliban, as a threat to our own security as well as to the security of our region and the world. So we make no distinction. We judge them by their actions. Those that are engaged in terrorist actions, those that pursue the course of militancy, those that attack our army or the armies of our neighbors, in Afghanistan, and our allies, we consider them all a threat.
The only question has been in what sequence should we deal with them militarily. Secondly, we also believe there is no purely military solution to the problem, that there also has to be a socioeconomic and a political dimension to the solution. There is no point in killing a few people and then those people being replaced by other new recruits. We have to make sure that the ability of the Taliban, in Afghanistan or Pakistan, to be able to continue to recruit people diminishes.
RFE/RL: "The New York Times" recently reported that Pakistan is looking ahead to a negotiated settlement to the Afghan conflict in order place one of its allies -- the militant group of Sirajuddin Haqqani -- in a position of influence in Kabul. If so, the move would be highly controversial because the group is an ally of Al-Qaeda and currently runs a major part of the insurgency in Afghanistan. What should we make of these reports?
Haqqani: The Haqqani network is an Afghan group and any Afghan group to be brought to the table is for the Afghan government to decide. Pakistan has made it very clear that we consider the stability of Afghanistan as crucial to our policy objectives, we do not want Afghanistan to be used as a terrorist safe haven against us or against any other country in the world, and we therefore defer to the government of Afghanistan in making decisions as to whom they engage in making reconciliation talks with.
Incorporating The Tribal Areas
RFE/RL: Let's turn to the Taliban Movement of Pakistan (TTP) led by Hakimullah Mehsud. Does Pakistan see it as a spillover from Afghan conflict, or something sui generis, of its own kind?
Haqqani: Well, the Taliban movement in Pakistan is a reflection of an ideological movement. They have a world view, they have been inspired by the Taliban in Afghanistan, but they have a world view of their own and their target has been Pakistan's own military, our own intelligence services, and our own law enforcement services. In fact, the very fact that these groups have attacked our military and our intelligence services with the vehemence with which they have conducted these attacks is evidence that the speculation about our military and our intelligence services as not being on board in fighting these people is totally erroneous and unfair.
As far as Pakistan's objectives in relation to the TTP are concerned, our objective is essentially to pursue a "clear, hold, and transfer" policy in which we clear the areas that these groups have created as their sort of mini-states with military means, then hold them and then transfer them to civilian control so that they are part of Pakistan's normal, social, political, and economic life.
RFE/RL: The TTP seems to be wholly, or largely Pashtun and the Pashtuns have a peculiar situation inside Pakistan. They represent the second-largest ethnic group in the armed forces, yet the FATA is semi-autonomous and political parties there say it is neglected by the federal government. The literacy rate 17 percent, there are more than 8,000 people per doctor compared to roughly 1,500 people per doctor in Pakistan overall, and only 102 high schools. What does Pakistan want for the FATA?
Haqqani: The government's declared policy is one of gradual inclusion of the tribal areas into what is now known as the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, the Northwestern Frontier Province as it used to be called by the British, and the idea is that the people of the tribal areas should not be kept separate because that separateness has deprived them of schooling, of infrastructure, of economic opportunities. The government and the international community has allocated vast resources now and as soon as peace is restored to a tribal area, one of the first things that is done is to start building new infrastructure, bringing clean water, roads, schools.
The extremists in the form of the Taliban also oppose all of that because they see modernization as a means of "losing autonomy," but the truth is that any autonomy that is used primarily to deprive people of their fundamental rights and the fundamental opportunities that are available to a modern citizen of a country, that autonomy is not necessarily the best. They should have rights under the constitution, they should be part of the Pakistani populace as citizens and as equals.
Enemies Of Modernization
RFE/RL: What does the term "Punjabi Taliban" mean, the label we increasingly see used in the media to designate the militants behind the recent bombings in Lahore?
Haqqani: Basically, the term "Punjabi Taliban" is used for Taliban sympathizers from mainly the Punjab Province, and these are members of various groups that have been set up or have been created over the years inspired by the jihadist ideology that took root in our part of the world in the war against the Soviet Union from 1979 to 1989. During that period a lot of Pakistanis also served as facilitators and subsequently people inspired by the call for global jihad.
Many of these groups have turned against the government of Pakistan and they are targeting Pakistani ordinary citizens, they are trying to wage sectarian warfare in some parts of the country. There are all kinds of assorted groups, they have extremist groups like Laskar-e Jhangvi, which is a sectarian group that used to target Shi'as, there are other smaller groups, and all of these groups have now come to light and the government of Pakistan is determined to eliminate them in accordance with our legal framework and also to deprive them of the ability to wage the kind of terrorist attacks that they have done in the last few months.
RFE/RL: What is bringing militant groups from widely different areas of Pakistan together? How closely do they now work together and toward what goal?
Haqqani: I think that these groups are brought together by their obscurantist philosophy, they all have a shared world view. They think that modernization and modernity are un-Islamic. They think that Pakistan should not be part of the modern world. They also think that they somehow have a God-given right to determine how people will practice religion, they do not recognize the pluralism within Islam that has been practiced and recognized for centuries in our part of the world.
The second thing that is bringing these groups together is that they are all targets of the efforts by the state of Pakistan to regain control of Pakistan. The only legitimate group with a legitimate right to use force in Pakistan should be the state of Pakistan. All other groups that create militias, that want to act as an army of their own, they are not acceptable to the state of Pakistan. And that has enabled many of these groups to come together in a time of adversity because they are under attack.
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British combat role in Afghanistan 'could be over in three years'
Ambassador Sir William Patey sees need for long-term partnership between the two countries
The Guardian Richard Norton-Taylor Thursday 8 July 2010
British troops could end their combat role in Afghanistan even sooner than the five years the government has suggested, the UK's top diplomat in the country said today.
Political developments could accelerate the process, leading to a reduction in fighting and to Nato forces ending their combat in a "three- to five-year timescale", said Sir William Patey, Britain's ambassador to Kabul. Talks leading to a political settlement should get off the ground sooner rather than later, he added, referring to contacts with Taliban elements.
He was speaking at a meeting in London organised by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, at which a Foreign Office minister, Alistair Burt, emphasised the government's commitment to ending the combat role of British troops in Helmand at the latest by 2015, the date Britain's next general election is due.
Burt was speaking as the Ministry of Defence announced the death of another member of Britain's armed forces in Sangin, which is regarded as the most dangerous place for foreign forces in Afghanistan.
The soldier, from 5th Regiment Royal Artillery, died after an explosion while he was on a foot patrol, the MoD said.
Nearly a third of the 313 British deaths in Afghanistan since 2001 occurred in Sangin, where 1,000 Royal Marines of 40 Commando and supporting units are based.
The defence secretary, Liam Fox, told MPs on Wednesday that British troops would pull out of Sangin in the autumn and be replaced by US marines. The handover will leave the British military effort concentrated in a smaller area of central Helmand.
At today's meeting, which was attended by Homayoun Tandar, the Afghan ambassador to Britain, both Burt and Patey stressed that though British soldiers would no longer be fighting in Afghanistan in five years' time at most, that would not mean the end of the UK's role in the country.
"David Cameron has made it clear he did not expect to have combat troops [in Afghanistan] after 2015 ... We made a judgment," Burt said. However, he added: "The withdrawal of combat troops did not mean the withdrawal of the UK from Afghanistan."
Patey spoke of a "long-term strategic partnership" between Britain and Afghanistan. He said Afghanistan had been neglected and it was only in the last year that resources "that can deliver" had been put in the country.
Both Burt and Patey emphasised the significance of the international conference due to he held in Kabul on 20 July, the need for a political settlement and the importance of reconciliation. Burt pointed to Cameron's visit to Delhi at the end of the month. It was important to "make very clear to India and Pakistan their engagement is absolutely crucial", he said.
However, preparing public opinion for more British deaths in Afghanistan, he said: "A very tough year is coming up. It will be difficult over the next few years."
Patey said drugs – opium poppy and heroin production in Afghanistan – were the "one issue" which could be the catalyst leading to the engagement of regional powers, including Russia and Iran, in a future political settlement in Afghanistan. Russia was also comcerned about Islamic extremism, he added.
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US to buy Russian helicopters for Afghan air force
The Pentagon plans to buy ten Russian military helicopters for Afghanistan's fledgling air force at a cost of $180 million (£119 million), ignoring protests from Congressmen who say US aircraft should be considered.
Telegraph.co.uk - International News Alex Spillius in Washington 08 Jul 2010
Defence Department officials have argued that purchasing the M-17s would accelerate the handover of control to Afghan forces.
Most Afghan pilots are in their 40s or older and have flown nothing else. Most of the 92 currently qualified pilots are products of the Soviet flying school.
Teaching them to use US helicopters such as the Chinook or Black Hawk would add as much as two years to making the Afghan National Army Air Corps self-reliant, according to the US military officials.
Considered an easy-to-maintain workhorse, the M-17 is comparatively simple to fly and is well suited to Afghanistan's high altitudes and desert landscapes.
The US has already spent $648 million on 31 civilian M-17s which it customised for military use in Afghanistan, primarily to transport troops and equipment.
But after Barack Obama's administration lifted the ban on Rosoboronexport, the Russian state arms exporter, it can now buy aircraft ready for military use direct from Russia, at a cost of $15 million to $18 million each, about half the price of a Chinook, the standard US transport helicopter.
Sen Richard Shelby of Alabama has led objections in Washington, arguing that the procurement of M-17s had lacked oversight.
"The results have led to massive waste, cost overruns, schedule delays, safety concerns, and major delivery problems," he said, calling on the administration to consider alternative helicopters for the Afghan mission.
The US military turned its attention to the Afghan air force in 2005, four years after the invasion. It then consisted of a few ageing M-17s, but there are now 19 working Mi-17s, with plans to further increase the fleet and establish a pilot training centre in the western province of Herat.
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