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Kandahar offensive will take months longer than planned, U.S. says
By Karen DeYoung and Craig Whitlock Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, June 11, 2010
When the Obama administration decided last fall to accept Hamid Karzai as the legitimate president of Afghanistan for the next five years, there were no illusions that working with him and his government would be easy. It has been even harder than many U.S. officials anticipated.
NATO Opens Northern Supply Route To Afghanistan
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty June 11, 2010
NATO has opened an alternate supply route to its troops in Afghanistan across Russia and Central Asia.
Most NATO supplies enter Afghanistan through Pakistan, but the route has come under increasing attacks by militants in the border region, and NATO has been negotiating alternate routes for months.
Transition in Afghanistan could start by year's end, NATO chief says
BRUSSELS, June 11 (Xinhua) -- NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Friday the alliance should start handing over security responsibility to Afghan forces "as soon as possible", hopefully by the end of the year.
Security fears divert UK leader in Afghanistan
The Associated Press By ROHAN SULLIVAN 11/06/2010
KABUL, Afghanistan - Security fears forced Britain's leader to cancel a visit to a military base in southern Afghanistan, where skepticism about foreign forces and a spike in bloodshed has slowed planning for a key NATO operation.
This is a war of necessity, David Cameron tells troops in Afghanistan
Prime minister announces doubling of soldiers' operational allowance and promises to ensure armed forces enjoy support in Britain they did during world wars
guardian.co.uk Nicholas Watt in Camp Bastion Friday 11 June 2010
British troops are stationed in Afghanistan out of a sense of obligation and not as an occupying force, David Cameron declared today as he sought to bolster public support for the mission.
Cameron and Karzai: Why it's different
June 11, 2010 By James Landale BBC News deputy political editor, in Afghanistan
Let me tell you the story of David Cameron and President Karzai's pigeon.
The Afghan leader had clearly been tickled by his recent visit to Chequers and wanted to repay the favour.
Young Afghan suicide bomber approached wedding guests
'Everyone immediately tried to escape,' one guest said. But the boy's suicide vest detonated, killing more than 40 and wounding at least 80, said a police chief who witnessed the attack.
Los Angeles Times By Alex Rodriguez June 11, 2010
Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan - The boy, dressed in white and thought to be no older than 13, appeared amid the din of a wedding party in a small southern Afghan village and walked up to within 15 feet of a cluster of tables where everyone was eating.
Roadside bombing kills 9, injures 8 in S. Afghanistan
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, June 11 (Xinhua) -- A roadside bomb hit a minibus in southern Afghanistan's restive province of Kandahar on Friday, killing nine civilians and wounding eight others.
Suicide bombing rocks S. Afghanistan, killing at least 3: official
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, June 11 (Xinhua) -- A suicide bombing Friday rattled southern Afghanistan's Zabul province, killing at least three people including the attacker and injuring 14 others, a local government official said.
SCO stresses UN's role in solving Afghan problems
TASHKENT, June 11 (Xinhua) -- The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) on Friday reiterated its support for the United Nations to play a leading role in international mediation efforts for Afghanistan.
If Afghanistan Seems Violent Now, Just You Wait
Newsweek By Andrew Bast 10/06/2010
Pay no attention to the war behind the curtain.
In the months leading up to June, as tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers landed in Afghanistan, all the talk was about Kandahar. It’s a big city (there are about a million people in and around it), and the plan was to win it back from the brutish, nasty
New plan to woo Afghan Taliban could harm villages
The Christian Science Monitor By Ben Arnoldy 10/06/2010
Kabul is proposing to reward villages whose Afghan Taliban fighters surrender by disbursing cash through councils that already oversee aid money. Critics say that would make the councils Taliban targets.
Violence, Political Uncertainty Plague Post-Jirga Afghanistan
June 10, 2010 VOA News Sean Maroney | Islamabad
Since Afghan President Hamid Karzai's much anticipated peace assembly earlier this month, the Taliban has launched a series of high profile attacks. Meanwhile, the top U.S. commander in the country, General Stanley McChrystal says the fight against the Taliban will take longer than anticipated in the south.
Reconciliation in Afghanistan
Outside the tent The government’s fraying unity The Economist - North America Jun 10th 2010
Kabul - THE hope Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s president, nurtured for the huge gathering, or jirga, held in a vast tent in Kabul this month was that it would give him the national support needed to start a peace process with the Taliban.
Why some Afghanistan opium farmers turn from poppies to saffron
Saffron can grow on dry land and command high prices. But it’s difficult to process and sell, making it unlikely to replace poppies, the basis of Afghanistan’s opium trade.
Christian Science Monitor By Tom A. Peter, Correspondent June 10, 2010
Herat, Afghanistan - Eight years after getting out of the poppy business, Hajji Ibrahim says he doesn’t miss it. The farmer here in western Afghanistan used to employ 10 guards to protect his land from roving addicts and warlords.
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Kandahar offensive will take months longer than planned, U.S. says
By Karen DeYoung and Craig Whitlock Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, June 11, 2010
When the Obama administration decided last fall to accept Hamid Karzai as the legitimate president of Afghanistan for the next five years, there were no illusions that working with him and his government would be easy. It has been even harder than many U.S. officials anticipated.
The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said Thursday that the civilian-military offensive scheduled to begin in the southern city of Kandahar this spring would take months longer than planned. The Afghan government has not produced the civilian leadership and trained security forces it was to contribute to the effort, U.S. officials said, and the support from Kandaharis that the United States was counting on Karzai to deliver has not materialized.
"When you go to protect people, the people have to want you to protect them," Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, said Thursday in explaining why the Kandahar operation has been pushed back until at least September.
"It's a deliberative process. It takes time to convince people," he told reporters at a meeting of NATO leaders in Brussels.
But time is short. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said this week that the U.S.-led coalition has until the end of the year to prove to the United States and its allies that their forces have broken a stalemate with the Taliban. President Obama has said he will begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan in July 2011.
In Marja, in western Helmand province, where Marines launched a major operation this year, U.S. efforts have been hindered by the absence or incompetence of Afghan officials and security forces and by the Taliban's enduring resistance.
After Karzai emerged triumphant from last year's chaotic and fraud-riddled presidential election, the administration decided there was nothing to be gained from trying to marginalize him and sought to repair what had become a tattered relationship. While the two sides demonstrate improved rapport in public, however, many officials are despairing behind the scenes.
"Washington is making nice with him, but what good has that done?" a U.S. official in Afghanistan said of Karzai. "We need him to step up and take a leadership role, to get his government to support what we're doing. But he's either unwilling or unable to do it.
"If he can't be a partner, how can any of this work?" said the official who, like others interviewed about Karzai and U.S strategy, spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Karzai's promises to stem corruption have yielded few results. Last week, he fired Interior Minister Hanif Atmar and intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh, two top cabinet officials whom the United States considered among the few who are competent and honest, in the culmination of long-running feuds with both. Karzai spokesmen said the two were let go because they did not prevent an attack on a reconciliation meeting in Kabul last week. But they had also strongly objected to Karzai's plans to seek reconciliation with the Taliban.
Afghan and U.S. sources cited additional issues, including their anger at Karzai's refusal to sign execution orders for convicted terrorists, as well as ethnic rivalries. Saleh is a Tajik from northern Afghanistan, who made clear during the election campaign that his sympathies did not lie with Karzai. One Afghan analyst speculated that Atmar, like Karzai a Pashtun from the south, was "sacrificed" to show the president was not playing ethnic politics.
During previous clashes with the two, particularly with Saleh, U.S. officials had forcefully intervened with Karzai. This time, they were conspicuously silent except to say that they respected Karzai's right to run his own government.
In Kandahar, U.S. military officials said a complex web of official and unofficial power brokers stands to lose if efficient government and rule of law are imposed. "There are generations of families that have lived off corruption," said 1st Lt. James Rathmann, 31, of Palm Beach, Fla., who leads a platoon in Kandahar city focused on police training.
The leading power broker is the president's half brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, who is widely considered to wield more authority than the governor of Kandahar province. U.S. officials argue that he impedes the emergence of more-representative leaders.
Congressional investigators are completing a report on corruption, including payoffs to the Taliban, among Afghan security firms, many with ties to senior government officials. Afghanistan's Interior Ministry, working with U.S. investigators on other corruption cases, has at times been obstructed by "interference at senior levels of government," a U.S. official in Washington said. He cited the case of Mohammad Siddiq Chakari, a former minister charged with taking bribes who has left the country for London.
The Americans are reluctant to blame Karzai and his government directly for the delays in Kandahar. But the Marja experience, with troops fighting to provide political space for government officials who still have not appeared, taught them that their efforts must be matched by the Afghans.
"You've got to have the governance part ready to go," Brig. Gen. Frederick Hodges, one of the top U.S. commanders in southern Afghanistan, said in an interview last week. "We talked about doing that in Marja, but didn't realize how hard it was to do."
"Ultimately, it's up to the Afghans to step forward," he said.
The operational plan drawn up for Kandahar last spring began with U.S. Special Operations forces raids against individual insurgent leaders within the city and in the Taliban-heavy "bands" in surrounding districts. At the same time, U.S. civilians were to help organize shuras, or meetings of local leaders and elders, to offer development aid and encourage them to take political control. By June, more than 10,000 newly deployed U.S. troops were to begin clearing the Taliban from the outlying districts, up to 80 percent of which the military estimates is controlled by insurgents.
The kickoff was a regional Kandahar shura in April led by Karzai, with McChrystal at his side. "Are you happy about this operation?" Karzai asked more than 1,000 tribal leaders at the gathering. In response to their loud murmurs, he answered the question himself. "No? Listen to me carefully. Until you're happy and satisfied, we will not conduct this operation."
At the time, U.S. officials were pleased with Karzai's deference to local sensibilities. Since then, especially in the absence of emerging local leadership, they have wondered at his apparent inability or unwillingness to lead.
McChrystal said Thursday that in the next few days he would make another trip to the city with Karzai for additional shuras that would focus "on all things to improve in Kandahar: security, governance, reducing corruption."
He acknowledged that winning support from local leaders was tougher than expected. Some see the Taliban fighters as their Muslim brothers rather than oppressors; others are afraid of assassination by Taliban hit squads that target government supporters or see no advantage in challenging the existing political power structure.
"There's no point in clearing an area until you have the capacity to do the hold, to bring governance" that does not now exist, one military official in Afghanistan said. "Without the Afghan government civilian capacity -- without a district government that can provide some basic services -- you'll end up with what we're experiencing in Marja right now."
Taking more time was not necessarily a bad thing, McChrystal said. "It's more important that we get it right than we get it fast," he said, adding that he did not intend to hurry.
Asked whether the delay leaves time for a decisive outcome by the end of the year, McChrystal was noncommittal. "It will be very clear by the end of the calendar year that the Kandahar operation is progressing," he said. "I don't know whether we'll know whether it's decisive. Historians will tell us that."
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NATO Opens Northern Supply Route To Afghanistan
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty June 11, 2010
NATO has opened an alternate supply route to its troops in Afghanistan across Russia and Central Asia.
Most NATO supplies enter Afghanistan through Pakistan, but the route has come under increasing attacks by militants in the border region, and NATO has been negotiating alternate routes for months.
The alliance said in a statement today that a trainload of supplies for its 122,000-strong force arrived in Afghanistan on June 9, traveling via Russia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan for the first time.
The shipment consisted of construction materials and food supplies.
compiled from agency reports
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Transition in Afghanistan could start by year's end, NATO chief says
BRUSSELS, June 11 (Xinhua) -- NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Friday the alliance should start handing over security responsibility to Afghan forces "as soon as possible", hopefully by the end of the year.
Defence ministers of the 46 ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) contributing countries on Friday met at NATO headquarters in Brussels.
The NATO chief told reporters that, according to the assessment of General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of the NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan, the alliance's new strategy was working, though "the Taliban are resisting every step of the way."
He said "Afghanistan belongs to the Afghans. Transition to Afghan lead is not only desirable, it is inevitable."
"We want this transition to happen as quickly as possible - once conditions permit - and for it to start, if possible, before the end of the year," he said, adding "we will agree in the coming weeks with the Afghan government on the detailed road map for transition."
The Dane said the alliance still need 450 trainers out of a total of 2300.
"I pushed Ministers very hard to dig deeper to find them. I am confident that we will see trainers soon," he said.
Following a two-day meeting, NATO defence ministers on Friday said in a joint statement that Afghanistan remained the alliance's "key priority", as "significant challenges remain, and success is not yet assured."
"We welcomed the significant improvement in the capability of the Afghan National Security Forces, and are committed to providing the trainers needed to support that steady progress," it said.
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Security fears divert UK leader in Afghanistan
The Associated Press By ROHAN SULLIVAN 11/06/2010
KABUL, Afghanistan - Security fears forced Britain's leader to cancel a visit to a military base in southern Afghanistan, where skepticism about foreign forces and a spike in bloodshed has slowed planning for a key NATO operation.
British Prime Minister David Cameron's planned visit to a frontline base in volatile Helmand province on Thursday was canceled after mobile phone calls referring to a possible rocket attack on a helicopter were intercepted, the British domestic news agency Press Association reported.
Cameron, on his first visit to Afghanistan since coming to power last month, was at his country's main base in Helmand on Friday speaking with British troops.
Meanwhile, the top U.S. and NATO commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, acknowledged Thursday that the coming operation to secure the southern city of Kandahar — the Taliban's birthplace and where it still has support — will take longer than originally planned.
McChrystal, speaking in Brussels, said he had underestimated the amount of time needed to get local support for the operation, although he insisted he would still demonstrate a turnaround in the war by year's end.
Violence in Afghanistan has risen sharply in recent weeks — at least 30 NATO troops have been killed so far this month, 20 of them U.S. service members including an American who died Thursday from a roadside bombing. Taliban insurgents shot down a U.S. helicopter over Helmand on Wednesday, killing four American troops.
The blood of civilians is also being spilled. An explosion at a wedding party on Wednesday in a village near Kandahar killed at least 40 people and wounded 74.
Authorities blamed a suicide bomber. Villagers said they heard helicopters just before the explosion and that they believed it must have been a NATO airstrike. It was unclear whether villagers were genuine in their suspicions about NATO or fearful of Taliban reprisals.
Public support for the U.S.-led mission is weakest in the dusty farming communities of southern Afghanistan, where the ethnic Pashtun population provides the Taliban with most of its fighters.
Commanders have warned of more casualties in the nearly nine-year-old war as U.S. troops surge into the country, mostly to the Taliban's heartland in the south. The Taliban, meanwhile, have stepped up attacks in an apparent bid to counter the coming Kandahar operation.
"There are going to be tough days ahead," McChrystal said in Brussels. "Violence is up, and I think violence is going to continue to rise, particularly over the summer months."
On Thursday, Cameron met Afghan President Hamid Karzai for talks in the capital. Afterward, the British leader said the allies needed to show this year that NATO was making headway in defeating the insurgency.
"This is the year when we have to make progress — progress for the sake of the Afghan people, but progress also on behalf of people back at home who want this to work," he said.
He affirmed support for the NATO mission, but ruled out sending more troops to Britain's 9,500-strong force.
As fighting escalates, Karzai is reaching out to the insurgents in hopes of ending the war.
The president last week won endorsement from a national conference for his plan to offer incentives to the militants to lay down their arms, and to seek talks with the Taliban leadership. The leadership has so far publicly shunned the offer, and the U.S. is skeptical whether peace can succeed until the Taliban are weakened on the battlefield.
Cameron said Thursday foreign troops should be in Afghanistan "not a moment longer than necessary," and that a political solution including reconciliation with the insurgents would be important to achieve lasting peace.
Associated Press writers Robert H. Reid in Kabul and Anne Gearan in Brussels contributed to this report.
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This is a war of necessity, David Cameron tells troops in Afghanistan
Prime minister announces doubling of soldiers' operational allowance and promises to ensure armed forces enjoy support in Britain they did during world wars
guardian.co.uk Nicholas Watt in Camp Bastion Friday 11 June 2010
British troops are stationed in Afghanistan out of a sense of obligation and not as an occupying force, David Cameron declared today as he sought to bolster public support for the mission.
In an early morning speech to British troops at Camp Bastion amid a sandstorm, the prime minister addressed unease back home by saying the mission in Afghanistan was vital for British national security.
Cameron, who pledged to "revere" Britain's armed forces after staying overnight at Camp Bastion, said: "This is not a war of choice, it is a war of necessity. This is not a war of occupation, it is a war of obligation."
The prime minister, who was given a taste of the threat from the Taliban on Thursday when his helicopter flight was diverted after militants were heard planning to attack an unnamed VIP, reminded the troops that most of the 9/11 hijackers had been trained in Afghanistan.
"That is why we came here. That is why we cleared away those training camps. If we left tomorrow, those training camps could come back tomorrow, because today the Afghans aren't yet ready to look after their own security. As soon as they are ready – and you are helping to train them to be ready – then we can leave and go home."
Cameron, who read out a message of support for the troops from the England football manager, Fabio Capello, sought to draw a distinction between his government and the last one by pledging to do more to support troops. He announced:
• A doubling of the operational allowance, at a cost of £58m a year, from £14.51 a day to £29.02 a day, backdated to the date of the general election. To applause and cheers, he said: "I know how hard you all work out here and I know the promise I made to all of you that we double the operational allowance. I can tell you today it is going to be doubled, you are going to get it next month and it is going to be backdated to the date of the general election."
• A republishing of the military covenant to ensure that troops and their families are properly looked after with proper housing and healthcare.
• That he would provide "real leadership" to ensure the armed forces win the sort of support they enjoyed in Britain during the two world wars and the Falklands war of 1982.
"I want to put you front and centre of our national life again. I think it is vital. There is huge respect and support for what the military does. I want that in every single part of our country. I want you to be proud of what you do."
Cameron paraphrased the poet Charles M Province, saying: "I want you to think of that great quotation that it's not the politician that brings the right to vote, it is the soldier, it is not the poet that brings free speech, it is the soldier, it is not the journalist that brings free expression, it is the soldier. So I want you to help me create a new atmosphere in our country, an atmosphere where we back and revere and support our military."
The prime minister opened his speech by reading out a message of support from Capello on the day before England's first match in the World Cup, against the USA. Capello wrote: "While the players receive incredible support from the country, as we are about to kick off in the World Cup, it is important you know how much all your efforts mean to all the players and staff with the England team. Your brave service to your country means so much to the players and we will all have complete respect for the incredible sacrifices that you and your families have made. While we will be doing all we can to achieve success in South Africa for the whole country we want you know that we believe that you are the real heroes."
The prime minister cited a series of "inspiring" acts by members of the armed services, including Staff Sergeant Kim Hughes, who crawled through dust without body armour to defuse seven linked Taliban mines and reach injured comrades.
"These stories inspire people back at home because, when he was asked, Kim Hughes, why he did what he did, he said what you always say: 'I was just doing my job.'
"But I've got to tell you: most people couldn't do your job. I couldn't your job, people at home couldn't do your job. But we are incredibly proud that you do do your job."
The prime minister was speaking on the second and final day of his first visit to Afghanistan as prime minister. He flew into Kabul amid tight security yesterday for talks with Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president.
Cameron drew a distinction with the last government by saying that he would adopt a hard-headed approach in Afghanistan, designed to reduce the terror threat, and not to create a perfect society.
"We are not here to build a perfect democracy. We are not here to build some perfect model society. We are here to help the Afghans take control of their security so we can go home.
"I can sum up this mission in two words. It is about national security: our national security back in the UK. Clearing al-Qaida out of Afghanistan, damaging them in Pakistan, making sure this country is safe and secure – it will make us safe and secure back home in the UK. We don't have some dreamy ideas about what this mission is about. It is about that, pure and simple."
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Cameron and Karzai: Why it's different
June 11, 2010 By James Landale BBC News deputy political editor, in Afghanistan
Let me tell you the story of David Cameron and President Karzai's pigeon.
The Afghan leader had clearly been tickled by his recent visit to Chequers and wanted to repay the favour.
So on Thursday the prime minister was given the full tour of the presidential palace in Kabul.
And amid the faded grandeur and unkempt masonry was perhaps the most secure nest in all Afghanistan where lay the president's pigeon and its young just outside his office window.
I tell you this not to reveal the president's secret hinterland as a pigeon fancier but to illustrate what it tells us about the prime minister.
Not only is he charming President Karzai in a way his predecessor did not, but he is also investing in him in particular and Afghanistan in general.
Britain's security
Karzai was the first foreign leader to be invited to meet the new prime minister.
There have been half day meetings on Afghanistan, a new security council set up, ministers dispatched to visit, and now Mr Cameron himself is here.
All before his first month in office is up.
And yet, why? The basic policy is clearly not going to change.
Mr Cameron makes clear that Britain will continue to support the US-led troop surge.
British servicemen and women will continue to fight - and sadly die - trying to protect Afghan civilians from the insurgency.
No, David Cameron is not changing the policy but he is changing the approach.
In the short term, he wants to be more honest with the public, explain more clearly why British troops are here - not to build a nation but to protect Britain's national security.
Further and faster
He clearly feels the previous administration came rather late to Afghanistan and paid a price for it, whether in rows over kit or the loss of public support.
But, in the longer term, he wants to prepare for a time when Britain is not at war in this part of the world.
I have been coming to Afghanistan with British prime ministers for several years now and Mr Cameron is the first who will willingly contemplate the future without tying himself in chronological, semantic knots about avoiding arbitrary timetables.
British troops, he says, should not be here any longer than they have to be.
They will be off the moment the Afghans can run their security.
He talks of the relationship Britain should have with Afghanistan once the troops are gone.
The truth, of course, is that our role and presence here will be determined by what the Americans do as much as the Afghans.
But the insight is that David Cameron is trying to force the pace. In his own words, to go further and faster.
He is the third British prime minister to confront this conflict in Afghanistan.
And he is clearly determined to be the last.
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Young Afghan suicide bomber approached wedding guests
'Everyone immediately tried to escape,' one guest said. But the boy's suicide vest detonated, killing more than 40 and wounding at least 80, said a police chief who witnessed the attack.
Los Angeles Times By Alex Rodriguez June 11, 2010
Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan - The boy, dressed in white and thought to be no older than 13, appeared amid the din of a wedding party in a small southern Afghan village and walked up to within 15 feet of a cluster of tables where everyone was eating. As he prepared to detonate his suicide bomb vest, the gathering flew into a panic.
"Everyone immediately tried to escape," said Abdullah Jan, a guest at the wedding. But there was no time.
The boy's suicide vest packed with explosives detonated, killing more than 40 people and wounding at least 80, said Zemarai Khan, a local police chief who was at the wedding and witnessed the attack.
Carried out late Wednesday in a small village in Kandahar province, the attack underscored the vulnerability of Afghan society even as President Hamid Karzai pursues negotiations with Taliban insurgents who have waged war with his government and Western forces for nearly nine years.
The Taliban has scoffed at Karzai's peace offer and has carried out a wave of deadly attacks since the Afghan leader convened a national peace conference in Kabul, the capital, last week aimed at establishing a framework for talks with the insurgency.
The bombing of the wedding in the village of Nagahan in the Arghandab district was the deadliest of those attacks. The bomber, who witnesses said was 12 or 13, targeted a housing compound where men and young boys were celebrating the wedding, authorities said. Female guests were in a different area. The groom was injured but survived, Jan said. His brother was killed.
Though authorities have not determined why the wedding was targeted, witnesses said the groom and several members of his family were Afghan police officers. Also, residents of Nagahan have formed a tribal militia to help keep Taliban militants from infiltrating their area.
The Afghan Interior Ministry sent a team of investigators to Nagahan.
Zalmay Ayubi, a spokesman for Kandahar Gov. Tooryalai Wesa, said villagers were supportive of the Afghan government.
The blast drew condemnations from Western officials as well as Karzai, who called it an act by "merciless people, who target innocent people at social gatherings and simply want to kill as many as they can."
Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations' special representative for Afghanistan, called the attack an "outrageous act."
"To specifically target people who were gathering at a moment of happiness to celebrate a wedding shows a total disregard for civilian life," he said.
U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization commanders hope to turn the tide against the insurgency by defeating it in Kandahar, the Taliban's former headquarters and birthplace. With thousands of additional U.S. troops in southern Afghanistan or on their way, the United States and its Western allies will try to secure Kandahar while ramping up civilian projects in a bid to strengthen the Afghan government's presence in the region and ultimately turn its residents against the rebels.
U.S. commanders have moved away from using the term "offensive" to describe their strategy in Kandahar, and are now trying to characterize their efforts in the crucial province as a gradual process that might take longer than initially expected.
Speaking Thursday in Brussels, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, U.S. Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, said the campaign to secure Kandahar, originally expected to conclude by August, probably would stretch into the fall.
"I do think it will happen more slowly than we had originally anticipated," McChrystal said. "It will take a number of months for this to play out, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.... I think it's more important that we get it right than we get it fast."
The Taliban has been fighting back in the south with a wave of attacks that have included assassinations of Afghan officials and the shooting down of a NATO helicopter this week that killed four U.S. soldiers.
Daud Ahmadi, a spokesman for the Helmand province governor's office, said that on Tuesday insurgents in the Sangin district hanged a 7-year-old boy they had accused of spying for U.S. forces. Ahmadi said insurgents kidnapped the boy from his home and hanged him from a tree in his village. Taliban leaders denied that they executed the boy.
The Taliban also denied any involvement in the attack on the wedding. However, Wesa, the Kandahar governor, said he was convinced that the Taliban was responsible.
"The Taliban are doing two things at once," Wesa said. "On one side, they target people who are in favor of the government. Then, at the same time, they don't want people to know their real face."
alex.rodriguez@latimes.com
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Roadside bombing kills 9, injures 8 in S. Afghanistan
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, June 11 (Xinhua) -- A roadside bomb hit a minibus in southern Afghanistan's restive province of Kandahar on Friday, killing nine civilians and wounding eight others.
Zalmay Ayubi, spokesman for the Kandahar provincial government, told Xinhua that the incident took place on the highway linking Kandahar and the neighboring province of Helmand.
Among those killed were four women and three children, said the official, adding that servicemembers of NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) rushed to the scene and sent the injured to hospital.
Kandahar, branded as hotbed of the Taliban, has been seeing increase of violence since the NATO force earlier this year announced to launch a major offensive on the Taliban in the province this month.
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Suicide bombing rocks S. Afghanistan, killing at least 3: official
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, June 11 (Xinhua) -- A suicide bombing Friday rattled southern Afghanistan's Zabul province, killing at least three people including the attacker and injuring 14 others, a local government official said.
Mohamad Jan, spokesman for Zabul's provincial government, told Xinhua that an attacker detonated the explosives tied on his body at a bazaar in Shajoy district where a team of service members with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was on foot patrol.
Two civilians and the attacker were killed on the spot and the eight injured are in critical condition, said the official.
He rejected to release information on the ISAF casualties.
Eye witnesses insisting on anonymity told Xinhua that two ISAF troops were killed in the blast but the NATO force has so far made no comment on the incident.
Yusuf Ahmadi, spokesman for the Taliban, told Xinhua through telephone from an unidentified location that the insurgent group claims responsibility for the attack and bragged about killing 13 U.S. soldiers.
He said the attacker named Abdul was also killed in the explosion. Taliban has for many times exaggerated about the NATO casualties.
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SCO stresses UN's role in solving Afghan problems
TASHKENT, June 11 (Xinhua) -- The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) on Friday reiterated its support for the United Nations to play a leading role in international mediation efforts for Afghanistan.
The continuous deterioration of the situation in Afghanistan as well as terrorism, drug trafficking and transnational organized crime that originate in the country still pose "serious threats" to the region, said a declaration released at the end of an SCO summit in the Uzbek capital.
Peace and stability in Afghanistan is conducive to the region's continued social and economic development, the declaration said.
The SCO member states believed "military means alone" cannot solve the country's problems, the declaration said.
The SCO called on the international community to intensify the fight against all sections of drug production and circulation in Afghanistan.
The SCO member states would like to coordinate with other international and regional institutions on the drug issue and call on the International Security Assistance Force to cooperate with SCO members in combating drugs, the declaration said.
The declaration said the organization supports its member states in working together with international institutions and other parties to take part in the economic reconstruction programs in Afghanistan.
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If Afghanistan Seems Violent Now, Just You Wait
Newsweek By Andrew Bast 10/06/2010
Pay no attention to the war behind the curtain.
In the months leading up to June, as tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers landed in Afghanistan, all the talk was about Kandahar. It’s a big city (there are about a million people in and around it), and the plan was to win it back from the brutish, nasty, and resurgent Taliban. As we’ve said before, the stakes are as high as ever for President Obama, who’s made the campaign for Afghanistan all his. As we wrote last week, the battle for Kandahar would be the turning point of the war.
Except that now, umm, there is no war in Kandahar. Commanders and officials from the U.S., Nato, and the Afghan military are playing down any notion that they were taking on the Taliban in the south of the country with guns a blazing. “It’s not going to be an aggressive military campaign,” an American official told The New York Times. “They’ve looked at it and realized it wouldn’t work.” Others say that there was never an “offensive” in the works. (But there was certainly an offensive in the neighboring hamlet of Marja.) Instead, winning back the Opium-filled south now depends on a “civilian surge” of aid, agricultural, and diplomatic experts. The tens of thousands of troops who are armed to the gill will, as the reporting goes, now play second fiddle, supporting them.
One problem: According to the Times, there are about 110 of these civilians working on Kandahar, and fifty more are due soon. That may be more than a fifteen-fold increase from the 8 that were there last year, but 150 smart Americans to administer an area of a million people that is ostensibly under siege?
Because the bottom line is that violence is surging. This week, ground fire downed a NATO helicopter in Helmand Province (that’s where Kandahar is), killing five. A bombing at a wedding in Kandahar killed 40 locals. And of course as Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s Peace Summit in the capital of Kabul was rocked by Taliban attacks. So far this year, according to the Pentagon, 143 Americans troops have been killed—almost 1,500 have been wounded. And the trend lines, yes, are heading up.
Counterinsurgency, the strategy the Americans are employing to “win over the population” isn’t based solely on conquering your enemy. It’s about gaining trust and support. But the fact is that before you build, you have to clear and hold. And the Taliban is surely fighting like mad to clear its side. What’s left to hold (and how many non-soldier hands the Americans have got to do it) makes this summer look like it’s not only going to be bloody, but confusing.
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New plan to woo Afghan Taliban could harm villages
The Christian Science Monitor By Ben Arnoldy 10/06/2010
Kabul is proposing to reward villages whose Afghan Taliban fighters surrender by disbursing cash through councils that already oversee aid money. Critics say that would make the councils Taliban targets.
Kabul - A plan drawn up by the Afghan government and NATO to disarm Taliban fighters is raising concerns that it could imperil one of Afghanistan's most successful development programs.
The draft document, circulating in Kabul as the Afghanistan Peace and Reintegration Program, envisions delivering aid to home villages of former Taliban fighters. The money would be spent by elected village councils set up under the National Solidarity Program (NSP) – widely seen as one of the few bright spots in Afghan reconstruction.
On Tuesday, US special envoy Richard Holbrooke pressed the Afghan government to finalize a draft plan and get it up and running before a Kabul conference on July 20.
But international aid groups involved in the NSP say that the current draft plan would militarize the civilian program, making themselves and the village councils a target for the Taliban. They warn the plan would diminish participation in the NSP just as it begins to show success boosting Afghan attitudes about their government.
The disarmament plan "might be perceived by the opposition as a hostile measure for recruitment of combatants. Every organization associated with that project will be considered an enemy," says Laurent Saillard, head of the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief, a consortium for nongovernmental organizations.
"It would affect one of the few successful programs in the country and reduce further the access to the population," he adds.
An aid program that delivers The NSP works by making small grants of around $30,000 to villages across the country and allowing them to choose which projects to pursue. The program, which has reached 70 percent of the country's villages, is run by Afghanistan's Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development (MRRD) and funded by international donors including the United States and the World Bank.
Each village is teamed up with an NGO, known as a facilitating partner, that helps run a local election for the council and develop the village's list of project priorities. It also provides engineering assistance.
In the village of Sakha in northeastern Afghanistan, all 118 families now have electricity for the first time after residents decided to spend their NSP funds on a micro-hydro turbine. The project was finished six months ago for less than $50,000 with the help of Afghan Aid, an international NGO.
Before the election of Sakha's council, called a shura, the villagers had no leaders. Now the shura has become a point of contact between the Afghan government, NGOs working on development projects, and the villagers. It's even become a local court of sorts.
"Whenever there is a dispute or a conflict between two or three among the community, first we try to solve that issue in our shura," says Baz Mohammad, the shura chief. "After NSP, we learned to send applications and requests to organizations and the government we know where to go to get help."
Seeking synergy The Taliban reintegration program envisions giving these councils another task: taking reward money for local Taliban fighters who surrender and spending it to benefit the entire village – including the ex-combatants and their victims. The former fighters might also stand for election to the shuras.
The Karzai government developed the draft plan with the help of NATO specialists under Gen. Phil Jones, the director of the Force Reintegration Cell in Kabul.
Jones says one of the goals was to avoid creating "additional or parallel" government structures. The councils are already trained to take government money and spending it on a prioritized list of projects.
There's no need to reinvent the wheel "where they have already developed a sensible list of projects," he argues. "One of the red lines for us is not to create existing things.”
The councils would not be asked to "tackle the higher level political questions" involved in reintegrating insurgents, according to the draft document.
Not a done deal Still, all this sounds worrisome to Mohammad Tariq Ismati, the government's executive director for the NSP program.
"The NSP is already loaded with a lot of concerns," including local development and community conflict resolution, he says. "We cannot risk it by adding such a sensitive and politicized process."
The plan, he says, is trying to turn the NSP into a tool of counterinsurgency by helping stabilize villages and win the residents over to the side of the government. While that's never been the reason for the NSP, new data suggest it is achieving some of those results.
A donor-funded study led by Harvard University researcher Andrew Beath looked at a random sample of 500 villages, half with NSP and half without. Villages with an NSP project gave slightly higher marks to the Afghan president, provincial and district leaders, and the US military. NSP villages did not see security improve, but the perception of safety went up by four percentage points.
"The process of mobilizing the community and widening the participation of villages is itself contributing to stability and security in localities," says Mr. Ismati. But "using the NSP as a model for counterinsurgency will put the model at risk."
He is confident that the draft plan can be changed before it's finalized. But he is unhappy that the proposal has already created unrest among NGOs such as Afghan Aid that work on NSP projects.
Representatives from the World Bank, which oversees the funding of the NSP, say that using the NSP councils will likely be edited out because of the harm it would do to the program.
"If the facilitating partners [NGOs] are not keen on doing this – and many have ideological problems with it – it's not going to work," says Qazi Azmat Isa, a senior rural development specialist with the World Bank in Kabul.
But General Jones gave no indication that the pushback on the idea was likely to sink it. The decision will have to come from the Afghan government.
Plan B? Few alternatives exist beyond the NSP village councils to receive the reintegration money. Giving it directly to the ex-combatants would give people incentives to join and quit the insurgency for the rewards. At the village level, few other credible leaders exist, and district-level government in Afghanistan is famously corrupt and ineffective.
The plan includes other money to provide jobs around the country through various Afghan government ministries, including new engineering and construction corps and an agricultural conservation corps.
"Young men from the community of fighting age can be given preference to deny recruits for the insurgency," reads the draft plan. Recruits for the conservation corps would, instead of picking up a gun, be planting trees.
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Violence, Political Uncertainty Plague Post-Jirga Afghanistan
June 10, 2010 VOA News Sean Maroney | Islamabad
Since Afghan President Hamid Karzai's much anticipated peace assembly earlier this month, the Taliban has launched a series of high profile attacks. Meanwhile, the top U.S. commander in the country, General Stanley McChrystal says the fight against the Taliban will take longer than anticipated in the south.
Analysts say several high profile attacks this week show the Taliban will not back down as coalition and Afghan forces prepare for a major offensive to drive them from their southern stronghold in Kandahar province.
Afghan authorities are blaming the Taliban for an attack on a wedding late Wednesday in southern Afghanistan, which killed nearly 40 people. The Taliban deny responsibility, but the groom had links to anti-Taliban groups. Also, Monday was the deadliest day so far this year for international forces in Afghanistan. Ten NATO soldiers, seven of them Americans, were killed in separate attacks in the eastern and southern parts of the country that day.
With this new violence, the director of Afghanistan's Center for Research and Policy Studies, Haroun Mir, said that he believes next month's scheduled international conference in Kabul might not happen.
"I don't think that it would be appropriate for a foreign minister from Europe to attend [the] Kabul conference when we know that there's a huge risk, tremendous risk, that they could be eliminated by one rocket attack," said Haroun Mir. "All we need is one rocket attack, and all these ministers are flying back to their homes and that would be a big humiliation."
Even the top U.S. commander in the country, General Stanley McChrystal, said this week he expects the Kandahar offensive to take longer than anticipated.
"There are going to be tough days ahead," said General McChrystal. "Violence is up, and I think violence will continue to rise, particularly over the summer months. It is necessary that we roll back Taliban influence as we move toward increased security in the future."
But McChrystal says that despite the violence, he thinks the perception of the insurgent's momentum is reversing.
It's this reversal in momentum that President Karzai and analysts hope will convince the Taliban to sit down for peace talks.
But Amrullah Saleh has a different idea. Saleh is the former head of the Afghan National Directorate of Security. He resigned from the post, along with the country's interior minister, following the insurgent attack on the peace jirga earlier this month.
Saleh criticized Mr. Karzai for wanting to reconcile with the Taliban.
"I want a dignified peace, a peace which will not reverse our achievements, a peace which will not undermine our constitution, a peace which will not allow a small terrorist group to dominate the political scene in Afghanistan," said Amrullah Saleh. "Therefore, I am in favor of peace but I am against bowing to the Taliban."
He also has said that he believes President Karzai is taking a softer approach toward Pakistan in a bid to negotiate with the Taliban. Saleh referred to Pakistan as Afghanistan's enemy number one for its alleged support of the Taliban.
Ayaz Wazir is Pakistan's former ambassador to Kabul. He said that he disagrees with Saleh, and he wonders about his motives for making these statements now, especially after his resignation.
"Had Pakistan been the 'enemy number one', then why was the intelligence chief not saying so before? Now when he is resigned, he is accusing [a] neighboring country," said Ayaz Wazir.
In another blow to the coalition, Britain's newly elected government says it will not pledge more troops, despite being one of America's biggest partners in the country since the toppling of the Taliban-led government in 2001.
Haroun Mir with Afghanistan's Center for Research and Policy Studies says all these factors teach the Taliban an important lesson.
"You know with one [or] three rocket fires, they were able to get the resignations of two important ministers, and now the NATO countries have lost their will," he said.
He also says it seems unlikely that the Taliban will want to negotiate if they believe they have the upper hand against a coalition in flux and what Mir calls a dysfunctional government.
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Reconciliation in Afghanistan
Outside the tent The government’s fraying unity The Economist - North America Jun 10th 2010
Kabul - THE hope Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s president, nurtured for the huge gathering, or jirga, held in a vast tent in Kabul this month was that it would give him the national support needed to start a peace process with the Taliban. Instead, it prompted the resignations of the country’s hugely respected interior minister and spy chief and exposed serious disagreements about efforts at reconciliation with the insurgents.
Hanif Atmar, a trusted technocrat, was seen by many foreigners as Mr Karzai’s best minister. Amrullah Saleh, the chillingly efficient chief of the intelligence service, was also much admired by fellow spooks in America and Britain. Ostensibly, they resigned to take the blame for the failure to stop insurgents getting through security cordons around the venue, despite the presence of some 12,000 police and soldiers. The attackers fired rockets, some of which narrowly missed the tent where Mr Karzai was making his opening speech.
Mr Saleh and Mr Atmar were called to explain themselves. Mr Karzai made clear he did not believe their account. He even suggested they were part of an American and British plot to wreck his peace initiative. The two men offered their resignations, which Mr Karzai accepted. When the world’s foreign ministers gather for a conference in Kabul in July, both main national-security posts may well be vacant.
However, in comments that are worrying for Mr Karzai’s peace initiative, members of Mr Saleh’s entourage say the president’s lack of confidence was only the “tipping point” for his resignation. They say that Mr Saleh has been deeply concerned for some time about Mr Karzai’s conciliatory approach to Pakistan—the old enemy, which Mr Saleh’s spies tell him essentially controls the Taliban. Hardliners, such as Mr Saleh, believe Afghanistan will win respect from Pakistan only by showing a bit of steel. For their part, the Pakistanis have long demanded his sacking.
Mr Saleh is said to believe that Mr Karzai, who like most of the Taliban (and many Pakistanis) is a Pushtun, a member of Afghanistan’s largest ethnic group, has softened towards Pakistan because he no longer thinks NATO can win in Afghanistan. Hence, in his view, Mr Karzai’s reluctance publicly to endorse the counterinsurgency strategy of General Stanley McChrystal, the American NATO commander.
Even more damaging in Mr Saleh’s eyes are compromises such as Mr Karzai’s post-jirga announcement of plans to release Taliban prisoners held on the basis of intelligence rather than hard evidence. Mr Saleh, whose organisation was responsible for locking up many of the prisoners, believes dangerous men will be freed.
That Mr Saleh, who in the 1990s was a close aide to Ahmed Shah Massoud, a famous Tajik guerrilla and leader of the Northern Alliance against the Taliban, objects so strongly even to a confidence-building measure such as prisoner releases shows how difficult it will be to reach consensus on a negotiated settlement. After all, Mr Karzai did not go nearly as far as some proponents of reconciliation would have liked—offering insurgent leaders nothing in the way of provincial governorships, cabinet positions or constitutional change.
The 1,600 delegates to the peace jirga were meant to represent the whole nation. But most were picked by Mr Karzai’s appointees. Non-Pushtun power brokers, whose support will be vital for any consensus, stayed away: Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Uzbek leader; the runner-up in last year’s presidential election, Abdullah Abdullah, who is seen as a Tajik; Mohammad Mohaqiq, an ethnic-Hazara leader; and the Tajik governor of Balkh province, Atta Mohammad Noor.
As one leading politician puts it: “The risk is that we win the south just to lose the north”—ie, for every southern Pushtun welcoming rapprochement with the Taliban, a non-Pushtun in the north may be looking to dust off the AK-47 that has been sitting on the shelf for nine years now.
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Why some Afghanistan opium farmers turn from poppies to saffron
Saffron can grow on dry land and command high prices. But it’s difficult to process and sell, making it unlikely to replace poppies, the basis of Afghanistan’s opium trade.
Christian Science Monitor By Tom A. Peter, Correspondent June 10, 2010
Herat, Afghanistan - Eight years after getting out of the poppy business, Hajji Ibrahim says he doesn’t miss it. The farmer here in western Afghanistan used to employ 10 guards to protect his land from roving addicts and warlords. Harvesting the poppies was so strenuous that, though women often help with such work, he says those in his family could not help. Still, it was difficult to find a crop that produced returns like poppies.
After the fall of the Taliban forced him to find other options, however, he planted a small, 300- square-meter (3/4 of acre) patch of saffron. It was easy to cultivate, so women could tend to it, and it was 20 percent more profitable than poppies.
“As I balanced all the pros and cons of growing saffron or poppies, there were many benefits for saffron – mostly, it is not against Islamic law,” says Mr. Ibrahim, who now devotes a sizable 30,000 square meters (7.4 acres) of his land to saffron.
With at least 80 percent of Afghanistan’s workforce involved in agriculture, policymakers have long focused on rehabilitating the farming sector to provide profitable options other than poppies, which fuel the country’s opium trade. The United States has touted wheat as an alternative crop, but with a market price three times lower than opium, few farmers care to make the switch.
Saffron sells high on the international market and can be grown on otherwise unused fields. But it is nowhere near the perfect substitute for opium – farmers have struggled to effectively process and market saffron well enough to be competitive in the international market.
As a result, Ibrahim says that before more of his neighbors devote their fields to saffron, they will have to see that it is a reliable source of income. That will not happen without better processing facilities. $2,000 per kilogram
In Herat, where a dry climate makes it one of the best saffron-growing regions in Afghanistan, currently 300 hectares of farmland are devoted to the purple flower – a number that should grow by about 100 hectares per year, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. Though that’s less than one percent of the region’s active agricultural land, US officials say saffron is one of the three most important crops in the province, the others being wheat and grapes.
The plant is the most expensive spice in the world by weight and can sell for $2,000 to $3,000 per kilogram, whereas most of the food grown in the region is consumed by farmers or sold at local markets for a modest profit.
Saffron has the potential to generate $100 million of income a year for Herat alone if the region can devote 5,000 to 7,000 hectares of farmland to the flower, says M. Hashim Astami, an independent saffron and natural resource expert in Herat.
Saffron also grows on land that is traditionally too dry for other crops, so it would not replace anything currently being cultivated in the region or reduce food production. On top of that, the growing season is in October and November when other plants do not need water, so canals are full and there is ample water to irrigate the saffron fields.
This year, the US will contribute by supplying farmers with 50 tons of saffron seeds to increase the reach of the crop.
Searching for buyers
Still, Mr. Astami worries that farmers are producing saffron faster than companies can be established to process and market it.
“Saffron production, processing, and marketing should grow together,” he says. “But production has increased very fast, processing has increased very slow, and marketing is very weak.”
In the 1990s in Peru, US efforts to encourage farmers to stop producing coca leaves (for the illegal cocaine market) and replace them with cocoa beans (for chocolate) initially failed because coca farmers were taught only how to grow alternative crops, but did little connect them with the niche markets that brought the best prices. That crop replacement program in Peru has since become successful.
Without proper processing, saffron loses its distinctive coloring and taste. Harmful bacteria can also take root in the plant. Consequently, a poorly rendered batch of the crop sells at about 40 percent below market rates – if at all.
Few people inside Afghanistan use saffron, so if farmers cannot produce a product that is viable in the international marketplace, they may not be able to sell it at all. Last year, a number of farmers experienced this problem, which dealt a blow to the appeal of growing saffron, says Sayed Wahidullah Aqil, the provincial management adviser for the US Department of Agriculture in Herat.
“Farmers in Afghanistan get their information from their neighbors. If there is a farmer who is cultivating saffron and this year he cannot sell his product, his neighbors will see this and this may decrease their interest in saffron,” he says.
Aside from increasing the quality of saffron, companies must also work to make Afghan saffron more attractive on the international market, which is dominated by Iran.
This has been a focus for people like Basher Ahmad Rashidi, something of a saffron evangelist and project manger at Afghan Saffron, which was established in 2006 and claims to be Afghanistan’s first specialized saffron company.
By training its farmers how to properly process saffron, the company has managed to produce a high-quality product and build a client base in Spain, France, the United Arab Emirates, India, USA, and it is just starting to make headway in the Japanese market.
If farmers and companies can effectively partner, Mr. Rashidi says that saffron has the potential to become a powerful tool for his country’s development.
“It is all linked together,” he says. “When the farmer has good opportunity to generate income then all of Afghanistan has a good chance to grow.”
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