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McChrystal's lack of political skills led to downfall
By Greg Jaffe Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, June 24, 2010; A01
Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who was sacked Wednesday by President Obama for comments denigrating his civilian bosses, will be recalled inside the military as an intense, highly effective soldier and an object lesson in the need to honor civilian control of the military.
Gen. David Petraeus: The right commander for Afghanistan
By David Ignatius The Washington Post Thursday, June 24, 2010; A21
Gen. David Petraeus didn't sign on as the new Afghanistan commander because he expects to lose.
That's the boldest aspect of President Obama's decision: He has put a troubled Afghanistan campaign in the hands of a man who bent what looked like failure in Iraq toward an acceptable measure of success. Obama has doubled down on his bet, much as George W. Bush did with his risky surge of troops in Iraq under Petraeus's command.
NATO Says No Change In Afghan Strategy
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty June 24, 2010
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has said that the alliance's strategy in Afghanistan "will not miss a beat" despite the dismissal of the United States' top general in the war-torn country.
McChrystal's exit not to reduce pressure on Pakistan in fighting militancy: experts
by Syed Moazzam Hashmi
ISLAMABAD, June 24 (Xinhua) -- The exit of the United States top commander General McChrystal and approved entry of General Petraeus from the Afghanistan's battlefield would not reduce America's pressure on Pakistan, which is in the loop in fight against homegrown militancy in the region, experts said Thursday.
A Critical Moment in War Effort
By GERALD F. SEIB in Washington and MATTHEW ROSENBERG in Kabul The Wall Street Journal JUNE 23, 2010
There's never a good time for an American administration to air its dirty laundry in public, but the departure of Gen. Stanley McChrystal amid a flurry of sniping and backbiting comes at a particularly inauspicious moment.
Afghan leaders saddened by McChrystal departure, optimistic on Petraeus
The Washington Post By Ernesto Londoño and Karin Brulliard Thursday, June 24, 2010
KABUL - Afghan officials said they were saddened and disappointed by the dismissal Wednesday of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, but they expressed high hopes for his replacement.
The Afghanistan Reboot: Can Obama and Petraeus Work Together?
TIME - Nation By Joe Klein Thursday, Jun. 24, 2010
It is amazing how quickly General Stanley McChrystal became an afterthought. It happened minutes after he was removed from command of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan for idiocy above and beyond the call of duty.
'Private Security Firms Threaten Afghan Security'
June 24, 2010 Quqnoos
Officials in the Afghan government said that private security firms form a big threat to security in the country
10 NATO soldiers killed in Afghanistan
KABUL, June 24 (Xinhua) -- Ten soldiers with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) were killed Wednesday in separate incidents, a grim trend that could make June among the deadliest months since Taliban regime collapsed in late 2001, the alliance confirmed in press releases issued here Thursday.
15 militants killed in southern Afghanistan
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, June 24 (Xinhua) -- Over a dozen Taliban insurgents were killed as troops stormed their hideout in Kandahar province south of Afghanistan, police said Thursday.
UN Needs Evidence to Delist Taliban Leaders
June 24, 2010 Quqnoos
The UN Security Council is considering removal of the names of Taliban leaders from the UN black list
Pakistan court jails five Americans for terrorism
by Waqar Hussain June 24, 2010
SARGODHA, Pakistan (AFP) – A Pakistani court on Thursday sentenced five Americans to 10 years in jail each after finding them guilty of waging war against the state and funding a terrorist group, lawyers said.
Parasite threatens Afghan opium production: UN
Wed Jun 23, 3:48 pm ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – A parasite is threatening one quarter of Afghanistan's poppy crops, which could result in lower supplies and higher prices for opium, the UN office in charge of fighting drugs said Wednesday.
Parasite threatens Afghan opium production: UN
Wed Jun 23, 3:48 pm ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – A parasite is threatening one quarter of Afghanistan's poppy crops, which could result in lower supplies and higher prices for opium, the UN office in charge of fighting drugs said Wednesday.
CIA hires Xe, formerly Blackwater, to guard facilities in Afghanistan, elsewhere
By Jeff Stein Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, June 24, 2010; A11
The CIA has hired Xe Services, the private security firm formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide, to guard its facilities in Afghanistan and elsewhere, according to an industry source.
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McChrystal's lack of political skills led to downfall
By Greg Jaffe Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, June 24, 2010; A01
Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who was sacked Wednesday by President Obama for comments denigrating his civilian bosses, will be recalled inside the military as an intense, highly effective soldier and an object lesson in the need to honor civilian control of the military.
McChrystal was selected for the top job in Afghanistan by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who believed that his intensity and focus would inject energy into a war that had long taken a back seat to the conflict in Iraq and seemed strategically adrift. Senior Obama administration officials hoped that McChrystal would be able to emulate the model forged by Gen. David H. Petraeus, who had won praise for both his skills in managing troops and his savvy in managing Washington.
McChrystal's lack of political skills ultimately led to his downfall after the publication of a Rolling Stone magazine article in which the general and his staff denigrated senior administration officials, including the vice president, in a series of crude and often sophomoric jokes.
(Read a breakdown of what was said about eight top officials)
"I strongly support the president's strategy in Afghanistan and am deeply committed to our coalition forces, our partner nations and the Afghan people," he said in a statement. "It was out of respect for this commitment -- and a desire to see the mission succeed -- that I tendered my resignation."
McChrystal remains an icon within the Special Operations community, where he was known for his innovations in collecting, analyzing and acting on intelligence to kill insurgent leaders in Iraq and Afghanistan. "This will be remembered as a Shakespearean tragedy," said retired Lt. Gen. James Dubik, who has known McChrystal for 30 years and served with him in Iraq. "Here is a true hero who risked his life to diminish al-Qaeda. He is a leader who cared for his soldiers and shared every danger with his soldiers."
Among elite Special Operations troops, McChrystal was revered for his toughness and willingness to endure the same hardships they faced. In 2005, he joined a small team of commandos in Iraq on a pre-dawn raid aimed at killing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. The force of American and British troops soon found itself outnumbered by insurgents, said a senior Army official familiar with the raid. McChrystal leapt into a ditch and began returning fire at fighters swarming his position.
The next day the British commandos presented McChrystal with a certificate that he hung in his Iraq office. "This recognizes that during the period 0230-0415 . . . while facing hostile fire from enemy forces, LTG Stanley McChrystal was the highest paid rifleman in the United States Army."
McChrystal, however, struggled to make the transition from the tight-knit Special Operations world, where he led through the force of his personality and face-to-face interactions with his troops, to top command in Afghanistan, a job in which he was responsible for leading more than 130,000 U.S. and NATO troops, interacting with NATO allies and working with political leaders in Washington. Such high-level commands demand bureaucratic as well as battlefield acumen.
Soon after he arrived in Afghanistan, the general issued a series of "tactical directives," the most controversial of which put tough limits on the use of airstrikes and constrained night raids on Afghan homes suspected of housing insurgents. The general saw the directives as key to a counterinsurgency strategy that places a high premium on winning the support of the Afghan people by improving governance and protecting them from Taliban attacks.
The new rules, however, drew the ire of frontline troops, who thought they didn't have sufficient latitude to attack the enemy. Despite his almost unparalleled credentials as a warrior, McChrystal had a difficult time convincing his sprawling and skeptical force that the new rules could provide a path to victory.
"In many ways, he had a tougher job than Petraeus did in Iraq, which was an American operation," said Andrew Exum, a former Army Ranger and adviser to the general's command. "McChrystal not only had to change the organizational culture of the U.S. military but the culture of several other nations' militaries. Petraeus didn't have that in Iraq."
Before taking over in Afghanistan, McChrystal had to fend off allegations that he played a role in the Army's mishandling of the death of Ranger Cpl. Pat Tillman, a former pro football star who was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan. He also faced criticism for his oversight of detention facilities where prisoner abuse occurred.
McChrystal's immediate staff officers, many of whom came from the world of Special Operations, routinely spoke of him as someone who was accessible, warm and open to new ideas. Unlike Petraeus, who often maintained an emotional distance from even his most loyal staff members, McChrystal was often described by his inner circle as both boss and brother in arms. At times the general's openness, especially with the news media, got him in trouble. Even his allies in the Pentagon worried that McChrystal too often was naive about how his blunt remarks would echo in Washington and European capitals.
"What I really respected was his intellectual courage," said one military official who worked with the general in Kabul. "He was open to a lot of inputs from a lot of areas and had a real ability to connect with people."
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Gen. David Petraeus: The right commander for Afghanistan
By David Ignatius The Washington Post Thursday, June 24, 2010; A21
Gen. David Petraeus didn't sign on as the new Afghanistan commander because he expects to lose.
That's the boldest aspect of President Obama's decision: He has put a troubled Afghanistan campaign in the hands of a man who bent what looked like failure in Iraq toward an acceptable measure of success. Obama has doubled down on his bet, much as George W. Bush did with his risky surge of troops in Iraq under Petraeus's command.
Here's a simple way to think about the change of command: If the Taliban sold stock, its price would surely have fallen after Wednesday's announcement. It's hard to see how Petraeus can rejigger the pieces of this puzzle, but as I've heard him say: "The thing about winners is that they know how to win."
Petraeus is, among other things, the most deft political figure I've seen in uniform. In just two years he has gone from being Bush's go-to general to Obama's. He accomplished that transition with some artful dancing, to be sure. But he always remembered that no matter how much of a military rock star he might have become (and how much envy and resentment that created among some of his peers), he still worked for civilian leadership, one president at a time.
If I were Petraeus, I would have bargained for one thing before agreeing to replace Gen. Stanley McChrystal as commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan: the time needed to succeed. That means a flexible, conditions-based interpretation of Obama's July 2011 timetable for beginning to withdraw troops.
Petraeus offered a carefully worded, deliberately ambiguous formula when he testified before the House and Senate Armed Services committees last week: "It is important that July 2011 be seen for what it is: the date when a process begins, based on conditions, not the date when the U.S. heads for the exits." The administration is still split on what this means -- and it's Petraeus's biggest potential problem.
Petraeus watched McChrystal's troubles with mounting concern. For someone as attuned to political nuance as Petraeus, it was a shock to see McChrystal stumble in his public statements -- and allow his aides to speak to Rolling Stone in language that bordered on insubordination. Petraeus, surely the most media-savvy commander in uniform, will not make those mistakes.
I've traveled extensively with Petraeus over the past six years in Iraq and Afghanistan. What stands out, beyond his extraordinary ambition and willpower, is his willingness to experiment -- especially when the chips are down. In putting together the surge strategy, he gathered a team of iconoclasts -- officers who were willing to think outside the box about what would work.
Creativity will be crucial in Afghanistan, where the strategy McChrystal devised is, frankly, spinning its wheels. I would bet that Petraeus will put more emphasis on bottom-up experiments. He's good at working both sides of the street -- placating presidents and prime ministers while he dickers with local militia leaders.
Petraeus is also an operator, in the sense that he likes to use back-channel emissaries to communicate with a wide range of players. That strategic edge has been missing in our Afghanistan policy, and it will become crucial next year, as we enter a likely phase of contact with the Taliban and its allies to explore a possible reconciliation deal. Nobody in the U.S. military is better at the mix of fighting and talking in such ambiguous situations.
Petraeus must now bring order to the discordant members of Obama's "team of rivals" on Afghan policy. The new commander understands, too, that this strategy might better be called "Pak-Af," since the key to success is Pakistani willingness to close the Taliban's havens in the tribal areas. He also has a clear vision of how the Kandahar campaign must unfold, with U.S. and Afghan forces working together in "joint security stations" across the city, as happened in Baghdad during the surge.
Traveling with Petraeus in Afghanistan last October, I watched as he turned a routine visit to the wondrously named village of Baraki Barak into a lesson in hands-on counterinsurgency. He drank glass after glass of tea from dirty mugs, scarfed down loaves of flatbread, breathed the place in whole -- all to give the residents a personal sense of the American mission. That's the creative, manipulative, media-age commander that Obama has chosen for Kabul.
davidignatius@washpost.com
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NATO Says No Change In Afghan Strategy
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty June 24, 2010
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has said that the alliance's strategy in Afghanistan "will not miss a beat" despite the dismissal of the United States' top general in the war-torn country.
Rasmussen, speaking at NATO headquarters in Brussels on June 23, said the strategy U.S.General Stanley McChrystal helped put in place was the "right one."
"I thank General McChrystal for his service to NATO, and for the enormous effort he has put into leading the ISAF mission. While he will no longer be the commander, the approach he helped put in place is the right one. The strategy continues to have NATO's support, and our forces will continue to carry it out," Rasmussen said.
McChrystal resigned on June 23 after making disparaging comments about senior U.S. administration officials to a U.S. magazine.
U.S. President Barack Obama, who accepted his resignation, said McChrystal showed "poor judgement."
Obama also said there would be no change in policy.
Obama replaced McChrystal with General David Petraeus, who led the United States' mission in Iraq.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai said he "respects" Obama's Petraeus appointment.
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McChrystal's exit not to reduce pressure on Pakistan in fighting militancy: experts
by Syed Moazzam Hashmi
ISLAMABAD, June 24 (Xinhua) -- The exit of the United States top commander General McChrystal and approved entry of General Petraeus from the Afghanistan's battlefield would not reduce America's pressure on Pakistan, which is in the loop in fight against homegrown militancy in the region, experts said Thursday.
"Apparently, the main U.S. policy would remain unchanged," remarked Arshi Saleem, senior research analyst at the Institute of Regional Studies (IRS) in Pakistani capital Islamabad while discussing the implications of this major change-of-guards in the complicated regional mosaic.
"Pakistan should be well aware of the fact that change in command would not reduce the U.S. pressure on Pakistan's fight against militancy," Arshi Saleem told Xinhua on Thursday.
The U.S. President Barack Obama sacked "loudmouth" General Stanley A. McChrystal on Wednesday following his controversial criticism on the White House and Obama's top administration on policy issues.
Obama said that McChrystal's remarks in a "Rolling Stone" article undermined the civilian control of the military "at the core of our democratic system," noting the decision to replace the general did not involve any disagreement over strategy or personal issues, CNN reported on Wednesday.
President Obama also announced General David Petraeus as McChrystal's replacement to command 140,000 U.S. and multinational troops fighting insurgency in war-torn Afghanistan, since the ouster of Taliban regime in 2001.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen announced that the Alliance's would maintain its policy in Afghanistan. While reacting to this sudden change, Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said that Taliban would continue to fight against foreign troops.
One can expect some change in the U.S. policy on Afghanistan. However, expecting a similar fate of the U.S. policy toward Pakistan is a far cry, as both the outgoing and incoming American generals were two poles apart in their approach and thinking.
General McChrystal seems to be more comfortable with Obama's predecessor George W. Bush and Republican ideals. He believed in continuing confrontation with Taliban and eliminating them through combat. He had asked for an additional 30,000 troops to keep fighting insurgent Taliban in Afghanistan where the U.S. had plans to withdrawing July 2011.
It would have continued fighting in Afghanistan and kept American pressure there, which was conflicting with the shifting U. S. policy of engaging Taliban into negotiations and bringing them into main stream politics and governance in the insurgency plagued country, analysts said.
Whereas Gen. Petraeus had help U.S. disengage in Iraq and shift over to Afghanistan as Commanding General of Multinational Force in Iraq. His presence in Afghanistan would emphasize engaging mainstream Afghan Taliban into active dialogue.
Arshi Saleem summarized both American generals saying, " McChrystal, a true soldier was more aggressive in behavior advocating police action against extremists while Petraeus is more into limited military action and diplomatic, plus engaging into dialogue with those who give up violence."
With his approach Petraeus would help the U.S. disengage its presence in Afghanistan, but it does not mean that he would have similar policy for Pakistan, something that makes the incoming commander more loved by the democrats.
Experts said that the U.S. pressure will continue or rather would be increased to combat terrorism and operations in Pakistan would continue.
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A Critical Moment in War Effort
By GERALD F. SEIB in Washington and MATTHEW ROSENBERG in Kabul The Wall Street Journal JUNE 23, 2010
There's never a good time for an American administration to air its dirty laundry in public, but the departure of Gen. Stanley McChrystal amid a flurry of sniping and backbiting comes at a particularly inauspicious moment.
The Afghanistan war effort Gen. McChrystal had been leading—and the strategy he personally devised for it—are entering a crucial few months that may well determine their success or failure. Before being dismissed Wednesday for intemperate remarks about civilian officials, Gen. McChrystal had put in place what most analysts consider the most comprehensive plan of coordinated military action and economic development in eight years of warfare. The troops he persuaded President Barack Obama to dispatch to execute that plan are still arriving.
A rising number of insurgent leaders have been killed or detained recently, and, with U.S. help, the size of Afghan security forces has been ramped up about 30% in the last year.
But in recent days, implementation of the strategy, as well as political support for it, have started to look considerably more shaky. A military push into the city of Marjah hasn't been the success hoped for, and a larger operation in the major city of Kandahar has been put off.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai, after briefly reassuring American officials of his reliability, has lately rekindled doubts by firing two cabinet ministers highly regarded in Washington. Allied support is fading; two allied nations plan to pull out next year, and only about a third of the Western military trainers once thought necessary to upgrade Afghanistan's security forces are on the job. American troops in the field have begun to openly question rules of engagement that require a high degree of caution in launching military attacks to avoid civilian casualties.
All that raises questions about how secure Afghanistan will look when parliamentary elections, crucial to broadening the Afghan government's grip, are held in September. Soon after that, allies will reassess their commitment to the war. A bigger political test comes in December when Mr. Obama reviews progress on the ground in anticipation of a July 2011 start to an American drawdown.
Now the troubled war effort proceeds minus Gen. McChrystal, its main architect and the one commander President Karzai appears to really trust.
During a video conference Tuesday night with Mr. Obama, the Afghan leader told the U.S. president that he had full confidence in Gen. McChrystal, said the Afghan president's spokesman, Waheed Omar. Firing him would disrupt the war effort at a critical moment, Mr. Karzai argued, with troops poised to begin a major effort to secure Kandahar and its Taliban-infested surroundings.
"The president believes that we are in a very sensitive juncture in the partnership, in the war on terror and in the process of bringing peace and stability to Afghanistan, and any gap in this process will not be helpful," the spokesman told reporters in Kabul.
The new commander Mr. Obama named, Gen. David Petraeus, shares Gen. McChrystal's philosophy of counter-insurgency operations, which stresses dispersing troops and civilian aid to secure selected areas and winning residents' loyalty through intense, on-the-ground cooperation with local leaders. Indeed, Gen. Petraeus essentially was the originator of the approach when he was head of American forces in Iraq.
Gen. Petraeus, currently commander of U.S. forces across the Middle East, has a much more solid relationship with President Obama and civilian leaders in the administration.
But he doesn't have Gen. McChrystal's knowledge of Afghanistan or the same trust of leaders there and in Pakistan, an important ally in the fight against the Taliban.
Anthony Cordesman, a veteran military analyst and sometime-adviser to Gen. McChrystal, offers this summary: "Is it winnable? Yes. Are we going to win? That's not a question anyone can answer. This is a war with so much uncertainty."
One immediate risk is that the military command team in Afghanistan could fracture. After arriving a year ago, Gen. McChrystal reshaped the allied command in his image, creating an unusual operation filled with handpicked loyalists.
Military headquarters and the U.S. embassy in Kabul have been filled in the past two days with talk that a departure of Gen. McChrystal could prompt an exodus of other top officers. Speculation Wednesday was that Gen. Petraeus would bring in his own aides.
Gen. McChrystal last fall sold President Obama on a counter-insurgency strategy that called for defeating the Afghan Taliban by sending troops to selected districts, ridding those of insurgents, and working with Afghan forces and international aid officials to hold the areas.
As important as the military effort was a push to use economic aid and Western development advice to build local governments that would win the hearts and minds of the locals.
But agreement on the plan came only after weeks of divisive administration debate. In giving Gen. McChrystal 30,000 of the 40,000 troops he sought to execute the strategy, Mr. Obama insisted on two conditions.
First, administration aides say, he told the general not to use the troops to take any cities or regions he wasn't confident they could then hold. And second, the president said there would be the December 2010 review of progress, and a decision in July 2011 about when and how to begin drawing down American troops.
The contingent of 30,000 additional troops isn't likely to be deployed in full before the end of September, coalition officials say. This means the coalition will be fighting at full strength only 10 months before the deadline for deciding on a drawdown plan—a timetable many military commanders see as severely handicapping their chances of rolling back the Taliban.
Meanwhile, progress on the ground is slower than Gen. McChrystal's team anticipated. That's especially clear in Marjah, where the general sent American forces to drive out the Taliban and establish a kind of showcase of counter-insurgency strategy.
Instead, after besting the Taliban in February and early March, Afghan and allied forces failed to set up a functioning government in Marjah quickly. The result has been a population that remains wary of the coalition forces and the Afghan authorities they back. That, in turn, has allowed the Taliban to make a resurgence, and Marjah today is contested turf.
Violence is up nearly 100% this year across Afghanistan, according to internal figures from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, whose countries provide the allied forces.
Some of that is due the increased number of soldiers; the more fighters brought in, the more fighting there will be, say coalition officials. But they also say it indicates the Taliban aren't backing down but looking to push back. June has been the deadliest month yet, by an Associated Press count, with 76 Western troops killed, including 46 Americans.
In Kandahar province, most troops for the surge have yet to arrive, and the military piece of the offensive has been delayed until September. For now, U.S. and Afghan officials are focusing on the softer parts of the campaign. They're mapping out how to build government offices in surrounding districts, boost the number of police in the city and set up fruit and other farming projects.
Sensing the need to show progress soon, senior military officers have begun to talk less of Marjah and Kandahar and more about a pair of districts in the southern province of Helmand, called Nawa and Garmsir, that were taken last summer in operations designed before Gen. McChrystal assumed command.
Meantime, a drive Gen. McChrystal implemented to minimize Afghan civilian casualties—a strategy based on the belief that a softer, gentler approach would dent the insurgency's appeal to the averge Afghan—has run into internal resistance.
There is growing frustration among front-line troops, who blame spiking casualties on increasingly restrictive rules of engagement. Platoon and company commanders in the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand openly speak of having to fight with one hand tied behind their back.
Use of indirect fire such as mortars requires so many layers of approval that, by the time it's secured, the intended targets are often long gone. Helicopter gunships are usually not allowed to shoot if the pilots don't see their targets holding weapons—even if these men had been spotted firing at American infantry just seconds earlier.
The result, troops complain, is that the U.S. has surrendered much of its technological advantage over the Taliban, who can trump coalition forces in an equal fight because of superior knowledge of the terrain and ability to blend in with civilians.
For all the military uncertainty, the key to the war effort this summer may lie more in how well the civilian side of Gen. McChrystal's formula works out. Progress in establishing a coherent rule of law continues to be hampered by the low pay offered Afghan civil servants and judges, for example.
A sense of pervasive government corruption persists, and analysts fear that will continue to be the case until Western nations figure out how to write foreign-aid contracts that make sure money goes to projects and Afghan citizens instead of corrupt political figures.
One sign of how broad that problem remains: A new report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates that up to 40% of all foreign aid "goes to corruption, security and overhead."
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Afghan leaders saddened by McChrystal departure, optimistic on Petraeus
The Washington Post By Ernesto Londoño and Karin Brulliard Thursday, June 24, 2010
KABUL - Afghan officials said they were saddened and disappointed by the dismissal Wednesday of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, but they expressed high hopes for his replacement.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai had personally lobbied President Obama on Tuesday night to keep McChrystal, who was seen by Afghan leaders as a trustworthy general with a deep and nuanced understanding of their country. Among the cadre of Obama administration officials involved in Afghanistan policy, he had arguably the strongest relationship with, and the most influence over, Karzai and his security chiefs.
"General McChrystal has been a very important partner," said Waheed Omer, a spokesman for Karzai. "We're sad to see him go, but we respect this decision by the U.S. commander in chief."
Omer said the Afghan government is encouraged by the nomination of Gen. David H. Petraeus, the former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and head of the U.S. Central Command, to replace McChrystal, saying it "shows the commitment of the United States to Afghanistan."
Karzai and Afghan security officials had expressed hope that McChrystal would weather the scandal unleashed by a magazine profile that portrayed him and his staff as dismissive and critical of top administration officials.
The Afghan leaders had particularly welcomed guidelines McChrystal issued to limit the use of lethal force in an effort to reduce the number of civilian casualties. He also worked closely with the Afghan government at the national and provincial levels in an effort to strengthen a state many Afghans view as weak and corrupt.
"They're very concerned," said a senior U.S. military official who works closely with Afghan commanders, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue. "They think McChrystal is the right guy at the right time. For the first time, what they're trying to do and what we're trying to do is in sync, and that's directly attributable to the guy who's in command."
Khalid Pashtoon, a member of parliament who serves as deputy chairman of the Internal Security Committee, called McChrystal's departure a big loss. "He was very bright and smart and a very active person," said Pashtoon, who recently traveled with McChrystal to the southern province of Kandahar, where a major NATO military operation is underway. "He always called us, sat with us and listened to us."
Petraeus's appointment as the new commander in Afghanistan is likely to be viewed as the best-case scenario in Pakistan, where McChrystal had established a remarkable level of trust.
Although his duties officially ended at the Afghan border, McChrystal focused on building a strong rapport with Pakistan's army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani. Pakistani officials said that through monthly meetings and helicopter tours of areas where Pakistani troops were battling insurgents, McChrystal and Kiyani had developed a common understanding. McChrystal also played a key role in improving Kabul's rocky relationship with Islamabad.
Yet Petraeus probably has as much, if not more, clout in Islamabad. He was an early proponent of a regional strategy that prioritized improving relations with Pakistan in hopes of persuading it to target the Afghan Taliban fighters who use Pakistani hideouts to plot attacks on coalition forces in Afghanistan.
Petraeus has visited Pakistan numerous times, delivering assurances that the U.S. troop buildup in Afghanistan would not spill over into Pakistan, visiting Pakistani paramilitary forces in the northwestern city of Peshawar and regularly praising Pakistan's fight against its domestic Taliban.
"There's a complete understanding of each other's situation," a senior Pakistani military official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "He's not a stranger."
In Iraq, Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari called Petraeus the architect of the turnaround in the war there. Violence has dropped significantly since the height of the conflict, and many attribute that to Petraeus, who implemented a surge of U.S. troops and paid former insurgents to battle al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Still, Zebari cautioned, "the situation in Iraq and in Afghanistan is really different."
Brulliard reported from Islamabad. Correspondent Leila Fadel in Baghdad contributed to this report.
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The Afghanistan Reboot: Can Obama and Petraeus Work Together?
TIME - Nation By Joe Klein Thursday, Jun. 24, 2010
It is amazing how quickly General Stanley McChrystal became an afterthought. It happened minutes after he was removed from command of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan for idiocy above and beyond the call of duty. He became an afterthought because of the brilliant, and in some ways diabolically clever, decision that Barack Obama made in naming his successor: General David Petraeus, the dominant U.S. military figure of our time.
It was the nature of McChrystal's blunder that made the reascension of Petraeus inevitable. It was the insular, locker-room puerility of McChrystal's team, spewing in a recent Rolling Stone article — the stone-cold belief that they had all the answers; that the civilians in charge, especially those who were members of the Democratic Party, were just a bunch of feckless chin pullers — that made the incident so dangerous; it cut far too close to the bone. It raised timeless questions about civilian authority over the military in wartime and a nagging one that has shadowed American politics since Vietnam: whether Democrats are too soft, too removed from the realities of military life, to pursue an effective national-security policy.
And that is why the Petraeus appointment is at once brilliant and clever — because his prickly relationship with the President has been the symbolic heart of this problem, and now it will take center stage, in Washington and on the battlefields of Afghanistan. How it is resolved, if it is resolved, will determine the fate of Obama's presidency.
Barack Obama's problems with Petraeus began in their very first meeting, in Baghdad during the 2008 presidential campaign. Obama was joined in that session by then-Senators Joe Biden and Chuck Hagel. Petraeus laid on one of his epic PowerPoint slide presentations, which annoyed members of the group. "It was propaganda, assuming we didn't know anything," one of those present told me. "We wanted to ask questions, and when we did, Petraeus treated us badly, interrupting Obama continually, taking a very hard stand." The meeting dissolved into a heated exchange between Obama and Petraeus over Obama's stated intention to withdraw all U.S. combat troops from Iraq by 2010. Ultimately, Obama's general view on the withdrawal prevailed; even Petraeus eventually came to believe Obama's policy was right, although he also believed it wouldn't have been possible without his 2007 surge in Iraq, which Obama opposed.
And now these two men are locked together for the foreseeable future, perhaps for history. In an odd way, their relationship — with its equal rations of respect and mistrust — reflects positive changes that have taken place in the Democratic Party and the U.S. military. For several decades after Vietnam, most Democratic politicians were antiwar by reflex and antimilitary by instinct. Even now, many Democrats — who come from the coasts, the big cities, the slums — are unfamiliar with a military culture rooted in the Appalachians, the South, the Plains. A moderate Democratic group called the Truman National Security Project offers a course called Military 101 to teach incoming Democratic members of Congress things like the difference between a battalion and a brigade.
Campaigning for the presidency, Obama was very much aware that a solution to his party's perceived military weaknesses was necessary after the Sept. 11 attacks. His answer had the virtue of being politically adept and substantively valid: Iraq had been the wrong war. Afghanistan was the right one, because it had been the home of al-Qaeda, and it had been neglected by George W. Bush. As President, Obama has abided by his campaign talk and has shown himself amenable to targeted but relentless use of force, in a manner that dismays his party's base. He won quiet praise from the people in uniform by retaining Bush's popular Defense Secretary Robert Gates and appointing Jim Jones, a retired Marine four-star general, as National Security Adviser. And Obama was applauded for supporting Petraeus, who was promoted from commander of the multinational forces in Iraq by Bush, in his new job as Centcom commander, a position that oversees American security interests in the most sensitive region in the world. He did so in large part because Petraeus was the exemplar of the creative new thinking that had, at least partly, transformed the U.S. military.
It isn't well remembered now, but Petraeus was an outcast midway through the Bush Administration. Donald Rumsfeld, Bush's wildly incompetent Defense Secretary, didn't like him; neither did many of his peers, who remained enamored of the Army they knew, a rumbling array of tanks and trucks and heavy artillery constructed to fight the Russians on the plains of Central Europe. Rumsfeld sent Petraeus out to pasture at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., which among other things serves as an Army think tank. There, Petraeus and a group of military intellectuals concocted the military's counterinsurgency field manual — a strategy waiting to be implemented as everything else in Iraq failed. The irony about counterinsurgency (which carries the unfortunate, jingling acronym COIN) is that it is a theory of warfare that should be more acceptable to Democrats — and it was, to smart ones like Hillary Clinton — because it emphasized protecting local populations, providing them with services like schools and health clinics and jobs. When Bush turned to Petraeus and COIN was implemented in Baghdad in 2007, it looked an awful lot like community policing and social services on the South Side of Chicago. And it worked.
But it was not the only thing that worked in Iraq. Petraeus' decision to purchase the Sunni tribes in Anwar province — the Bush Administration had considered tribes "part of the past" until then — undermined the insurgency and separated the professional, al-Qaeda terrorists from the indigenous population. Most important was the untold story of the spectacular success that the special-operations forces led by McChrystal suddenly began to have in rooting out the bad guys (this was, in large part, attributable to the resources President Bush devoted to cultivating human intelligence assets). The success in Iraq was attributable to what the military calls full-spectrum warfare, the use of all the tools in its kit, but it was COIN that emerged as the headliner — an oversimplification that has had dire ramifications in Afghanistan.
By 2009 the gospel of COIN had helped revive the phlegmatic Army. Its two chief promoters, Petraeus and McChrystal, seemingly could do no wrong. They stormed into Obama's extended Afghan-policy review intent on having their way. They sort of got it: 30,000 more troops, on top of the 20,000 Obama had initially dispatched — after a series of pitched battles between Petraeus, who was the most vocal military participant in the process, and Vice President Joe Biden, who was the most vocal civilian.
But the policy featured two caveats that have been misinterpreted — purposely, in some cases — by the military and oversold by the Obama Administration to the Democratic Party base. The first was the deadline of July 2011, at which time a transition would begin to Afghan control of the war. Petraeus, McChrystal and Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen agreed to this because it wasn't really a deadline. There was no intention of actually pulling troops from the real Afghan war zones in the south and east in July 2011; the assumption was that if things were going well, some forces would stay for years, in gradually diminishing numbers, doing the patient work of counterinsurgency. The other caveat was more problematic: there would be another policy review in December 2010, to see how well things were going. "I wouldn't want to overplay the significance of this review," Petraeus told the House Armed Services Committee recently.
But Petraeus is wrong; in fact, the review is crucial. The implicit agreement was that if things aren't going well by December, the strategy will have to change. And things haven't been going well. So the military has been quietly working the press, complaining about the July 2011 transition date, pressing for more troops, complaining about the lack of civilian progress in Afghanistan — the failure of the Afghan government and U.S. State Department to provide security and programs for the populace — complaining about the failure of Richard Holbrooke to get all the recalcitrant neighbors (Pakistan, India, Iran and China, among others — what a bunch!) on board with a coherent regional strategy. A lot of this griping was at the heart of the Rolling Stone story. "When the military says withdrawals should be conditions-based, here's what they mean," says Les Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. "If things are going well, we shouldn't withdraw, because the policy is working. If things aren't going well, we should add more troops. What they really want is no decision on anything until July 2011."
The problem with the military position is that what worked in Iraq is not working in Afghanistan. The policy of funding the tribes is of limited value in Afghanistan because the enemy isn't led by foreign terrorists; it is a native insurgency. Funding some tribes and not others simply aggravates the feuding between them. And COIN depends on having a reliable local government running the security and social programs, which simply isn't going to happen so long as Hamid Karzai is President. The only part of the military spectrum that has worked in both Iraq and Afghanistan is McChrystal's special ops, which is stripping out midlevel Taliban leaders on a nightly basis.
This is the sort of moment that people write books about, a moment when the size of the personalities matches the scale of the stakes they're wrangling over. The real question is whether this Democratic President and the military, symbolized by Petraeus, can make the adjustments necessary to live with each other. It seems obvious that Obama is going to have to be less coy with the public about what is really going to happen in July 2011, even if that risks alienating his party's vestigial antiwar base. He is going to have to make it clear that "significant" troop withdrawals — a word bandied about in recent weeks — are not in the cards unless the situation on the ground changes dramatically, for good or ill. And Petraeus is going to have to reconsider whether the crown jewel in his tiara — the counterinsurgency doctrine — is really feasible in Afghanistan and what strategic modifications will have to be made in order to leave the place in the most stable, humane fashion.
These adjustments should not be difficult; they simply require the good faith and respect from both sides that have been lost, as McChrystal's crushing indelicacy so clearly demonstrated.
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'Private Security Firms Threaten Afghan Security'
June 24, 2010 Quqnoos
Officials in the Afghan government said that private security firms form a big threat to security in the country
The Afghan government and the US are concerned about a lack of transparency in the international contracts by which security firms are paid, which result in chaos in the country, the spokesperson for the Afghan president said.
The spokesman for President Karzai, Wahid Omar, sees private security firms behind the security concerns.
Meanwhile, a report published by the US Congress claimed that part of the US military budget in Afghanistan goes to the Taliban’s and insurgents’ pockets.
In the report, the US Congress says that the US forces in Afghanistan can pay millions of dollars for security of their logistic convoys in a week, but the money flows to the Taliban’s pocket as bribe.
While confirming the comments made by the Afghan government, the former Higher Education Minister-turned Taliban member Arsalan Rahmani said that private security firms are afraid of taking risks so they give bribes at the crossing locations controlled by the Taliban.
"This is a reality when convoys carrying foreign forces’ goods cross an area controlled by the Taliban. The security contractors split some of the money taken from the contract with the Taliban," said Rahmani.
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10 NATO soldiers killed in Afghanistan
KABUL, June 24 (Xinhua) -- Ten soldiers with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) were killed Wednesday in separate incidents, a grim trend that could make June among the deadliest months since Taliban regime collapsed in late 2001, the alliance confirmed in press releases issued here Thursday.
In the latest incident, according to press releases, four foreign soldiers were killed in a traffic accident in southern Afghanistan, the stronghold of Taliban militants.
"Four ISAF service members died as a result of a vehicle accident in southern Afghanistan yesterday," the press release said Thursday.
Four other ill-fated troopers were killed in the lethal homemade device -- Improvised Explosive Device (IED) attacks in eastern and western parts of the militancy-plagued country.
Majority of over 290 NATO soldiers, who lost their lives since the beginning of this year, have been killed by IED attacks in the post-Taliban Afghanistan.
Another ISAF soldier lost his life in a small-arms attack in the south of the country and the 10th was killed following an accident while on patrol in western Afghanistan also on Wednesday.
However, the press releases did not disclose the nationalities of the victims saying "It is ISAF policy to deter identification procedures for casualties to the relevant national authorities."
The heavy casualties on Wednesday coincided with the resignation of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, who was replaced by Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. Central Command.
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15 militants killed in southern Afghanistan
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, June 24 (Xinhua) -- Over a dozen Taliban insurgents were killed as troops stormed their hideout in Kandahar province south of Afghanistan, police said Thursday.
"Afghan and NATO-led forces stormed a hideout of Taliban rebels in Jalai district on Wednesday. As a result, 15 militants were killed and three others made captives," deputy to provincial police chief Fazal Ahmad Shirzad told Xinhua.
He did not give more details. Taliban militants have yet to make comment.
Kandahar, the birthplace of Taliban militants, has been the scene of increasing militancy over the past couple of years.
Taliban insurgents have vowed to intensify anti-government activities this year in Afghanistan.
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UN Needs Evidence to Delist Taliban Leaders
June 24, 2010 Quqnoos
The UN Security Council is considering removal of the names of Taliban leaders from the UN black list
Members of the UN Security Council say that decisions about removing the names will only be made when the Afghan government presents sufficient evidences to prove innocence of the blacklisted ones.
The UN Security Council members who are in Kabul to investigate Afghanistan’s situation, called their Afghan visit important in a press conference in Kabul, and pledged their firm support for peace and stability in the country.
"During our contacts, we have arbitrated the UN Security Council’s support and enduring commitment to the people of Afghanistan and its government in furthering peace, development and stability," said a member of the UN Security Council, Urtughal Ipkan.
Although, the Afghan government has demanded from the UN Security Council to remove the names of the Taliban leaders from its blacklist, the UN Sanctions Committee said they will soon finish investigating the list of the names.
"People who are to be delisted, have to renounce violence, have to lay down arms, break all links with Al-Qaeda and fully accept the Afghan constitution. For any delisting to happen, this requires the consensus of all security members of the UN Security Council. And it is evidently important to have exact information that this criteria has been fulfilled and in this instance, of course the information that can be provided by the Afghan government is of paramount importance," said Chairman of the Sanctions Committee of the UN Security Council, Thomas Mayor Herting.
The Security Council members said the Afghan government has not handed over any list to them. Of the 500 names on the UN black list, 137 of them are Taliban leaders, including Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the leader of the Islamic Party (Hezb-i-Islami).
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Pakistan court jails five Americans for terrorism
by Waqar Hussain June 24, 2010
SARGODHA, Pakistan (AFP) – A Pakistani court on Thursday sentenced five Americans to 10 years in jail each after finding them guilty of waging war against the state and funding a terrorist group, lawyers said.
The five, aged 19 to 25, had been on trial in a closed court in a prison in the eastern city of Sargodha since March. The judge found them guilty of two charges, but acquitted them of three others.
In a mostly secret trial, each defendant was handed concurrent sentences of 10 and five years and fined 70,000 rupees (820 dollars).
Both the defence and the prosecution vowed to appeal. Rana Bakhtiar, deputy prosecutor general for the Punjab provincial government, said he would seek 20-year sentences.
The Americans -- of Egyptian, Eritrean, Pakistani and Yemeni descent -- were arrested in December in Sargodha on charges of plotting a terrorist attack.
Umar Farooq, Waqar Hussain, Rami Zamzam, Ahmad Abdullah Mini and Amman Hassan Yammer had faced a maximum punishment of life in prison.
"For criminal conspiracy they were sentenced to 10 years in prison plus 50,000 rupees' fine," defence lawyer Hassan Katchela told AFP.
"For funding a banned terrorist organisation they were imprisoned for five years each plus 20,000 rupees' fine."
Defence lawyers and the prosecution said the clause included "waging war against Pakistan".
A copy of the court order obtained by AFP sentenced them to "rigorous imprisonment" which Katchela said would entail "a kind of hard labour".
Pakistani officials said the young men planned to travel to neighbouring Afghanistan and join up with Taliban-led militants fighting US and NATO troops.
The defendants pleaded their innocence, saying they had come to Pakistan to attend a wedding and wanted to travel onto Afghanistan to do humanitarian work.
They accused the FBI and Pakistani police of torture, but the authorities have flatly denied any ill-treatment.
Khalid Farooq, the Pakistani father of Farooq, spoke of his shock at the sentencing and vowed to go all the way with an appeal.
"It is a matter of great disappointment. We were not expecting it," he told reporters outside the jail in Sargodha.
"We will go to every forum, from the high court to the international court. We will file an appeal in Lahore high court in seven days."
The sentencing came three days after Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad pleaded guilty to an attempted car bombing in Times Square, warning a New York courtroom of more attacks on the United States until it leaves Muslim lands.
Investigators claimed that the Sargodha five planned to travel to South Waziristan, a training ground for Islamist militants in Pakistan's lawless tribal belt and a region targeted by a major military operation last year.
Although the Pakistani government is a close ally in the US war on Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, the country is gripped by widespread anti-Americanism and many blame deteriorating security on the alliance.
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Parasite threatens Afghan opium production: UN
Wed Jun 23, 3:48 pm ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – A parasite is threatening one quarter of Afghanistan's poppy crops, which could result in lower supplies and higher prices for opium, the UN office in charge of fighting drugs said Wednesday.
"Twenty-five percent of the opium crop will be likely destroyed by 2010 and might not been able to meet the world demand," said Antonio Maria Costa the executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
"Yet the world is not short of opium: there has been an oversupply since 2006," said Costa, who was giving his office's annual report.
Afghanistan produces nearly 90 percent of the world's opium.
The UNODC estimates that there are more than 12,000 tonnes of opium stored in Afghanistan, the equivalent of 2.5 years of global demand.
Opium prices peaked at more than 380 dollars a kilo in 2003, but last year dropped to 48 dollars a kilo. The UNODC expects 2010 prices to double to 89 dollars a kilo, as Afghan opium production has dropped 23 percent in the last two years.
"Afghanistan is producing twice as much (opium) as the whole world did 10 years ago," said Victor Ivanov, Director of Russia's Federal Service for the Control of Narcotics.
Russia is the world's largest consumer of heroin.
"We are cautiously optimistic regarding the tendencies of the global market and acreage," said Ivanov, speaking through a translator.
"We should try to find out the reason for this phenomenon where opium production is followed by emergence of hashish industry, which is huge. It's quite clear that production of hashish in conjunction with production of heroin has every chance to capture all the world market," the Russian official said.
Afghanistan produces some 7,000 tonnes of opium a year and 3,000 tonnes of cannabis. Officials estimate that 657 tonnes of heroin are produced around the world, of which 430 tonnes reach the market and the rest is stored.
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UK troops could stay in Afghanistan for 5 years - general
(Reuters) - British troops could stay in Afghanistan for up to five more years, the head of the British Army was quoted as saying on Wednesday.
General David Richards, who is tipped for possible promotion to overall chief of the British armed forces, told Prospect magazine that the reason Britain had no more than 10,000 troops in Afghanistan was that it could "endure that forever" within the army's deployable strength of 75,000.
Asked whether U.S. forces could withdraw from Afghanistan quite soon, Richards said: "Well, it depends who you talk to. That is not the official line coming out of the White House or the Pentagon.
"I'm assuming we'll be involved in Afghanistan for another three to five years, that is the current working assumption at the Ministry of Defence."
Richards's comments were published as U.S. President Barack Obama prepared to confront his top Afghanistan commander, General Stanley McChrystal, before deciding whether to fire him over inflammatory comments that have angered the White House and threaten to undermine the war effort [nSGE65M0DW].
Despite a surge that has brought the U.S.-dominated foreign force to 150,000, the Taliban insurgency is at its strongest since the hardline Islamists were overthrown in 2001.
Under Obama's strategy, U.S. forces would gradually begin to withdraw starting in July 2011 as Afghan forces take the lead. The U.S. administration has not said how many troops will be withdrawn or how quickly they will leave.
British forces have been engaged in some of the fiercest fighting in the southern province of Helmand. The British military death toll since 2001 has risen above 300, eroding support for the mission among the British public.
New Prime Minister David Cameron has ruled out sending more troops to the Afghan mission and said Britain's forces should not stay on "for a day longer" than necessary.
Visiting Afghanistan this month, Cameron called 2010 a "vital year" for the Afghan war and said the British public needed to see progress over the next six months.
The Afghan war is costing Britain billions of pounds at a time when it is slashing government spending to rein in a gaping budget deficit. Defence spending is likely to be cut.
Richards is a leading contender to succeed Jock Stirrup as chief of the defence staff, Britain's most senior military officer, when he steps down later this year.
(Reporting by Adrian Croft; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
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CIA hires Xe, formerly Blackwater, to guard facilities in Afghanistan, elsewhere
By Jeff Stein Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, June 24, 2010; A11
The CIA has hired Xe Services, the private security firm formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide, to guard its facilities in Afghanistan and elsewhere, according to an industry source.
The previously undisclosed CIA contract is worth about $100 million, said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the deal, which is classified.
"It's for protective services . . . guard services, in multiple regions," the source said.
Two other security contractors, Triple Canopy and DynCorp International, put in losing bids for the CIA's business, the source said.
The revelation comes only a day after members of a federal commission investigating war-zone contractors blasted the State Department for granting Xe a new $120 million contract to guard U.S. consulates under construction in Afghanistan.
CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano stopped short of confirming the contract, saying only that Xe personnel would not be involved in operations.
"While this agency does not, as a rule, comment on contractual relationships we may or may not have, we follow all applicable federal laws and regulations," Gimigliano said.
The spokesman added: "We have a very careful process when it comes to procurement, and we take it seriously. We've also made it clear that personnel from Xe do not serve with the CIA in any operational roles."
Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Erik Prince, chairman of the board at Xe and owner of Prince Group -- which owns Xe -- said the firm had no comment.
"Blackwater has undergone some serious changes," said a U.S. official who is familiar with the deal and spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss it freely.
"They've had to prove to the government that they're a responsible outfit. Having satisfied every legal requirement, they have the right to compete for contracts. They have people who do good work, at times in some very dangerous places. Nobody should forget that, either."
The firm, based in Moyock, N.C., has been fighting off prosecution and lawsuits since a September 2007 incident in Baghdad, when its guards opened fire in a city square, allegedly killing 17 unarmed civilians and wounding 24.
Two weeks ago, Prince announced that he was putting the company on the block. A spokeswoman said "a number of firms" are interested in buying but declined to elaborate.
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