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November 20, 2010 

NATO pledges to hand command to Afghanistan
by Dave Clark
LISBON (AFP) – Western allied leaders agreed on Saturday to start pulling their forces off the Afghan battlefield next year but vowed not to leave the beleaguered Kabul regime prey to a still unbeaten Taliban.

NATO Agrees to Secure Afghanistan Through 2014
By JUDY DEMPSEY The New York Times November 20, 2010
LISBON — NATO leaders, backing President Obama’s plan for a gradual phaseout of combat operations, on Saturday signed an agreement with Afghanistan to control the country’s security until 2014 and then assist with its logistics, training and advising.

Bicycle bombs kill 4 in eastern Afghanistan
By Rahim Faiez, Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan – Two remote-controlled bombs attached to bicycles exploded about 30 minutes apart Saturday in two parts of a city in eastern Afghanistan, killing four people and wounding more than 30, local officials said.

Afghans want their country back - and Americans should listen
Washington Post By David Ignatius Sunday, November 21, 2010
America's first problem in Afghanistan is that the Afghan people in the key battleground don't understand why we're there: When pollsters read a simple summary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack and its aftermath to a sample of 1,000 young men in Helmand and Kandahar provinces, only 8 percent said they knew about this event.

The Afghan View
By KARL F. INDERFURTH and THEODORE L. ELIOT Jr. The New York Times November 18, 2010
One is constantly reminded of the grim realities of Afghanistan today, a country entering its 10th year of war with a bloody and brutal insurgency and a government in Kabul commonly viewed as corrupt and ineffective.

London rally to call for troops out of Afghanistan
Sat Nov 20, 6:15 am ET
LONDON (AFP) – Anti-war protesters will rally in London on Saturday to call for the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.

Afghan golf team makes Asian Games debut
By ERIC TALMADGE, Associated Press
GUANGZHOU, China (AP)—For Hashmatullah Sarwaree and Ali Ahmad Fazel, hazards aren’t a major concern on the golf course. After all, their club in Kabul was cleared of land mines after the fall of the Taliban regime.

Afghan ministry does not see delay at MCC's Aynak
19 Nov 2010 12:17:46 GMT By Polly Yam and Hamid Shalizi
HONG KONG/KABUL, Nov 19 (Reuters) - The Metallurgical Corp of China Ltd (MCC) said on Friday the discovery of an ancient temple could delay its Afghan copper project, but Afghanistan's Mines Ministry does not foresee any impact on the massive development.

Construction contracts a weak link in Afghan nation building
By Dion Nissenbaum, Warren P. Strobel, Marisa Taylor and Jonathan S. Landay McClatchy Newspapers via The Seattle Times
SHAHRI BUZURG, Afghanistan — For more than a year, Afghan police chief Rajab Mohammed and his men have worked out of a dark, cramped mud home in a remote corner of Afghanistan while waiting in vain for construction workers to finish building the U.S.-funded police station across the street.

Pentagon's decision to send tanks to Afghanistan praised
The Washington Times By Ashish Kumar Sen Friday, November 19, 2010
The Pentagon's decision to deploy heavily armored battle tanks to Afghanistan is being hailed as a step in the right direction by military and civilian advisers in that war.

Afghanistan: military quagmire and government money pit
The Guardian By Pratap Chatterjee 19/11/2010
One reason US reconstruction work in Afghanistan is so fruitless is that oversight into where the billions go is wholly inadequate

The Afghan Tea Party
The Daily Beast By Ann Marlowe November 19, 2010
Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has been loudly calling for the U.S. to scale back its presence in Afghanistan, is meeting with Obama in Lisbon today to discuss war strategy. But not everyone in Afghanistan is swatting the U.S. away. Ann Marlowe meets one man who has American taxpayers' interest at heart—Kabul's anti-Karzai.

TV Channel, Part Owned by Murdoch, Gets Threats in Iran
New York Times By DEXTER FILKINS November 19, 2010
KABUL, Afghanistan - In little more than a year, the Persian-language satellite television channel beamed into Iran by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation and a prominent Afghan family has rapidly become one of the most popular stations in the country.
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NATO pledges to hand command to Afghanistan
by Dave Clark
LISBON (AFP) – Western allied leaders agreed on Saturday to start pulling their forces off the Afghan battlefield next year but vowed not to leave the beleaguered Kabul regime prey to a still unbeaten Taliban.

The 48 countries that make up the NATO-led force in Afghanistan signed a deal with President Hamid Karzai to begin handing his government control of the war in early 2011 and cede command to it by the end of 2014.

At the same time, however, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the Western allies would stand by Kabul even after their combat mission ends.

"The aim is for Afghan forces to be in the lead countrywide by the end of 2014," Rasmussen said, as he and Karzai announced the deal after talks between coalition leaders at the NATO summit in Lisbon.

"We will stay after transition in a supporting role. President Karzai and I signed an agreement on a long term partnership between NATO and Afghanistan that will endure beyond our combat mission," he added.

US President Barack Obama and his allies in NATO's nine-year-old Afghan conflict met seeking an exit strategy for their 150,000-strong force.

Even as they met, four more Afghans were killed and 33 wounded when two suicide bombers struck in the east of the country, adding to a grim civilian toll in the bloodiest year yet for NATO soldiers and ordinary Afghans.

The summit was attended by leaders from the 28 NATO allies, the 20 other nations that fight alongside them in the ISAF military coalition, big cash donor Japan and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

A small group of anti-war protesters briefly chained themselves across a road a few hundred yards (metres) from the venue, but they were quickly removed by Portuguese police and there was no sign of large scale demonstrations.

NATO commanders want the allies to send enough funds and military trainers to allow them to boost the total size of Afghanistan's national security forces to 306,000 from 256,000 within the next 12 months.

Alliance officials insist the transition to Afghan control is not a rush to the exit, but the war is unpopular in Europe and cash-strapped governments are under pressure from voters to bring soldiers home.

Nevertheless, Obama hopes to convince his allies to send more troops to train Afghan security forces plagued by desertion and corruption. Summit host Portugal said it plans to send 40 more trainers.

Karzai surprised his allies this week by urging US forces to scale down military operations and halt unpopular night raids by special forces, but after the talks he suggested that the row had been smoothed over.

"I hope that as we move forward many of these difficulties will go away and that then our movement to the future will be one without the difficulties that we are encountering," he said, when asked about the raids.

The number of ordinary Afghans killed in the conflict rose by a third in the first six months of 2010 to 1,271, with most deaths caused by Taliban insurgent attacks, the United Nations reported in August.

The Alliance was to hold a separate meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev later Saturday to strike a new cooperation deal on Afghanistan and invite Moscow to take part in a new missile defence shield.

"A former military adversary is now clearly a partner," German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters at the summit. "It's a turning point in working together that we can clearly call historic."

Russia helps NATO on Afghanistan by allowing alliance supplies -- except weapons -- to transit through its territory and by providing counter-narcotics training to Afghan officials outside Moscow.

NATO, which faces rebel attacks on fuel trucks on Pakistani roads, wants Russia to expand the list of permitted goods to include armoured vehicles.
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NATO Agrees to Secure Afghanistan Through 2014
By JUDY DEMPSEY The New York Times November 20, 2010
LISBON — NATO leaders, backing President Obama’s plan for a gradual phaseout of combat operations, on Saturday signed an agreement with Afghanistan to control the country’s security until 2014 and then assist with its logistics, training and advising.

NATO, which has over 150,000 troops based in Afghanistan, including over 100,000 American soldiers, intends to begin the phaseout next year. But the agreement on Saturday ensures the slower military transition favored by Mr. Obama, even as Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been pushing for greater control.

The pact followed more than three hours of talks among leaders from the 28 NATO countries, including Mr. Obama, and the 20 other coalition countries in Afghanistan. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the secretary general of NATO, said the agreement showed a commitment to the long-term security and development of Afghanistan.

“Today marks the beginning of a new phase in our mission in Afghanistan,” Mr. Rasmussen said at a signing ceremony for the agreement, which was attended by Mr. Karzai and Ban ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general.

“We will launch the process by which the Afghan government will take leadership for security throughout the country, district by district. If the enemies of Afghanistan have the idea that they can just wait it out until we leave, they have the wrong idea. We will stay as long as it takes to finish our job.”

Public opinion across Europe and in the United States is increasingly opposed to the war in Afghanistan. But with a shift from combat operations to police and army training, diplomats here said they hoped they could buy some time with the public instead of rushing out of Afghanistan. While Ivo Daalder, the American ambassador to NATO, said the 2014 goal and the end of NATO’s combat role in Afghanistan beyond that date “are not one and the same,” many NATO countries have insisted they will remove all their troops by 2014. British Foreign Secretary William Hague reiterated said his country will end its combat role in Afghanistan by 2015.

“Make no mistake about it, that is an absolute commitment and deadline for us,” the British news agency Press Association quoted him as saying. He added: “This remains a phenomenal challenge. There is a huge amount of work to do in Afghanistan, and I wouldn’t want anyone to think we can relax in any way about Afghanistan.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said German troops would be withdrawn from Afghanistan by 2014 but added that her country would continue training Afghan police and armed forces. Germany has more than 5,000 soldiers serving in Afghanistan.

Mrs. Merkel added that Germany would host a conference on Afghanistan next year to take stock of the training and transition phase.

After the NATO-Afghan meeting, leaders will turn their attention to a summit with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

NATO, which has been seeking much closer cooperation with Russia over Afghanistan, expects to sign agreements to expand the alliance’s supply routes to Afghanistan through Russia as well as set up a new training program in Russia for counter-narcotics agents from Afghanistan and other Central Asian countries. NATO and Russia is also close to agreeing a program to provide training to Afghan helicopter crews.

Russia is expected to sell 18 Mi-17 helicopters to the United States and lend three more to Afghan forces. The Mi-17 is better suited to operating in Afghanistan’s high altitudes and cold weather than equivalent U.S. helicopters.

Mrs. Merkel, who will meet Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in Berlin next week, said NATO’s growing ties with Russia signalled a “new chapter.”

She said all NATO countries, especially those from central and Eastern Europe, hoped that Mr. Obama would be able to push through the ratification of the START treaty, which Republicans say they will block.

On Saturday, Mr. Obama took aim at Republican senators standing in the way of a nuclear arms reduction pact with Russia, saying they were abandoning Ronald Reagan’s lesson of nuclear diplomacy.Mr. Obama used his weekly address to focus on international affairs at a time of increased political gridlock at home as the GOP prepares to take control of the House in the new Congress next year. Describing his nuclear efforts as part of a five-administration continuum, Obama said the treaty to cut the permitted number of U.S. and Russian long-range nuclear warheads by a third was “fundamental to America’s national security.”

On another issue in Lisbon, it was still unclear if Russia would participate in Mr. Obama’s plans to build a missile shield over Europe.

NATO leaders agreed Friday night on the missile shield, but the exact details over cost and command and control of the shield have still to be worked out.

“It offers a role for all of our allies,” Mr. Obama told reporters Friday. “It responds to the threats of our times. It shows our determination to protect our citizens from the threat of ballistic missiles.”

Mr. Obama did not mention Iran by name, acceding to the wishes of NATO member Turkey, which had threatened to block the deal if its neighbor was singled out.

And while the United States has invited Russia to participate, European diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, on Saturday said that NATO and Russia would probably agree to develop two separate systems but eventually connect them.

Under the arrangement, a limited system of United States anti-missile interceptors and radars already planned for Europe — to include interceptors in Romania and Poland and possibly radar in Turkey — would be linked to expanded European-owned missile defenses. That would create a broad system that protects every NATO country against medium-range missile attack.
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Bicycle bombs kill 4 in eastern Afghanistan
By Rahim Faiez, Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan – Two remote-controlled bombs attached to bicycles exploded about 30 minutes apart Saturday in two parts of a city in eastern Afghanistan, killing four people and wounding more than 30, local officials said.

The Afghan Ministry of Interior said two suicide attackers were responsible, but local authorities said they could not find evidence that insurgents blew themselves up at the two sites.

Ghulam Aziz Ghranai, the police chief in Laghman province, said the first morning explosion occurred as vehicles were waiting to be searched at a police checkpoint on a road leading into the provincial capital of Mehtarlam.

Deputy provincial governor Edayutullah Qalanderzai, who was at a local hospital, said a woman, a child and an elderly man were killed and 25 others were wounded, including one Afghan policeman.

The second explosion, which killed one and injured eight others, occurred about a half hour later inside the city less than a mile from the first blast, Qalanderzai said.

President Hamid Karzai condemned the attacks in Mehtarlam, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) east of Kabul.

Separately, the Afghan government reported that a senior Taliban commander was killed in an airstrike Saturday in Nad Ali district of Helmand province in the south. The commander was known to have planned bombings and suicide attacks in the area, according to a government statement.

On Friday, Afghan and coalition troops in eastern Afghanistan captured an insurgent believed to have planned suicide attacks for al-Qaida, the Taliban and the al-Qaida linked Haqqani network. The troops tracked the insurgent in charge of the suicide operations in the province to a compound in Khogyani district of Nangarhar province where he was apprehended.
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Afghans want their country back - and Americans should listen
Washington Post By David Ignatius Sunday, November 21, 2010
America's first problem in Afghanistan is that the Afghan people in the key battleground don't understand why we're there: When pollsters read a simple summary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack and its aftermath to a sample of 1,000 young men in Helmand and Kandahar provinces, only 8 percent said they knew about this event.

The poll results convey a stark reality about this war: People in the Pashtun region of southern Afghanistan resent foreign fighters. Most don't comprehend why they have come or how they might offer a better future than would the Taliban. They feel that America and its allies don't respect their traditions.

When President Hamid Karzai complains about U.S. military tactics, as he did in a recent interview with The Post, he's expressing what many Afghans feel. Rather than getting furious at Karzai's outbursts, which is the normal reaction of U.S. officials, perhaps it's worth listening more carefully. After nine years of war, the Afghans want their country back.

NATO forces have done better over the past six months at winning "hearts and minds" in southern Afghanistan - but probably still not well enough to succeed without some changes in tactics. That's my reading of the new polling by Canadian researcher Norine MacDonald, which she showed me prior to publication.

MacDonald's polls offer a glimpse of some "ground truth" that's easy for visiting journalists, and also perhaps U.S. policymakers, to miss. She has been based in Kandahar and Lashkar Gah for more than five years, doing research for the International Council on Security and Development, a private group that's funded by foundations in Europe. She's a rare independent observer of this conflict.

MacDonald conducted her latest poll in October, following one she did in the two southern provinces in June. This time, she doubled the interviews to get a statistically reliable sample. On many issues, she got much more favorable responses than in June. But a majority of respondents still didn't support the U.S. mission or understand its rationale.

The numbers show that Afghans remain wary, even as U.S. troops pound the Taliban: 50 percent of those polled in October think recent military operations are bad for the Afghan people; 58 percent think it's wrong to work with foreign forces; 55 percent oppose military operations against the Taliban in their area; 72 percent say that foreigners disrespect their religion.

President Obama premised his strategy last December on the idea that as U.S. forces drove the Taliban from Kandahar and Helmand, local governance would improve and support for the insurgency would dry up in these key provinces. There has been some movement in that direction in recent months.

Here are some indications that Obama's core assumptions are still unproven: Only 31 percent of those polled believe that NATO forces are protecting the population; 51 percent say that their view of NATO forces is either more negative or the same compared to a year ago; 65 percent say that foreign forces kill more civilians than do the Taliban.

Perceptions of the Afghan army and police are improving in Helmand and Kandahar, but not sufficiently that people are confident they can take control. Fifty-two percent say the Afghan army is effective, and 39 percent say that about the police. But on the big question of transferring power, 61 percent believe that the Afghan security forces will be unable to provide security in areas from which foreign forces are withdrawing.

And here are the most chilling numbers of all: In the region that was Osama bin Laden's stronghold, 81 percent say that al-Qaeda will come back if the Taliban returns to power, and 72 percent say that al-Qaeda will then use Afghanistan as a base for attacks against the West.

MacDonald thinks it's not too late to turn these trends around. She argues that the United States and its allies need to make clear why they've come and explain why Afghans will have a better future working with the coalition and the Afghan government.

People want electricity, for example, so she suggests a simple choice: Future with us, lights on; future with Taliban, lights off.

To improve the U.S. image with young Afghans, MacDonald has an innovative plan for a "marriage allowance" scheme to help them finance their most passionate ambition.

Gen. David Petraeus has stepped up the "enemy-centric" side of counterinsurgency, tripling the number of U.S. Special Operations raids from a year ago. But MacDonald's polling data make clear that the "protect the population" side isn't succeeding yet. The trends are improving, but not enough.
davidignatius@washpost.com
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The Afghan View
By KARL F. INDERFURTH and THEODORE L. ELIOT Jr. The New York Times November 18, 2010
One is constantly reminded of the grim realities of Afghanistan today, a country entering its 10th year of war with a bloody and brutal insurgency and a government in Kabul commonly viewed as corrupt and ineffective.

But there is another perception of what is taking place in Afghanistan that should be taken into account — what the Afghans themselves think of their current situation. A recent poll reveals that many Afghans actually believe things are getting better — slowly, to be sure, but improving despite the odds.

The survey was directed by the Asia Foundation in Kabul. It was the sixth public opinion poll conducted by the foundation since 2004, providing a snapshot of public opinion in Afghanistan over time.

The 634 trained Afghan pollsters interviewed 6,500 Afghans, almost equally divided between men and women and including all ethnic groups, across the country’s 34 provinces. When instability or the presence of fighting placed areas off limits, sampling replacements were made in the same region. The polling was done two months before the September parliamentary elections.

Nearly half of those polled (47 percent) said the country is moving in the right direction. That figure was 38 percent in 2008 and 42 percent in 2009. Twenty-seven percent said it was moving in the wrong direction, a corresponding decrease from the last two years.

The top three reasons cited for optimism were a perception of better security; construction and rebuilding projects such as roads and bridges; and the opening of schools for girls. More than half of those surveyed (54 percent) said they were personally aware of such projects in their areas. This is an important “hearts and minds” indicator: Afghans are seeing improvements that have a direct impact on their daily lives.

At the same time, Afghans were acutely aware of the major challenges they face, with insecurity (attacks, violence, terrorism) identified as the biggest problem by more than a third of those surveyed (37 percent), followed by continuing high unemployment (28 percent) and corruption (27 percent). Corruption, in fact, jumped from 17 percent last year.

Despite these challenges, the survey found that the level of confidence remained high in many key Afghan institutions, with the Afghan National Army toping this list at over 90 percent. Afghans said that the army is improving their security, that it is honest and fair, but that it is still unprofessional and poorly trained. Seventy percent of those surveyed said the army cannot operate by itself and needs the continuing support of foreign troops for training.

President Hamid Karzai has cited the end of 2014 as the date by which the Afghan Army and police will be ready to take over from U.S. and NATO forces — a timetable likely to be endorsed at the NATO summit in Lisbon.

The survey shows that satisfaction with the performance of the national government has risen steadily over the last three years, and now stands at 73 percent. The most commonly mentioned achievement is a better education system. This result is buttressed by numbers “on the ground” — seven million children, including 2.5 million girls, are now in schools; 90,000 graduated from the 12th grade last year.

The survey also found overwhelming Afghan support for the Karzai government’s efforts at reconciliation with the Taliban and other armed opposition groups. Eighty-three percent favor the government’s attempts to put an end to the fighting through negotiation, up from 71 percent last year. This strong desire for peace talks is perhaps a reflection of an old Afghan proverb: “Blood cannot be cleaned by blood.”

While clearly war weary, Afghans are also increasingly wary of the motivations of those trying to take control of the country. The level of sympathy for insurgent groups has fallen significantly in the last year, from 56 percent in 2009 to 40 percent this year. While more sympathy is found in the south and the west where the current fighting is concentrated, the survey shows that more Afghans across all regions have no sympathy at all. Two of the principle reasons cited: They are the oppressors and they are killing innocent people.

Finally, 81 percent of the Afghans surveyed say they continue to agree with the democratic principle of equal rights for all groups to political participation and representation, including gender equality and equal educational opportunities for women.

Many of the encouraging results of the Afghan survey sound almost counterintuitive given the daily negative reports emanating from that country. But given what the Afghans have experienced the past three decades, any signs they see of improvement are taken as forward progress. They have not given up on the possibility of building a better future for their country. Nor should the international community.

Karl F. Inderfurth, professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, was assistant U.S. secretary of state for South Asia affairs 1997-2001. Theodore L. Eliot Jr. was U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan 1973-1978 and is dean emeritus of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Both are trustees of The Asia Foundation.
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London rally to call for troops out of Afghanistan
Sat Nov 20, 6:15 am ET
LONDON (AFP) – Anti-war protesters will rally in London on Saturday to call for the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.

The demonstration in London is set to draw thousands of campaigners who oppose the conflict, the Stop The War Coalition said.

Students and sixth-form pupils from across the country will join the protest amid a "surge" of anti-war feeling, coalition spokeswoman Lindsey German said.

"It will be a lively demonstration to press for the withdrawal of troops," she said.

"Spending on Afghanistan is now approaching 5 billion pounds a year - money that should be spent on areas such as education and welfare, which are now under threat because of the government's spending cuts."

German said about 75 percent of the British public want troops to be brought home from Afghanistan.

The charity War On Want plans to back the protest because the war is "unwinnable", a spokesman said.

He added that there have been more civilian and military casualties in 2010 than during any similar period since the conflict began in 2001.

The demonstration comes as the 100th British member of the Armed Forces killed in the conflict this year was named as Christopher Davies.

John Hilary, executive director of War On Want, said: "The UK Government must face up to the reality that the war in Afghanistan is not only unrelenting in the growing toll of victims, but unjust and unwinnable.

"It must withdraw the troops and seek a political solution in favour of Afghans' freedom and human rights."

The protest was also organised by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and the British Muslim Initiative.

Activists plan to march from Hyde Park Speakers' Corner to Trafalgar Square, where they will hear speeches from Ken Livingstone, Labour's London mayoral candidate, Labour MPs Eric Joyce and John McDonnell, human rights lawyer Phil Shiner and former solider Joe Glenton.
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Afghan golf team makes Asian Games debut
By ERIC TALMADGE, Associated Press
GUANGZHOU, China (AP)—For Hashmatullah Sarwaree and Ali Ahmad Fazel, hazards aren’t a major concern on the golf course. After all, their club in Kabul was cleared of land mines after the fall of the Taliban regime.

That’s probably why scores that were more than 130 strokes behind the winners in the four-round Asian Games competition weren’t a major concern for the pair from Afghanistan, who finished third-to-last and last on the lush Dragon Lake Golf Course outside of Guangzhou on Saturday.

For 10 hours a day, pretty much every day, Sarwaree drives a taxi on the chaotic streets of Kabul.

That’s only his job, though. His heart belongs to golf.

“I just like golf,” he told The Associated Press. “I want to do it all the time.”

Golf in Afghanistan is a different brand than most people are used to. First off, the greens are made of sand and oil, which actually makes them brown but keeps them from blowing away. And there’s only one course in the whole country.

“It’s totally different here,” Sarwaree said after finishing his fourth round at Guangzhou in his country’s first try at golf in the Asian Games, a regional version of the Olympics that is held once every four years. “It’s so big, and there’s grass!”

Unaccustomed to teeing off on anything but sand or gravel, Sarwaree and Fazel finished at the bottom of the rankings—Sarwaree was 73rd out of 75 men at 116 over. Fazel was last, with a 179-over par total of 467.

The winner, South Korea’s Kim Meen-whee, finished with a 15-under par 273 total, and the silver medalist, Miguel Luis Tabuena of the Philippines, shot 6-under par.

Fazel, a student, was undaunted.

“I’m satisfied with what I did,” he said, smiling broadly. “I want to be a professional golfer someday. I just want to work hard.”

Despite the glaring lack of proper training facilities, golfing in the warzone that is Afghanistan is not as much of a hardship as one might think, said national coach Mohammad Juma Herwati.

He said the only course is at the Kabul Golf Club, a 9-hole facility built about 40 years ago by the Afghan government that is a 20-minute drive from the center of town. Because Kabul is relatively safe compared with some other parts of the war-torn country, the club is fairly active and usually open.

The golf course is something of a symbol of Afghanistan’s resilience.

It was cleared of land mines several years after the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, and has been in business since.

“I play every Friday,” Herwati said. “I’ve been playing for years.”

Herwati, who learned the game in Iran and has a 4.5 handicap, said that the number of Afghan golfers is steadily growing, although he acknowledged that the people who have the time, money or interest in a nation that has a lot of other things on its mind remains tiny in the overall scheme of things.

Still, he said, Afghanistan loves sports.

“People are very enthusiastic about this game,” he said. “We have actually started down the right path. We are doing our best.”

Afghanistan has 67 athletes competing in 13 sports at the Asian Games, and has won one silver and one bronze, both in the martial art of taekwondo. Its basketball team was knocked out in the preliminary rounds earlier this week. The men’s cricket team is in with a chance of a minor medal.

Herwati said that he tries not to think too much about the lack of funds and support that his team has compared with Asian sports powerhouses like China or South Korea. Instead, he says he wants to focus on what can be done on a day-to-day basis to improve the lot of Afghan golfers.

Progress is being made.

Sarwaree, for example, said he gets a $200 a month stipend from the government for golfing. That is roughly equal to the amount he makes driving his taxi.

“We want to do something constructive,” Herwati said. “We all have to work hard. We started from zero and have moved ahead.”
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Afghan ministry does not see delay at MCC's Aynak
19 Nov 2010 12:17:46 GMT By Polly Yam and Hamid Shalizi
HONG KONG/KABUL, Nov 19 (Reuters) - The Metallurgical Corp of China Ltd (MCC) said on Friday the discovery of an ancient temple could delay its Afghan copper project, but Afghanistan's Mines Ministry does not foresee any impact on the massive development.
The Aynak mine, southwest of the Afghan capital Kabul, is currently being developed and due to begin production in 2013. It is expected to contribute $300 million to $400 million to national coffers each year once it is running at full capacity, the country's mining minister has said.

It is a crucial component of plans to wean the country off the foreign aid that currently makes up most of its budget, and has been embraced by both President Hamid Karzai and the alliance of industrialised nations pouring cash into the country.

"The MCC project is the biggest investment in Afghanistan and we don't think the construction will be affected by the discovery of ancient sites," said Jawad Omer, spokesman for the Ministry of Mines and Industry.

The government and MCC already had an agreement on protecting cultural sites, are coordinating construction work and would build a museum at the site to house valuable finds, Omer added.

The area has long been exploited for the rich copper deposits in its rocks and is dotted with ancient smelting sites.

But archaeologists recently uncovered Buddhist remains in the area, including a temple, stupas, frescoes and statues several metres high, some more than 15 centuries old. [ID:nSGE67F08L]

MCC said the effort to uncover and preserve the relics could slow its work, and an Afghan who visited the site recently said they had been banned from using some explosives.

"(The discovery) may affect the progress of building the mine. Details should depend on the Afghan government's policy," MCC's board secretary Huang Dan said in an email sent to Reuters.

Other work for the project is proceeding normally, she added.

The Aynak copper project is 75 percent owned by MCC and 25 percent owned by China's top copper producer, Jiangxi Copper .

RISK VS REWARD

The Aynak mine is regarded as one of the world's major copper ore bodies, with proven reserves of 9 million tonnes of copper.

China is the world's top copper consumer but can produce less than one third of its needs, making the Aynak supply vital.

The mine is also the biggest overseas copper project for MCC, and will channel concentrates from Aynak into refined copper production at the firm's subsidiary Huludao, which currently has to buy them on international and Chinese markets.

The mine is expected to have annual capacity of 200,000 tonnes of metal in the first phase, expanding to 320,000 tonnes.

Revenue earned abroad rose from 2.5 percent of the company's total 2006 to 8.7 percent of revenue in the first six months of 2009, MCC said in a 2009 prospectus for a share offering.

"We expect that a significant portion of our revenue and profits will continue to be derived from international projects and other overseas operations," the prospectus added.

But the remote site has seen some clashes. Despite beefed up security the Aynak site was not visited for the prospectus and could become more vulnerable if the insurgency strengthens.

Violence in Afghanistan is at its worst since the Taliban were overthrown in late 2001, with record casualties on all sides of the conflict, and the insurgency spreading to previously peaceful northern and western parts of the country.

MCC warned this year that construction of Afghanistan's first major rail line, which it plans to build as part of its mining investments, could be in jeopardy if security worsens.

"If the security situation gets worse, then at that time the investors will have to assess how to go forward," MCC President Zou Jianhui said, after launching a feasibility study on the line, which gives two years before a final decision must be made.

(Additional reporting by Tom Miles in BEIJING; Writing by Emma Graham-Harrison in KABUL; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani) (If you have a query or comment on this story, send an email to news.feedback.asia@thomsonreuters.com)
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Construction contracts a weak link in Afghan nation building
By Dion Nissenbaum, Warren P. Strobel, Marisa Taylor and Jonathan S. Landay McClatchy Newspapers via The Seattle Times
SHAHRI BUZURG, Afghanistan — For more than a year, Afghan police chief Rajab Mohammed and his men have worked out of a dark, cramped mud home in a remote corner of Afghanistan while waiting in vain for construction workers to finish building the U.S.-funded police station across the street.

With winter fast approaching, some of the men, who'd been sleeping in a dirt courtyard, recently took over the idle construction site and set up cots inside the half-built station after they learned that the U.S. government had fired the Afghan company responsible for the project.

The U.S. is spending billions of dollars to build facilities like the one in Badakhshan for Afghanistan's expanding national police and new garrisons for its army. The ambitious program is a linchpin of President Obama's strategy to strengthen Afghan security forces so 100,000 U.S. troops can come home.

However, like much of the wider Afghan reconstruction effort, it's faltering, according to current and former U.S. officials, Afghan and American contractors, and contract documents.

Dozens of structures across the country either were poorly constructed or never completed at all. Tens of thousands of Afghan soldiers who were supposed to be living in garrisons by now are still housed in tents.

The stations and barracks represent a pattern repeated across Afghanistan: Construction projects are failing with such frequency that the administration's initiative to reinforce the Afghan security forces could be hobbled.

While American policymakers struggle to find enough money to resuscitate the U.S. economy or rebuild infrastructure at home, American taxpayers are financing an unprecedented construction boom in Afghanistan for new schools and clinics, electricity and water and roads and bridges.

U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of international forces in Afghanistan, has ordered a dramatic expansion in contracting. Other than asking a brigadier general to investigate problems with military contracts, so far he's failed to address their flaws.

A McClatchy Newspapers investigation has found that since January 2008, nearly $200 million in U.S. Army Corps of Engineers construction projects in Afghanistan have failed, face serious delays or resulted in subpar work. Poor record-keeping made it impossible for McClatchy to determine the value of faulty projects before then. The military tries to recover part of a project's cost, but in many cases, the funds were already spent.

The investigation also found that:

In a rush to award contracts to Afghan companies, the Corps accepts bids that don't cover the cost of a project, including the expense of security and a contractor's profit.

Rather than scrap a project that's failing, the government sometimes rewrites the contract to require only the work that's been done and declares the effort a success. The process is called "de-scoping."

A vast majority of the companies that McClatchy found were doing shoddy work haven't been banned from getting new U.S. contracts, according to government records. U.S. taxpayer dollars also continue to go to firms whose true ownership is hard to determine, making it difficult to hold anyone accountable.

Spending up anyway

Despite these challenges, the Corps' work in Afghanistan is set to more than double in the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1, to nearly $2 billion from $900 million in the northern half of Afghanistan alone, according to a recent presentation by Army Col. Thomas Magness, the commander of the Afghanistan Engineer District-North.

U.S. taxpayers also will pay to maintain the Afghan police and army bases, because the Afghans lack that capability. In August, the Corps awarded ITT Corp., based in White Plains, N.Y., an $800 million contract to maintain the sites and train Afghans themselves to eventually do so.

In an interview in Kabul, Magness said the number of contracts set aside for Afghan firms would expand from 25 last year to 91 this year, "so we are going all the way in."

He acknowledged past problems but promised changes. "There is a recognition that our construction is not keeping up with the requirements."

Before, he said, the approach to construction was " 'Ready, fire, aim,' and now we want to change it to 'Ready, aim, fire.' And I think as a result of that we'll have a higher record of success."

'Afghan First' program

Administration officials have concluded that its emphasis on awarding U.S. government contracts to local firms will build up the Afghan economy and strengthen the capabilities of domestic companies.

The U.S. has decided to expand this effort by promoting an experimental initiative that's supposed to give Afghan companies an edge over international firms competing for billions of dollars of work in Afghanistan.

The program, dubbed Afghan First, grew out of a meeting in 2006 in which Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, then the commander of the U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, held up a bottle of water imported from Pakistan and asked his staff, "Why can't we do this locally?" recalled retired Army Col. Andy Smith, his logistics chief.

The reason: Most of the U.S. contracting dollars go to U.S. or multinational contracting giants. Only 22 percent of U.S. development-assistance funds reached the local Afghan economy, according to a study by Peace Dividend Trust, a nonprofit working with the U.S. government. The reverse was true for Great Britain, which didn't funnel most of its aid through international companies. As a result, more than 70 percent of British aid reached the Afghan economy.

Before Afghan First can work, however, the U.S. approach needs fundamental rethinking, critics familiar with the program say.

"Their intentions are good, but the way they are managing the program is a total mess," said the president of a large U.S. firm doing work in Afghanistan, who requested anonymity to not risk his relations with the Army. "The system needs a serious, serious re-analysis and re-evaluation."

Deep cultural chasm

The administration also appears to be ignoring a deep cultural chasm exposed by the initiative, contractors and former government officials said.

Afghan firms, often with little experience and sometimes newly formed, bid too low on projects and then are unable to complete them. As a result, more than 40 Afghan police-headquarters projects have been delayed or terminated before completion.

One major reason: The Corps often insists that unqualified Afghan companies adhere to stringent U.S. building standards and tough safety requirements. The Corps concedes that only a handful of Afghan firms can meet those standards.

"This whole system is designed for the United States," said another U.S. contractor who asked to remain anonymous because he's doing business with the Corps. "It's Western standards being imposed on Eastern areas where they don't have the materials or the managers for this volume of work."

The laborers may not have the skills, either. DynCorp found that it had to train its construction workers how to hammer nails and pour concrete, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

Afghan firms are loaded down with "contract after contract" in the rush to build, even though they're not equipped to handle major projects, said John Brummet, a SIGAR assistant inspector general.

As a result, Corps officials have an expression for a project that fails to meet proper construction standards but is sufficient enough to be classified as completed, often through de-scoping. They call it "Afghan good."

Such low standards can result in unsafe buildings, however. Six police stations in southern Afghanistan's most volatile provinces, for instance, were supposed to be built for less than $1 million each but were so poorly constructed by one Afghan contractor, Basirat Construction Firm, that they can't be occupied, according to auditors.

Even though the stations in Helmand and Kandahar were never completed, the Corps paid Basirat most of the $5.5 million contract price after subcontracting oversight to local Afghans, who provided digital pictures of supposed progress.

When projects go under, the subcontractors often are left in the lurch. The Corps doesn't require prime contractors to take out bonds that guarantee that their subcontractors get paid.

The Afghan contractor "suddenly realizes he's not going to make it, takes the money and doesn't pay the subcontractor and leaves," said Mazin Sadiq, of FCEC UIProjects, a construction joint venture working in Afghanistan. "Most of the stories are like that."
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Pentagon's decision to send tanks to Afghanistan praised
The Washington Times By Ashish Kumar Sen Friday, November 19, 2010
The Pentagon's decision to deploy heavily armored battle tanks to Afghanistan is being hailed as a step in the right direction by military and civilian advisers in that war.

Retired Gen. Jack Keane, who recently participated in an assessment of the situation for the commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, welcomed news of the deployment.

"Many of us had been scratching our heads over why [the tanks] hadn't been sent before, given the success we enjoyed with them during the counterinsurgency in Iraq," Gen. Keane said at a discussion at the Institute for the Study of War on Friday.

A company of 14 M1A1 Abrams tanks along with 115 Marines to crew them will be deployed to southwest Afghanistan in December.

Gen. Keane said the tanks had been effective in Iraqi cities, especially when coupled with ground troops.

"I think the commanders recognized that a tank accompanied by infantry is a formidable weapons system," Gen. Keane said, adding, "You can compel other people's will just by its presence. ... And it also provides protection for our troops."

The Washington Post first reported the Pentagon's decision to deploy the tanks on Friday.

Gen. Keane said the Afghan Taliban does not as yet have adequate firepower to defeat the heavily armored tanks.

Max Boot, an adviser to U.S. commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan, said the decision by Gen. Petraeus to send tanks to Afghanistan "blows a big hole in one of the myths of population-centric counterinsurgency."

"Successful counterinsurgency combines attempts to reach out to the population with very hard-headed kinetic action to capture and kill insurgents," Mr. Boot said, adding this is precisely the strategy being deployed by Gen. Petraeus.

According to Western officials who closely follow developments in Afghanistan, a surge of U.S. troops is beginning to produce results.

One of the officials, who discussed developments on the condition of anonymity because he is not allowed to speak to the press, said it is becoming evident that the Taliban are "increasingly on the back foot."

However, an Afghan official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the matter, cautioned that this could be a "tactical move" on the part of the Taliban who may be biding time until coalition troops start to withdraw.

"The Taliban know they have time on their side," the Afghan official said.

Despite efforts by the Obama administration to undo damage caused by its announcement of a July 2011 date to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, officials and analysts say it has had a deleterious effect on Afghan morale.

"The deadline of July 2011 has done us enormous harm. It has led a great many Afghans and Pakistanis and others to believe we are [getting] out of there too quickly," said Ronald Neumann, who served as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan during the George W. Bush administration.

NATO leaders meeting in Lisbon on Saturday will discuss plans to draw out the withdrawal of coalition troops to the end of 2014.

The alliance's leaders are also expected to agree on a timetable to transfer responsibility for security to Afghan forces.

Speaking in Lisbon on Friday, President Obama said coalition partners and the Afghan government would work to "align our approach on Afghanistan, particularly in two areas: our transition to full Afghan lead between 2011 and 2014, and the long-term partnership that we're building in Afghanistan."

But U.S. officials describe 2014 as only "an aspirational goal."

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said this week that "although the goal is to have Afghan security forces in the lead over the preponderance of the country by then, it does not necessarily mean, A) that everywhere in the country they will necessarily be in the lead -- although clearly that would be the goal, that would be the hope, that's what we would shoot for ... and B), that it does not mean that all U.S. or coalition forces would necessarily be gone by that date. There may very well be the need for forces to remain in-country, albeit, hopefully, at smaller numbers, to assist the Afghans as they assume lead responsibility for the security of their country."

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the West must stay committed in Afghanistan for "as long as it takes."

Gen. Keane said the coalition's ability to successfully meet its 2014 target is threatened by the continuing support from the Pakistani government and army for militant safe havens along the border with Afghanistan.

"Those sanctuaries are aided and abetted by the government of Pakistan and by the military of Pakistan. If the Pakistanis do not pull the plug on those sanctuaries ... it is hard to imagine us meeting the 2014 date," Gen. Keane said.

Pakistan's involvement in Afghanistan is linked to its desire to limit archrival India's influence in the region.

Shuja Nawaz, director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council, said parts of the Pakistani establishment continue to view Afghanistan as a client state.

"A serious attempt is needed within Pakistan to rethink this view of Afghanistan," Mr. Nawaz said.

Mr. Boot said terrorist safe havens, along with government corruption, were the two most problematic issues in Afghanistan.

"I don't think you can get the Pakistanis to turn off support for the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani Network and others any time in the near future, but we can safeguard Afghanistan against foreign interference," he said.

Describing government corruption as the best recruiting agent that the Taliban have, Mr. Boot said this is one area in which the U.S. can do more by regulating the flow of its contracting dollars.

Gen. Keane, who last visited Afghanistan in September, said the situation on the ground is changing for the better and if this momentum continues, by next spring "we will have definable progress that will be self-evident to anyone."

He said the surge of U.S. troops was working and cited an "erosion of the will of the enemy" and a "breakdown of its morale" as key indicators of this progress.

Gen. Keane said every coalition commander he met while in Afghanistan had evidence of Taliban fighters reaching out to switch sides. "Sometimes it was just a handful and in others as much as 200... that is a very significant factor," he said.

Mr. Neumann, meanwhile, said it was important to check a desire for instant results and cautioned against exaggerating progress.
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Afghanistan: military quagmire and government money pit
The Guardian By Pratap Chatterjee 19/11/2010
One reason US reconstruction work in Afghanistan is so fruitless is that oversight into where the billions go is wholly inadequate

Louis Berger, a major construction company headquartered in New Jersey, has agreed to pay out a record $69.3m in fines (pdf), the largest ever such penalty imposed on a contractor working in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq. The company has been awarded billions of dollars in contracts for the construction of roads, schools and electrical plants in Afghanistan.

Harold Salomon, a former senior financial analyst at the company, discovered that company officials were sending bills for items like the cost of the music system in its Washington, DC office to the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Salomon blew the whistle on estimated overcharging of up to $20m and took the company to court with the help of Phillips & Cohen, a trial law firm in Washington, DC.

"Today I can affirm to those who told me the Louis Berger Group can get away with anything that they were wrong," Salomon said in a press statement, when the settlement was announced on 5 November. "To those who said, 'If you cannot beat them, you have to join them,' I say they were wrong, too."

Louis Berger's work in Afghanistan was first heavily criticised in a 2006 report by Fariba Nawa of CorpWatch titled "Afghanistan, Inc." (full disclosure: I commissioned this report when I worked at CorpWatch). Nawa described a clinic in Qala Qazi built by Louis Berger, which she had visited, that was falling apart:

"The ceiling had rotted away in patches; the plumbing, when it worked, leaked and shuddered; the chimney, made of flimsy metal, threatened to set the roof on fire; the sinks had no running water; and the place smelled of sewage."

Louis Berger also advised USAID on a road from Sar-e Paul province and Shiberghan, the capitol of Jawzjan province, which Nawa also visited. The highway did not have shoulders for emergency stops, gravel on the road caused their car punctures and broke windshields, and the runoff from the raised road was flooding local homes. A petition, signed by 1,000 local residents, was delivered to the local governor, but since the road was paid for by Washington, the governor was unable to do anything.

"On a programme of this magnitude, there will be problems; the challenges in Afghanistan make it even more difficult. There will be disagreements and mistakes made by anybody at any given time. However, you overcome those problems and you keep the objectives in mind and move forward," Fred Chace, deputy operations manager for Berger in Afghanistan, wrote in an email to Nawa when she asked for explanations of these problems in November 2005.

Five years later, the company has admitted that its employees were overcharging the government at about the same time. "When the company identified issues with its allocations to the federal government for projects overseas, it began refunding the government in addition to implementing a companywide internal improvement programme," asserted company spokesperson Holly Fisher in an official statement last week.

Despite this investgation and settlement, a slew of new reports from the special inspector general for Afghanistan (Sigar) suggests that the US government still does not have a full grasp of what happens to the billions of dollars that are being funnelled into Afghanistan today. Between 2007 and 2009, the Pentagon, the state department and USAID approved nearly $18bn to nearly 7,000 contractors. According to an October 2010 audit by Sigar, they cannot readily account for this expenditure: "If we don't even know who we're giving money to, it is nearly impossible to conduct system wide oversight," said Major General Arnold Fields, director of Sigar.

A second audit issued by Sigar last month showed that "six Afghan National Police (ANP) facilities funded by the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) in the strongholds of Kandahar and Helmand are so poorly constructed, they are currently unusable." And a third audit by Sigar issued at the same time reported that the "US government is unable to determine how much money it has given the Afghan government in salary supplements since 2002, or how many recipients are being paid."

The litany of financial mismanagement goes on. In a fourth audit issued by Sigar in October, investigators reported that Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan was receiving millions of dollars in aid which local government officials were unable to properly oversee. "This haphazard approach to development assistance results in overlapping, or duplicate, projects, and also a lack of much-needed facilities because donors funnelling in millions of dollars do not know what specific projects the various donor countries are responsible for," Maj Gen Fields reported. "This is a recipe for a disaster, and a recipe for tremendous waste of money and resources."

Nine years after the invasion of Afghanistan, one has to ask the questions: why is there no proper way to manage money in Nangarhar (where the US has a major military base); why are police stations in Helmand and Kandahar (the two provinces with the largest military operations) unusable; and why is there, apparently, no way to tell whether or not the government salaries are being paid out properly; and what, finally, has happened to the last 18bn of US taxpayers' dollars spent in the country?

Yet, reconstruction funding is only part of the problem in Afghanistan. An estimated $14bn a year has been spent by the Pentagon and Nato on contractors to build bases and drive fuel trucks. Some of that money is believed to leak out into the hands of insurgent groups like the Taliban, according to an investigation conducted by the US Congress.

The Pentagon has appointed a special group called Task Force 2010 to follow those billions. The answers to where the money has gone aren't necessarily going to be made public by the Pentagon, in which case American taxpayers may have to hope there will be another Harold Salomon willing to put the information in the public domain via WikiLeaks or trial lawyers like Phillips & Cohen.
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The Afghan Tea Party
The Daily Beast By Ann Marlowe November 19, 2010
Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has been loudly calling for the U.S. to scale back its presence in Afghanistan, is meeting with Obama in Lisbon today to discuss war strategy. But not everyone in Afghanistan is swatting the U.S. away. Ann Marlowe meets one man who has American taxpayers' interest at heart—Kabul's anti-Karzai.

“In the presidential election, some people said I was the populist candidate. But this is wrong. I was the candidate of the American taxpayer,” says Dr. Ramazon Bashardost, sitting in his cramped office in the Afghan parliamentary office building. “For the $40 billion you’ve spent here, you could have built three Afghanistans. But in nine years you’ve not built one new dam! You have $18 billion in American aid that you cannot account for!”

As the Obama administration commits to a continuation of the costly U.S. presence in Afghanistan for at least four more years, it’s nice to know that someone has the American taxpayers’ interest in mind—even if it’s an Afghan politician.

And Dr. Bashardost—who holds three master’s degrees and a doctorate in law from French universities—is well worth American attention. While it’s unlikely he’ll ever lead Afghanistan, he offers a hard-hitting critique of American efforts from something very like the standpoint of an Afghan Tea Party.

The refined, soft-spoken and compactly built 45-year-old politician is best known for running his 2009 presidential campaign from a tent nearby. But this afternoon, the only evidence of eccentricity is his trademark white suit, trimmed in the red, black and green of the Afghan flag, that he designed himself.

“Old style colonialism was about extraction of resources. The new colonialism is about unlimited spending.”

This office is a hive of activity in a notoriously ineffective institution that has only in the last year or so begun to stand up to President Hamid Karzai. In Afghanistan, lawmakers are elected as individuals without official party affiliation, making for shadowy networks of influence and undisciplined individualism on the floor.

Currently, Afghans are waiting for the final results of September’s parliamentary elections, where more than 2,500 candidates competed. But accusations of fraud and disputes have deadlocked the situation for weeks.

A member of parliament from Kabul, Bashardost was the third-highest vote-getter in the August 2009 presidential elections, winning about 10 percent of the vote, employing a kind of barnstorming campaign almost unheard of here. In a country where even governors or parliamentarians get out much, Bashardost visited 28 of the country’s 34 provinces, railing against waste and corruption.

“It is time to listen to the ordinary people of Afghanistan,” he says, taking aim at most of the Afghan political class, including but not limited to President Karzai and his brothers. (Mahmoud is being investigated for corruption.) “When Afghans complain to me about the market economy, I tell them that we do not have market economy—we have mafia economy.”

Unlike nearly every other member of the Afghan elite, Bashardost maintains a seemingly genuine horror at the disparity between official perks and the standard of living of the average Afghan. When he was minister of planning (a position since abolished) in Karzai’s first administration, he would often spend his own salary to buy lunch for his ill-paid staffers. And an Afghan diplomat reports that when Bashardost was summoned to a meeting with other Afghan dignitaries at the Marriott hotel coffee shop, he took one look at the menu with its $8 coffees, threw the menu to the ground, and upbraided his colleagues for spending on a coffee what the average Afghan lives on for several days.

To an American, Bashardost looks like the local equivalent of a Tea Party candidate, and not the only one. Another highly educated Afghan politician, Dr. Ashraf Ghani,—the Beltway favorite who is now working for the very man he previously railed against, President Karzai—struck a similar theme during the election. Both men, who campaigned on anti-corruption platforms that relied heavily on their reputations for honesty, have doctorates and are serious intellectuals.

But while Ghani is also known for his violent temper and Pashtun nationalist views, Bashardost successfully played down his Hazara origins, and won respect and support among some of the Sunni Pashtun tribesmen who traditionally despise the Shia Hazara. (Earlier this year, I was surprised to hear rural Pashtun men in Khost say they had come very close to voting for Bashardost because he is not corrupt.) Bashardost’s problem is similar to that of Ghani: they’re both Tea Party candidates without a party, lacking a cohesive movement or political organization to back them. Both men were unwilling to make the compromises which are generally the lifeblood of politics and, unable to suppress their personal ambitions, failed to build a coalition that might have decisively defeated Karzai.

“I cannot choose between two corrupt politicians,” Bashardost insists. “I cannot support a warlord or corrupt politician. All Afghans in power are killers.”

What’s the way forward for the U.S. in Afghanistan? Bashardost envisions yet another sit-down in a country much given to sit-downs—this one of Western donor nation prime ministers, President Karzai, and major Afghan powerbrokers. “It is time to speak frankly. When you speak kindly with an Afghan politician, he will not think you are kind, but that you are weak or afraid.”

He also proposed a new ministry of anti-corruption with a dedicated police force to investigate the countless cases of government dishonesty. But a cynic might respond that, given the Afghan track record, we might then need another ministry to investigate the ministry of anti-corruption, and so on ad infinitum.

In one respect, Dr. Bashardost isn’t all that different from other politicians in power. While he rails against waste and corruption, he fundamentally believes that our massive aid transfer to Afghanistan should continue, undiminished, arguing that unless we continue to prop up Afghanistan, “al Qaeda will come back.”

For now, the foreign money pipe spews seemingly endless amounts of money. As a young business consultant here, Michael Guarino, told me the other day, “Old style colonialism was about extraction of resources. The new colonialism is about unlimited spending.”

Ann Marlowe is a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute who blogs for World Affairs. She visits Afghanistan frequently.
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TV Channel, Part Owned by Murdoch, Gets Threats in Iran
New York Times By DEXTER FILKINS November 19, 2010
KABUL, Afghanistan - In little more than a year, the Persian-language satellite television channel beamed into Iran by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation and a prominent Afghan family has rapidly become one of the most popular stations in the country.

A little too popular, it appears.

This week, a long-running campaign led by the Iranian government to undermine the channel, Farsi1, took a menacing turn: A group calling itself the Iranian Cyber Army hacked into Farsi1’s Web site, as well as several sites owned by the Mohseni family, and posted a cryptic but sinister warning.

“The allies of Zionism should know this,” said the message, which stayed on the Web sites for about six hours on Thursday. “Dreams of destroying the foundation of the family will lead straight to the graveyard.”

The exact meaning of the message was unclear, but conservative Iranian leaders complain that the programming — a heavily censored variety of comedies, soap operas and dramas — is eroding traditional Iranian values.

The campaign against Farsi1 illustrates the growing fear among Iranian leaders over the intrusion of private broadcasters onto the country’s airwaves, which is challenging the state’s monopoly over the flow of information.

The cyberattack is the latest effort in a campaign to discredit the television station, which went on the air in August 2009. This year, Iranian authorities tried to jam a satellite used by the channel. Personal attacks on Mr. Murdoch, as well as on Saad Mohseni, the chairman of the Moby Group, have appeared on Iranian television and newspapers. News Corporation and the Moby Group each own half of the channel.

The Iranian authorities appear to be particularly unnerved by the entrance of Mr. Murdoch, who is not just an aggressive businessman but also a politically active one. In neighboring Afghanistan, the Mohseni family has built a successful string of television and radio stations and Web sites since the American-led invasion in 2001.

Both Mr. Murdoch and the Mohseni family were named in the renegade Web site posting that appeared Thursday.

According to American officials, as well as spokesmen for both the Moby Group and the News Corporation, Farsi1 receives no funds from any government.

Indeed, Farsi1 offers no political fare, neither news nor editorial commentary. Instead, it provides viewers with comedies and dramas, most of them from Latin America and Korea, and toned down for a more conservative Iranian audience.

Though the plots often involve romance and infidelity, anything resembling male-female contact is excised — even kissing. The menu even includes a few American standbys like “24,” which features an American federal agent who often battles terrorists from the Muslim world.

“If the script says anything that is not right or appropriate, we edit it,” said Zaid Mohseni, the chief executive officer of Farsi1 and Saad Mohseni’s brother. “Visually, if there is something not appropriate, we edit it out. We know that the majority of viewers are watching with their families. We are very sensitive to this.”

Still, Farsi1 has drawn the ire of Iranian leaders, who say that the Western-oriented programming represents an assault on traditional Iranian values and is even corrupting the Iranian people.

“Satellite TV programs such as those broadcast on Farsi1 destroy the chastity and honor of our families and encourage the young to take up lovemaking, wine drinking and Satan worship,” Mohammad-Taghi Rahbar, a member of Parliament, told the Iranian news agency IWNA this year.

“The channel is funded by ‘Zionist money’ and planned and managed by Iran’s enemies,” he said, without providing details. “What family that has any dignity would let is members watch Farsi1?”

Television audiences are difficult to measure in Iran, especially audiences for programs broadcast by satellite. Satellite dishes are prohibited, but as many as half the households in Tehran are thought to maintain them.

A station like Farsi1, which is based in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, has no transmitter inside Iran. Many of the Persian-language channels that are broadcast into the country are news- and politics-oriented, like the BBC or the Voice of America.

Farsi1’s backers focus exclusively on entertainment and, by doing so, say they have been able to draw millions of viewers away from the drab programs offered by Iranian state television and the news-only offerings of the others.

Mr. Mohseni says that by his own tentative estimates, Farsi1 has been able to draw several million viewers a day. If that is true, then it has most likely peeled viewers away from some of the more mainstream Iranian stations — and possibly irritated some of the Iranian government’s establishment, who have a vested interest in the success of state television.

“We should not discount financial motivations in the negative statements about Farsi1,” Mr. Mohseni said.

In any case, anti-Western fears appear to be running at a high pitch in Iran these days, especially since the huge antigovernment protests last year that the government eventually crushed.

In a television interview earlier this year, Hassan Abassi, the head of the Center for Doctrinal and Strategic Studies, associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, warned against a “soft cultural war” being waged by the West. The Revolutionary Guards is an especially politicized wing of the Iranian military. Mr. Abassi said that the American show “24” was meant to encourage hatred of Muslims and fear of Islam by portraying Muslims as terrorists.

Mr. Mohseni said, “If people feel we are destroying the culture, they will not watch us.”

The Iranian Cyber Army appears to be a group affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards and dedicated to staging computer attacks against perceived enemies. A Web site, ircarmy.com, says the group was established “to protest U.S. and Israeli interference in our internal affairs” and “the distribution of false news.”

The group has a proven track record, experts say.

“The Iranian government has in the past claimed to attack Web sites on U.S. servers to collect the names of Iranian dissidents,” said Jeffrey Carr, an expert on computer hacking and the author of “Inside Cyber Warfare.”

“I suspect that this is a case of a patriotic, highly skilled Iranian hacker crew conducting an attack on behalf of their government, but not officially a part of the government,” Mr. Carr said.

He said the Iranian Cyber Army recently took credit for an attack on Baidu, the Chinese Internet search engine.

William Yong contributed reporting from Tehran, and John Markoff from San Francisco.
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