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Taliban attack on US chopper kills Afghan interpreter
by Jennie Matthew
KABUL (AFP) – Taliban insurgents fired a rocket into a US helicopter on Tuesday, killing an Afghan interpreter and wounding eight soldiers in eastern Afghanistan, a key flashpoint in the country's war.
Cargo plane crashes near Kabul, seven dead: official
By Hamid Shalizi
KABUL (Reuters) – A civilian cargo transport plane crashed into mountains near the Afghan capital Kabul on Tuesday evening, killing all seven people on board, a local civil aviation official said.
Pakistan says it is key to Taliban peace talks
By Zarar Khan, Associated Press Writer – Tue Oct 12, 7:48 am ET
ISLAMABAD – Pakistan's prime minister said Tuesday that peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban cannot succeed without Islamabad's help, a reminder of the leverage the country has because of its historical ties with the group.
Mediator sees Karzai softening on Afghan talks
Sayed Salahuddin Reuters via Yahoo! UK & Ireland News - Oct 11 11:18pm
Afghan President Hamid Karzai is backing away from his preconditions for peace talks with the Taliban by giving full autonomy to a newly formed council tasked with opening negotiations, one of its members said. Skip related content
Afghan Peace Council to begin work: presidential spokesman
KABUL, Oct. 12 (Xinhua) -- The chief spokesman of Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday said that the High Council for Peace set up recently to accelerate the government-backed national reconciliation program to end the protracted war, would formally start its working day on Wednesday.
ICRC: Kandahar casualties reflect worsening security
By the CNN Wire Staff October 12, 2010 7:01 a.m. EDT
Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- War casualties in a Kandahar hospital are "hitting record highs," figures that illustrate the "deteriorating security situation" in southern Afghanistan, the International Committee for the Red Cross said on Tuesday.
Taliban diversifying income generation means in Pakistan
by Syed Moazzam Hashmi
ISLAMABAD, Oct. 12 (Xinhua) -- The insurgent Taliban militants in Pakistan have diversified their income generation means by finding new ways to continue funding terrorism and saboteurs against international community's the war-on-terror, analysts said Tuesday.
Afghan gov't sets up land authority to ease land management
KABUL, Oct. 12 (Xinhua) -- In efforts to revive economy and promote agricultural development in the war-shattered Afghanistan, the Afghan government has set up a new land department - Afghanistan Land Authority, to coordinate land issues and ease land management across the country, Chief Executive Officer of the newly established body said Tuesday.
In Afghanistan, the first hints of success
The Washington Post By Michael Gerson Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Success in Afghanistan is beginning to come in the first muddy trickles after a long drought.
Small groups of Taliban fighters -- sometimes a dozen with a leader -- are approaching local Afghan government officials, asking what kind of deal they might get. "First, they want to be taken off any list, so they are not targeted," explains a NATO official in Afghanistan. "Second, they want protection from the insurgency. Third, some kind of economic opportunity."
Afghanistan Seeks To Further Reduce High Maternal Mortality Rate
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty October 12, 2010
KABUL -- The Afghan Health Ministry says that although it has lowered the country's high maternal mortality rate in recent years, the country is still critically short of trained midwives, RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan reports.
Taliban border haven in U.S. sights
Some officials urge military action on Pakistani soil to curb the flow of fighters and bomb-making materials into southern Afghanistan.
Los Angeles Times By David S. Cloud October 11, 2010
Reporting from Washington - U.S. military officials racing to make progress in Afghanistan are pressing new tactics to choke off the flow of Taliban fighters and bomb-making materials from Pakistan into key battlefields of the south, with some even advocating cross-border attacks, according to several U.S. civilian and military officials.
Kabul's Old City Gets A Face-Lift, And An Injection Of Cash
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty October 11, 2010 By Charles Recknagel
KABUL -- Kabul has been so damaged by wars and pell-mell rebuilding that it's hard to remember this was once a pretty city with elegant mud-brick mansions, elaborate carved-wood lattices, and shady courtyards.
Afghan Training Makes Gains, Though War Struggles
By C. J. CHIVERS The New York Times October 12, 2010
KABUL, Afghanistan — Long a lagging priority, the plan to produce many more highly trained Afghan security forces is moving this fall at a rapid pace. Two main training sites — the Kabul Military Training Center, used principally by the Afghan Army, and the Central Training Center, used by the police
Payoff seen in Afghan surge
Taliban demoralized and changing sides, military says
The Washington Times By Rowan Scarborough Monday, October 11, 2010
The U.S. military is starting to see signs that the troop surge in Afghanistan is working on a timetable similar to the Iraq reinforcement campaign in 2007, according to an outside adviser and military sources.
The foreplay of an Afghan settlement
Asia Times By M K Bhadrakumar 12/10/2010
When "well-placed Pakistani and Arab sources" sing like magpie robins, you never get tired of hearing them. There is a lot of variety to their songs. The magpie robin gives voice to a range of motifs: loud songs to establish territory and pair formation; soft, aggressive songs to defend territory; or, haunting resting melodies.
First Sports Museum Opened in Kabul
Mir Sayed Sediqi Tolo news October 10, 2010
For the first time in sports history of Afghanistan, Museum of National Olympics Committee was inaugurated by Minister of information and culture, Sayed Makhdoum Rahin
US orders probe of aid worker's death in Afghanistan
by Sam Reeves – Tue Oct 12, 3:01 am ET
LONDON (AFP) – The US has ordered a probe into the death of a British aid worker kidnapped in Afghanistan amid fears she may have been killed by a grenade detonated by American troops attempting to rescue her.
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Taliban attack on US chopper kills Afghan interpreter
by Jennie Matthew
KABUL (AFP) – Taliban insurgents fired a rocket into a US helicopter on Tuesday, killing an Afghan interpreter and wounding eight soldiers in eastern Afghanistan, a key flashpoint in the country's war.
The US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) took nearly a full day to confirm that an explosion on the aircraft was caused by an insurgent attack, which the Taliban militia had been quick to claim.
An AFP correspondent in Kunar province said he saw three helicopters flying over the Ghash area of Marawar district and then heard the sound of rocket fire, after which two helicopters flew off and a gun battle broke out.
"Eight people were wounded and one killed after a rocket-propelled-grenade was fired at an International Security Assistance Force helicopter in Kunar province today," the military said.
There were 26 people on board the helicopter, which ISAF identified as a US CH-47 Chinook.
The helicopter had just landed at a military outpost and was off-loading through the rear ramp when the RPG was fired into the cargo bay.
"The explosion resulted in one Afghan interpreter killed, seven ISAF service members and one Afghan border police member wounded," the military said.
Eastern Afghanistan is one of the most volatile parts of the country, where Taliban and other Islamist insurgents have carved out strongholds. It lies just across the border from Pakistan, where militant groups have rear bases.
The interior ministry said separately that six civilians, including a woman and two children, were killed Tuesday when insurgents fired a rocket into the Ghibi Khil area of southeastern province Paktika.
The war is now in its deadliest year. Around 152,000 foreign troops under US and NATO command are fighting a Taliban insurgency that has steadily expanded since the 2001 US-led invasion brought down their regime.
NATO and US troops rely heavily on helicopters for transporting troops and supplies across the country, where convoys travelling on largely poor roads are vulnerable to attacks by insurgents.
While helicopter accidents are not uncommon, the Taliban have attacked NATO air assets in the past and militia spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed that the insurgent group had shot down the helicopter on Tuesday.
A NATO soldier died on Tuesday in a bomb attack in southern Afghanistan, the military said, but as a matter of policy ISAF no longer discloses the nationalities of troops killed in combat.
The death took to 576 the number of foreign troops killed in 2010, according to an AFP toll based on the independent website icasualties.org.
The conflict has killed more than 2,140 international soldiers since the 2001 invasion replaced the Taliban with a Western-backed administration.
On Tuesday, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said the number of wounded being treated at the main hospital in Kandahar, in the heart of the conflict-torn south, has soared to a record high.
Thousands of NATO and Afghan troops are fighting to control Kandahar city in Operation Dragon Strike.
As the Taliban's spiritual capital and the largest city in the south, the fate of Kandahar is considered crucial to a US-led campaign to beat back the Taliban as quickly as possible and restore confidence in the Afghan government.
About 1,000 patients with weapon-related injuries were registered at the Mirwais Regional Hospital in August and September 2010, almost twice as many as the same period last year, the ICRC said.
"Our greatest challenge consists in maintaining access to the areas hardest hit by the fighting, but the increase in the number of armed groups is making this much harder for us," said Reto Stocker, the ICRC head in Kabul.
Western public opinion is growing increasingly tired of the war, angry over corruption within President Hamid Karzai's government and mounting casualties as the conflict pushes into its 10th year.
In Italy, Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said Rome would start withdrawing its troops next year, making the comments in an interview published on the same day as a funeral for four Italian soldiers killed in the war.
Italy is the fifth largest contributor of foreign troops in Afghanistan, deploying around 3,400 troops on the ground.
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Cargo plane crashes near Kabul, seven dead: official
By Hamid Shalizi
KABUL (Reuters) – A civilian cargo transport plane crashed into mountains near the Afghan capital Kabul on Tuesday evening, killing all seven people on board, a local civil aviation official said.
Afghan and international forces sent a search and rescue mission and helicopters out to the area of the crash, around 25-30 kilometers (15-20 miles) east of Kabul, after the aircraft went down en route from nearby Bagram military air base.
"It was a cargo plane coming from Bagram to Kabul when it hit the peak," Nangyalai Qalatwal, spokesman for the Ministry of Civil Aviation, told Reuters.
He said all seven people on board had died and all were foreigners, but he had no details of their nationalities.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said early reports indicated the plane was an L-100 Hercules aircraft, the civilian equivalent of a military C-130. The plane was not an ISAF aircraft, a spokesman for the force said.
A police official had earlier reported a passenger plane had crashed near the Afghan capital.
Kabul's international airport is bustling with civilian and military air traffic involved in U.S., NATO and United Nations operations in the country's conflict and aid efforts, as well as commercial passenger and cargo flights.
In May, a plane from Afghanistan's Pamir Airways crashed into a remote Hindu Kush mountain region near Kabul, killing 43 passengers and crew. Before that the last major air crash was in 2005 when a Boeing 737 operated by Afghan carrier Kam Air crashed in a snow storm, killing 104 passengers and crew.
(Additional reporting by Emma Graham-Harrison; Writing by Patrick Markey; Editing by Peter Graff)
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Pakistan says it is key to Taliban peace talks
By Zarar Khan, Associated Press Writer – Tue Oct 12, 7:48 am ET
ISLAMABAD – Pakistan's prime minister said Tuesday that peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban cannot succeed without Islamabad's help, a reminder of the leverage the country has because of its historical ties with the group.
The drumbeat about talks has picked up in recent days, fueled in part by Afghan President Hamid Karzai's confirmation that his government has had informal discussions with the Taliban on securing peace in Afghanistan "for quite some time."
Pakistan has offered to facilitate peace talks previously, but Afghanistan is believed to be suspicious of its motives. Pakistan helped the Taliban seize power in Afghanistan in the 1990s and many of the group's senior commanders, including leader Mullah Omar, are believed to be based along Pakistan's rugged border with Afghanistan.
Many analysts suspect Pakistan would again like to see the Taliban in a position of power in Afghanistan to act as a counterweight to Islamabad's archenemy, India, in the country. This suspicion has raised questions about how Pakistan would use its influence with the Taliban during any negotiations with the Afghan government.
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani tried to dispel concerns about the country's role when asked about Taliban peace talks Tuesday, but also reminded observers of the leverage Pakistan has in the process.
"Look, nothing can happen without us because we are part of the solution. We are not part of the problem," Gilani told reporters while visiting the northwest town of Charsadda.
Many people wonder just how far Pakistan would go to protect its interests.
The Pakistani government arrested the Taliban's No. 2 leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, in February in a joint raid with the CIA — a move that some analysts believe was driven by Pakistan's desire to guarantee itself a seat at the negotiating table. Baradar was considered a likely channel in any talks with the top Taliban leadership.
The momentum for talks has picked up since the arrest as support for a drawn-out military push in Afghanistan is waning in the U.S. and with other NATO allies. Sending thousands more U.S. troops this summer to the country's south has yet to show significantly increased security in the Taliban heartland.
NATO's top commander in Afghanistan — Gen. David Petraeus — said recently that the military coalition was aware of overtures made by Taliban insurgents at the highest levels to the Afghan government.
Karzai told CNN's "Larry King Live" in an interview broadcast Monday that the Afghan government has held informal talks with the Taliban "countryman to countryman" over an extended period.
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Mediator sees Karzai softening on Afghan talks
Sayed Salahuddin Reuters via Yahoo! UK & Ireland News - Oct 11 11:18pm
Afghan President Hamid Karzai is backing away from his preconditions for peace talks with the Taliban by giving full autonomy to a newly formed council tasked with opening negotiations, one of its members said. Skip related content
Set up by Karzai after it was approved by a grand assembly he summoned in June, the High Peace Council aims to find ways to end a war now in its 10th year and will sit down this week to devise a mechanism for starting the talks.
Karzai has always demanded the Taliban and other militants renounce violence and al Qaeda, accept the Afghan constitution and lay down their arms before talks can start.
Analysts say that is tantamount to seeking the surrender of the Taliban, who have gained strength in recent years and spread to the previously peaceful north of the country despite the presence of nearly 150,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan.
But when the 68-member High Peace Council was inaugurated on Thursday, Karzai, Afghanistan's leader since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001, said his government would not interfere in the council's decisions as it tries to start talks.
Atta Ullah Ludin, a lawmaker in parliament and member of the council, said he saw Karzai's comments as a sign the president was backing away from his long-held demands.
"The previous conditions were a bit tough and tight. He has given unconditional authority to the council this time," Ludin told Reuters in an interview when asked whether he considered Karzai's latest comments a significant shift.
"In politics there are such softenings. And this proposal of His Excellency, Karzai, is very rational for giving the High Peace Council full authority," he added.
Karzai's spokesman, Waheed Omer, declined to comment directly on Ludin's interpretation of the president's remarks, saying only that the government respected the council's independence but would ensure its actions did not erode recent achievements.
"The government will deliberate on any of its decisions to ensure we maintain the past nine years' gains," Omer said.
TEMPTING THE TALIBAN TO TALKS
The Taliban have slammed the council and called its leader, former President Burhanuddin Rabbani, an obstacle to peace.
But Ludin, who in the past has taken part in unofficial talks with some militants said some softening from Karzai might prompt the Taliban to also consider giving some ground.
Foreign forces will eventually leave and the Taliban need to agree with Kabul on a post-withdrawal plan, he said.
Despite the loss and arrest of some senior leaders in recent years, the Taliban have publicly always pushed for the expulsion of foreign forces before starting talks with Karzai.
"We are hopeful that ... the Taliban will come up with their conditions. The council will debate with them, however strict they may be over the withdrawal of foreign forces," Ludin said.
He also warned that talks could be held up if Karzai's Western backers insist on the conditions Karzai has always spelt out, or reject any council decisions that violate them.
U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke said in Berlin on Monday that any talks must stay inside "red lines" -- which roughly correspond with Karzai's conditions.
"Anyone deciding to rejoin the political system...has to renounce al Qaeda, lay down their arms and participate in the constitution with particular attention to the role of minorities and women," he said.
Neighbouring Pakistan's cooperation was also key for ending the conflict, Ludin said, as a sometime backer of militant groups and provider of a safe haven for the Taliban.
(Editing by Emma Graham-Harrison and Alex Richardson)
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Afghan Peace Council to begin work: presidential spokesman
KABUL, Oct. 12 (Xinhua) -- The chief spokesman of Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday said that the High Council for Peace set up recently to accelerate the government-backed national reconciliation program to end the protracted war, would formally start its working day on Wednesday.
"The council will formally begin its work tomorrow Wednesday," Waheed Omar told a weekly press conference here.
Regarding the appointment of ex-President Burhanuddin Rabbani as the chairman of the council, Omar said Rabbani was elected by the 70 members of the council and the government had no interference in it.
"It is an independent body aimed at finding the ways and means to negotiate with Afghans who are eager to renounce violence and severe relations with international terrorist groups," Omar added.
Taliban militants previously in a statement described the formation of peace council as a ploy of U.S. to deceive public opinion and downplayed the peace body under Rabbani who fought Taliban in the past as impotent to achieve peace.
Acknowledging informal contacts with the hard-die Taliban militants, Omar said some Taliban leaders with the mediation of tribal elders and religious clerics have been trying to open talks with government.
"There were some contacts, with the mediation of elders and religious leaders, but no formal talks have been held between the government and the Taliban," Omar emphasized.
He said the negotiation and reintegration process in post- Taliban Afghanistan enjoys full support of international community.
Regarding the murder of a British aid worker in country's eastern Kunar province who was killed during rescue operation days ago, he said, "Kidnapping and killing of aid workers for any reasons is not justifiable and the responsibility for the incident goes to groups who committed the crime."
Earlier the media reported that Linda Norgrove may have been killed by a grenade detonated by one of her rescuers, however the commander of NATO-led forces General David Petraeus on Monday requested a probe into the murder case of the victim, a Briton who was killed during the rescue operation in Afghanistan's restive Kunar province on Friday night.
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ICRC: Kandahar casualties reflect worsening security
By the CNN Wire Staff October 12, 2010 7:01 a.m. EDT
Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- War casualties in a Kandahar hospital are "hitting record highs," figures that illustrate the "deteriorating security situation" in southern Afghanistan, the International Committee for the Red Cross said on Tuesday.
Mirwais Regional Hospital had nearly 1,000 new patients with weapon-related injuries. That's twice as many new patients with weapon-related injuries in August and September 2010 as during the same months last year at the facility, supported by the ICRC.
Reto Stocker, head of the ICRC delegation in Kabul, called the numbers "just the tip of the iceberg" because people suffer from injuries or get diseases indirectly from the Afghan conflict.
"Our greatest challenge consists in maintaining access to the areas hardest hit by the fighting, but the increase in the number of armed groups is making this much harder for us," Stocker said.
"Nevertheless, because the ICRC is engaged in dialogue with all parties to the conflict, it hopes to be able to maintain its presence among the displaced, the detained, the injured or the otherwise war-affected people of Afghanistan."
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Taliban diversifying income generation means in Pakistan
by Syed Moazzam Hashmi
ISLAMABAD, Oct. 12 (Xinhua) -- The insurgent Taliban militants in Pakistan have diversified their income generation means by finding new ways to continue funding terrorism and saboteurs against international community's the war-on-terror, analysts said Tuesday.
Compelled by the tightening of noose around the external monetary sources from overseas by the United States-led coalition European countries, the militants discovered three new ways of funding at home. It includes kidnapping for ransom, looting NATO supply convoys and extorting protection-money from the rich, analysts said.
This is in addition to the income generated through poppy growth and narcotics smuggling, which has been keeping a consistent upward trend since the ouster of the Taliban government in Afghanistan in 2001. Most of drugs in streets of Europe are produced in Afghanistan and are smuggled through Pakistan and Central Asia.
It's not just the Taliban but different Baloch separatist groups in the insurgency-plagued provinces of southwest Balochistan and criminal gangs of thugs in the northwest are operating hand-in-glove with Taliban, local analysts believed.
Some 60,000 NATO containers shipped supplies to over 140,000 multinational troops fighting insurgency in Afghanistan through Chaman during the past couple of years. An equal number of oil tankers had also crossed the border as well.
Pakistan has entered into a controversial transit agreement with NATO in 2001 that allows a customs inspection and tax free supply to the International Security Assistance Forces (IASF) fighting Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan since 2001.
During the past nine years, over 10,000 containers disappeared with no trace on way to Afghanistan from the southern port city of Karachi up to the two entry points into Afghanistan: Chaman in the southwest Balochistan province and Torkham in the northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, local media reports said.
The gradually rising attacks and robbing of NATO convoys seemed to have been turning into a profitable industry for various vested interest groups. At least 500 containers missing during this year are being searched in Balochistan.
Local watchers have also raised serious concerns over the rising trend of looting NATO convoys, which carries all kind of stuff including military hardware.
Local television DAWN reported that landing of weapons into the hands of Taliban from robbed NATO containers have raised serious national concerns, as even helicopter spare parts are being sold in the troubled northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Besides, Taliban are now searching for high-value targets and planning to kidnap VIPs to generate funds for their nefarious plans, local paper Daily Times reported citing official sources.
"Kidnapping for ransom is now a main source of income for the Taliban," the paper quoted an unidentified official sources as saying.
Traders in Khyber tribal area and other parts of the region have protested several times during this year against kidnapping of colleagues for ransom and against charging of protection-money by different militant groups.
Dr. Ajmal Khan, Vice Chancellor of Islamia College University Peshawar, was kidnapped by disbanded Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan ( TTP) in September. He is cousin of Asfandyar Wali Khan, chief of the Awami National Party (ANP)that ruled the insurgency-plagued northwest province Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, which is the front line in war against terror.
Earlier, in Nov. 2009, Kohat University of Science and Technology Vice Chancellor Dr. Lutfullah Kakakhel was kidnapped. He was released six months later after striking a ransom deal with Taliban.
Doctors are still on a partial boycott of hospitals and private clinics in Peshawar to protest kidnapping of Dr. Intikhab Alam last week. Rumor of kidnapping of senior doctors of three top hospitals in the provincial capital has gripped the city.
Some government officials, professionals and children are still awaiting release after being kidnapped for ransom or for the exchange of the arrested militants.
Militants' new sources of income are taking roots deep into insurgency areas of Pakistan, which local analysts believe would be hard to effectively control in the near future as criminal elements have also joined hands with them in this money making spree.
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Afghan gov't sets up land authority to ease land management
KABUL, Oct. 12 (Xinhua) -- In efforts to revive economy and promote agricultural development in the war-shattered Afghanistan, the Afghan government has set up a new land department - Afghanistan Land Authority, to coordinate land issues and ease land management across the country, Chief Executive Officer of the newly established body said Tuesday.
"Afghanistan Land Authority planned to launch a survey and register over 25,000 hectares of land in the next one year and with issuing new regulations will make it easy for private sector and farmers to rent the public lands across the country and invest, " Ahmad Shaheer Shahriar told a news conference here.
"In the current regulations it took a farmer or agriculture firm six to 12 months and over 50 signatures were needed to rent a piece of public land to invest but with the new rules a farmer or invester would finish the procedures in only six weeks," he stated.
He also said the authority is tasked to fight with powerful individuals who have illigally occupied thousands of hectares of governmen land in the country.
In Afghanistan there is 8 million hectare arable and if brought under cultivation the country's economy and agricultural products would be considerablty improved, he further said.
However, the three decades of war have had a devastating impact on Afghan agricultural sector, a country with over 80 percent of population relying on agricultural product.
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In Afghanistan, the first hints of success
The Washington Post By Michael Gerson Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Success in Afghanistan is beginning to come in the first muddy trickles after a long drought.
Small groups of Taliban fighters -- sometimes a dozen with a leader -- are approaching local Afghan government officials, asking what kind of deal they might get. "First, they want to be taken off any list, so they are not targeted," explains a NATO official in Afghanistan. "Second, they want protection from the insurgency. Third, some kind of economic opportunity."
In counterinsurgency doctrine, this is known as "reintegration." The official admits it is "spotty" in Afghanistan but spreading in all regions. "It is happening in small numbers -- drip, drip, drip. It has not yet changed the battle space. . . . It is not a tipping point, at this point." The goal is to push these numbers much higher, with more insurgents driven to negotiation and exhaustion, so they "put down their weapons and go home."
Many Americans ask: What would victory look like in Afghanistan? It would look like this -- except more of it.
Eighteen months ago, Afghan insurgents had the morale that comes from momentum. But the surge in NATO operations, particularly Special Operations, has started to change the psychological battlefield. Special Forces now go after eight to 10 major objectives each night -- perhaps three-quarters of these raids result in the death or capture of an insurgent leader. Two Taliban shadow governors -- a key position in the leadership structure -- were killed in the last week. Such roles are quickly refilled, but replacements tend to be less seasoned and more frightened.
"We hear a lot of chatter," says the official, "from networks inside of Afghanistan." Some fighters don't feel "a moment of peace. They can't sleep. They keep moving all the time. They can't plan attacks because they are planning to survive." And this is opening up a "real rift" with Taliban "bosses leading from the relative comfort of Pakistan." While some units are well supplied, others are "not supplied, not paid, but told to keep fighting."
Reintegration of low- and mid-level fighters is based on their concern for survival. Reconciliation between the Afghan government and higher-level Taliban leaders is a political matter, gaining much recent attention. President Hamid Karzai has convened a "high peace council," open to Taliban overtures but insisting on certain conditions: repudiating al-Qaeda, laying down arms, accepting the Afghan constitution. The most ideological of Taliban leaders will never reconcile. Others may calculate, as many Sunni leaders eventually did in Iraq, that their rejectionism is undermining their long-term political influence.
In a national settlement, some kind of power-sharing arrangement is probably inevitable. But sharing power in a united government is very different from the concession of Taliban control over any portion of Afghanistan's territory. This would incite ethnic conflict and re-create the conditions that led to the Sept. 11 attacks. It is the definition of American defeat.
Political reconciliation is the objective. But it is conceivable only if momentum toward reintegration continues and gathers -- and this, in large part, is a military task. Many have argued that an acceptable outcome in Afghanistan will not be achieved by military force alone. True. But an acceptable outcome is enabled by military pressure.
That pressure is being undermined by a Taliban argument. President Obama's July 2011 deadline for the beginning of American troop withdrawals from Afghanistan is being used, according to the NATO official, as "an opportunity for propaganda."
"They are trying to convince Afghans that we are out in July. They are saying we will be gone, telling people, 'We will remember our friends, and remember our enemies.' " There are two ways to combat this claim. The first is to build up the Afghan army and police, so that an eventual American drawdown will not leave a void. "This is one area," says my source, "where the enemy has misjudged. They said that our training goals for the army and police were too ambitious. But we are meeting our growth numbers, and the quality of the force is taking off." The task remains "very challenging," but, with enough partnership and patience, it is achievable.
The second response is to make clear that America is not abandoning Afghanistan in July. The message should be, according to the official, "As conditions exist, there will be a responsible drawdown."
It is America's commander in chief who has created a destructive ambiguity on this point. And only he can remove it.
michaelgerson@washpost.com
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Afghanistan Seeks To Further Reduce High Maternal Mortality Rate
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty October 12, 2010
KABUL -- The Afghan Health Ministry says that although it has lowered the country's high maternal mortality rate in recent years, the country is still critically short of trained midwives, RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan reports.
The ministry told RFE/RL on October 10 that Afghanistan had reduced the number of maternal deaths during childbirth from some 1,800 per 100,000 live births in 2002 to an estimated 1,400 per 100,000 live births this year.
Afghanistan's maternal mortality rate is one of the highest in the world. Italy had the world's lowest maternal mortality rate in 2008 of 3.9 deaths per 100,000 live births.
Afghanistan's decrease in maternal deaths has taken place mainly in urban areas, where many new health facilities have been built and the quality of care has risen in the past eight years.
But Health Ministry spokesman Ghulan Sakhi Kargar said that the high number of women who die during childbirth in rural areas was still alarming.
He said that since 2002, when the Taliban was ousted from power, the government had focused on making women aware of the benefits of having smaller families. Kargar added that the addition of some 2,000 health-care centers across the country had made medical care more accessible.
Health Ministry officials in Kabul say there is still an urgent shortage in Afghanistan of some 6,000 midwives needed to aid in childbirth. Kargar said at least 1,000 nurses and midwives had been trained so far this year and make up the some 2,500 midwives currently working throughout the country.
But not all of Afghanistan's remote areas have seen the improvements.
Rahela, 38, who recently gave birth in the northeastern Takhar Province, told RFE/RL that she spent one day and night travelling to a health clinic to give birth. She said that "many women in villages die on their way to a [far away] clinic."
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Taliban border haven in U.S. sights
Some officials urge military action on Pakistani soil to curb the flow of fighters and bomb-making materials into southern Afghanistan.
Los Angeles Times By David S. Cloud October 11, 2010
Reporting from Washington - U.S. military officials racing to make progress in Afghanistan are pressing new tactics to choke off the flow of Taliban fighters and bomb-making materials from Pakistan into key battlefields of the south, with some even advocating cross-border attacks, according to several U.S. civilian and military officials.
Two senior officers from the staff of Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S. general who commands NATO forces in Afghanistan, are scheduled to meet with Pakistani counterparts this week, a senior NATO official said, in part to present intelligence about Taliban operations in Baluchistan, a Pakistani province along Afghanistan's southern border.
The focus on southern Afghanistan is a response to the difficulties the U.S. has encountered this year in Kandahar and neighboring Helmand province, to which the U.S. has sent tens of thousands of additional troops.
Offensives in the region, the heartland of the Taliban movement, have struggled to clear guerrilla fighters who melt into the local population. U.S. and Afghan officials have in many areas not been able to establish stable government and improve services, priorities in the effort to win the support of Afghan civilians.
Petraeus is facing a deadline from the White House to show progress in the war by July, and officials said he is pushing the Pakistani military to confront the Taliban.
"We're going to take this fight to the edge," said one official. "We're not going to back off from the fight."
Long a Taliban stronghold, Kandahar and areas of Helmand have remained violent in part because of the ongoing infiltration of fighters over the border. The Taliban leadership fled across the border into the Baluchistan capital, Quetta, after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, and some members are believed to be directing the insurgency from there.
Maj. Gen. Mike Flynn and Maj. Gen. William Mayville plan to share U.S. intelligence about Taliban efforts to recruit fighters in refugee camps in Pakistan and locations where the militant group loads ammonium nitrate, a key chemical in homemade bombs, to be smuggled over the border, officials said.
The goal, U.S. officials said, is to persuade the Pakistani military to crack down on these activities.
Some steps to secure Kandahar are already underway, including the use of reconnaissance drones along the border to increase surveillance of smuggling routes and efforts to crack down on corruption. Officials say they are improving training and pay for Afghan border guards, and installing screening devices along the frontier to examine shipments.
The majority of U.S. casualties this year have been in the south. A total of 575 U.S. and allied troops have been killed this year, according to the website icasualties.org. That is the highest yearly number on record for the war, with more than two months to go. The website does not break this year's casualties down by location.
U.S. officials say they have begun to see a reduction in homemade bombs in southern Afghanistan, a sign that their efforts might be working.
But other U.S. military officials say that lasting stability in southern Afghanistan is impossible as long as the Taliban can operate with relative freedom in Baluchistan. Some U.S. military personnel involved in the debate are skeptical that even high-level U.S. pressure on Pakistan will produce results.
Some U.S. officials say Islamabad has long refused to take decisive action against the Taliban leadership. For that reason, they argue, unilateral U.S. operations in Baluchistan should be considered, including airstrikes or secret raids by special operations forces.
Even small-scale operations by U.S. special forces into Pakistan, unless conducted jointly with Pakistani forces, would infuriate officials in Islamabad and probably provoke a backlash even worse than that seen earlier this month, when Pakistan closed a key border crossing to North Atlantic Treaty Organization supply convoys for 11 days after a U.S. helicopter attack killed two Pakistani border guards.
Military officials said the recent rash of border incidents involving U.S. helicopters crossing into Pakistani territory and the escalation of CIA drone strikes in Pakistan's North Waziristan region were not directly related to the debate about additional military steps in the south.
Pakistan points to its offensives last year in the Swat Valley, South Waziristan and other tribal areas in the western part of the country as proof that it is serious about taking on the Pakistani Taliban. But it says its military is stretched and cannot do more.
Most U.S. efforts to disrupt insurgent activity in Pakistan also have been farther north, in the lawless tribal areas.
Airstrikes by unmanned drones operated by the CIA have been carried out almost exclusively in the tribal areas, with tacit support and even secret assistance from the Pakistani government. In addition, most of the incidents in which U.S. forces fired into Pakistan or crossed the border while pursuing insurgents have come in the tribal regions.
Pakistani sensitivities about Baluchistan are more acute than those about the tribal belt, and officials played down the possibility that Petraeus would approve cross-border attacks in the south — even as they acknowledged that some military officers are promoting the idea.
"I suspect there probably are advocates for putting more pressure on Pakistan, who feel they have been given enough time to act," said the senior NATO official. "But I would tell you that at senior levels that is not under consideration."
Senior Obama administration officials also have not approved broadening the attacks beyond the tribal belt, and the military personnel who agreed to discuss the ongoing debate would do so only anonymously because of the sensitive nature of the deliberations.
They stressed that the idea remains controversial even among U.S. commanders in Kabul, the Afghan capital, with some advocating the move out of frustration that the Pakistani military has refused to move against bomb-making facilities and refugee camps the Taliban uses for recruitment.
david.cloud@latimes.com
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Kabul's Old City Gets A Face-Lift, And An Injection Of Cash
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty October 11, 2010 By Charles Recknagel
KABUL -- Kabul has been so damaged by wars and pell-mell rebuilding that it's hard to remember this was once a pretty city with elegant mud-brick mansions, elaborate carved-wood lattices, and shady courtyards.
But some of the old neighborhoods still exist, hidden away in what today are the poorest parts of town.
To find them means going to the very center of Kabul, where a bazaar the locals call "Titanic" appears each summer in the dry gulch of the Kabul River, then disappears again with the spring floods.
There, you have to duck behind the Soviet-era buildings and concrete-box shops surrounding the bazaar and plunge into a labyrinth of smoky, noisy lanes. As the smoke from the blacksmiths' forges stings your eyes and the hammering rings in your ears, you reach the neighborhood of Murad Khane.
For decades, this neighborhood of once-grand homes was so neglected that it literally fell into ruin. The mud-brick homes crumbled around the residents as they became too destitute to repair them. Some of the largest homes turned into cheap warehouse space for the nearby bazaar and their courtyards became dumping sites for trash from other parts of Kabul.
But now, Murad Khane is reviving. Since 2006, it has been the focus of a major renovation effort funded mostly by private international donors. And as its buildings return to view, the neighborhood is becoming one of the city's most charming historical treasures.
Taking Out The Trash
Rory Brown, the development officer for the project, says the task of just digging out the trash has been prodigious. "Since 2006, we have removed almost 20,000 cubic meters of rubbish from the streets, courtyards, and sites of collapsed buildings in Murad Khane," he says. "In places, that has meant the street level has dropped by up to 2 meters."
The recovery is part of a $25 million effort by the Kabul-based Turquoise Mountain project and the brainchild of two well-known British personalities.
One is the Prince of Wales, who famously dislikes modern architecture, and the other is Rory Stewart, Turquoise Mountain's founder. Stewart walked across Afghanistan shortly after the fall of the Taliban to write the best-selling book "The Places In Between" and, like Prince Charles, admires Afghanistan's cultural and artistic traditions and wants to help revive them.
Among the renovated buildings is the Peacock House, named for the motif of peacocks that appears on its carved wood facade. Like many of the other landmark buildings in Murad Khane, it dates to the 1920s, when dozens of buildings with elaborate wood carvings were erected by rich families.
The district itself was long associated with the royal palace that stands nearby. Afghanistan's founding ruler, Ahmad Shah Durrani, built several buildings there in the 18th century to house members of his court and it remained a prestigious address for centuries afterward.
New Generations Of Artisans
The aim in restoring Murad Khane now is both to save the centrally located district from being bulldozed to make room for new buildings and to find a new life for some of the finest structures as a crafts school. Fifteen of the buildings will provide the campus of the Institute for Afghan Arts and Architecture, which will not only teach new generations of artisans but also help provide a sustainable economy for the rest of the district.
At the same time, the urban-renewal project has built a primary school in Murad Khane, provided the neighborhood with electricity, water, sewerage, emergency repairs on private houses, and now is completing a women's community center. All the work has created near full employment in the neighborhood.
In one of the restored buildings, the institute's ceramic school is already up and running. Its teacher and headmaster is Abdul Matin, who graduated from the school last year.
Matin says one of the most difficult things for the students to master is the traditional glaze that gives Afghan ceramics their characteristic blue-green coloring. The glaze is based on a plant that grows in northern Afghanistan called "gaz" and which requires many steps to process before it delivers a rich range of colors from yellow to green.
"Actually, we don't burn the [plants] ourselves, but the people of Hairaton in [northern] Balkh Province collect them, ignite them, and collect their coal," Matin says. "We purchase the coal, then we heat it by adding some special products and next crush the coal into powder in a special machine. Once we have the powder, we can use it as a glaze."
Too Many Applicants
Matin, a native of the nearby village of Istalif, which is traditionally famous for its ceramics, operates his own pottery business in addition to teaching. His studies at the school prepared him to do that by including not just pottery classes in the three-year curriculum but also general art history and design classes, business classes, and even English-language lessons.
The comprehensive education the school offers has made it a magnet for would-be artisans across the country, despite its small size. The total student body is only 120 students, with some 30 places in each of the four craft areas of ceramics, woodworking, jewelry-making, and miniature-painting.
Khan Etebari, a spokesman for Turquoise Mountain, says each year the Institute for Afghan Arts and Architecture gets hundreds more applicants than it has places.
"Each year we announce the process of institute enrollment and on the average we receive between 800 up to 1,200 applications for 30 seats," Etebari says.
Unlike traditional apprenticeship programs in Afghanistan, where a student begins to study under a master at 12 and completes his training with almost no other education by 18, the new art institute only takes students who already have graduated from high school. The arts-and-crafts education at the institute is so complete that it has received Britain's demanding City and Guilds Accreditation, which certifies the quality of the students' work.
For now, as reconstruction in Murad Khane continues, the institute's three other schools remain housed in an old fort the Turquoise Mountain renovated elsewhere in Kabul as a temporary quarters. The older students there may or may not ever see the new campus being prepared for them before they graduate.
But the teachers say that all the students of the new art institute have one thing in common that previous generations of artisans in Afghanistan lacked. That is, the possibility of making a successful commercial living in their own country when previously many had to flee to find work elsewhere.
Home Hit By A Rocket
Haji Aslam, the head of the school of jewelry and gem-cutting, was trained by his father, who was a jeweler to the Afghan court. But he spent much of his own professional life as a refugee in Pakistan because of Afghanistan's recent decades of turmoil.
"[The economy] wasn't good, it was collapsing, and then all of us became refugees and headed toward the neighboring countries of Pakistan and Iran because there was a big fight here," Aslam says. "Our own home got hit with a rocket; my kids were injured and we couldn't live here."
Aslam says that today the jewelry business is good in Kabul, for both modern and traditional styles, and he believes his students will not have to live as he did.
It is an optimistic thought in a country still struggling with an insurgency and major economic problems. But such optimism seems fully at home in the newly awakened neighborhood of Murad Khane.
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Afghan Training Makes Gains, Though War Struggles
By C. J. CHIVERS The New York Times October 12, 2010
KABUL, Afghanistan — Long a lagging priority, the plan to produce many more highly trained Afghan security forces is moving this fall at a rapid pace. Two main training sites — the Kabul Military Training Center, used principally by the Afghan Army, and the Central Training Center, used by the police — have become bustling bases, packed with trainers and recruits, and there is a sense among the officers that they are producing better soldiers than before.
The military center has been graduating 1,400 newly trained soldiers every two weeks, as the Obama administration, eager to show progress in a slow-going war, has devoted more trainers and money to the effort.
NATO officials hope that the clear changes in the training, both in its output and atmosphere, is grounds for a measure of optimism in a war that has frustrated those waging it and provoked increasing opposition at home.
The ratio of instructors to students has gone from one for every 79 trainees in 2009 to one for every 29, officers at the center say, suggesting that the new police officers and soldiers are getting more attention than in years past. The soldiers are paid better and desert less often, officials say.
New Afghan infantry battalions, each with roughly 800 soldiers, are regularly leaving the capital for service in the war, sometimes making two or three battalions a month. Regional training centers are also holding more sessions, and new bases — including a flight school for Afghanistan’s nascent air force — are soon to be built.
The question now is whether these new forces will allow NATO and the Afghan government to reverse the insurgency’s momentum and begin reducing the Western presence in the country.
If so, will it happen quickly enough for an American public weary of the war? Or will the promise of these newly minted troops also be undermined by desertion, poor leadership and the established pattern of leaving much of the most dangerous work to Western hands?
Any answer must navigate a pair of remarkably different pictures of the war.
Away from the capital, in the rural areas where the insurgency rages, the Afghan military has not performed well. In provinces where the Taliban are strongest and the fighting is most pitched, the common view is that the Afghan Army and the police have thus far been disappointing.
At the small-unit level, Western troops and journalists have documented their corruption, drug use, mediocre or poor fighting skills and patterns of lackluster commitment, including an unwillingness to patrol regularly and in sizable numbers, or to stand watch in remote outposts.
At the higher levels, Western military officers often describe patronage, favoritism and an absence of managerial acumen, rooted in part in the pervasive culture of corruption and in widespread illiteracy. (Now, 14 percent of the combined force can read or write — at the third-grade level.)
There is also a strong worry about Taliban infiltration into the ranks, especially among the police.
In contrast to the field, however, at the training bases the newly formed forces are clearly improving, Afghan and Western officers say.
Since last year, when President Obama’s plan dedicated more resources to Afghan development, the Pentagon has pursued what is in theory a simple, if expensive, approach: to recruit and field forces quickly, and then, over time, to improve their fighting and managerial skills.
Enormous resources have been dedicated to the effort. The numbers indicate that the first step is under way.
In June 2009, after more than seven years of war, the United States had helped Afghanistan field a combined army and police force of about 170,000 members. Since then, the combined force has grown by half that size again — by more than 86,000 troops.
Today the Afghan Army has 136,000 members, and the police about 120,000. Within a year, the combined forces are projected to grow by 50,000 more people.
Raw personnel numbers are only one measure. The United States is simultaneously buying and issuing new weapons, vehicles and communications gear, building barracks, classrooms and logistics depots, and developing a network of language labs to nudge the force toward literacy.
It is also underwriting programs intended to expand Afghan military and police capabilities, including training bomb- and drug-detection dogs for the border police, training pilots for the small fleet of Afghan helicopters and transport aircraft, and opening so-called branch schools to focus on the technical development of Afghans with specialized military skills.
“Basically, there is a big change in training, the quality of the training,” said Brig. Gen. Aminullah Patyani, the commander of the Kabul Military Training Center.
This month, for example, the Afghan Defense Ministry opened a school for artillerists. Some of these programs, American officials say, show clear signs of progress, including scheduled flights with Afghan pilots and helicopters to transfer wounded Afghan soldiers from Kandahar to Kabul.
“We’re getting to the point where we have reliable, repeatable Afghan Air Force missions,” said Brig. Gen. David W. Allvin, who commands the NATO effort to develop an Afghan aviation capability.
Col. John G. Ferrari, a deputy commander of the NATO Training Mission Afghanistan, spoke of an “inevitability factor,” in which local security forces, in theory and if trained properly, rise in quantity, skill and state of equipment, sharply tilting the war in the government’s favor.
For that to be the case, officers say, the Pentagon must overcome a persistent problem in the Afghan security forces: attrition. Official estimates put attrition across the force at roughly 3 percent each month. Attrition is a powerful drain that makes growth difficult. Police officers and soldiers simply disappear, even as replacements flow in.
For this reason, for the army to grow by 36,000 more soldiers, the government must recruit and train 83,000 Afghans, according to projections released by NATO. Similarly, for the police to reach the hoped-for increase of 14,000, the government must train 50,000 more officers. This drives up costs to Westerners paying the bill.
The training mission in Afghanistan also labors under a legacy of unfulfilled past promises, inadequate training even in basic skills like marksmanship and driving military vehicles, and a pattern of overstating how ready or skilled the forces are.
Early this year, the Pentagon and senior Afghan and American officers in Kabul insisted that the complex operation to re-establish a government presence in Marja, a Taliban stronghold, was “Afghan led.”
It was not. And many Afghan units, by the accounts of many Americans present, performed poorly. Some units openly shirked combat duty — refusing to patrol, or sending a bare minimum of soldiers on American patrols, sometimes only a pair of soldiers to accompany an American platoon. The remaining Afghans remained behind, lounging in the relative safety of outposts the Americans secured.
In the operations under way in Kandahar, reports continue to indicate that American forces are almost always in the lead
A formal Pentagon assessment of Afghan readiness is expected in December, and under President Obama’s plan, American troops could begin a gradual drawdown next summer.
Even as these deadlines approach, many officers have spoken of managing expectations.
Brig. Gen. Carmelo Burgio, the Italian officer who commands the police development effort, said that NATO had made practical steps toward police competence, and that training had improved.
But developing a well-rounded police officer, much less a well-rounded force, takes many years — perhaps much longer than America and other NATO nations have the patience for. “We believe we are on the right path,” General Burgio said. “We need time. Without time, without patience, it is impossible.”
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Payoff seen in Afghan surge
Taliban demoralized and changing sides, military says
The Washington Times By Rowan Scarborough Monday, October 11, 2010
The U.S. military is starting to see signs that the troop surge in Afghanistan is working on a timetable similar to the Iraq reinforcement campaign in 2007, according to an outside adviser and military sources.
"There are already some early signs of a beginning of a momentum shift in our favor," retired Army Gen. Jack Keane told The Washington Times.
Gen. Keane just returned from a two-week tour of the battlefield, where the focus is on ousting the Taliban from Kandahar, its birthplace, as well as from Helmand province and other southern and eastern areas.
Gen. Keane reported his findings to Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Kabul, who saw the surge of 30,000 troops completed in August, placing about 100,000 American service members in country.
An architect of the Bush administration's surge of troops in Iraq, Gen. Keane advised Gen. Petraeus when he was the top commander there.
Gen. Keane told The Times he has witnessed in Afghanistan the same shift in fortunes: Taliban fighters are changing sides, villages are being cleansed of the enemy and protected, and intercepted communications show flagging Taliban morale.
"Overall, we can see now that the surge forces are starting to make a difference," he said. "And you have to be encouraged by some of the progress that's being made. All that said, we're in a tough fight, and I believe we will continue to gain momentum."
Gen. Keane offered two observations as evidence. First, most commanders with whom he spoke said they are encountering Taliban who want to stop fighting and reintegrate into Afghan society. "That's a big deal," he said.
Second, "There's evidence of erosion of some of the will of the Taliban. We pick it up in interrogations, and we also pick it up listening to their radio traffic and telephone calls in terms of the morale problems they're starting to have," Gen. Keane said.
A military officer in the U.S. who monitors the war confirmed that Taliban radio chatter sounds a bit frantic.
"The Taliban are not anxious to engage us, because we come after them once they start shooting at us," the officer told The Times on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press. "One of the translations I saw came out as 'Marines are insane.' So, maybe that means that little by little things are getting better."
Gen. Keane said the drop in Taliban morale can be traced to soldiers and Marines going after hillside hamlets and safe havens. The Taliban has thrived in such areas, where they regroup, plan raids and store ammunition.
"What is happening is, the Taliban's freedom of movement," he said. "We are literally taking away from them things they are used to. We are denying them some of the safe havens that they have in the south. We are denying them the support zones they've been operating out of with impunity.
"Support zones are up in the mountains, where they use villagers to help hide their weapons caches. Safe havens are up there, too, usually away from everybody, and we are denying them the use of those. We are interdicting and disrupting their operating areas, which had a tendency to focus on the roads quite a bit, and we're interdicting what they're doing there."
Gen. Petraeus is on a schedule to show positive results by July 2011, when President Obama's war strategy calls for the beginning of a troop exit.
The four-star general's job may have gotten tougher last week, when James L. Jones, a retired four-star Marine Corps general, quit as Mr. Obama's national security adviser. He will be succeeded by Thomas Donilon, a Democratic Party operative and lawyer who served as Gen. Jones' deputy and who opposed more troops for Afghanistan, which puts him at odds with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.
In a recent NPR interview, Gen. Petraeus cited the Malajat district in Kandahar city as an area infested with Taliban but now controlled by U.S. and Afghan forces.
"A month ago, it was a sanctuary for certain elements of the Taliban who were carrying out assassinations, intimidation activities, extortion and a variety of other illicit acts," he said. "They largely controlled it. That Malajat district was [one] in which the Taliban had freedom of movement, freedom of access, and again, considerable influence in that area."
Maj. Gen. Richard Mills, the top Marine in Afghanistan, who is focused on retaking Helmand, has been guarded about war progress. But last week at a change-of-command ceremony, he declared, according to press reports: "We're hurting the enemy, and we're hurting him badly. For every casualty we suffer, the enemy suffers numerous casualties."
Stephen Biddle, a Council on Foreign Relations analyst who advises the command in Afghanistan, like Gen. Keane, has seen territorial gains.
"There are places that had been deeply Taliban-held that are now certainly contested and in some places increasingly government-controlled, like the central Helmand River Valley for example," he said on the council's website. "This may happen increasingly over coming weeks and months in previously dangerous parts of Kandahar province, where progress has not been as fast as many had hoped."
Mr. Biddle said the Obama administration made a mistake in calling out Afghan President Hamid Karzai publicly for rampant corruption, which embarrassed him in front of his people and forced him to lash out at Washington.
Now, the U.S. command and State Department have embarked on a "bottom-up" strategy to try to root out corruption network by network, he said.
There are still plenty of skeptics, given the rampant government corruption, Pakistan's inability to stop the Taliban from infiltrating Afghanistan, and the mixed loyalties of Afghan police and army. The Taliban issued a statement last week on the war's ninth anniversary claiming they control 75 percent of Afghanistan.
Robert Maginnis, a military analyst and Army consultant, said "big problems" exist. Mr. Obama's 2009 Afghan strategy put new emphasis on Pakistan-U.S. cooperation in defeating the Taliban. Yet, elements of Islamabad's intelligence service are still helping the Taliban, according to a London School of Economics study.
"Pakistan is not helping our efforts, and Obama made Islamabad a major part of the solution," he said. "Part of the problem with Pakistan is the major distraction created by the floods, but also because the civilian government is utterly incompetent."
Mr. Maginnis also said that if Mr. Obama insists on the July 2011 deadline, it will result in the Taliban simply returning from Pakistan to retake villages and cities.
"We may spend more blood and treasure in the counterinsurgency, but next summer there will be little to show for the investment other than a few population centers enjoying some security but little governance and an economy," he said.
Still, Gen. Keane said he sees Marines and soldiers methodically taking territory once controlled by the Taliban.
"We've made significant progress in Helmand province," he said. "The Marines will continue to make progress as they push farther north, as well. The effort in the south, in Kandahar, is just beginning."
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The foreplay of an Afghan settlement
Asia Times By M K Bhadrakumar 12/10/2010
When "well-placed Pakistani and Arab sources" sing like magpie robins, you never get tired of hearing them. There is a lot of variety to their songs. The magpie robin gives voice to a range of motifs: loud songs to establish territory and pair formation; soft, aggressive songs to defend territory; or, haunting resting melodies.
Remember how such well-placed sources sang without a break from the mid-1980s in the run-up to the Geneva talks all the way to February 15, 1989, when the last Soviet soldiers, led by General Boris Gromov finally managed after 10 years to leave Afghanistan on foot over the Hairatonbridge across the Amy Darya River? Well, they are singing again.
But they are very combative - less bird-like and more like kung fu masters ready to do battle. Are they establishing territory or merely defending it? Most certainly, these are not haunting resting songs.
Highly tendentious themes have appeared in rapid succession over the past week: Afghan President Hamid Karzai is in talks with the Taliban's Quette shura (council) about a "comprehensive" Afghan settlement, with the latter participating in government; Karzai is also talking with the Haqqani network thanks to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). This follows the ISI setting up a meeting "on the Afghan-Pakistan border in the spring" between Karzai and Sirajuddin Haqqani, and the ISI escorting Sirajuddin's brother and uncle to Kabul. The Haqqanis realize that the time has come to "make the transition from the IRA to Sinn Fein" and that "This is the end of the road for al-Qaeda in Waziristan", as diplomatic sources have been reported as saying. A calibrated media offensive has appeared, the principal objective of which is to underscore that the Taliban are gaining the upper hand politically. The intention seems to be threefold. First, to scare the daylight out of the non-Pashtun groups which believed fro
m day one that the idea of accommodating the Taliban in the Afghan power structure would be extremely dangerous.
If the non-Pashtun groups could be sufficiently incited to agitate, they would exert big pressure on Karzai regarding the "sell-out" to the Taliban. The discord would tear apart the tenuous coalition that Karzai heads, and a sure casualty could be the High Council that the Afghan president is erecting as his bridge leading toward the Pashtun camp in Pakistan bypassing the Punjabi-led establishment.
Second, the media offensive projects the veteran mujahid Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son, Sirajuddin, onto the center stage. A "senior Pakistani official" even claimed that talks are going on between Haqqani, Karzai and the US government - "The ice has broken".
An impression is being created that while the Quetta shura may remain important, its stature as the principal interlocutor in the insurgency has eroded while the Haqqanis surged as the main military threat to the US forces on the battlefield. That is to say, there can be no enduring peace unless the Haqqanis are engaged in talks by the Americans as their key interlocutor.
Third, this sort of media expose creates confusion regarding the nascent reconciliation process. It puts Karzai on the defensive vis-a-vis his non-Pashtun allies, embarrasses moderate elements within the Taliban leadership and forces them to resort to grandstanding and intransigence that ultimately could derail the reconciliation process.
In short, this entire media blitzkrieg aims at aborting the sort of "Afghan-led" reconciliation process that Karzai is conceiving.
The reconciliation process is at an extremely vulnerable "embryonic" stage, to use the words of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) representative in Afghanistan, Mark Sedwill. Last week, while talking to reporters in Washington, Sedwill said, "There are significant [Taliban] leaders who seem to be weary of the fight and seem to be willing to contemplate a future within the mainstream." But, "Essentially, we're at the embryonic stage. The channels of communication are open. I wouldn't, at this stage, say that we've reached the point of real negotiation."
The context becomes very important from yet another angle. A new level of equilibrium or maturity has lately appeared in Washington's equations with Karzai. Washington has manifestly edged closed toward Karzai in recent days, putting behind the period of alienation and drift. The controversy over the issue of "corruption" has tapered off. Again, Washington accepts the conduct of the Afghan parliamentary elections and is preparing to deal with the emergent power alignment involving the new parliament and Karzai.
The Barack Obama administration seems to have decided to work with Karzai when the search for a political settlement is shifting gear.
Detractors and debunkers of Obama's war see things differently. The former US Central Intelligence Agency operative-turned-critic, Michael Scheuer, says, "The game is over and we are looking for a way out. Obama won't be able to hold his base for 2012 if he is not out [of Afghanistan and Iraq]".
However, we cannot be so very prejudiced as to overlook that there is a consistent streak in Obama's political personality. Laurence Tribe, the renowned professor who became Obama's intellectual mentor at Harvard, once summed up nicely, "Overall, Obama has ... a problem-solving orientation. He seems not to be powerfully driven by an a-priori framework, so what emerges is quite pragmatic and even tentative. It's hard to describe what his presuppositions are ..."
All indications are that Obama is acutely aware that the war isn't going too well. If anything, author Bob Woodward further provoked Obama into a "problem-solving orientation" with revelations in his latest book Obama's Wars of rifts in the administration over Afghan war policy.
No doubt, Obama's video teleconference with Karzai on Monday had a "hands-on" purposive approach. He firmed up a most crucial leg of any Afghan settlement, namely, formalizing the US commitment of long-term support to the Kabul government embracing the post-settlement era.
Obama and Karzai agreed that a new US-Afghan Strategic Partnership Declaration would be ready by the time a NATO summit takes place in Lisbon in November.
They linked this to the other key topic at the NATO summit, namely, "transition to Afghan lead security responsibility by 2014", as the White House readout put it. The White House said on Wednesday that Obama supported Karzai's efforts at opening peace talks with Taliban leaders, but "this is about Afghanistan. It has to be done by the Afghans."
On the other hand, US-Pakistan ties, which have always been difficult, have come under new pressures. The US has sharply escalated drone attacks on Pakistan's tribal areas. Two "hot pursuit" incidents provoked Pakistani attacks on NATO convoys and the closure of the Torkham border post from Pakistan into Afghanistan, but no one is losing sleep in Washington or Brussels.
A Voice of America commentary rhetorically asked, "Have the [Pakistani] attacks brought supply shortages to NATO troops in Afghanistan?" It went on to answer with a derisive "No", quoting General Joseph Blotz who commands the International Security Assistance Force: We do have plenty of supplies and stocks within Afghanistan. We do have access to transport and logistics through other border crossing points ... and, yes, we need to look for other options and the other options are, you know, getting in the necessary supplies and logistics through border crossing points with neighboring countries in the north... where we get in actually almost as much supplies as through the border crossing points with Pakistan, so there are alternatives. In sum, the US message is getting to be somewhat blunt: the Pakistani military has little choice but to cooperate. Again, regional players may have differences with the US strategy in Afghanistan, but the Obama administration keeps the back-channel to Iran, is actively consulting Russia, and has restrained New Delhi from making precipitate moves. Equally, it is preposterous that Beijing would contemplate goading the reluctant Pakistani military into the high-risk enterprise of "strategic defiance" of the US in the Hindu Kush.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration has so far ignored the Pakistani attempt to draw the US into the unrest in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal flashed details of a White House report that is being forwarded by Obama to the US Congress which in unusually plain speaking says that the Pakistani military is playing a double game in the Afghan war.
"The Pakistan military continued to avoid military engagements that would put it in direct conflict with Afghan Taliban or al-Qaeda forces in North Waziristan [tribal area in Pakistan]. This is as much a political choice as it is a reflection of an under-resourced military prioritizing its targets."
We are witnessing the foreplay of an Afghan peace settlement. No doubt about it. As a perceptive Guardian commentator put it, the issue is no longer about peace talks but as to when the fighting will stop. And Pakistan is reiterating its claim to be the key arbiter of any peace talks and has asserted its seamless capacity to be a "spoiler" if it is spurned.
A charming thing about magpie robins is that they can incorporate fragments of other bird calls into their songs. Remember how their songs kept frustrating the Geneva talks and prolonged the Soviet agony in Afghanistan?
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
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First Sports Museum Opened in Kabul
Mir Sayed Sediqi Tolo news October 10, 2010
For the first time in sports history of Afghanistan, Museum of National Olympics Committee was inaugurated by Minister of information and culture, Sayed Makhdoum Rahin
Retention of Afghan sport pioneers identity and introduction of prideful faces of the country's sport to future generations are cited as the aims to establish such a museum.
During the inauguration ceremony which was attended by some top Afghan government officials, the Minister of Information and Culture said that this is a significant step in sports of Afghanistan.
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US orders probe of aid worker's death in Afghanistan
by Sam Reeves – Tue Oct 12, 3:01 am ET
LONDON (AFP) – The US has ordered a probe into the death of a British aid worker kidnapped in Afghanistan amid fears she may have been killed by a grenade detonated by American troops attempting to rescue her.
The top US commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, ordered the investigation Monday after a review of the operation they launched to try to free Linda Norgrove.
British officials had initially said 36-year-old Norgrove, who was kidnapped on September 26 in eastern Afghanistan, died when one of her Taliban captors blew up a suicide vest in the failed-US led rescue operation on Friday.
US President Barack Obama passed his condolences to Prime Minister David Cameron in a phone conversation late Monday, said a statement from Cameron's office.
The leaders "agreed that the decision to launch the rescue operation had been right, given the grave danger to Linda's life, and that US forces had shown great courage," a Downing Street spokesman said in a statement.
"The prime minister and the president agreed that it was now essential to get to the bottom of what had happened in the course of the rescue operation."
But their show of unity did not prevent a growing backlash in Britain in response to the latest development.
An editorial in The Independent newspaper titled "The weight of mendacity" expressed anger at the initial decision to put out the story that Norgrove might have been killed by a suicide vest.
"Its only effect was to make Linda and her family's tragedy even more bitter than necessary. And the public's waning belief in the war has slipped another notch."
The Times said if it was confirmed that a US grenade had killed Norgrove, "it would be an inescapable indictment of a botched mission that would cast a long shadow over Anglo-American relations.".
Britain is the second-largest troop contributor to the Afghan war effort after the US, with some 9,500 soldiers in the country.
Friends of Norgrove meanwhile said the news would make it harder for her parents, who live on the Isle of Lewis, off Scotland's northwest coast, to deal with the tragedy.
Margaret MacLeod, the aid worker's former teacher, said the news was "absolutely shocking", in comments to the Daily Telegraph newspaper
"This makes it a lot harder to comprehend, especially for the parents," she said.
"They, like everybody else, will want hard questions answered fully."
Norgrove was working for US development group DAI when she and three Afghan colleagues were kidnapped while travelling in Kunar province, a hotbed of Taliban activity in eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistani border.
Breaking the news of the latest development at a Downing Street press conference Monday, a stony-faced Cameron said: "Linda could have died as a result of a grenade detonated by the task force during the assault.
"However this is not certain and a full US-UK investigation will now be launched."
British Foreign Secretary William Hague told parliament he gave the green light for the operation because the kidnappers were linked to the Taliban, and it was feared they could hand Norgrove to Al-Qaeda militants in Pakistan.
"At no stage was any serious attempt made by those holding her to negotiate," Hague said. Her captors aimed to "pass her further up the Taliban command chain to make her more inaccessible," he added.
Once hostages are taken to Pakistan, tracking their whereabouts becomes far more difficult. Western troops are barred from operating there.
In Kabul, a US military statement confirmed that Petraeus had ordered the investigation "immediately following additional information developed by the military commander in charge of the rescue operation."
Initial reports had indicated the blast was triggered by her captors, it said, but added: "Subsequent review of surveillance footage and discussions with members of the rescue team do not conclusively determine the cause of her death."
US Central Command would start the investigation, US Forces Afghanistan spokesman Lieutenant Colonel John Dorrian spokesman told AFP.
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