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Karzai challenges US group on civilian deaths
KABUL (AFP) – Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday urged a high-level visiting US delegation to scale back night raids and military operations causing civilian casualties.
New Koran Furor Over 'Toilet Paper' Accusation
April 19, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
So far it's just AFP reporting it, but stone-throwing demonstrators destroyed part of an Afghan paper mill on April 18 over claims that the mill had "recycled copies of the Koran into toilet paper."
Analysis:Pakistan military strives to secure central Afghan role
By Chris Allbritton
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - The Pakistani military is scrambling to shore up ties with Afghanistan to ensure a central role in a negotiated settlement of the conflict as the beginning of a U.S. military withdrawal draws closer.
Does Pakistan Really Want a Stable Afghanistan?
by Ishaan Tharoor Monday, April 18, 2011 time.com
In recent weeks, ties between Islamabad and Washington have grown more strained than a cup of sickly sweet South Asian chai. A prolonged kerfuffle over Raymond Davis, the American CIA agent who gunned down two Pakistani men allegedly pursuing him in Lahore, sparked protests across the country and triggered a diplomatic
Afghanistan should brace for more assassinations - U.S. envoy
By Rob Taylor
DARBISHAN, Afghanistan, April 19 (Reuters) - Afghanistan's government and foreign troops should prepare for the Taliban to step up urban suicide attacks and assassinations as they shift tactics to "very focused" terrorism, the U.S. ambassador said.
Pentagon clears McChrystal of reported wrongdoing
WASHINGTON, April 18 (Xinhua) -- The Pentagon announced Monday that there was no sufficient proof of reported wrongdoing by Stanley McChrystal that has forced him to quit the job as top U.S. commander in Afghanistan.
Brother of triple agent who blew himself up in CIA outpost in Afghanistan arrested in Jordan
By Associated Press, Tuesday, April 19, 6:26 AM
AMMAN, Jordan — Jordan’s counterterrorism forces have arrested the brother of an al-Qaida triple agent who blew himself up in a CIA outpost in Afghanistan in 2009, a Jordanian security official and two Islamist leaders said Tuesday.
Talks on US presence in Afghanistan after pullout unnerving region
By ANI | ANI – Tue, Apr 19, 2011 2:35 PM IST
Kabul, Apr. 19 (ANI): The proposed pullout from Afghanistan by American troops is now being viewed as a delicate development, as it will take place at a critical time. There are also concerns over reports that American troops may consider staying on after the 2014 deadline for evacuation of all foreign troops expires.
Pentagon program has U.S. civilians advising Afghan ministries to improve cooperation, security
Washington Post By Walter Pincus Monday, April 18,2011
Beginning last summer selected senior Defense Department civilians began replacing previously untrained U.S. military personnel and contractors as advisers to top levels of the Afghan defense and interior ministries. The credit goes to a relatively new Pentagon program called, appropriately, the Ministry of Defense Advisors (MoDA).
Pentagon rushes underwear armor to Afghanistan
USA TODAY By Tom Vanden Brook 18/04/2011
A rise in the number of troops wounded from buried bombs in Afghanistan has the Pentagon experimenting with new forms of protection, ranging from heavyweight chaps and Kevlar underwear to ground-penetrating radar systems.
This 'Jihadi' Is Armed With a Subversive Sense of Humor
Artist Totes Gold Gun, Tweaks Afghan Elite, Doles Out 'Reverse Bribes'
Wall Street Journal By DION NISSENBAUM APRIL 19, 2011
KABUL - Dressed in a police uniform, Aman Mojadidi once set up a fake roadside checkpoint to hand out real money to befuddled Afghan motorists used to paying, not receiving, bribes.
Afghanistan: UN Says Political and Humanitarian Concerns Don’t Mix
EurasiaNet By Aunohita Mojumdar April 18, 2011
Humanitarian agencies working in Afghanistan have been saying it for years. Now the United Nations is also admitting it: Humanitarian aid workers are facing increasing risks in many conflict zones where assistance is most needed and not much is being done to protect them.
Isaf Says Militants Weak to Face Forces
TOLOnews.com Monday, 18 April 2011
Isaf on Monday said Insurgents have lost the potential to "challenge" Afghan forces and foreign troops in the war amid a dramatic surge in Taliban-led violence.
Afghan Group Distances Itself From One Under Cloud
New York Times By KIRK SEMPLE April 18, 2011
The ripples created by an explosive television report challenging the veracity of “Three Cups of Tea,” a bestselling memoir dealing with Afghanistan and Pakistan, have reached Queens.
Thriving housing development generates hope for all of Kandahar
The Globe and Mail SUSAN SACHS Monday, Apr. 18, 2011
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN - The broad streets are paved. Tidy two-storey houses are tucked behind pastel walls and flower beds. Families picnic in the park and the strip mall boasts a pizza place, an Internet café and a bank.
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Karzai challenges US group on civilian deaths
KABUL (AFP) – Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday urged a high-level visiting US delegation to scale back night raids and military operations causing civilian casualties.
The call came as he met John Boehner, US House Speaker, who is leading a six-member delegation from the House of Representatives which also visited Pakistan this week.
"The president of Afghanistan said the people of Afghanistan highly appreciate the assistance given by the US in the past 10 years but they want the US military to seriously reconsider arbitrary and night search operations and those operations that cause civilian casualties," a statement from Karzai's office said.
Civilian casualties during military operations and night raids are highly sensitive issues in Afghanistan and are a repeated source of tension between Karzai's administration and its Western backers.
There are around 130,000 international troops, two-thirds of them from the US, fighting an insurgency waged by the Taliban since the Islamist militants were toppled from power by a US-led invasion in 2001.
A limited withdrawal of foreign troops is scheduled to begin in July, when Afghan forces will take control of security in a handful of areas ahead of a planned full transition of responsibility to Afghan troops and police by 2014.
Boehner is the most senior Republican in the US Congress and second in line for the country's presidency after Vice President Joe Biden.
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New Koran Furor Over 'Toilet Paper' Accusation
April 19, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
So far it's just AFP reporting it, but stone-throwing demonstrators destroyed part of an Afghan paper mill on April 18 over claims that the mill had "recycled copies of the Koran into toilet paper."
Defacing or otherwise sullying Islam's holy book are a serious offense in Afghan society. And recent speculation that fundamentalists are whipping up crowds into violent frenzies over real or perceived offenses against Islam -- sometimes with tragic results -- compounds the danger. But the target of those incidents have mostly been Westerners. Not so this time, assuming the mill's owners aren't foreigners.
Says AFP:
Copies of the Koran were found inside the factory, Kabul police spokesman Hashmat Stanikzai said, adding that no-one was injured in the protest.
"The attorney general's office and Kabul police have jointly tasked a delegation to investigate the alleged disrespect to our holy book in that factory," a spokesman for the office, Amanullah Iman, told AFP.
"We have arrested three people including the director of the company so far... we are taking the issue very seriously."
-- Central Newsroom
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Analysis:Pakistan military strives to secure central Afghan role
By Chris Allbritton
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - The Pakistani military is scrambling to shore up ties with Afghanistan to ensure a central role in a negotiated settlement of the conflict as the beginning of a U.S. military withdrawal draws closer.
Uneasy neighbors Pakistan and Afghanistan took an important step last weekend, agreeing to include Pakistani military and intelligence officials in a commission seeking peace with the Taliban, giving Pakistan's security establishment a formal role in any talks.
Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan have been fraught for decades largely because Pakistan has seen successive Afghan governments as too close to its main enemy - India.
Pakistan's military has had long-running ties to the Afghan Taliban and has repeatedly said that the road to a settlement of the 10-year conflict in Afghanistan runs through Islamabad.
It has in the past frowned upon efforts by Kabul to independently launch dialogue with the Taliban and is unlikely to countenance a similar outreach by Washington to the insurgent group without its involvement.
In recent months, Pakistan has sought to improve relations with Afghan President Hamid Karzai as the United States begins its withdrawal in July, and regional powers including India jostle for influence.
"This is part of General Kayani's relentless outreach to President Karzai ever since the Obama administration announced withdrawal plans," said C. Raja Mohan, a prominent Indian foreign affairs expert, referring to Pakistani army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani.
Mohan said Karzai - who has often blamed Pakistan for fueling the insurgency in his country - had responded to the Pakistani military overtures because he saw Pakistan as his hope for survival once the United States leaves.
"Karzai is looking to his political future after the U.S. withdrawal and he has asked for 'Pindi's help to find a way to work things out with the Taliban," he added, referring to Pakistani army headquarters in the city of Rawalpindi.
Feelers have gone out between the Afghan government and Taliban sympathizers, although no formal peace process has begun.
At the same time, Afghanistan and Pakistan have turned to each other when their own relations with the United States are strained.
U.S. ties with Karzai have soured since his election was called into question and over corruption. Relations with Pakistan have suffered over covert U.S. actions, including missile attacks by drone aircraft that Washington says are necessary to hunt down al Qaeda and the Taliban and which Pakistan sees as a violation of its sovereignty.
Above all, driving the flurry of diplomacy is the worry that the United States will leave Pakistan to clean up the mess after it leaves, just as it did following the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989.
"As we're coming to the end game, it's created a sense of urgency for an opening for all sides to come back to the table," said Cyril Almeida, a columnist for Pakistan's Dawn newspaper.
But the question, he said, is whether the younger generation of Taliban commanders is war-weary or war-hardened, and how much authority supreme Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar retains over them.
That uncertainty calls into question how much sway Pakistan itself has over the militants, given its ostensible abandonment of them in 2001 after an American ultimatum
COMPLICATED TIES
Pakistan's once close relationship with the Taliban -- it was one of only three countries to recognize the brutal regime toppled by the United States in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks - has become more complicated.
"The Taliban are not a manageable force anymore. The blowback that has happened in Pakistan, the whole insurgency. They're really worried about the emboldening of characters on their side of the border," said Kamran Bokhari, Middle East and South Asia director for the global intelligence firm STRATFOR.
"They don't want the Talibanization of Afghanistan," he said, referring to Pakistani leaders.
One scenario that Pakistan is working toward is a coalition government - perhaps similar to the one in Iraq - that sees the Taliban embedded in a political process that grants them a major say, but prevents them from taking over entirely, Bokhari said.
It is unclear if the United States would be happy with that, but it may have little choice given that a military victory looks impossible.
"Ultimately, the Americans don't like the idea that there should be some negotiations with the Haqqanis and Mullah Omar," Bokhari said, referring to the most dangerous Afghan Taliban faction.
"But it's in their interest to see a little bit of a load taken off their plate," he said, referring to a Pakistani role in pressing the Taliban to talk peace.
But before Pakistan can play a major role, it must overcome distrust in Afghanistan, and a belief that it will always see the Taliban as its long-term allies in achieving its aims, including keeping India at bay, analysts in Kabul say.
"One thing is clear," said Thomas Ruttig, co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network.
"Pakistan needs to play a more constructive role in Afghanistan. I don't see signs that Pakistan has given up its ideas of using the Taliban as an asset for post-2014 Afghanistan."
(Created by Chris Allbritton; Additional Reporting by Zeeshan Haider in Islamabad, Emma Graham-Harrison and Hamid Shalizi in Kabul and Sanjeev Miglani in Singapore; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Robert Birsel)
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Does Pakistan Really Want a Stable Afghanistan?
by Ishaan Tharoor Monday, April 18, 2011 time.com
In recent weeks, ties between Islamabad and Washington have grown more strained than a cup of sickly sweet South Asian chai. A prolonged kerfuffle over Raymond Davis, the American CIA agent who gunned down two Pakistani men allegedly pursuing him in Lahore, sparked protests across the country and triggered a diplomatic crisis that, while temporarily calmed, likely led to the next severe test of U.S.-Pakistan relations: last week's Pakistani demand that the U.S. drastically curb its CIA activities in the country and scale back its drone attacks. There were more drone strikes this weekend and Pakistani ire shows no sign of abating.
But a Monday op-ed by Huma Yusuf, Pakistan fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, in the Pakistani daily Dawn pours cold water on the "histrionic" reaction of many Pakistani politicians to the latest drone attack, suggesting that, while the "Pakistanis have believed that their unified outrage can coerce the US into suspending the strikes... the consensus in Washington is that the drones are here to stay for the foreseeable future." Moreover, Yusuf adds that many in Pakistan's tribal areas prefer these targeted attacks as they "cause less collateral damage than the Pakistan Army's conventional bombing tactics, and they've disrupted a variety of militant operations."
So what's really stoking the political furore? Beyond Pakistan's own fraught domestic politics, an April 18 article in the New York Times situates the tensions between Washington and Islamabad north of the border, in the spiraling mess that is the war — and desperate American search for an endgame — in Afghanistan:
Broadly, the Americans seek a strong and relatively centralized Afghan government commanding a large army that can control its territory. Almost all those ends are objectionable to Pakistan, which while it calls for a stable Afghanistan, prefers a more loosely governed neighbor where it can influence events, if need be, through Taliban proxies.
The Times piece is grim, though not altogether surprising reading, pointing to a fundamental lack of trust between American and Pakistani diplomats and a growing sense that both sides' visions for an ideal end as the U.S. and NATO scale down their troop presence in Afghanistan widely diverge. For decades now, as is well documented, Islamabad has nurtured and tolerated the presence of Pakistan-friendly Taliban in Afghanistan as "strategic depth" in a broader South Asian geo-political contest with India. The key architect of this policy has been Pakistan's military, the country's most powerful institution and one whose raison d'etre for most of its existence has been as a counterweight to Pakistan's larger neighbor to the southeast.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Apoorva Shah singles out the Pakistani military chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, a man many in Washington hoped would prove a reliable ally, for being too possessed by an "India-centric" focus:
Washington has tried engaging with Gen. Kayani, but doesn't seem to be succeeding... Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen clearly wishes to ensure that his counterpart focuses on the Taliban in the west of Pakistan, instead of India on the east. But he has not succeeded.
Instead, it seems the more bellicose and fundamentalist-friendly in the country's military firmament are now pushing to actively undermine U.S. efforts in Afghanistan. Arif Jamal, a prominent Pakistani scholar and journalist, claimed in an April 15 story in Foreign Policy that we may soon see a similar blockade of American supply shipments into Afghanistan as took place in September 2010 -- this time with the clear connivance of some in the Pakistani military. Says Jamal:
A group of former Pakistani servicemen are currently preparing an unofficial "plan B" to once again halt the flow of supplies to U.S. troops in Afghanistan, with the knowledge of the Pakistani military. According to this plan, if the Americans do not agree to the new terms of cooperation from Pakistan [the departure of CIA operatives and greater sharing of drone technologies with the Pakistani military], various civilian and political groups will block the highways leading to Afghanistan at some date in the not-so-distant future. Sources tell me that the legendary former Pakistani intelligence chief Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul, one of the key coordinators of [U.S.-funded] weapons and money to the anti-Soviet mujahideen and a vocal supporter of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden, is playing a key role in the preparation of this plan.
If true, such a development is entirely in keeping with the complex, schizophrenic U.S.-Pakistani relationship, one that is front-loaded with years of tragic irony and now seems to be lurching down another dark alley.
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Afghanistan should brace for more assassinations - U.S. envoy
By Rob Taylor
DARBISHAN, Afghanistan, April 19 (Reuters) - Afghanistan's government and foreign troops should prepare for the Taliban to step up urban suicide attacks and assassinations as they shift tactics to "very focused" terrorism, the U.S. ambassador said.
Karl Eikenberry told Reuters in an interview that three insurgent attacks in just four days pointed to a change in strategy following setbacks against international and Afghan security forces.
"Our sense is that in the course of the spring and the summer that we could see continued suicide attacks, perhaps at a higher level than we saw last year," Eikenberry said on his aircraft during a fleeting visit to restive Kandahar province.
"It seems to us now that they can't hold forces in the field and they can't fight head-on. They have shifted and they have begun now a very focused terrorist campaign."
An insurgent strike on Monday killed two people in the Afghan Defence Ministry in the third attack on supposedly high-security installations in just four days.
On Friday, a suicide bomber wearing a police uniform killed Gen. Khan Mohammed Mujahid, the Kandahar police chief, while another uniformed suicide bomber on Saturday killed five NATO service members in one of the worst attacks in months.
Insurgents have long targeted powerful leaders, with Mujahid the third Kandahar police chief assassinated since 2005, but there is widespread concern that in the face of pressure from tough U.S. "surge" troops these killings will increase.
Eikenberry, a former U.S. general, visited Kandahar city on Monday for private talks with provincial governor Tooryalai Wesa in the wake of the police chief's killing, as well as visiting U.S. special forces soldiers and local leaders in the strategically vital district of Khakrez, to the northwest.
The area and its overshadowing Masoud mountain range was once a Taliban stronghold and is still a vital insurgent supply route, or "rat run", but Eikenberry and U.S. commanders say district security has improved sharply in the last year.
Eikenberry went without body armour and jumped on an open special forces buggy with a minimal escort to visit a newly built girls' school and bazaar in Darbishan village, where the turquoise dome of Afghanistan's third holiest shrine glimmered against the crags behind.
But U.S. troops admit the relationship with around 2,500 local people is still fragile, with many having close ties and even extended family bonds with the Taliban.
Much of the area, including shops and the Sufi shrine of Shah Maqsood Agha, was also shattered by U.S air strikes in 2001 as American troops tried to drive out the Taliban and al Qaeda fighters, prompting an intensive rebuild.
"There are no hard-core Taliban here any more. But they are still unsure about us. They are still not sure how long we are going to stay and if the Taliban will come back," said one special forces soldier who could not be named.
To improve the relationship, the special forces command in Kandahar has just extended rotation of elite troops from six months to a year, to better solidify ties with local elders.
"The focus is on relationships. That's the most important counter-intelligence strategy," a senior officer told Reuters in the marble courtyard of the shrine.
Eikenberry, in a flurry of shura meetings with local people in Khakrez and Kandahar, heard pleas for new schools, teachers and health clinics, but also worries about security after a transition to fully Afghan security in 2014.
"There is uncertainty throughout Afghanistan. On one hand there is a sense of pride that goes with transition, but at the same time there is a sense of apprehension," Eikenberry said.
Governor Wesa said Kandahar had been through bad periods before many times, including the January assassination of Deputy Governor Abdul Latif Ashna, and the government was resilient enough to recover from Mujahid's slaying.
"The opposition are trying as hard to disturb the security as we are trying to build security. There will be tough days, but we will be okay," Wesa said.
Eikenberry said the use of uniformed suicide bombers was a tactic that would be hard but not impossible to combat. NATO has said it is training intelligence officers specifically to search out possible infiltrators and Taliban sympathisers.
"That's a tactic that's designed to lower the trust of the Afghan people and their security forces, an effort to break down the trust within the forces themselves," he said.
"It does represent a very serious threat and the Afghan security need to ensure that their vetting processes, their recruiting are rigorous and that their counter-intelligence within the forces is effective." (Editing by Nick Macfie)
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Pentagon clears McChrystal of reported wrongdoing
WASHINGTON, April 18 (Xinhua) -- The Pentagon announced Monday that there was no sufficient proof of reported wrongdoing by Stanley McChrystal that has forced him to quit the job as top U.S. commander in Afghanistan.
"The evidence was insufficient to substantiate a violation of applicable DoD (Department of Defense) standards with respect to any of the incidents on which we focused," the department's Office of Inspector General said in a report.
In an article published last June on the Rolling Stone magazine, the general and his inner circle were quoted as making disparaging remarks about the civilian leadership of the Afghanistan war, which finally led to his retirement.
"Not all of the events at issue occurred as reported in the article. In some instances, we found no witness who acknowledged making or hearing the comments as reported," the Pentagon concluded after investigation.
"In other instances, we confirmed that the general substance of an incident at issue occurred, but not in the exact context described in the article," said the report.
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Brother of triple agent who blew himself up in CIA outpost in Afghanistan arrested in Jordan
By Associated Press, Tuesday, April 19, 6:26 AM
AMMAN, Jordan — Jordan’s counterterrorism forces have arrested the brother of an al-Qaida triple agent who blew himself up in a CIA outpost in Afghanistan in 2009, a Jordanian security official and two Islamist leaders said Tuesday.
The attack in the Afghan province of Khost killed seven CIA employees and was one of the worst tragedies in the history of the American intelligence agency.
A Jordanian security official said the arrested man, Ayman al-Balawi, 38, was detained in a sweep Friday along with 102 other members of the ultraconservative Muslim Salafi sect.
The sweep followed violent clashes with anti-government protesters in the eastern Jordanian city of Zarqa during which Salafis stabbed unarmed policemen with swords and knives, wounding 83 officers, and brandished bundles of barbed wire.
Salafis — a banned sect which operates underground in Jordan — have held a series of rallies in various parts of the country in recent weeks. Their demonstrations are separate from the four-month-old wave of anti-government protests demanding democratic reforms and inspired by uprisings in the Arab world.
The security official said Tuesday that Ayman al-Balawi is the brother of Humam al-Balawi, the Jordanian physician-turned-bomber who carried out the December 2009 strike in Khost. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the sweep with the media. He said al-Balawi was not in the Zarqa protest.
“He tried to resist the arrest but he was overwhelmed,” the official told The Associated Press. He said Ayman was arrested in his home in Nuzha — which, like Zarqa, is a predominantly Palestinian refugee neighborhood in the heart of the Jordanian capital Amman.
Two militant Islamist leaders speculated that the arrest of Ayman, a known senior Salafi figure, was related to his recent call on an Islamic militant website urging followers to force the implementation of the strict Islamic Sharia law in Jordan.
The two leaders also spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity, saying they feared police reprisals.
In his posting, Ayman argued that if Sharia law was in place in Jordan, it would help resolve the country’s economic and political problems, including what he described as “regime’s misdeeds.”
He also called for toppling Jordan’s King Abdullah II, a moderate U.S. Arab ally who maintains cordial ties with Israel under a 1994 peace treaty.
Ayman’s mother, Shunara Awwad, said her son was preaching in an Amman mosque on Friday and was nowhere near the Zarqa protest. “He’s a mosque preacher, employed by the religious affairs ministry and he went to the mosque to work on Friday,” she said.
The security official said Ayman and others arrested in the sweep espouse what is called “takfiri” — an extremist doctrine that regards even non-militant Muslims as infidels.
He said the Salafis have about 4,000 members in Jordan, split along the lines of “hawks and doves” in their ideology.
While it is difficult to independently confirm links between al-Qaida and takfiri Salafis, the sect itself says there are about 300 “takfiris” serving prison terms in Jordan. Jordanian security officials decline to confirm the number but say the prisoners were convicted of working for al-Qaida abroad, plotting terror attacks in Jordan and recruiting Jordanians to carry out attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Ali al-Halabi, who heads a moderate Salafi wing with about 1,000 followers in Jordan, said his group was not part of the Zarqa clashes and denounced the violence.
“Although we agree on the necessity of implementing Sharia law in Jordan, Islam does not condone violence to achieve that,” al-Halabi said.
Last month, Ayman — who also goes by another first name, Mohammed — addressed an anti-government rally, saying authorities must release those convicted of links to al-Qaida. Otherwise, he warned militants would “hunt down” Jordanian intelligence officers, who he also accused of torturing detainees.
In the Khost attack, Ayman’s brother Humam Khalil al-Balawi — better known by his militant name, Abu Dujana al-Khurasani — also killed a Jordanian intelligence officer.
The Jordanian bomber was in fact a triple agent, recruited first by Jordanian intelligence to provide information to the CIA on al-Qaida’s number 2, Ayman al-Zawahri. But he turned on his handlers.
Jordan has convicted scores of al-Qaida suspects for links to the terror network or for plotting deadly attacks in the kingdom, including a triple hotel bombing in 2005, which killed 60 people in Amman.
The attack was claimed by then-leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, the Zarqa native Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. A year later, al-Zarqawi himself was killed in a U.S. attack in Iraq.
Al-Qaida has targeted Jordan because of its moderate outlook, close ties to the United States, the treaty with Israel, and support for the U.S.-led global war on terrorism.
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Talks on US presence in Afghanistan after pullout unnerving region
By ANI | ANI – Tue, Apr 19, 2011 2:35 PM IST
Kabul, Apr. 19 (ANI): The proposed pullout from Afghanistan by American troops is now being viewed as a delicate development, as it will take place at a critical time. There are also concerns over reports that American troops may consider staying on after the 2014 deadline for evacuation of all foreign troops expires.
Afghan officials have expressed concern that the negotiations could scuttle peace talks with the Taliban, now in their early stages, because the insurgents have insisted that foreign forces must leave the country before they will deal.
That they are already talking is an indication they are willing to compromise on the timing of a withdrawal - but it is hard to imagine Taliban acceptance of a lasting American presence here.
Formal talks on a long-term agreement began last month under President envoy's Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan Marc Grossman.
The reaction regionally was immediate. The Iranian interior minister made a rushed visit to Kabul, followed shortly by the national security advisers of India and Russia.
The Russians, though generally supportive of NATO's role in Afghanistan, were alarmed at the prospect of a long-term Western presence.
"The Russian side supports the development of Afghanistan by its own forces in all areas - security, economic, political - only by its own forces, especially after 2014," said Stepan Anikeev, a political adviser at the Russian Embassy here.
American officials have hastened to assure Russia and other neighbors about their intentions after 2014.
Despite worries, American and Afghan officials are negotiating on an accelerated timetable, with the Americans hoping to come to an agreement by July, when the first withdrawals of some American troops are to start, diplomats say. (ANI)
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Pentagon program has U.S. civilians advising Afghan ministries to improve cooperation, security
Washington Post By Walter Pincus Monday, April 18,2011
Beginning last summer selected senior Defense Department civilians began replacing previously untrained U.S. military personnel and contractors as advisers to top levels of the Afghan defense and interior ministries. The credit goes to a relatively new Pentagon program called, appropriately, the Ministry of Defense Advisors (MoDA).
“It’s a way of generating high-quality, effective civilian advisers who establish lasting links to partner ministries,” was how it was described last week by Dr. James Schear, deputy assistant secretary for Defense for partnership, strategy and stability operations before a Senate Armed Services subcommittee.
The Defense civilians, grade GS-13 and above, must agree to stay in Afghanistan for one to two years and take seven weeks of pre-deployment training, Schear said. Fundsare available to hire replacements to fill their jobs while they are deployed, he added.
“Within two months after our first deployment of 17 advisers in Kabul, General [David A.] Petraeus quickly challenged us to recruit, train and deploy 100 more before the end of this year,” he said.
A recent advertisement on the Defense Department’s Civilian Expeditionary Workforce Web site for a one-year position as a senior adviser to the Afghan Ministry of Interior (MOI) describes the complexity of the jobs being undertaken in the MoDA program.
“The incumbent coordinates the ministerial development effort of over 200 advisors in the MOI,” reads the ad. That person would be responsible for overseeing the National Police Plan, the National Police Strategy and 25 Ministerial Development Plans. These plans cover procurement, logistics, intelligence, strategy, policy budgets, communications and information technology, and much more.
Related duties include assessing progress with other advisers and Afghan counterparts, and reporting progress to the Afghan minister of Interior; the coalition’s deputy commander for police, a major general; and the coalition’s assistant commanding general for police development, a brigadier general.
An August 2010 blog of a then-civilian operations research analyst for Central Command provides a hint of the challenges involved. The analyst had to brief these same generals about issues related to the Afghan National Police.
One of the “sticky issues” concerned the Afghan commander of a training camp who refused to permit coalition personnel to use buildings there to house new police recruits.
One U.S. brigadier general agreed to take it to the Minister of Interior, saying “the [Afghan camp commander’s] behavior was unacceptable” and if access was denied “he would be fired.”
According to a federal employees Web site, there are 100 vacancies in the MoDA program for 12-month tours in Afghanistan. Preference is given to current, permanent Defense Department civilians who “should have relevant Office of Secretary of Defense, Joint Staff or Service Headquarters experience.” A secret security clearance is needed for all MoDA positions.
Kimberly Ekholm, before joining the initial MoDA group, was a program analyst and executive services officer at the Pentagon, according to a story posted on a Pentagon Web site last November. Her job in Kabul was to help develop office staff functions for the deputy Afghan defense minister and the vice chief of the Afghan general staff.
“During my office assessments, I saw how much manual work was being submitted both in and out of the office. When I asked why they weren’t using their computer, they said they didn’t know how,” the article quoted Ekholm as saying. She began teaching computer literacy, not just for her group but to the entire ministry staff.
George M. Dreyden was a program manager with the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, handling Europe and Eurasia. He went to Kabul working in support of the Afghan Defense Ministry. With an American colleague, he created an assessment program for the Defense Ministry’s development board, and the two have gone on to work on a ministerial development plan.
Schear also discussed a second, little-publicized new Pentagon program, the Defense Institution Reform Initiative (DIRI), which aims at streamlining support programs for partner defense ministries, such as those in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It identifies capabilities and gaps and “then supplies teams of subject matter experts to work with a partner nation on a periodic, sustained basis,” he said. He offered an example: One country might need a “realistic” strategic defense plan and another a new personnel system.
Both programs are aimed at finding better ways to solve problems encountered in security cooperation missions, which vary from country to country.
Schear noted that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates recently described as “patchwork” the “specialized [U.S. congressional] legislative authorities and funding sources that evolved in a very different security environment” than today.
Lessons learned hopefully will guide support efforts for Washington’s growing number of new military partners.
pincusw@washpost.com
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Pentagon rushes underwear armor to Afghanistan
USA TODAY By Tom Vanden Brook 18/04/2011
A rise in the number of troops wounded from buried bombs in Afghanistan has the Pentagon experimenting with new forms of protection, ranging from heavyweight chaps and Kevlar underwear to ground-penetrating radar systems.
The number of troops wounded by improvised explosive devices (IEDs) has gone from an average of 22 a month in 2008 to 281 a month in 2010, the year that a surge of 30,000 troops ordered by President Obama was completed.
Although soldiers and Marines wear armored vests, they generally have no such protection below the waist against explosives that detonate when stepped on. The counterinsurgency strategy overseen by Gen. David Petraeus emphasizes the increased use of foot patrols to root out insurgents and avoid civilian casualties.
“We’re talking about stopping a lot of stuff (that) comes blasting up at you,” said Brig. Gen. Peter Fuller, who leads Army efforts to equip soldiers. “So you have the projectiles associated with the actual device, then you have a lot of dirt and debris, sand and all this others stuff. It’s all ending up in your lower abdomen area.”
Among the items rushed to Afghanistan:
•Titanium athletic cups to protect troops’ genitals, Fuller said. Kevlar bike shorts and heavy silk underwear are also being issued to some troops to prevent bomb debris from perforating their abdomens.
•Handheld ground-penetrating radar systems called Minehounds help troops find buried bombs with few metallic parts that could be discovered by conventional detectors. Commanders want more than 600 of the devices.
•Heavy-weight chaps that can be worn in areas where troops fear IEDs are hidden.
Because troops already carry as much as 100 pounds of gear, adding heavy clothing or armor in Afghanistan’s hot summers is a concern, Fuller said. Kevlar degrades when it gets wet, and it can be cumbersome, he said. “Is the discomfort worth the protection it will provide for you?”
About 9% of IEDs found by troops in the U.S.-led coalition in March killed or caused wounds, according to the Joint IED Defeat Organization, the Pentagon’s lead agency for coordinating efforts to combat makeshift bombs. Those bombs killed 11 U.S. troops and wounded 210, figures that were down slightly compared with March 2010, according to JIEDDO.
Marines have been hit particularly hard. In the six weeks before March 18, almost half of all IED attacks occurred in the southern Afghanistan region that they patrol. Those attacks accounted for 48% of all coalition troops killed by IEDs and 56% of those wounded, according to JIEDDO.
The Army is studying the experience of British soldiers who have worn armored underwear for years, Fuller said. Irene Smith, a JIEDDO spokeswoman, said the agency has funded robots and devices to detect bombs and has expanded troops’ training on how to avoid IEDs.
Training might be the most effective way to protect troops, said Dakota Wood, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a non-partisan think tank in Washington. “This kind of fighting calls for caution and awareness, and you get that by intensive training methods,” Wood said.
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This 'Jihadi' Is Armed With a Subversive Sense of Humor
Artist Totes Gold Gun, Tweaks Afghan Elite, Doles Out 'Reverse Bribes'
Wall Street Journal By DION NISSENBAUM APRIL 19, 2011
KABUL - Dressed in a police uniform, Aman Mojadidi once set up a fake roadside checkpoint to hand out real money to befuddled Afghan motorists used to paying, not receiving, bribes.
Then, during last fall's parliamentary elections, the Florida-born Afghan artist took his antics a step further by covertly pasting Kabul walls with faux campaign posters that featured him in a black turban with a gold-plated pistol hanging around his neck.
"Vote for me," the posters urged. "I'm rich—and I've done jihad."
The stunts are part of a campaign the 40-year-old Afghan-American has been waging for the past three years against the excesses of the Afghan government, ranked as one of the world's most corrupt. In the process, he has become the leading agent provocateur of the nascent Afghan art scene.
"I think Aman can be a leader for Afghans in showing what provocative art can do in Afghanistan," said Tamim Samee, founder of Afghanistan's Contemporary Art Prize, a four-year-old competition meant to nurture the country's young artists.
In recent years, Mr. Mojadidi has helped train young Afghans about street graffiti, worked with Mr. Samee on the annual arts prize, and joined forces with expats who have injected a jolt of inspiration into Kabul's evolving artistic community.
"No one's doing as provocative and unusual stuff," says Nikki Diana Marquardt, Mr. Mojadidi's Paris-based art dealer.
Kabul is now home to a small-but-growing number of experimental musical acts, including a heavy metal band and a popular indie group inspired by Britain's pop sensation Oasis.
Filmmakers have used American and European government money to produce movies on everything from Afghan women prisoners to the region's unusual sport of buzkashi, under which players on horseback vie for possession of a dead goat.
Mr. Mojadidi's use of the word jihad in his work is no coincidence. Here, it usually refers to the U.S.-backed Afghan war against Soviet troops in the 1980s.
Veterans of that struggle, known as mujahedeen, occupy the top rungs of power in President Hamid Karzai's administration—and many of these once-respected fighters have come under withering criticism for enriching themselves while on government service.
"Jihad," proclaims Mr. Mojadidi, "is the Afghan bling."
Mr. Mojadidi, who spent his teen years as a vegetarian, high-school dropout and surfer in Florida, most famously channeled widespread contempt for the country's corrupt leaders by adopting the persona of "Jihadi Gangster"—a comical blend of Afghan mujahedeen and American gangsta rappers.
The most controversial photograph from his "Jihadi Gangster" series—"After a Long Day's Work"—featured Mr. Mojadidi sitting on a couch in front of a gold-plated prosthetic leg and a table filled with alcohol, cashews and jade-tipped bullets.
With his black turban and golden gun hanging down below his long gray beard, Mr. Mojadidi was pictured blithely using a remote to switch TV channels as a scantily clad woman with a blue burqa covering her face fawned over her man.
The limited edition photos—one of which was auctioned off for $14,000—have caused an uproar in Kabul.
When Afghan censors saw some of the tamer photographs from the series featured in the December issue of Kabul's largest English language magazine, Afghan Scene, they angrily forced the publisher to cut out the images—literally, with scissors—from 9,000 already-printed copies.
"This is not a Muslim fighter, he is Indian or something," said government censor Abdul Raquib Jahid as he jabbed his finger at one of the banned photographs. "This is an insult—or a blasphemy—to jihad."
As it happens, Mr. Mojadidi, who sometimes describes himself as a "Southern Fried Afghan," comes from holy warrior stock himself.
His uncle, Sibghatullah Mujaddedi, was one of the country's most famous anti-Soviet mujahedeen in the 1980s, and, until recently, chaired Afghanistan's Senate. Mr. Mojadidi himself briefly traveled with his uncle's anti-Communist fighters in 1990 to the front lines in Afghanistan.
At the time, dressed in Converse sneakers and the traditional Afghan shalwar kameez, the artist even fired a couple of mortars at the Soviet-backed government's tanks outside Jalalabad. He drove back to Pakistan the next day, filled with his first jolt of conflict reality.
"I grew up saying: 'I'm Afghan,'" Mr. Mojadidi recalls. "But when I came on that trip when I was 19, I remember thinking: 'I'm not that. My experience is completely different.'"
The next time he returned to Afghanistan was in 2001, when he joined his uncle in a triumphant convoy from Pakistan to Kabul after the fall of the Taliban regime.
The uncle, Mr. Mujaddedi, who had served as interim president of Afghanistan after the fall of the Soviet-backed regime in 1992, oversaw the drafting of a new Afghan constitution.
The white-bearded Afghan leader chuckled quietly when he was first shown his nephew's photographs of the "Jihadi Gangster" series.
"I don't agree with him," Mr. Mujaddedi said while looking over the images in his office as former Taliban government officials sat nearby waiting to confer. "This will make people upset and create problems for him."
Controversy, of course, is what Mr. Mojadidi is courting. His recent run-in with Afghan censors was just the latest round of cultural shenanigans.
In his first big attempt at performance art, Mr. Mojadidi bought an Afghan police uniform in 2009 and set up a fake checkpoint on a road outside Kabul.
Some of his filmed experiment, which he called a "reverse bribe," made its way onto "Danger Bell," Afghanistan's premiere political satire TV show.
With video cameras rolling, Mr. Mojadidi flagged down cars, checked their papers and then offered a personal apology—along with $2 worth of Afghan currency, a significant amount of money here—if the drivers had ever had to pay off a police officer in the past.
On the video, most of the drivers appeared perplexed and initially hesitant to take the cash, perhaps fearing it was some sort of cruel trap. But only four of the 20 drivers turned down the money.
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Afghanistan: UN Says Political and Humanitarian Concerns Don’t Mix
EurasiaNet By Aunohita Mojumdar April 18, 2011
Humanitarian agencies working in Afghanistan have been saying it for years. Now the United Nations is also admitting it: Humanitarian aid workers are facing increasing risks in many conflict zones where assistance is most needed and not much is being done to protect them.
A new report, released on April 12 by the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), says the UN has failed to maintain neutrality by playing both a political and a humanitarian role in Afghanistan, a fact that the UN’s political leadership may find an embarrassing admission, and says Taliban militants now see the UN as a legitimate target.
“Due to the dual nature of the UN as both a political actor and a humanitarian actor, UN aid agencies have more difficulty projecting a neutral image than many other humanitarians. The UN’s political role in many of the most-contested environments has placed it squarely in the Western camp, where it is viewed as a legitimate and prominent target (Al Qaeda along with national-level jihadist elements in different countries have named the UN as an enemy target on more than one occasion),” says the report, To Stay and Deliver: Good Practices for Humanitarians in Complex Security Environments. “Humanitarian action is under attack, but neither governments, parties to armed conflicts, nor other influential actors are doing enough to come to its relief.”
Certainly, the April 1 attack on a UN compound in Mazar-i Sharif highlights the challenges of operating in Afghanistan’s increasingly dangerous environment. Seven employees died in that assault. The crisis for aid agencies is likely to deepen with the escalation of international military operations and the counterattacks expected ahead of the international forces drawdown, slated to begin this July.
“Compared to 2010 there is a multiplication of military operations by the international military forces or those initiated by the AOG [armed opposition groups],” says Laurent Saillard, director of the European Commission’s humanitarian aid programs in Afghanistan. “It is an extremely hostile environment, politically speaking.”
“Access is a huge challenge for all of us,” says Manohar Shenoy, Oxfam’s Afghanistan country director. “It is becoming more complicated as the insurgency is spreading and for the belligerents it is difficult to distinguish between who is impartial and who is not. The impartial and humanitarian lines have become blurred.”
“In provinces like Kandahar and Helmand, as the fighting intensifies, the space for civil society and non-state actors is decreasing,” Shenoy adds. The threat to humanitarians is widespread, now impacting organizations that have managed to maintain neutrality even in the eyes of Taliban commanders, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross. In a March 15 operational update, the ICRC described the situation as “untenable,” warning that it is relying more on local partners in remote areas.
“People tell us that they are caught in the middle of the conflict and they don’t know which way to turn,” the ICRC’s head of delegation, Reto Stocker, was quoted as saying in the update. “We need to remain close to the people if we are going to be able to do our work.”
“Only half the country is accessible to humanitarian organizations,” said a quarterly report on Afghanistan released by the UN Secretary General in March. “The deteriorating security situation has been hampering safe access to people in need.”
That lack of access is, in turn, hurting the people who need aid the most, wrote Tufts University’s Antonio Donini in the January issue of The Humanitarian Exchange.
“This is particularly true of the UN, whose international staff can only move around in armored vehicles in all but a few more stable areas in the center and north,” Donini writes. “The one-sidedness of aid agencies, real or perceived, is affecting both the reach and the quality of their work. With the exception of the ICRC and a few others, mainstream international agencies, UN and NGO alike, are becoming more risk-averse and loath to rethink the way they work.”
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Isaf Says Militants Weak to Face Forces
TOLOnews.com Monday, 18 April 2011
Isaf on Monday said Insurgents have lost the potential to "challenge" Afghan forces and foreign troops in the war amid a dramatic surge in Taliban-led violence.
At a joint press conference with Nato Senior Civilian Representative's spokesperson, Dominic Medley, in Kabul Isaf Spokesperson Gen. Josef Blotz said 60 percent of insurgent-led attacks target civilians, tribal elders, religious leaders and government officials.
General Blotz said this year's statistics indicate an increase in assaults striking civilians, tribal leaders and government officials.
"Insurgents not able to challenge Afghan national security forces and Isaf forces to any significant degree continue to assassinate Afghan patriots and religious leaders," Gen. Blotz told reporters.
While emphasising on Nato's long-term cooperation to Afghanistan Nato's Senior Civilian Representative Spokesperson Dominic Medley pointed out to the new phase of progress unfolding in the country.
"New phase is taking place in Afghanistan as the country progresses on its road to peace, stability and security and that new phase is the joint strategy with Afghanistan and Nato," Mr Medley said.
Blotz said the man who targeted 201st ANA Corps in Laghman province was an army recruit. But he refused to shed light on the attacker's military rank.
On Saturday 201st ANA Corps in Laghman province was targeted by a suicide bomber, dressed in ANA uniform, and killed 4 Afghan soldiers, 7 foreign troops and hurt eight others.
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Afghan Group Distances Itself From One Under Cloud
New York Times By KIRK SEMPLE April 18, 2011
The ripples created by an explosive television report challenging the veracity of “Three Cups of Tea,” a bestselling memoir dealing with Afghanistan and Pakistan, have reached Queens.
On Monday afternoon, Women for Afghan Women, an advocacy group based in Fresh Meadows, issued a statement distancing itself from the book and its author, Greg Mortenson, and declaring the transparency of its work to help women and girls in Afghanistan and in the Afghan diaspora in the United States.
Though it has no connection to Mr. Mortenson or his charity, the Central Asia Institute, the women’s organization in Queens said that its funders “regularly visit our facilities to verify our reports. Our financial system is transparent and open to anyone — agency or individual — who wishes access to it.” The statement added: “We welcome this close attention.”
A report Sunday on “60 Minutes,’’ the CBS news program, questioned the facts of the book and the management of Mr. Mortenson’s organization, which has built schools, mostly for girls, in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Mr. Mortenson has strenuously denied the accusations.
Some advocates and others have worried that the allegations could impair fund-raising efforts by other organizations working in Central Asia.
Saad Mohseni, a media executive in Afghanistan, told The Daily Beast that if the allegations proved to be true, it would be “a tremendous blow to humanitarian and education related nongovernment work in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as many in the West will shy away from helping similar projects in the future.”
In its statement, Women for Afghan Women said it was “shocked and dismayed by the allegations of dishonesty and malfeasance” in the CBS News report. The organization added: “We’ve been asked if the expose — if true — will have any effect on American support for programs that benefit women and girls in Afghanistan, programs such as ours.”
The advocacy group, which is based in a single-family home in a residential area of Fresh Meadows, runs five shelters for battered women in Afghanistan, as well as a residence for children who have been living with their mothers in a prison in Kabul. The organization — which is financed by governments, nongovernmental agencies and individuals in Europe and the United States — is planning to add three women’s shelters to its network and two children’s shelters. It also provides help to Afghan women in New York, including victims of domestic violence.
Women for Afghan Women has itself been fighting challenges to its integrity in Afghanistan. Many in the deeply conservative country have embraced rumors that the shelters are mere fronts for prostitution. A Kabul television network ran an investigative series suggesting that the shelters, all operated by independent charities, are just fronts for prostitution, yet the series offered no evidence, and the station never sent anyone to visit the principal shelters, advocates said.
The shelter operators have also been fighting new rules under consideration by the Afghan government that would put the shelters under the control of government officials.
But Esther Hyneman, a founder of Women for Afghan Women, said in an interview on Monday that the Afghan government had apparently decided not to adopt those rules. “ All indications are that this plan has been withdrawn,” she said.
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Thriving housing development generates hope for all of Kandahar
The Globe and Mail SUSAN SACHS Monday, Apr. 18, 2011
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN - The broad streets are paved. Tidy two-storey houses are tucked behind pastel walls and flower beds. Families picnic in the park and the strip mall boasts a pizza place, an Internet café and a bank.
If not for the 11 interior police checkpoints, the 180 armed guards and the passing military vehicles bristling with weapons, the sprawling housing development of Aino Mina on the outskirts of Kandahar would not look out of place in any Canadian suburb.
“This,” said Tooryalai Wesa, the provincial governor, “is what the future looks like.”
Utopian visions do not survive long in Afghanistan, particularly in the ramshackle and dangerous city of Kandahar where Taliban hit squads are assassinating local officials, most recently the provincial police chief. Security is precarious. Investment is scarce. Infrastructure, where it exists, is decaying.
But for the first time in years, a few sparks of hope for economic development are visible.
After dithering and debate among foreign donors, the American military stepped late last year to provide two powerful new generators for Kandahar. The second unit was installed just this month. Now the boost in the electricity output is helping fuel an improbable housing bubble and boom in property speculation.
Aino Mina is a prime example of the pent-up potential for economic growth, according to its developers and bullish Kandahar officials.
Sales of plots, going for $22 a square metre, have soared in the past two years and spawned a lively real-estate futures market, said Mohammed Gul Basha, the project’s sales manager.
About 2,500 people have built homes and another 1,000 people have purchased contracts to build, putting down about 50 per cent of the sale price of the land. Many are now selling their contracts for major profits, he said.
The development, built on 9,000 hectares of land that once belonged to the Afghan Ministry of Defence, is owned by a company that includes two of President Hamid Karzai’s brothers. The deal was controversial and called an illegal land grab by critics. But Kandahar’s mayor, like the provincial governor, now raves about its economic benefits.
“There are hundreds of people working there building houses, roads, markets, everything,” said Mayor Ghulam Haider Hamidi. Property taxes from Aino Mina homeowners, he added, essentially bankroll city services, providing $6-million of the city’s $16-million budget.
The people who bought land in the first years of the five-year-old project were Afghans living abroad who wanted to help their Kandahar relatives. More recently, Mr. Bacha said, they are the local middle class.
They made money in the past few years selling equipment and services to the NATO air base. But they had no place to invest, since the lack of reliable electricity in the city has choked off any new business investment.
The American military, already the biggest generator of jobs and revenue in the province, is also largely responsible for the nascent housing bubble. In late December, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers flew in a new diesel generator and installed it on the east side of the city at the site of a lifeless industrial park filled with shuttered factories. Last week, the military delivered a second one for the city’s western end.
The generators’ combined output of 20 megawatts of power effectively increases the city’s electrical capacity by 42 per cent.
Promises and plans for bringing power to southern Afghanistan, the Taliban heartland and the scene of the big NATO military surge of the last year, have been discussed by various donor countries for nearly nine years.
Development agencies argued against spending money on quick fixes like generators. Instead, they pushed for big-ticket projects like hydroelectric dams, new transmission lines and power substations to build a modern electricity grid
But the centrepiece of those plans, the rehabilitation of the 1950s-era Kajaki dam in Helmand province, has been stalled by fierce fighting. A new effort, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, is now under way to refurbish Kajaki and its frayed transmission lines to Kandahar. But the area remains a hotbed of Taliban activity, and security problems could still push back the project’s three-year timeline.
The new generators for Kandahar are seen as a quick but necessary fix to the city’s chronic energy shortage. They were bought with money from the Commanders Emergency Response Program, the discretionary funds that American officers in the field can use for small “hearts and minds” projects to win over Afghans. CERP funds were also promised to cover the cost of fuel for the generators for the next three years.
The new generators will not solve the city’s chronic power deficit. But their arrival, representing a $300-million investment in kick-starting Kandahar’s moribund economy, has already encouraged some factory owners to reopen.
The lack of reliable electricity has been driving investment out of Kandahar.
Al-Haj Raheemdin, deputy director of the local Chamber of Commerce, said he invested $40,000 in equipment in hopes of starting a small factory a few years ago to produce cosmetics and pharmaceutical products. But the city’s erratic electricity changed his mind. He ended up establishing the company in Kabul where the power supply is more reliable.
“We have about 130 factories in Kandahar and very few were working because of the electricity problems,” Mr. Raheemdin said. “Now they might start again. And if each one has 20 or 30 people working, they would be all day working and at night sleeping. No fighting. No stealing. No robbing.”
Aino Mina is hooked into the city’s power grid, but most homeowners who live there have installed their own generators, Mr. Basha said. As the development grows, though, so does his vision of a purring self-sufficient suburban lifestyle for down-at-the-heels Kandahar.
“We’re going to build generators,” he said, as he drove around Aino Mina in his white Lexus, pointing out armies of labourers already laying the foundations for a multi-storey shopping centre and a sports complex. “And we have plans to build our own hydroelectric dams in the future.”
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