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Panetta in Afghanistan, Calls 2011 a ‘Turning Point’ in US-Led War
VOA News December 13, 2011
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is in Afghanistan to check on the progress of U.S.-led counterinsurgency efforts, which he says reached a “turning point” this year after a decade of fighting the Taliban.
Prospects unclear as U.S. hobbles away from 2 wars
by Xinhua writer Ran Wei
WASHINGTON, Dec. 13 (Xinhua) -- The United States is shifting its focus to the Asia-Pacific region as it pulls out of Iraq and Afghanistan, ending the chronic wars that have sapped the country's political strength and international influence.
Islamabad Says Blockade On NATO Will Last Until 'Rules Of Engagement' Changed
RFE/RL December 12, 2011
Pakistani Prime Minister Yusaf Raza Gilani says his country's blockade of NATO supply lines into Afghanistan -- ordered in retaliation for a deadly NATO helicopter attack in Pakistan -- is likely to stay in place for weeks.
Change Afghanistan Can Believe In
10 years later, life isn't just better -- it's much better
Foreign Policy BY CHARLES KENNY DECEMBER 12, 2011
After 10 years of war and reconstruction, and as tens of thousands of international troops and aid workers in Afghanistan gear up to spend yet another holiday season a long way from the comforts of home, a lot of people are wondering: Was it worth it? Certainly Dec. 5's international conference in Bonn, Germany, on the future of Afghanistan was a subdued affair
Pakistan Taliban shift focus to Afghanistan
Asia Times By Amir Mir 12/12/2011
ISLAMABAD - With the Pakistan Taliban finally holding peace talks with a government in Islamabad that is increasingly seen at odds with the United States in the aftermath of the November 26 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) air strike that killed 25 soldiers, Pakistani suicide bombers seem to have shifted the focus of their deadly attacks from their homeland to neighboring Afghanistan.
Iran opposed to US, Afghan partnership
Press TV December 13, 2011
Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi has once again stated Tehran's opposition to any treaty that would enable the US forces to remain in Afghanistan.
Pakistan's Afghanistan policy under review: FM
ISLAMABAD, Dec. 13 (Xinhua) -- Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar Tuesday said that Pakistan is also reviewing its policy about Afghanistan in the envoy conference underway in Islamabad.
US Congress panel freezes $700m worth of Pakistan aid
13 December 2011 BBC News
A US Congressional panel has frozen $700m (£450m) in aid to Pakistan until it gives assurances it is tackling the spread of homemade bombs in the region.
Bomb blast destroys music shop in Afghan town
JALALABAD, Afghanistan, Dec. 13 (Xinhua) -- A music shop was destroyed as a bomb planted by unknown men went off in Nangarhar province, 120 km east of Afghan capital city Kabul, on Tuesday, an official said.
US cuts put British-backed Afghan hydropower project in doubt
Kajaki dam turbine, hauled 100 miles across Helmand by British forces, may be deemed not cost-effective to install
Guardian.co.uk By Jon Boone Monday 12 December 2011
Kabul - Cuts to the US government's Afghanistan development programme have put in doubt the future of a 220-tonne hydroelectric generator that British forces hauled across the desert of Helmand more than three years ago.
Reporting Problems in Southeast Afghanistan
Much to be done to raise standards, local media-watchers say.
IWPR By Hejratullah Ekhtiyar 12 Dec 11
Afghanistan - Allegations of incompetence and corruption are nothing new in Afghanistan, and are usually levelled at government officials.
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Panetta in Afghanistan, Calls 2011 a ‘Turning Point’ in US-Led War
VOA News December 13, 2011
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is in Afghanistan to check on the progress of U.S.-led counterinsurgency efforts, which he says reached a “turning point” this year after a decade of fighting the Taliban.
Panetta arrived in Kabul on Tuesday for meetings with U.S. military commanders and Afghan officials. On the flight to the Afghan capital, he told reporters the Afghan military and police are better prepared to take responsibility for securing the country as U.S.-led NATO troops gradually withdraw.
U.S. President Barack Obama issued an order earlier this year for the withdrawal of 10,000 American troops by the end of 2011 and the pullout of another 23,000 by next October. NATO plans to continue transferring security control of Afghan provinces to Afghan forces during that period.
But the transition process has been complicated by worsening U.S. relations with Pakistan, whose long border with Afghanistan is a haven for Taliban and al-Qaida militants who attack NATO and Afghan troops.
In his remarks to the media, Panetta said the United States “cannot win the war in Afghanistan without being able to win in our relationship with Pakistan as well.” He said the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General John Allen, has reached out to Pakistani commanders to try to rebuild cross-border security cooperation.
Pakistan barred NATO from using Pakistani border crossings to send supplies to landlocked Afghanistan last month in retaliation for a NATO air strike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers along the frontier. NATO says its aircraft were trying to attack militants and denies Pakistani accusations that it deliberately targeted the Pakistani troops.
Pakistan has taken other punitive measures in response to the November 26 incident, including ordering the U.S. military to vacate a Pakistani air base that serviced U.S. drones involved in attacks on militants in the border region.
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Prospects unclear as U.S. hobbles away from 2 wars
by Xinhua writer Ran Wei
WASHINGTON, Dec. 13 (Xinhua) -- The United States is shifting its focus to the Asia-Pacific region as it pulls out of Iraq and Afghanistan, ending the chronic wars that have sapped the country's political strength and international influence.
The two costly, bloody wars reflect America's contradicting "must win" but "cannot stand the loss" mentality, exposing the vulnerability of the strongest military force in the world.
They also underscored the country's persistent effort to maintain its global hegemonic position, a foreign policy that has not changed for decades.
If it continues to seek global predominance at the expense of other countries' interests, the United States perhaps will face a more humiliating collapse of its power and prestige.
LOSING MORE THAN IT GAINS IN TWO WARS
Launched in 2001 and 2003, respectively, to topple down the Taliban and Saddam regimes, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been painfully expensive in money and lives. More than 6,300 U.S. troops have been killed, with another almost 40,000 severely injured.
Meanwhile, 1.3 trillion U.S. dollars has been spent in the two wars, with the number still increasing, according to a recent estimate by the Congressional Research Service.
Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, the U.S. defense budget climbed from 304 billion dollars to 616 billion in 2008, with another 75 billion dollars spent annually on domestic anti-terror measures.
Aggravated by the recent global financial crisis, the country is now mired in debt. Federal debt soared from 5.6 trillion dollars in 2001 to the current 15 trillion dollars-plus.
Some people say the two wars have dealt a blow to al-Qaida and other terrorist groups and spared the United States from another major terrorist strike.
But as Melvyn Leffler, history professor of U.S. foreign policy at the University of Virginia, told Xinhua, the United States "has suffered more than it has gained" at least in the short to intermediate terms.
The U.S. inability to execute its goals in Iraq and Afghanistan has put the two wars into question and damaged the country's prestige.
It is perhaps no exaggeration to say that both wars are kind of humiliation for the world's biggest power.
"They are not as bad as the one from Vietnam in the 1970s, but it is bad enough in terms of a blow to U.S. prestige," Ted Carpenter, a senior fellow with the Washington-based Cato Institute, told Xinhua.
Meanwhile, the two wars also upset the regional strategic balance. Anti-American sentiment among Muslims has been inflamed, while Iran's influence has expanded in the Middle East. The number of terrorist attacks has not decreased in a measurable way globally, and the world's security situation has not improved significantly.
Americans seem to have a conflicting view of war. With the world's most powerful military, the country is ready to defeat any rival, but as losses grow heavy, citizens and political elites alike become increasingly impatient with what they see as military "black holes."
WITHDRAWALS INEVITABLE
As more and more policymakers see the two wars as a heavy burden to U.S. strength and international status, the public's anti-war sentiment grows and, amid economic recession and high unemployment, more and more Americans demand a speedy end to the wars.
Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said in a speech in Washington D.C. last month: "We selected objectives beyond the capacity of the American domestic consensus to support over the period required to implement them," citing the U.S. military interventions on the Korean peninsula, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
The two "unwinnable" wars, plus economic difficulties, made troop withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan inevitable, analysts say.
On June 22, President Barack Obama announced that 10,000 U.S. troops would leave Afghanistan by the end of this year and another 23,000 would head home by September 2012. The ultimate goal is to transfer leading security responsibility to Afghan forces by 2014.
On Oct. 21, Obama said the U.S. troop pull-out from Iraq would be completed by the end of the year, ending the almost nine-year war.
Despite substantial troop cutbacks and the end of U.S. involvement now in sight, troubles in the two countries continue.
Iraq is now a weak country with fragile stability and unity. This does not fulfill the U.S. goal of turning it into a stable and pro-West democracy. Recently, America could not even strike an agreement with Iraq to allow its military trainers to stay.
The endgame in Afghanistan may be worse. After 10 years of fighting, there are few lasting benefits apparent. Increasing signals suggest Afghanistan could return to its fractious nature.
The two countries are likely to remain America's headaches.
CLOSER EYE ON ASIA
While drawing troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States is in the meantime looking to expand its influence in the Asia-Pacific region, as Obama's recent Asia trip suggested. Analysts say U.S. foreign policy is moving its focus toward Asia Pacific in a strategic adjustment.
The history of U.S. foreign policy reveals a consistent pattern of the country making significant policy changes after setbacks from wars and economic difficulties, as it seeks to pull itself out of the mire and regain global dominance.
Professor Leffler cited the example of the 1970s, when the U.S. suffered defeats in Vietnam, and experienced high inflation, soaring unemployment, and an oil crisis.
He said America then "recalibrated its capabilities," including improving relations with China and re-configuring its military posture.
"Ultimately, in the 1980s, it emerged as a hegemonic power in the international system," he said.
Similarly, after taking office in 2009, Obama indicated he would end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, while unveiling his "Back to Asia" policy.
"When President Obama came into office, he came in with the idea that the U.S. has diverted too many resources and too much attention to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan," Kenneth Lieberthal, former White House senior director on Asian affairs and current director of the John Thornton China Center at Brookings Institution, told Xinhua.
Indeed, Asia has become the world's most dynamic region in the past 10 years, with roughly 50 percent of the world's economic output. Just as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pointed out in her recent speech at the APEC summit, "It is becoming increasingly clear that in the 21st century, the world's strategic and economic center of gravity will be the Asia Pacific."
America's Back-to-Asia policy reflects a changing global geopolitical and economic reality. As Asia has become more and more important in the global economy, the United States, of course, does not want to miss this "grand banquet."
But more than that, another obvious reason behind this back-to-Asia effort is America's concerns about the rapid growth of China.
Undoubtedly, there is a sense of uneasiness among Washington's political elites about a rising China. Carpenter says these concerns will remain because "part of that is simply the dynamic that exists between an incumbent hegemony and a rising great power."
Nevertheless, the United States should draw lessons from its successive foreign policy failures of the past. Amid a changing global strategic and economic landscape, if it continues to care only about its own interests and tries to get its way on everything, while ignoring or even clamping down upon other countries' legitimate interests, it will only face more failures or humiliation in the future.
U.S. leaders must accept the realities that China will play a more active role in Asia as its power grows, Carpenter said.
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Islamabad Says Blockade On NATO Will Last Until 'Rules Of Engagement' Changed
RFE/RL December 12, 2011
Pakistani Prime Minister Yusaf Raza Gilani says his country's blockade of NATO supply lines into Afghanistan -- ordered in retaliation for a deadly NATO helicopter attack in Pakistan -- is likely to stay in place for weeks.
In a December 11 interview with the BBC, Gilani admitted Pakistan was using the blockades on the supply routes as a bargaining chip to get Washington to write new "rules of engagement" for NATO attacks in Pakistan's border region.
Gilani said Pakistan could take further retaliatory action, including the possibility of closing its airspace to the United States -- a move that would further complicate the supply of NATO forces in Afghanistan.
Gilani also told the BBC that neither Pakistan nor the United States trusted each other in the fight against Islamic militancy, and that Islamabad would keep its blockades in place at border crossings into Afghanistan until new rules of engagement were written.
"Yes, there is a credibility gap [between Pakistan and the United States]. We are working together and still we don't trust each other," Gilani said. "I think we have to improve our relationship so that, for better results, we should have more confidence in each other."
Disputed Border Attack
Pakistan's already fragile relations with the United States were shaken further in May when U.S. forces killed Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden near a Pakistani military academy without first notifying Islamabad or Pakistani military authorities.
But relations fell to a new low on November 26, when two NATO helicopter strikes killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in what Pakistan's military has called a deliberate attack.
Washington has expressed regret about the strikes on the two Pakistani border posts, but says there will be no apology until an investigation determines exactly what the Pakistani soldiers were doing when the air strikes were called in by nearby NATO ground troops in Afghanistan.
Within hours of the helicopter attacks, Pakistan cut the two main routes in its territory for transporting NATO supplies into Afghanistan -- the Khyber Pass that goes from the border town of Torkham to Kabul and a route through Pakistan's Baluchistan Province that passes from the border town of Chaman on to Kandahar.
Those two routes account for about one-third of all cargo that the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) ships into Afghanistan.
Northern Route Gains Importance
Another one-third of NATO's supplies are flown directly into Afghanistan, while the remaining cargo goes overland along the so-called "northern distribution network," which passes through Central Asia from the Caucasus or Russia.
With some supplies for Afghanistan's fledgling security forces also passing through Pakistan, a sustained blockade by Islamabad could threaten efforts by the United States and its allies to build up the Afghan armed forces ahead of the planned 2014 withdrawal of international forces from the country.
Gilani's threat to keep the blockade in place on NATO deliveries through Pakistan also raises the importance of the alternative route through Central Asia.
That could lead to further negotiations between NATO and Central Asia states, as well as Russia and Caucasus transit countries like Azerbaijan, that would allow greater amounts of cargo or the inclusion of weapons and ammunition along the northern distribution network.
Seeking End To Pakistan Reliance
Before 2009, most supplies for the 140,000 ISAF troops in Afghanistan were shipped to the port of Karachi in Pakistan and then transported by truck into Afghanistan.
But after a series of ambushes against its supply trucks in Pakistan in 2009, NATO began to negotiate transit rights with Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Those negotiations took almost a year to complete.
Germany and the United States have been allowed to use the northern route through Central Asia to receive nonlethal supplies. But that route had been closed to NATO forces as a whole, as well as for delivering weapons, ammunition, or other combat supplies to Afghanistan.
Even before Islamabad imposed its blockade, ISAF forces and the U.S. military had decided to push supply networks away from their reliance on Pakistan. In July, more than half of all ground-transported supplies arrived in Afghanistan through Khyber or Chaman.
Since then, the United States has been trying to reduce its supply transit through Pakistan to about 25 percent of overland cargo.
ISAF said the move was aimed at "reducing reliance on any single line of communication to avoid any unnecessary vulnerabilities should that network become unavailable."
Not Many Other Options
Pakistan has briefly closed supply routes through its territory on two earlier occasions -- once after crossborder NATO air strikes in the autumn of 2010 that killed three Pakistani soldiers and again in April when thousands of Pakistanis demonstrated against NATO drone strikes by rallying on a key highway.
The routes through Pakistan are also vulnerable to attacks by insurgents. Since the blockade was imposed, militants have carried out several attacks on NATO supply trucks that have been backed up in Pakistan near the border. The latest such attack, which killed one driver and destroyed several NATO supply trucks, happened early on December 12.
Afghanistan also has a border with Turkmenistan to the northwest and Tajikistan to the north, as well as a small remote border with China in mountainous territory in the far northeast. But the border with China is too remote and high-altitude to create a major transit route.
A convenient and relatively cheap link through Iran's port of Chabahar into western Afghanistan is ruled out because of hostile relations between Tehran and Washington.
U.S. forces early on December 12 completed their withdrawal from the remote Shamsi Air Field in southern Pakistan. The withdrawal from that air field, used mostly as a maintenance and refueling base for unmanned U.S. drone aircraft, began on December 5 after talks by telephone between Gilani and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
But that withdrawal is expected to have little impact on the drone campaign because most drone attacks in the Afghan-Pakistani border region originate from air fields in Afghanistan.
with agency reports
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Change Afghanistan Can Believe In
10 years later, life isn't just better -- it's much better
Foreign Policy BY CHARLES KENNY DECEMBER 12, 2011
After 10 years of war and reconstruction, and as tens of thousands of international troops and aid workers in Afghanistan gear up to spend yet another holiday season a long way from the comforts of home, a lot of people are wondering: Was it worth it? Certainly Dec. 5's international conference in Bonn, Germany, on the future of Afghanistan was a subdued affair -- boycotted by Pakistan after NATO aircraft killed 24 troops on its border and rapidly overshadowed by a rare act of sectarian violence in Kabul (against Afghan Shiites) that killed 59 people. Expectations were considerably below the high hopes of the first Bonn conference 10 years ago on building a post-Taliban Afghanistan. Then, in 2001, the talk was of making the country a haven of peace and prosperity after 30 years of war. Last week, it was the hope of good-enough government over a stable-enough country.
Nonetheless, the answer to "was it worth it" is yes. For all the waste, corruption, and death, Afghanistan is a much better place to live than it was 10 years ago, and the international community can take a considerable part of the credit for that.
First, the country remains considerably more peaceful and united than it has been for most of the past 40 years. The 1990s saw battle deaths in Afghanistan average around 9,000 a year, according to World Bank data. From 2003 to 2008, though, despite an uptick of violence in the last few years, that average was down to below 3,000 deaths. Yes, negotiations with the Taliban have foundered since the September assassination of the government's chief negotiator, Burhanuddin Rabbani. Still, militant attacks were down by more than a quarter in the three months to September this year over the same period last year. Asia Foundation polling suggests people feel more secure, support for the government is up, and more than two-thirds of the country reports no sympathy for the Taliban.
The economy is also in better shape than it was 10 years ago. According to World Bank data, GDP per capita climbed from $569 to $879 between 2002 and 2008, a rate of growth that suggests average incomes might have doubled over the course of the decade since the fall of the Taliban. The World Bank suggests that as the troops leave and aid flows diminish, GDP growth rates may slow from around 9 percent to 5 or 6 percent. Nonetheless, rising average incomes suggest at least some Afghans are living life a little further away from absolute destitution. One positive sign: 71 percent of Afghan households have a mobile phone.
World Bank data and the recent Afghanistan Mortality Survey suggest heartening progress in quality of life over the past decade as well. Not least, adult mortality has been declining both because of reduced violence and improved conditions for good health. Death rates among men ages 15 to 59 has approximately halved over the last 10 years. For men and boys together, war and other violence now account for about the same number of deaths as drownings and traffic accidents combined. War-related injuries kill about as many males as die from diabetes-related complications and one-quarter the number who die from infections and parasitic disease. Additionally, deaths from infectious diseases have also been declining, not least because the proportion of the population (some 48 percent) with access to clean water more than doubled between 2000 and 2008.
Furthermore, female adult mortality declined by about one-third over the past decade -- not least thanks to improved maternal health. The risk that a woman could die from pregnancy- or childbirth-related causes has fallen by one-third since 2000, though it is still at a shockingly high level that kills almost one in 10 adult women. Once more, that is in part thanks to expanded availability and use of health services. The percentage of women of childbearing age using contraceptives climbed from 5 to 20 percent between 2000 and 2010, and the percentage of births attended by skilled personnel more than doubled.
Moreover, the percentage of women seeking medical care and advice for their newborns increased from 16 to 60 percent between 2003 and 2010. Meanwhile, immunization rates against measles climbed from 35 percent of 2-year-olds in 2000 to 76 percent by 2009. Partly as a result, under-5 mortality fell from nearly 11 percent of kids dying before their fifth birthday to around 8 percent over the past 10 years. Combined with rapidly dropping birth rates, this suggests the chance that a parent will go through the pain of watching one of his or her children die before age 5 has declined from a likelihood of roughly three in five to around one in three.
Also, the growing numbers of kids who survive to school age are far more likely to actually end up in class. In 2001, 774,000 Afghan children were in primary school, virtually none of whom were girls. By 2009, nearly 5 million kids were in primary school, 40 percent of them girls.
Beyond improved access to health care and education, women in particular have been able to play a far greater role in public life: 27 percent of seats in the lower house of parliament are now held by women. Government initiatives including the National Solidarity Programme, which channels resources to projects building roads, schools, electricity networks, latrines, and other infrastructure across the country, have ensured that women have a voice in financing decisions at the local level by mandating gender balance on the councils that select projects. One more sign of changing attitudes about women: In 2010, only 4 percent of 15-19 year-olds reported they were first married by age 15. That compares with one-fifth of women now between 25 and 29 who were first married at 15 -- they would have reached that age under Taliban rule.
It would be ridiculous to deny a role for the international community in supporting this dramatic revival in the fortunes of a benighted country. At the same time, it would be as ridiculous to suggest that the cost has been anything but high -- far higher than it needed to be. Leave aside the incalculable cost of lives lost and look only at the monetary expense: There has been fraud and waste on a colossal scale. Even the successful programs carry a high price tag. The National Solidarity Programme, for example, has raised the proportion of villagers who report improvements in their economic conditions by 5 percentage points -- but at a cost of $200 per household, estimates Justin Sandefur, my colleague at the Center for Global Development. That's a reason to think of alternative approaches to foster peace and development, like cash transfers conditional on declining violence, and to keep on pushing for institutional reform alongside more transparent leadership.
Doubtless, the cost of sustaining progress will remain considerable. The Afghan government suggests it might need as much as $10 billion in aid each year over the coming years -- about $300 per person in the country each year. It is a huge sum. But in the context of a war that currently costs the United States alone about $10 billion a month, it is worth it. The substantial investment the international community has already made sustains a quality of life and a semblance of peace in a country that is in far better shape today than it has been for decades -- if not ever before. Let's not abandon such hard-won gains now.
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Pakistan Taliban shift focus to Afghanistan
Asia Times By Amir Mir 12/12/2011
ISLAMABAD - With the Pakistan Taliban finally holding peace talks with a government in Islamabad that is increasingly seen at odds with the United States in the aftermath of the November 26 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) air strike that killed 25 soldiers, Pakistani suicide bombers seem to have shifted the focus of their deadly attacks from their homeland to neighboring Afghanistan.
Afghanistan has seen a sharp increase in suicide bombings in recent months, the latest being the December 6 attack targeting Shi'ite worshippers at a Kabul mosque, killing 56 people.
It was the first major anti-Shi'ite attack in Afghanistan since the fall of the Afghan Taliban a decade ago in 2001. The bombing took place on the concluding day of the Bonn conference on Afghanistan that was boycotted by Pakistan.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has blamed the Pakistan-based sectarian jihadi group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) for the Kabul attack, demanding justice from Islamabad. Pakistan has responded by asking Kabul to provide evidence to support allegations that the LeJ was responsible. "Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is a banned organization. We would encourage Kabul to share with us evidence through official channels," Pakistani Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit said.
The fact, however, remains that Lashkar-e-Jhangvi al-Almi - an offshoot of the LeJ, an anti-Shi'ite sectarian-cum-jihadi group, has already claimed responsibility for the attack.
A spokesman for the LeJ (Almi) claimed the Kabul attack in a phone call to Radio Mashaal, a Pashto language radio station in Afghanistan. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi al-Almi is reportedly based in Pakistan’s tribal areas on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and is considered a radical offshoot of the LeJ. Both groups act as surrogates for al-Qaeda.
The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (Pakistan Taliban - TTP) has its roots in anti-Shi'ite violence, with the LeJ acting as a training ground for many of its anti-Shi'ite leaders, including Hakeemullah Mehsud and his first cousin, Qari Hussain Mehsud.
The LeJ was launched in 1996 by a breakaway faction of Sunni Deobandi extremists, including Ishaq, Riaz Basra and Akram Lahori, who walked out of the outfit after accusing the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) leadership of deviating from the ideals of its founder, Maulana Haq Nawaz Jhangvi, who was killed by Shi'ite rivals in February 1990.
But many terrorism experts believe that the SSP is in fact the mother organization that has provided human fodder to the cauldron of the region's multi-layered violence in the name of Islam.
Having ideological affinity with the Taliban, the SSP aims at restoring the caliphate system and has declared the Shi'ite minority to be non-Muslim. The SSP and the LeJ, which is considered to be the military wing of the SSP, were once strategic assets of Pakistan and have linked with al-Qaeda as its ancillary warriors, killing Pakistani citizens and targeting the security forces to dissuade Pakistan from fighting the "war against terror" as a United States ally.
The LeJ still has deep links with al-Qaeda and the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban and is considered to be the most violent terrorist organization operating in Pakistan, with the help of its suicide squads.
As with most Sunni Deobandi sectarian and militant groups, almost the entire LeJ leadership is made up of people who have fought in Afghanistan with the backing of the Pakistani security establishment and most of its cadre are drawn from the numerous Sunni madrassas (seminaries) in Pakistan.
The Lashkar stands out for its secrecy, lethality and unrelenting pursuit of its core objectives - targeting Western interests in Pakistan and the Shi'ite community as a way to the eventual transformation of the country into a Taliban-style Islamic state. It has become the group of choice for hardcore militants who are adamant in pursuing their jihadi agenda in Pakistan.
According to Interior Ministry circles in Islamabad, the LeJ consists of eight loosely coordinated cells spread across Pakistan with independent chiefs for each cell. Headed by a fugitive Punjabi Taliban leader, Maulana Abdul Khalil, who comes from the central Punjab, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi al-Almi is largely believed to be the international wing of the LeJ which operates mostly in the central parts of Punjab and the tribal areas on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
Incidentally, the Kabul bombing (already claimed by the LeJ) took place the day Pakistan's Interior Minister Rehman Malik publicly thanked the Pakistani Taliban for maintaining peace during the Shi'ite ritual of Ashura and for not staging terrorist attacks this year. This gives credence to earlier media reports that the TTP had declared a temporary ceasefire with the government in Islamabad to pave the way for peace talks. The anti-Shi'ite TTP has frequently bombed Shi'ite processions in Pakistan during Ashura in the past.
Although the Pakistani authorities have already declared war on the TTP for targeting the security forces and intelligence agencies' personnel, there have been unofficial reports in recent weeks of peace talks between the two sides, which have been refuted by both the Pakistani military and the militants.
But the December 6 statement by Malik indicated that there was more to this than meets the eye. Talking to newsmen in Islamabad on December 6, Malik disclosed that he had appealed to the TTP to respect Shi'ite observances this year and spare their processions.
"And they responded positively to my appeal. This is a good sign and I am confident that the security situation will further improve in future. I am thankful to the Taliban who did not carry out any attack on Shi'ites and showed respect to their rituals. I hope they will also remain peaceful in the future, lay down arms and work together with us for the security of the country," Malik said.
Three days after Malik's statement (December 10), a senior Taliban commander and deputy leader of the TTP, Maulvi Faqir Mohammad, claimed that the peace talks were on between the government and the Pakistan Taliban. He further claimed that the government had already released 145 members of the militant organization as a goodwill gesture and halted the military operation in the Bajaur tribal region.
Pakistan's leading English daily The News quoted Faqir as speaking from somewhere in Afghanistan by phone:
Our talks with the government are going in the right direction. If we succeed in signing a peace agreement in Bajaur, then the Taliban in other places such as Swat, Mohmand, Orakzai, Darra Adamkhel, Kurram and South Waziristan tribal regions will also ink peace accords with the government in their respective areas. Bajaur will be a role model for other areas and if our talks prove fruitful, the same formula will be applied in all other areas where the Taliban are fighting against the government and its armed forces.
In Bajaur, Maulana Faqir Mohammad said the government and the Taliban had already ceased fighting to give peace a chance and to enable a jirga (tribal council) comprising notables from the tribal areas and settled districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and some government and security officials to find a peaceful settlement to the conflict.
He said the government, after a long time, had shown some courage in the recently held All Parties Conference in Islamabad that helped restore the trust of the Pakistan Taliban groups in state institutions.
The Taliban, Mohammad added, were earlier reluctant to seriously consider the peace offers of the government as it had lost its credibility by arresting some senior Taliban commanders in Swat invited for peace talks:
We have no wish to fight against our armed forces and destroy our country. If the government stops killing its own people and pulls out of the US-led war against humanity, then there is no need for us to fight against the state. There has been some major development in our previous rounds of peace talks but the government will have to show flexibility and restore trust of the Taliban groups by releasing our prisoners and stopping military operations in FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas].
However, another militant commander introducing himself as Mullah Dadullah and claiming to be the Taliban leader in Bajaur rejected Mohammad's statement and denied peace talks with the government.
He said it was Mohammad's personal decision to enter into talks with the government and this should not be considered as a unanimous decision of the Bajaur Taliban or the TTP. The next one to deny the TTP-government peace talks was Ehsanullah Ehsan, the official spokesman of the TTP, who said there would be no negotiations until the government imposed Islamic law, or sharia, in the country. "Talks by a handful of people with the government cannot be deemed as the Taliban talking," Ehsan told The Associated Press by telephone from an undisclosed location.
Malik, who often makes controversial statements on key issues of national importance, spoke on December 11, categorically stating that the government was not holding any talks with the TTP, adding that negotiations could not take place until terrorists surrendered themselves before the authorities.
While facing media flak in Islamabad for thanking the Taliban, he denied reports about negotiations between the government and the TTP, saying:
I talked to stakeholders in Bajaur to confirm that there are no talks with them. If Maulvi Faqir Muhammad wants to hold talks with the government, he should come down from the hills, lay down his arms and surrender. If the TTP surrenders, the government will definitely consider talks.
Commenting on reports that some Taliban fighters had been released, he said there was no truth to this and Faqir was spreading disinformation in this regard.
It may be recalled that TTP chief Hakeemullah Mehsud rejected Malik's November 6 offer of peace talks by vowing to carry out more attacks on the state of Pakistan. The offer was made in accordance with a resolution adopted at an all-party conference on October 18 in Islamabad that endorsed peace talks with the Taliban.
But well-informed circles in the Ministry of Interior claim that the TTP had actually set some pre-requisites to initiate talks with the government, most of which have been accepted in the aftermath of the November 26 NATO air attack on two Pakistani check posts on the AfPak border.
Pakistan reacted sharply to the NATO strike by announcing a review of Pakistan-US ties, suspending NATO supply lines through Pakistan to Afghanistan and giving a 15-day deadline to the Americans to vacate the Shamsi air base in Balochistan province.
All three Pakistani actions correspond closely with the November 19 pre-conditions made public by a TTP spokesman for entering into peace negotiations with the federal government. Therefore, unlike in neighboring Afghanistan where a suicide bomber killed more than 50 Shi'ite worshipers on December 6, the Ashura observances passed peacefully in Pakistan without any terrorist activity, resulting in the interior minister publicly thanking the Taliban for responding to his appeal.
Government circles in Islamabad say following the deaths of TTP founder Baitullah Mehsud and the chief of the group's suicide bomb squad, Qari Hussain Mehsud, the TTP are relatively weakened and are ready to hold peace talks with a government that has increasingly been at odds with the US since the May 2 Abbottabad raid in which al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed by US special forces.
As a result, the rhythm of suicide attacks has changed dramatically in Pakistan, which has not experienced any major attacks September 15 when a suicide bomber killed 46 people at a funeral in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, with the Pakistani human bombs shifting the focus of their deadly attacks to neighboring Afghanistan.
Amir Mir is a senior Pakistani journalist and the author of several books on the subject of militant Islam and terrorism, the latest being The Bhutto murder trail: From Waziristan to GHQ.
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Iran opposed to US, Afghan partnership
Press TV December 13, 2011
Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi has once again stated Tehran's opposition to any treaty that would enable the US forces to remain in Afghanistan.
Describing the existence of foreign military bases in the region as the cause of instability in regional countries, Salehi said on Tuesday that Iran believes in the competence of Afghan forces in providing security for the Islamic Republic.
The Iranian Foreign Minister made the remarks in a meeting with Afghanistan's Deputy Defense Minister Homayoun Fawzi.
Referring to the violation of Iran's airspace by a US drone which was downed by the Iranian military, Salehi said “we are serious when it comes to maintaining and defending our country's national security.”
The US RQ-170 Sentinel stealth aircraft was landed with minimal damage by the Iranian Army's electronic warfare unit on December 4 while flying over the northeastern Iran city of Kashmar, some 225 kilometers (140 miles) away from the Afghan border.
Iran's Foreign Ministry summoned Afghan Ambassador to Tehran Obeidollah Abid on Saturday to inform him of the country's official protest to the incident
Tehran called for an immediate explanation from the Afghan government over the incident and asked Kabul to prevent the repetition of such occurrences.
Fawzi praised Iran's assistance to the Afghan government and nation over the past years, assuring Salehi that Kabul would not allow any danger to threaten Iran from Afghanistan.
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Pakistan's Afghanistan policy under review: FM
ISLAMABAD, Dec. 13 (Xinhua) -- Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar Tuesday said that Pakistan is also reviewing its policy about Afghanistan in the envoy conference underway in Islamabad.
She told the Senate that Afghanistan is a very important country for Pakistan and "we must recognize Afghanistan as a sovereign country as required by the UN charter."
"It is in better interest of Pakistan to have good relations with the government in Kabul whatsoever it is," she said.
The foreign minister said that Pakistan's security and prosperity depends on the peace and stability in Afghanistan. " Therefore, we say that prosperous, stable and peaceful Afghanistan is in interest of Pakistan," Hina Khar said.
She added that in reviewing the foreign policy, keeping in view the interest of Pakistan is the foremost.
To a question about huge staff at the Pakistani embassy in Kabul, she said that there are always security threats to the mission in Afghanistan and therefore majority of the employees are security staff, besides the ambassador, one first secretary and two others.
Responding to a question about multiple visas to Afghanistan, she said that Pakistan would raise issue of multiple visas with Afghan government soon. "Pakistan is already giving the facility of multiple visas to Afghans but Afghanistan should also reciprocate."
As for Afghanistan bashing against Pakistan over the attempted killing of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, the minister said, "We accommodated a lot of Afghan refugees in Pakistan and what is our guilt if someone move from here, then stay in a restaurant in Afghanistan and he is not checked and then he attacks former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani," she said.
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US Congress panel freezes $700m worth of Pakistan aid
13 December 2011 BBC News
A US Congressional panel has frozen $700m (£450m) in aid to Pakistan until it gives assurances it is tackling the spread of homemade bombs in the region.
The move - the second such freeze this year - reflects US frustration over what it sees as Islamabad's reluctance to act against militant groups.
But it has has been criticised by senior Pakistani politicians.
The killing of Osama Bin Laden by US forces and ongoing US drone strikes in Pakistan have strained bilateral ties.
Washington is also known to be unhappy about what it sees as lacklustre Pakistani efforts to counter the al Qaeda-linked Haqqani network, which it believes operates out of Pakistan and fights US troops in Afghanistan.
Correspondents say that Pakistan is one of the largest recipients of American foreign aid and the cutback announced on Tuesday is only a small proportion of the billions of dollars it receives from Washington every year in civil and military assistance.
But the freeze in aid - part of a defence bill that is expected to be passed by Congress later this week - could presage even greater cuts, correspondents say.
Washington has provided about $20bn (£12.8bn) in security and economic aid to Pakistan since 2001, much of it in the form of reimbursements for assistance in fighting militants.
In July the US said it was withholding some $800m (£500m) in military aid to Pakistan - about a third of the annual US security assistance to Pakistan.
White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley told ABC television at that time that Pakistan had "taken some steps that have given us reason to pause on some of the aid".
Justifying the latest aid freeze, some in Congress say that Islamabad has not only failed to act against militant groups but that in some cases it has actively provided them with help, a charge Pakistani officials deny.
Members of Congress are particularly aggrieved over suspicions that homemade bombs - or improvised explosive devices (IEDs) - are being made by militants based in Pakistan for use against US and Nato troops in Afghanistan.
IEDs are among the most effective weapons of the militants, and are responsible for most coalition casualties in Afghanistan.
Many are reportedly made using ammonium nitrate, a common fertiliser which Washington believes is being smuggled across the border from Pakistan.
The US wants "assurances that Pakistan is countering improvised explosive devices in their country that are targeting our coalition forces", Representative Howard McKeon, a House Republican, said.
Pakistan, however, argues that it is doing its utmost to fight al-Qaeda and the Taliban - and hundreds of its soldiers have been killed since it joined the US-led war in Afghanistan in 2001.
"It [the latest freeze] is most unfortunate and untimely," Pakistani senate committee on foreign affairs chairman Salim Saifullah Khan told the AFP news agency.
"I think we will survive without aid, but it is most unfortunate to see these things after 31 years of sacrifices by Pakistan."
Last month Pakistan accused Nato of killing 24 Pakistani soldiers in an air strike near the Afghan border - and has stopped fuel being supplied from Pakistan to Nato forces in Afghanistan as a sign of its anger.
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Bomb blast destroys music shop in Afghan town
JALALABAD, Afghanistan, Dec. 13 (Xinhua) -- A music shop was destroyed as a bomb planted by unknown men went off in Nangarhar province, 120 km east of Afghan capital city Kabul, on Tuesday, an official said.
"A bomb planted by unknown men close to a music shop in Nangarhar's provincial capital Jajalabad city exploded at 05:30 a. m. local time today destroying the shop," spokesman for provincial administration Ahmad Zia Abdulzai told Xinhua.
Abdulzai added that investigation has been initiated to identify those behind the blast.
There were no casualties and no groups or individuals have claimed of responsibility.
Taliban militants during their rule in Afghanistan which collapsed in late 2001 had banned music and all other entertainments.
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US cuts put British-backed Afghan hydropower project in doubt
Kajaki dam turbine, hauled 100 miles across Helmand by British forces, may be deemed not cost-effective to install
Guardian.co.uk By Jon Boone Monday 12 December 2011
Kabul - Cuts to the US government's Afghanistan development programme have put in doubt the future of a 220-tonne hydroelectric generator that British forces hauled across the desert of Helmand more than three years ago.
The September 2008 operation to sneak the heavy machinery across 100 miles of hostile territory in northern Helmand to the Kajaki dam was acclaimed by the British army as one the most daring operations of its kind since the second world war.
The operation, in which at least 100 insurgents were killed, was also touted as a turning point in the battle to win hearts and minds in southern Afghanistan by bringing electricity to the region.
In adding a third turbine to the hydroelectric station at Kajaki, one of the most delayed aid projects in history would finally be completed. US engineers constructed a power plant in the 1970s with two turbines but left a space for a third.
Three years after the British delivered it, the £3m turbine remains packed up and its future in doubt as the United States Agency for International Development (USAid) ponders whether installing it makes financial or strategic sense.
With the USAid budget slashed from $4bn in 2010 to $2bn this year, and the US Congress calling for further reductions, the US military and USAid are currently discussing what it describes as a "cost analysis and best-case scenario for implementation of work at Kajaki dam given funding and time restrictions".
Options include further delaying the turbine installation and instead refurbishing power lines, substations and the existing turbines.
"Money is always an issue," said Ken Yamashita, the USAid mission director in Kabul. "Because of things like security and costs have gone up. What we are looking at very carefully is see how we can get the most economic solution."
Military sources in the capital say the delay has alarmed John Allen, the US commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, who wants to see progress on a project that has long been regarded as a key part of the campaign.
Nato commanders are particularly exasperated because of the efforts made in recent months by the US marine corps to correct one of the blunders of the 2008 British operation: that although the turbine was safely delivered, there was no plan to bring the 700 tonnes of cement required to install the turbine.
Route 611 to Kajaki running from Sangin, the heart of the Helmand insurgency, was far too dangerous and USAid's contractors refused to complete the job.
In October the marines finally carried out operations to clear insurgents from the villages along the road. In theory, all that now needs to happen is for the road to be hardened to withstand heavy trucks.
Yamashita said doing everything that Kajaki requires – new transmission lines, substations and the new turbine – could still happen, but "it is unrealistic to think that to do so in a sustainable manner can be in done in the short term in a few years".
The needs of Kajaki also have to be balanced against the need for electricity all over the country, and other infrastructure projects.
"So if we look at that then it becomes a question of prioritising, is it Kajaki over something else in the north in the east and so one and so forth? That's part of the difficult conversation," said Yamashita.
Although the third turbine would raise the output of the dam from 32 megawatt to 48, even that is not a huge amount of power for a region enjoying fast economic growth.
He said even with three turbines, the plant would not meet the surging electricity demand from the two key regional cities of Lashkar Gah and Kandahar, which is currently relying for much of its electricity needs on giant diesel generators provided by the US army, which are hugely expensive to operate.
"[The Kajaki dam] is important and necessary for the valley," he said. "It will not be sufficient to meet all of Kandahar's needs."
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Reporting Problems in Southeast Afghanistan
Much to be done to raise standards, local media-watchers say.
IWPR By Hejratullah Ekhtiyar 12 Dec 11
Afghanistan - Allegations of incompetence and corruption are nothing new in Afghanistan, and are usually levelled at government officials.
Journalists in the southeastern Nangarhar province, however, acknowledge that some of their colleagues are prone to the same kinds of problems.
Some of the wilder factual inaccuracies have included a TV report that the Taleban had shot down a drone plane – the unmanned aircraft used by United States forces - killing everyone on board. A local radio station carried dramatic news of the arrest of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, leader of the insurgent faction Hezb-e Islami, when in fact it was only a student allegedly linked to the group who was detained.
Stories are often peppered with misspellings and incorrect dates and figures.
Media experts blame the frequently poor standards of accuracy on lack of training and low wages, which leads some reporters to take shortcuts.
“The media have lost their prestige,” media lecturer Abdul Basir Sabawun said.
Sabawun believes Nangarhar needs better training in journalism.
“There are short-term courses in journalism here, but journalism is not an ordinary profession that can be learned in a few months,” he said.
Media analyst Najibollah Nayel often spots suspicious similarities between news reports, which he says result from journalists forming unofficial pools which delegate one of their number to cover a story. If that reporter misunderstands the story, everyone else will repeat the error when they file their own copy.
“They mostly look alike – the only difference is the name of the reporters,” he said of the stories. “The same reports get aired by all media outlets.”
Other journalists are subservient to officialdom.
“Many journalists wait for the government to say something, and then air whatever it tells them to. They don’t cover the real problems affecting society. How can people trust such media outlets?” Nayel asked.
A media analyst in Nangarhar who requested anonymity said he had personally witnessed reporters calling government officials to seek line-by-line approval of stories prior to publication.
“If the official deems the report unacceptable, he abuses the journalist, who listens quietly,” he added.
Ershad Raghand, a reporter for the Zhwandun radio and television network, said bribery was also a major issue in local journalism. When journalists have not been paid for months, they may find it hard to refuse gifts of cash, clothing, fuel and land from local politicians and officials.
In any case, the media outlets they report for may be funded by local power-brokers or foreign donors, creating a temptation to write whatever journalists think their paymasters want to read.
“Journalists are factionalised not just in Nangarhar, but all over the country,” Shakil Ahad Rafiqzai, a student at Nangarhar’s Ariana University, said. “They are influenced by the powers that support them. How can they write something that goes against the interests of their backers?”
Parwais Romal, who reports for Reuters news agency in the province, said he accepted that some journalists were a discredit to the profession, but added that it should be remembered there were others who kept to the highest standards.
Hejratullah Ekhtiyar is an IWPR-trained reporter in Nangarhar province.
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