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Secret US-Taliban talks reach turning point
Diplomacy remains a long shot, officials acknowledge
Reuters via MSNBC
WASHINGTON — After 10 months of secret dialogue with Afghanistan's Taliban insurgents, senior U.S. officials say the talks have reached a critical juncture and they will soon know whether a breakthrough is possible, leading to peace talks whose ultimate goal is to end the Afghan war.
Taliban Ready To Open Political Office, Afghan Negotiator Says
December 18, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
A key government negotiator says that the Taliban is willing to open an office outside of Afghanistan, a step toward holding face-to-face peace talks with the Afghan government.
Taliban may open office for negotiation: Afghan FM
KABUL, Dec. 18 (Xinhua) -- Afghan Minister for Foreign Affairs Zalmai Rasoul said Sunday that the government would have no objection if Taliban open office for negotiation either inside Afghanistan or abroad.
Afghanistan denies deal with Taliban over schools
AFP 17/12/2011
The Afghan government on Saturday denied making a deal with the Taliban agreeing a more conservative curriculum and more mullahs as teachers in return for an end to attacks on schools.
Afghan Taliban militants target civilians in ex-stronghold
By Abdul Haleem
KABUL, Dec. 18 (Xinhua) -- Taliban militants fighting Afghan and NATO-led troops apparently as part of new tactic have focused their gun on soft targets in their former stronghold Kandahar as two civilian officials and a pro-government figure have been assassinated over the past week.
Armed men gun down official in southern Afghan city
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Dec. 18 (Xinhua) -- Unknown armed men assassinated a government official on Saturday in Taliban's former stronghold Kandahar province, 450 km south of capital Kabul, spokesman for provincial administration Zalmai Ayubi said Sunday.
1,400 newly graduated soldiers join Afghan National Army
MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan, Dec. 18 (Xinhua) -- A total of 1, 400 graduated soldiers on Sunday joined Afghan National Army (ANA) in Mazar-i-Sharif city, the provincial capital of Balkh province, some 305km north of capital city of Kabul, an army commander said.
Afghanistan wants help to kick-start mining boom
ABC News By Stan Correy for Background Briefing December 18, 2011
Afghanistan wants more Australian help - not from the military, but from Australian mining companies - to kick-start a post-war economy with a mining boom.
Karzai: Afghans still don't have personal security
AP By DEB RIECHMANN and RAHIM FAIEZ 17/12/2011
KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghanistan has achieved political stability, yet Afghans still do not feel personally secure in their daily lives, President Hamid Karzai said in an interview to be aired on Sunday.
Afghans Negotiating Long-Term U.S. Presence, Karzai Says
Bloomberg By Bob Willis December 17, 2011
Afghan President Hamid Karzai said his government is negotiating with the U.S. to establish an “enduring partnership” that may entail a long-term presence of U.S. forces in the South Asian country.
217 still missing as refugee ship sinks off Indonesia
JAKARTA, Dec. 18 (Xinhua) -- The search and rescue operation at the second day on Sunday for about 217 missing migrants, as their wooden ship sank in waters off Trengglek district of East Java on Saturday, fails to find any one of them, a rescuer said.
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Secret US-Taliban talks reach turning point
Diplomacy remains a long shot, officials acknowledge
Reuters via MSNBC
WASHINGTON — After 10 months of secret dialogue with Afghanistan's Taliban insurgents, senior U.S. officials say the talks have reached a critical juncture and they will soon know whether a breakthrough is possible, leading to peace talks whose ultimate goal is to end the Afghan war.
As part of the accelerating, high-stakes diplomacy, Reuters has learned, the United States is considering the transfer of an unspecified number of Taliban prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay military prison into Afghan government custody.
It has asked representatives of the Taliban to match that confidence-building measure with some of their own. Those could include a denunciation of international terrorism and a public willingness to enter formal political talks with the government headed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
The officials acknowledged that the Afghanistan diplomacy, which has reached a delicate stage in recent weeks, remains a long shot. Among the complications: U.S. troops are drawing down and will be mostly gone by the end of 2014, potentially reducing the incentive for the Taliban to negotiate.
Still, the senior officials, all of whom insisted on anonymity to share new details of the mostly secret effort, suggested it has been a much larger piece of President Barack Obama's Afghanistan policy than is publicly known.
U.S. officials have held about half a dozen meetings with their insurgent contacts, mostly in Germany and Doha with representatives of Mullah Omar, leader of the Taliban's Quetta Shura, the officials said.
The stakes in the diplomatic effort could not be higher. Failure would likely condemn Afghanistan to continued conflict, perhaps even civil war, after NATO troops finish turning security over to Karzai's weak government by the end of 2014.
Success would mean a political end to the war and the possibility that parts of the Taliban - some hardliners seem likely to reject the talks - could be reconciled.
The effort is now at a pivot point.
"We imagine that we're on the edge of passing into the next phase. Which is actually deciding that we've got a viable channel and being in a position to deliver" on mutual confidence-building measures, said a senior U.S. official.
While some U.S.-Taliban contacts have been previously reported, the extent of the underlying diplomacy and the possible prisoner transfer have not been made public until now.
The reconciliation effort, which has already faced setbacks including a supposed Taliban envoy who turned out to be an imposter, faces hurdles on multiple fronts, the U.S. officials acknowledged.
They include splits within the Taliban; suspicion from Karzai and his advisers; and Pakistan's insistence on playing a major, even dominating, role in Afghanistan's future.
Obama will likely face criticism, including from Republican presidential candidates, for dealing with an insurgent group that has killed U.S. soldiers and advocates a strict Islamic form of government.
But U.S. officials say that the Afghan war, like others before it, will ultimately end in a negotiated settlement.
"The challenges are enormous," a second senior U.S. official acknowledged. "But if you're where we are ... you can't not try. You have to find out what's out there."
Next steps?
If the effort advances, one of the next steps would be more public, unequivocal U.S. support for establishing a Taliban office outside of Afghanistan.
U.S. officials said they have told the Taliban they must not use that office for fundraising, propaganda or constructing a shadow government, but only to facilitate future negotiations that could eventually set the stage for the Taliban to reenter Afghan governance.
On Sunday, a senior member of Afghanistan's High Peace Council said the Taliban had indicated it was willing to open an office in an Islamic country.
But underscoring the fragile nature of the multi-sided diplomacy, Karzai on Wednesday announced he was recalling Afghanistan's ambassador to Qatar, after reports that nation was readying the opening of the Taliban office. Afghan officials complained they were left out of the loop.
On a possible transfer of Taliban prisoners long held at Guantanamo, U.S. officials stressed the move would be a 'national decision' made in consultation with the U.S. Congress. Obama is expected to soon sign into law the 2011 defense authorization bill that contains new provisions on detainee policy.
There are slightly fewer that 20 Afghan citizens at Guantanamo, according to various accountings. It is not known which ones might be transferred, nor what assurances the White House has that the Karzai government would keep them in its custody.
Guantanamo detainees have been released to foreign governments--and sometimes set free by them--before. But the transfer as part of a diplomatic negotiation appears unprecedented.
Ten years after the repressive Taliban government was toppled by its Afghan opponents and their Western backers, a hoped-for political settlement has become a centerpiece of the U.S. strategy to end a war that has killed nearly 3,000 foreign troops and cost the Pentagon alone $330 billion.
While Obama's decision to deploy an extra 30,000 troops in 2009-10 helped push the Taliban out of much of its southern heartland, the war is far from over. Militants remain able to slip in and out of lawless areas of Pakistan, where the Taliban's senior leadership is located.
Bold attacks from the Taliban-affiliated Haqqani network have undermined the narrative of improving security and raised questions about how well an inexperienced Afghan military will be able to cope when foreign troops go home.
In that uncertain context, officials say that initial contacts with insurgent representatives since U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton publicly embraced a diplomatic strategy in a February 18, 2011 speech have centered on establishing whether the Taliban was open to reconciliation, despite its pledge to continue its 'sacred jihad' against NATO and U.S. soldiers.
"The question has been to the Taliban, 'You have got a choice to make. Life's moving on," the second U.S. official said. "There's a substantial military campaign out there that will continue to do you substantial damage ... Are you prepared to go forward with some kind of reconciliation process?"
U.S. officials have met with Tayeb Agha, who was a secretary to Mullah Omar, and they have held one meeting arranged by Pakistan with Ibrahim Haqqani, a brother of the Haqqani network's founder. They have not shut the door to further meetings with the Haqqani group, which is blamed for a brazen attack this fall on the U.S. embassy in Kabul and which senior U.S. officials link closely to Pakistan's intelligence agency.
U.S. officials say they have kept Karzai informed of the process and have met with him before and after each encounter, but they declined to confirm whether representatives of his government are present at those meetings.
Evolving Taliban position?
Officials now see themselves on the verge of reaching a second phase in the reconciliation process that, if successful, would clinch the confidence-building measures and allow them to move to a third stage in which the Afghan government and the Taliban would sit down together in talks facilitated by the United States.
"That's why it's especially delicate -- because if we don't deliver the second phase, we don't get to the pay-dirt," the first senior U.S. official said.
Senior administration officials say that confidence-building measures must be implemented, not merely agreed to, before full-fledged political talks can begin. The sequence of such measures has not been determined, and they will ultimately be announced by Afghans, they say.
Underlying the intensive efforts of U.S. negotiators are fundamental questions about whether - and why - the Taliban would want to strike a peace deal with the Western-backed Karzai government.
U.S. officials stress that the 'end conditions' they want the Taliban to embrace -- renouncing violence, breaking with Al Qaida, and respecting the Afghan constitution -- are not preconditions to starting talks.
Encouraging trends on the Afghan battlefield - declining militant attacks, a thinning of the Taliban's mid-level leadership, the emergence of insurgent-on-insurgent violence -- are one reason why U.S. officials believe the Taliban may be more likely to engage in substantive talks than in the past.
They also cite what they see as an overlooked, subtle shift in the Taliban's position on reconciliation over the past year, based in part by statements from Mullah Omar marking Muslim holidays this year.
In July, the Taliban reiterated its long-standing position of rejecting any peace talks as long as foreign troops remain in Afghanistan. In October, a senior Haqqani commander said the United States was insincere about peace in Afghanistan.
But U.S. officials say the Taliban no longer wants to be the global pariah it was in the 1990s. Some elements have suggested flexibility on issues of priority for the West, such as protecting rights for women and girls.
"That's one of the reasons why we think this is serious," a third senior U.S. official said.
Risky strategy
Yet as the process moves ahead, the idea of seeking a peace deal with an extremist movement is fraught with challenge.
At least one purported insurgent representative has turned out to be a fraud, highlighting the difficulty of vetting potential brokers in the shadowy world of the militants largely based in Pakistan.
And the initiative was dealt a major blow in September when former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, who headed peace efforts for Karzai, was assassinated in an attack Afghanistan said originated in neighboring Pakistan.
Since then, Karzai has been more ambivalent about talks. He ruled out an early resumption in negotiations and said Afghanistan would talk only to Pakistan 'until we have an address for the Taliban.'
The dust-up over the unofficial Taliban office in Qatar, with a spokesman for Karzai stressing that Afghanistan must lead peace negotiations to end the war, suggests tensions in the U.S. and Afghan approaches to the peace process.
Speaking in an interview with CNN aired on Sunday, Karzai counseled caution in making sure that Taliban interlocutors are authentic -- and authentically seeking peace. The Rabbani killing, he said, was a demonstration of such difficulties and "brought us in a shock to the recognition that we were actually talking to nobody."
Critics of Obama's peace initiative are deeply skeptical of the Taliban's willingness to negotiate given that the West's intent to pull out most troops after 2014 would give insurgents a chance to reclaim lost territory or nudge the weak Kabul government toward collapse.
While the United States is expected to keep a modest military presence in Afghanistan beyond then, all of Obama's 'surge' troops will be home by next fall and the administration - looking to refocus on domestic priorities -- is already exploring further reductions.
Another reason to be circumspect is the potential spoiler role of Pakistan, which has so far resisted U.S. pressure to crack down on militants fueling violence in Afghanistan and to cooperate more closely with the U.S. military and diplomatic campaign there.
Such considerations make reconciliation a divisive initiative even within the Obama administration. Few officials describe themselves as optimists about the peace initiative; at the State Department, which is formally leading the talks, senior officials see the odds of brokering a successful agreement at only around 30 percent.
"There's a very real likelihood that these guys aren't serious ... which is why are continuing to prosecute all of the lines of effort here," the third senior U.S. official said. While NATO commanders promise they will keep up pressure on militants as the troop force shrinks, they are facing a tenacious insurgency in eastern Afghanistan that may prove even more challenging than the south.
Still, with Obama committed to withdrawing from Afghanistan, as the United States did last week from Iraq, the administration has few alternatives but to pursue what may well prove to be a quixotic quest for a deal.
"Wars end, and the end of wars have political consequences," the second official said. "You can either try to shape those, or someone does it to you."
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Taliban Ready To Open Political Office, Afghan Negotiator Says
December 18, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
A key government negotiator says that the Taliban is willing to open an office outside of Afghanistan, a step toward holding face-to-face peace talks with the Afghan government.
Arsala Rahmani, a senior member of Afghanistan's High Peace Council, said that "senior Taliban commanders" had "agreed on a political office."
The move follows a series of failed attempts at talks with the group by Afghans and their Western allies.
In November, Afghan President Hamid Karzai ruled out negotiations with the Taliban until the insurgent group had an address at which he could contact them.
Last week, Afghanistan recalled its ambassador to Qatar hours after an Indian newspaper reported that arrangements had been put in place for a Taliban office in the Persian Gulf state.
The report alarmed Kabul, which expects to be the base for peace talks.
compiled from agency reports
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Taliban may open office for negotiation: Afghan FM
KABUL, Dec. 18 (Xinhua) -- Afghan Minister for Foreign Affairs Zalmai Rasoul said Sunday that the government would have no objection if Taliban open office for negotiation either inside Afghanistan or abroad.
"Our priority is that such office should be inside Afghanistan or in another Islamic country preferably Saudi Arabia or Turkey," Rasoul said in a press briefing here.
He also rejected the reported opening of Taliban office in Qatar, saying any office opened for dialogue with Taliban should be opened in consultation with the government of Afghanistan.
The Afghan top diplomat also emphasized that such office will be only for dialogue with Taliban and not a political bureau.
The foreign minister made this comment in the wake of reported progress on opening Taliban office in Qatar last week.
The government of Afghanistan has suspended peace talks with the Taliban outfit after the assassination of Afghan peace chief negotiator Burhanudin Rabbani by an alleged Taliban fighter on Sept. 20.
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Afghanistan denies deal with Taliban over schools
AFP 17/12/2011
The Afghan government on Saturday denied making a deal with the Taliban agreeing a more conservative curriculum and more mullahs as teachers in return for an end to attacks on schools.
Responding to a report released by the Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN), the Afghan ministry of education said it would not cut any deal which could jeopardise the school system.
The AAN report, published on Tuesday, said such deals were taking place at national and local levels, and appeared to be behind a drop in attacks against schools.
The violence peaked in 2006 when dozens of teachers and students were killed and hundreds of schools burned down or forcibly shut, the think-tank said, although these attacks provoked a backlash from local communities.
"The Ministry of Education strongly denies all the details and contents of this report and assure the proud nation of Afghanistan that it will not cut a deal with anyone or any group which could jeopardise the immense and historic gains achieved in the education system," it said.
The AAN report said initial negotiations between the ministry and the Taliban began in 2007 although they were cut short, allegedly because of US opposition.
But negotiations continued at a local level, with the Taliban agreeing to reopen schools if a conservative curriculum was adopted and Taliban-approved religious teachers were hired, usually in addition to MoE teachers.
The report said in 2010 the ministry reopened negotiations, coinciding with the removal of a Taliban order to attack schools and teachers.
"The Ministry of Education leadership seemed keen to turn deal-making on schools into a confidence-building measure for future political negotiations," the authors Antonio Giustozzi and Claudio Franco said.
"The Taliban, on the other hand, appear more motivated by the need to improve relations with rural communities, who are themselves increasingly wary of a conflict which never seems to end."
Afghan president Hamid Karzai has said that education is the only way to bring peace and stability to the violence-hit country.
Millions of Afghan girls have enrolled in school since the overthrow of the Taliban, while the number of children in school has risen from a mere two million to more than eight million.
But rights groups have raised concerns that such deals could deter girls from going to school.
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Afghan Taliban militants target civilians in ex-stronghold
By Abdul Haleem
KABUL, Dec. 18 (Xinhua) -- Taliban militants fighting Afghan and NATO-led troops apparently as part of new tactic have focused their gun on soft targets in their former stronghold Kandahar as two civilian officials and a pro-government figure have been assassinated over the past week.
In the latest waves of attacking soft targets in Taliban birthplace and former stronghold Kandahar, the anti-government insurgents assassinated Abdul Baqi Raghbat, an advisor to the Ministry for Tribal and Frontiers Affairs on Saturday, an official confirmed Sunday.
"Unidentified gun men riding a motorbike opened fire on Abdul Baqi Raghbat at around 06:00 p.m. local time (1330 GMT) Saturday evening killing him on the spot," spokesman for provincial administration Zalmai Ayubi told Xinhua.
The attackers have made their good escape, he said, adding the search operation is underway to arrest and punish those behind the offense.
Meantime, Qari Yusuf Ahmadi who claims to speak for the Taliban outfit in talks with media via telephone from unknown location claimed of responsibility, saying Taliban fighters had targeted and killed Raghbat for his cooperation with government.
In the previous attack against civilian officials in Kandahar city, the insurgents riding motorbike sprayed bullets and killed Shir Alam Khan, the director of 4th precinct of Kandahar Municipality on Dec. 11.
Anti-government militants, according to officials in efforts to frighten civilians and destabilize security in Taliban former stronghold and their spiritual capital Kandahar, have also eliminated a pro-government chieftain Agha Mohammad in Kandahar city on Dec. 13.
The militants fighting Afghan government have also targeted Abdul karim Walasmal, the governor of Zharai district over the past week, injuring two of his bodyguards but Karim himself escaped unhurt.
Kandahar, some 450 km south of Afghan capital Kabul, has been the scene of increasing militancy over the past five years.
The Taliban militants, who emerged from Kandahar in 1994 and ruled more than 90 percent of Afghanistan before their collapse in late 2001, had staged a violent comeback five years ago and since then have been fighting to take over the power in the post-Taliban land.
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Armed men gun down official in southern Afghan city
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Dec. 18 (Xinhua) -- Unknown armed men assassinated a government official on Saturday in Taliban's former stronghold Kandahar province, 450 km south of capital Kabul, spokesman for provincial administration Zalmai Ayubi said Sunday.
"Unidentified gun men riding a motorbike opened fire on Abdul Baqi Raghbat at around 06:00 p.m. local time Saturday, killing him on the spot," Ayubi told Xinhua.
The attackers have made good their escape, he added.
Baqi Raghbat has worked as advisor to the Ministry for Tribal and Frontiers Affairs.
Meantime, Qari Yusuf Ahmadi who claims to speak for the Taliban outfit in talks with media via telephone from unknown location claimed of responsibility, saying Taliban fighters had targeted and killed Raghbat in Kandahar city.
Raghbat is the second official who have been killed in Kandahar since last Sunday.
In the previous offensive, the insurgents killed Shir Alam Khan, an official with Kandahar Municipality.
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1,400 newly graduated soldiers join Afghan National Army
MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan, Dec. 18 (Xinhua) -- A total of 1, 400 graduated soldiers on Sunday joined Afghan National Army (ANA) in Mazar-i-Sharif city, the provincial capital of Balkh province, some 305km north of capital city of Kabul, an army commander said.
"As many as 1,400 soldiers after completion of two-month training commissioned to ANA 209 'Shaheen Corps' on Sunday in Mazar-i Sharif city," commander of Shaheen Corps Amanullah Mobin said at the graduation ceremony.
"The newly graduated soldiers are ready to be deployed to any part of the country to provide security for their people," he further said.
The Afghan government and NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan have stepped up efforts to train and equip Afghan police and army as the country's security forces took the responsibility for securing seven areas of the nation in July this year.
In the second phase of security transition, Afghan army and police will take full control of security of six Afghan provinces including Balkh province, seven provincial capitals as well as more than 40 districts in near future, part of a process which will run to 2014 when Afghanistan will take over the full leadership of its own security duties from the U.S. and NATO forces.
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Afghanistan wants help to kick-start mining boom
ABC News By Stan Correy for Background Briefing December 18, 2011
Afghanistan wants more Australian help - not from the military, but from Australian mining companies - to kick-start a post-war economy with a mining boom.
"So far I have not got in touch with any of the major Australian investors - Australian companies like Rio Tinto, BHP and the others - but I'm going to Melbourne to see if there is a possibility of getting those major companies interested," Afghanistan's ambassador to Australia, Nasir Andisha, said.
Afghanistan, like Australia, is rich in natural resources - iron ore, copper, gold, lithium, coal, uranium, oil and gas.
So far Chinese and Indian companies have been given the frontrunning in exploiting these resources.
The last mining boom in Afghanistan was over 2,000 years ago in the era of Alexander the Great, when gold, silver and precious stones were routinely mined.
Geologists have known of the extent of the mineral wealth for over a century, as a result of surveys done by the British and Russians.
In an interesting historical footnote, an American company was offered a mining concession over the entire country in the 1930s but turned it down.
Despite this historical knowledge, global interest was only really boosted last year when the Pentagon commissioned a report from the US Geological Survey (USGS).
The report spoke of "trillions of dollars" worth of minerals and energy resources in the country.
While the US military has been focusing on its strategic security interests in Afghanistan, American companies have expressed concern about being sidelined in the bidding process for mineral and energy licences.
A Chinese state-owned company won the rights to one of the largest copper deposits, at Mes Aynak, near Kabul. And an Indian consortium recently won the rights to the enormous Hajigak iron ore deposit.
At the Bonn international conference on the future of Afghanistan this month, president Hamid Karzai told the international delegates that his government is working hard to exploit the mineral resources for "long-term growth and prosperity".
But some Americans are questioning the way this underground wealth is being auctioned off.
"It used to break my heart sitting in Beijing, the second largest embassy in the world, looking at neighbouring Afghanistan," former US Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman said during a recent candidate's debate
Now a Republican presidential candidate, Mr Huntsman said: "We have 100,000 troops there. The Chinese would move in and take the mining concession". 'Policy of balance'
According to Afghanistan's Ambassador to Australia, the country has little choice but to pursue a policy of accommodating its powerful neighbours.
"It's a policy of balance", he said, adding that the Afghan government wants to attract investors from all over the world.
Nasir Andisha told Background Briefing that one Australian-based company, Buccaneer Energy, came second in the bid for the Amu Daryu oil fields in Northern Afghanistan - a tender won in September by the Chinese state-owned company CNPC.
The Chinese success has not surprised an American firm involved in the oil fields tender.
"The tender process could have only one outcome," said Alexander Benard, managing director of the Washington DC-based investment advisory firm Gryphon Capital Partners.
Mr Benard says the only possible outcome was for a Chinese state-owned company to win the tender and that is what happened because with state backing the Chinese could offer much higher mining royalties.
But he says the tender is yet to benefit Afghans.
"The Chinese actually have dragged their feet, it's been several years now and there's hasn't been any meaningful development," Mr Bernard said.
"So a higher royalty rate is meaningless if no work is being done and no resource is being extracted, that's no revenue at all to the Afghan government.
"And number two, on various infrastructure projects that were promised they haven't built them yet and they haven't made progress that they were supposed to."
Mr Benard told Background Briefing he is not blaming the Afghan government for awarding the contract to the Chinese, he is blaming the Pentagon.
He claims the tender process was managed by a Pentagon business unit - the Task Force for Business and Stability Operations (TFBSO) - which he says misused taxpayer funds by assisting the Chinese to win the contract.
A Pentagon business unit making Afghanistan safe for Chinese state capitalism might seem incongruous, but there is a geopolitical logic behind it.
"I know that at higher levels of strategic thinking, military officials just don't care at this point," China and Central Asia analyst Jeffrey Reeves, from the Griffith Asia Institute, said.
"They're just looking for anything to stabilise Afghanistan, anything to provide economic opportunity other than insurgency."
It may be that China, not the United States foots the bill for the future development of Afghanistan. 'Mining development'
Meanwhile, the Australian Government has introduced a "Mining for Development" policy to help countries like Afghanistan develop their minerals sectors.
Oxfam Australia executive director Andrew Hewett says that while he recognises the need for mining aid, there could be a perception it benefits Australian business interests.
"I think there's a real danger that you could find yourself either with the reality or the perception that aid is being provided for an Australian company to benefit from a particular minerals discovery," he said.
"You've got to really be clear that the Australian aid program is focused on helping communities to hold corporations and their governments accountable."
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Karzai: Afghans still don't have personal security
AP By DEB RIECHMANN and RAHIM FAIEZ 17/12/2011
KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghanistan has achieved political stability, yet Afghans still do not feel personally secure in their daily lives, President Hamid Karzai said in an interview to be aired on Sunday.
"The international coalition and the Afghan government have been able to provide, in the past 10 years, political stability to Afghanistan," Karzai said on CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS."
"But we have not been able — the United States, NATO and Afghan government together — to provide the Afghan people with their individual personal security. That is yet to come."
Karzai said the troops have slowed the mobility and activity of the Taliban and other militant groups, but he stopped short of saying the war has been won.
"I'll have to wait a bit longer to confirm that we have reversed the trend and that the Afghan people will see the fruits of our efforts and see peace and further security," he said, according to a transcript of the interview CNN released on Saturday.
Karzai also said his government would welcome the creation of a Taliban political office where Afghan and other officials could hold meaningful discussions about a possible political resolution to the war. If the Taliban decided to open an office, it would signal their willingness to talk peace, Karzai believes.
Efforts to reconcile with the Taliban were dealt a major setback when former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani was assassinated on Sept. 20. Rabbani, who was leading the government's campaign to broker peace with the insurgents, was killed by a suicide bomber posing as a peace emissary from the Taliban.
After Rabbani's death, Karzai said informal peace efforts would not resume. Instead, he said, the Taliban had to stop fighting and establish an official address.
Earlier this week, Karzai said that if security concerns make it impossible to set up an office in Afghanistan, then it should be established in another Islamic nation, such as Saudi Arabia or Turkey.
"That address must have the clarity that this representative is authorized and is representing the Taliban movement," he said.
Karzai also said that because Taliban leaders were based in neighboring Pakistan, "a meaningful peace process cannot go well or end in satisfactory results without Pakistan's participation and help."
U.S. officials have said that so far, Pakistani officials have not offered to bring Taliban leaders to the negotiating table.
On other issues, Karzai said that U.S. and Afghan officials are still negotiating a strategic partnership document that will govern how some American forces will stay in Afghanistan after foreign troops ends their combat mission in 2014. A sticking point in the talks are nighttime raids that target suspected insurgents and terrorists.
Karzai has repeatedly argued that the troops who push into compounds to search the premises and the residents treat too may civilians as if they are insurgents and violate citizens' privacy in an intensely conservative society. He said the raids result in too many civilian deaths.
"What we are asking for, in very specific and clear terms, is that no foreign forces should enter Afghan homes," Karzai said.
NATO has said that more than 90 percent of night operations are done alongside Afghan forces and that more than 85 percent are conducted without any shots fired.
The night raid controversy was evident on Saturday when the coalition and local Afghan officials released differing accounts of a raid on a home around 1 a.m. Saturday in the Ahmadaba district of Paktia province.
The provincial governor condemned what he said was a raid on the home of the provincial counternarcotics chief, said the governor's spokesman, Rohullah Samon. He said local authorities, who believe the counternarcotics chief has not committed any crime, have contacted the coalition about getting him released.
The coalition said three men who were detained included a leader with the Haqqani militant network, which is affiliated with al-Qaida and the Taliban.
A joint Afghan-NATO force returned gunfire coming from the house, the coalition said. After the shooting stopped, they called for those inside to come out.
Two Afghan women inside were wounded and evacuated to a medical facility and one later died of a gunshot wound, the coalition said.
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Afghans Negotiating Long-Term U.S. Presence, Karzai Says
Bloomberg By Bob Willis December 17, 2011
Afghan President Hamid Karzai said his government is negotiating with the U.S. to establish an “enduring partnership” that may entail a long-term presence of U.S. forces in the South Asian country.
Karzai, speaking in an interview on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” to be aired tomorrow, said the accord “may bring about the presence of some U.S. troops in Afghanistan for the duration of the agreement.” It would also include provisions for the U.S. to equip and train Afghan forces, he said.
The U.S. plans to withdraw most of its 98,000 combat soldiers in Afghanistan by 2014 as it hands over operational control in the war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda to Afghan forces. It is pulling out the last of its remaining 5,500 troops from Iraq this month, even as it will leave behind in Baghdad the largest U.S. embassy in the world, with 15,000 employees and 5,000 private security guards.
A State Department official in Washington said the U.S. is negotiating the terms of a long-term strategic partnership with Afghanistan. President Obama hasn’t made any decisions about the U.S. presence there after 2014 and has repeatedly said the U.S. doesn’t seek permanent military bases, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The 10-year occupation by U.S.-led international coalition forces has brought “political stability to Afghanistan,” Karzai said, according to a transcript of the interview. Still, he said, the U.S.-led occupation and the Afghan government have failed to “provide the Afghan people with their individual personal security.”
The occupation began with a U.S.-led invasion in 2001 to oust the Taliban, which had harbored the al-Qaeda terrorist network, in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S.
Night Raids
Karzai said any agreement for U.S. forces to remain in the country must put an end to so-called “night raids” on Afghan homes where terror suspects are allegedly hiding.
“What we are asking for, in very specific and clear terms, is that no foreign forces should enter Afghan homes,” Karzai said.
The State Department official reiterated that the U.S. goals were to turn search, arrest and detention operations over to Afghan forces. Any post-2014 U.S. presence will only be with the invitation of the Afghan government, the official said.
The top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, General John Allen, has privately recommended delaying new American troop withdrawals planned by the Obama administration until 2014, the Wall Street Journal reported Dec. 6.
Karzai said his government would welcome the establishment of a Taliban political office to foster peace negotiations with the government. He said the office must be “authorized” and represent the “Taliban movement as we see it.”
The assassination by a suicide bomber of Burhanuddin Rabbani, a former Afghan president and chairman of Afghanistan’s government-appointed committee seeking peace negotiations with the Taliban movement, “brought us in a shock to the recognition that we were actually talking to nobody,” said Karzai. “Those who came in the name of the peace process were assassins, were killers, were terrorists rather than negotiators,” he said.
Including Pakistan
Any peace negotiation with the Taliban must include Pakistan, he said. “We all know that the Taliban have their places there. They operate from there,” Karzai said. “A meaningful peace process cannot go well or end in satisfactory results without Pakistan’s participation and help.”
He called the Dec. 6 bombing of a Shiite Muslim shrine in Kabul a “terrible terrorist attack, which appears again to be traced back to Pakistan.” The attack by a suicide bomber killed 56 people and wounded almost 150, Ghulam Sakhi Kargar, spokesman for public health ministry, said Dec. 7.
A Pakistani extremist group known as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi claimed responsibility for the attack. “If it is Lashkar-e- Jhangvi, then perhaps it’s the responsibility of Pakistan, and of all of us together, to go and stop this,” said Karzai.
U.S. and Afghan forces made progress in the past year in eroding the “overall mobility and activity of the Taliban,” Karzai said. “But I’ll have to wait a bit longer to confirm that we have reversed the trend.”
Karzai said he won’t run for a third term after his presidency expires in 2014. “It is against the Afghan constitution,” he said.
Germany’s Bild-Zeitung, citing a classified report by Germany’s BND intelligence agency, reported Dec. 5 that Karzai planned to change the country’s constitution to allow him to run for another term.
--Editors: Ann Hughey, Christian Thompson.
To contact the reporter on this story: Bob Willis in Washington at bwillis@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at msilva34@bloomberg.net
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217 still missing as refugee ship sinks off Indonesia
JAKARTA, Dec. 18 (Xinhua) -- The search and rescue operation at the second day on Sunday for about 217 missing migrants, as their wooden ship sank in waters off Trengglek district of East Java on Saturday, fails to find any one of them, a rescuer said.
The small ship was carrying 250 asylum seekers, most of whom are from the Middle East including Iran, Afghanistan, Turkey and Iraq. 33 of them had been rescued, a rescuer named Purwanto from the East Java Search and Rescue Office Kelik Enggar Purwanto told Xinhua by phone from the district.
About 500 navy officers, marine policemen and sailors had combed the waters where the ship was predicted to be broken after being hit by huge waves, he said.
The searching involved two warships, two vessels and three helicopters, said Purwanto.
"Nevertheless, it fails to find any one of the missing persons today (Sunday), even the searching by helicopters was done to a far distance to the eastern of the ocean," he said.
The rescuer said that two vessels were still at sea continuing to search for the missing persons.
He said that the search and rescue would be conducted up to the seventh day, as usual.
The ship heading to Christmas island of Australia sank off at about 40 nautical miles from TPI Prigi beach of Trenggalek district at about 0200 GMT Saturday and victims were first found by sailors at 0800 GMT in the day, another rescuer Brian Gautama said.
Indonesia has been a favorable transit point for illegal immigrants from the Middle East heading to Australia for a better life.
However they are frequently confronted with accidents on the sea, as they take the journey with inadequate safety measures. High waves on the ocean could hit and collapse their boat, causing casualties.
Indonesia has set up cooperation with Australia to address the issue of illegal immigrants.
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