 |
||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Serving you since 1998 | ||||||||||||
|
|
U.S.-Taliban Talks
by Steve Coll The New Yorker Magazine February 28, 2011
On August 22, 1998, Mullah Omar, the emir of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, made a cold call to the State Department. The United States had just lobbed cruise missiles at Al Qaeda camps in his nation. Omar got a mid-level diplomat on the line and spoke calmly. He suggested that Congress force President Bill Clinton to resign.
U.S. entering direct talks with Taliban: report
Sat Feb 19, 11:09 am ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States has entered into direct talks with leaders of the Taliban in Afghanistan, but contacts are exploratory and not yet a peace negotiation, according to an article on Saturday in The New Yorker magazine.
Attackers raid bank in Afghanistan, kill 8
By Adam Schreck, Associated Press – Sat Feb 19, 2:51 pm ET
KABUL, Afghanistan – Gunmen wearing explosives vests stormed a bank in eastern Afghanistan Saturday as government employees were waiting to be paid, killing at least eight people and wounding scores of others in a standoff punctuated by deadly explosions.
Bank scandal highlights Afghan corruption
by Katherine Haddon
KABUL (AFP) – Featuring a world-class poker player, a brother of the president and a reported $900 million in missing cash, the poisonous scandal over Afghanistan's Kabul Bank could be straight out of a thriller.
Afghan leader says U.S. bases depend on neighbors
By Hamid Shalizi – Sat Feb 19, 5:30 am ET
KABUL (Reuters) – The possibility of the United States retaining long-term bases in Afghanistan could only be addressed once peace has been achieved and must take into account the country's neighbors, the Afghan president said on Saturday.
Russia warns US against Afghan bases
February 19, 2011 Press TV
Russia has warned the US against setting up permanent military bases in Afghanistan, saying the move could undermine peacemaking efforts and anger neighbors.
Karzai Preconditions Peace to US Permanent Bases
Tolo news February 19, 2011
President Hamid Karzai Saturday preconditioned peace in Afghanistan before any US permanent bases are established in the country.
Croatia backs Afghan peace process: President Josipovic
KABUL, Feb. 19 (Xinhua) -- Croatian government has supported Afghanistan's peace and reconciliation process, visiting Croatian President Ivo Josipovic said here on Saturday.
3 German soldiers killed in Afghanistan
February 19, 2011 Press TV
A gunman in an Afghan army uniform has opened fire on US-led soldiers in Afghanistan's northern Baghlan province, killing three German soldiers and injuring six others, a report says.
Clinton: Taliban Cannot Outlast US Military Pressure
February 18, 2011 VOA News David Gollust | State Department
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday the Taliban cannot defeat or outlast U.S. military pressure and must break with al-Qaida and reconcile with the Afghan government. In a policy speech in New York, she also announced veteran diplomat Marc Grossman will replace the late Richard Holbrooke as U.S. special envoy for the region.
Pakistani Taliban issue video of slain spy officer
ISLAMABAD, Feb. 19 (Xinhua) -- Pakistani Taliban Saturday released video of the shooting of a former officer of the country' s intelligence agency, who had been kidnapped in March last year in the North Waziristan tribal region.
Pakistani Taliban claims it killed retired spy
By Rasool Dawar, Associated Press – Sat Feb 19, 9:48 am ET
PESHAWAR, Pakistan – The Pakistani Taliban claimed Saturday it shot dead a retired Pakistani spy who once mentored its Afghan brethren and sided with the U.S. against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
Tolo news February 19, 2011
President Hamid Karzai Saturday introduced 34 appointed senators after one and a half months delay.
The new list of appointed senators which includes 18 former senators and 16 new senators has been presented to Independent Election Commission for some administrative procedures.
Canada's top soldier hopes to build trust in Afghanistan's Ambush Alley
By Tara Brautigam, The Canadian Press
NAKHONAY, Afghanistan - Canada's top soldier marches through a narrow lane known among some troops as Ambush Alley, hoping to build trust in an Afghan village that has proven difficult to win over in recent years.
Afghanistan will not control all women's shelters
Sat Feb 19, 3:24 pm ET
KABUL (AFP) – President Hamid Karzai said Saturday his government did not plan to take control of all shelters for abused women in Afghanistan, in an apparent contradiction of a previous announcement.
In Afghanistan With Our Warrior Elite
Wall Street Journal By ANDREW EXUM 18/02/2011
Bing West's "The Wrong War: Grit, Strategy, and the Way Out of Afghanistan" is one of the best books yet written on the war in Afghanistan. I disagree with the way Mr. West characterizes the war at times, but "The Wrong War" is filled with both vivid descriptions of the Afghan fighting and sound advice concerning how counterinsurgencies should be waged.
Why American troops in Afghanistan shouldn't have to wear headscarves
Washington Post By Martha McSally Friday, February 18, 2011
In 2001, I was an Air Force lieutenant colonel and A-10 fighter pilot stationed in Saudi Arabia, in charge of rescue operations for no-fly enforcement in Iraq and then in Afghanistan. Every time I went off base, I had to follow orders and put on a black Muslim abaya and head scarf. Military officials said this would show "cultural sensitivity"
Back to Top
U.S.-Taliban Talks
by Steve Coll The New Yorker Magazine February 28, 2011
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2011/02/28/110228taco_talk_coll?printable=true#ixzz1ET2Fqif2
On August 22, 1998, Mullah Omar, the emir of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, made a cold call to the State Department. The United States had just lobbed cruise missiles at Al Qaeda camps in his nation. Omar got a mid-level diplomat on the line and spoke calmly. He suggested that Congress force President Bill Clinton to resign. He said that American military strikes “would be counter-productive,” and would “spark more, not less, terrorist attacks,” according to a declassified record of the call. “Omar emphasized that this was his best advice,” the record adds.
That was the first and last time that Omar spoke to an American government official, as far as is known. Before September 11th, some of his deputies had occasionally spoken with U.S. diplomats, but afterward the United States rejected direct talks with Taliban leaders, on the ground that they were as much to blame for terrorism as Al Qaeda was. Last year, however, as the U.S.-led Afghan ground war passed its ninth anniversary, and Mullah Omar remained in hiding, presumably in Pakistan, a small number of officials in the Obama Administration—among them the late Richard Holbrooke, the special representative for Afghanist
Holbrooke’s final diplomatic achievement, it turns out, was to see this advice accepted. The Obama Administration has entered into direct, secret talks with senior Afghan Taliban leaders, several people briefed about the talks told me last week. The discussions are continuing; they are of an exploratory nature and do not yet amount to a peace negotiation. That may take some time: the first secret talks between the United States and representatives of North Vietnam took place in 1968; the Paris Peace Accords, intended to end direct U.S. military involvement in the war, were not agreed on until 1973.
When asked for comment on the talks, a White House spokesman said that the remarks that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made last Friday at the Asia Society offered a “thorough representation of the U.S. position.” Clinton had tough words for the Taliban, saying that they were confronted with a choice between political compromise and ostracism as “an enemy of the international community.” She added, “I know that reconciling with an adversary that can be as brutal as the Taliban sounds distasteful, even unimaginable. And diplomacy would be easy if we only had to talk to our friends. But that is not how one makes peace. President Reagan understood that when he sat down with the Soviets. And Richard Holbrooke made this his life’s work. He negotiated face to face with Milosevic and ended a war.”
Mullah Omar is not a participant in the preliminary talks. He does not attend even secret meetings of underground Taliban leadership councils in Pakistani safe houses. When he does speak, he does so obliquely, via cassette tapes. One purpose of the talks initiated by the Obama Administration, therefore, is to assess which figures in the Taliban’s leadership, if any, might be willing to engage in formal Afghan peace negotiations, and under what conditions.
Obama’s war advisers previously made it clear that the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, must lead any high-level peace or “reconciliation” process involving Taliban leaders, and, since 2008, Karzai has carried out sporadic talks with current and former Taliban, occasionally aided by Saudi Arabia, but to no end. Last summer, the Afghan government’s attempts produced a farcical con, when a man posed as a senior Taliban leader and fleeced his handlers for cash. The recent American talks are intended to prime more successful and durable negotiations led by Karzai. The United States would play a supporting role in these negotiations, and might join them to discuss the status of Taliban prisoners in U.S. custody or the future of international forces in Afghanistan. For the United States, the overarching goal of such negotiations would be to persuade at least some important Taliban leaders to break with Al Qaeda, leave the battlefield, and participate in Afghan electoral politics, without touching off violence by anti-Taliban groups or gutting the rights enjoyed by minorities and women.
Although the Taliban’s record is nothing like Al Qaeda’s, they have aided international terrorism; in 2000, for example, they facilitated the escape of the murderous hijackers of an Indian Airlines passenger plane. As Hillary Clinton indicated, the morality of talking to them at all, given their history of violence and repression, is debated within the Administration, as it is within the Afghan government. But in both countries there is also hope for an honorable path to end the war.
The pursuit of peace, however, can be just as risky as the prosecution of war. If mismanaged, full-blown Afghan peace talks might ignite a civil war along ethnic lines. (The Taliban draw their support from Afghanistan’s Pashtuns; the most vehement anti-Taliban militias are non-Pashtun.) Also, the Taliban and their historical benefactors in Pakistan, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, the spy agency directed by the Pakistani military, have an almost unblemished record of overreaching in Afghan affairs, by funding and arming client militias, and there is no reason to think that their habits would change if serious negotiations unfolded. And, even under the best of circumstances, an Afghan peace process would most likely mirror the present character of the war: a slow, complicated, and deathly grind, atomized and menaced by interference from neighboring governments—not just Pakistan’s but also those of Iran, India, Russia, Uzbekistan, and China.
The Taliban today are diverse and fractured. Some old-school leaders, who served in Mullah Omar’s cabinet or as governors during the nineteen-nineties, belong to a council known as the Quetta Shura, named for the Pakistani city in which many Taliban have enjoyed sanctuary since 2001. This is the group whose members are thought to be most ready to consider coming in from the cold. Other factions, such as the Haqqani network, based in North Waziristan, which has long-standing ties to the I.S.I., are regarded as more malicious and more susceptible to Pakistan’s control. Inside Afghanistan, young Taliban commanders fight locally and often viciously, oblivious of international diplomacy. Yalta this is not.
Nonetheless, the Obama Administration has understandably concluded that the status quo is untenable. The war has devolved into a strategic stalemate: urban Afghan populations enjoy reasonable security, millions of schoolgirls are back in class, Al Qaeda cannot operate, and the Taliban cannot return to power, yet in the provinces ethnic militias and criminal gangs still husband weapons, cadge international funds, and exploit the weak. Neither the United States nor the Taliban can achieve its stated aims by arms alone, and the Administration lacks a sure way to preserve the gains made while reducing its military presence, as it must, for fiscal, political, and many other reasons.
If giving peace talks a chance can decrease the violence and shrink the Afghan battlefield by twenty or even ten per cent, President Obama will have calculated correctly: even a partly successful negotiation might help create political conditions that favor the reduction of American forces to a more sustainable level. A Taliban-endorsed ceasefire, to build confidence around long-term talks supported by many international governments, might also be conceivable.
Last spring, in Kabul, several former Taliban leaders told me that some exiled senior Taliban in Pakistan wanted the United States to leave Afghanistan but, at the same time, they preferred to talk with the Americans directly about the country’s future, both to escape I.S.I. manipulation and because they regarded Karzai as a weak puppet. As long as the Obama Administration refused to join in the talks, progress would be impossible, they told me. “It’s just the Americans,” Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taliban’s former ambassador to Pakistan, said. “They are not ready to make positive progress.”
At that point, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and military commanders, such as Admiral Michael Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, argued that Obama’s “surge” of troops needed more time to inflict morale-sapping damage on the Taliban; their theory was that Taliban leaders would take peace talks seriously only when they felt sufficiently battered. Last year, American-led forces killed or captured scores of mid-level Taliban commanders. General David Petraeus said recently that counterinsurgency efforts in the Taliban strongholds of Helmand and Kandahar provinces had pushed the guerrillas back. It was these perceived military gains that influenced the Administration’s decision to enter into direct talks.
Confidentiality has its place in statecraft, and if Afghanistan’s war is to be resolved it will require some quiet dealmaking, but there is something unsavory about secret talks as a mechanism for drawing the Taliban into politics. Afghanistan has suffered heavily enough from the covert designs of outside powers. Negotiations with the Taliban must eventually be transparent, so that the Afghans themselves can examine them. And more than a deal with Taliban leaders will be called for. American efforts to calm the violence will succeed only if they are part of a broader strategy in Afghanistan and South Asia, one that gives priority to economic development, energy links, water, and regional peacemaking, including in the conflict between India and Pakistan.
It is past time for the United States to shift some of its capacity for risk-taking in the war off the battlefield and into diplomacy aimed at reinforcing Afghan political unity, neutrality, civil rights, and social cohesion. The recent talks are nevertheless a constructive step. For too long, American political strategy in Afghanistan has been subordinate to military and intelligence operations. Thinking and learning through principled discussions with an enemy is an opportunity, not a trap.
Back to Top
Back to Top
U.S. entering direct talks with Taliban: report
Sat Feb 19, 11:09 am ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States has entered into direct talks with leaders of the Taliban in Afghanistan, but contacts are exploratory and not yet a peace negotiation, according to an article on Saturday in The New Yorker magazine.
The article, citing people briefed on the talks, said the talks are to assess who in the Taliban leadership, if anyone, might engage in formal peace negotiations and under what conditions.
"They're exploratory, at least as I understand them," Steve Coll, the article's author, said in an interview on National Public Radio.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has held sporadic talks with current and former Taliban members, but with little apparent result.
There was a flurry of unsourced or guardedly sourced newspaper reports last year of secret talks, sponsored by NATO, between Afghan officials and Taliban leaders. In one case a so-called Taliban leader turned out to be an imposter.
The United States rejected direct talks with the Taliban after September 11, 2001, saying it was partly to blame for the attacks in New York and Washington, along with al Qaeda.
But Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan who died in December, pushed last year for a renewed effort to talk to the Taliban.
The New Yorker piece said the recent U.S.-led talks were meant to lead to more "successful and durable negotiations" led by Karzai, in which the United States would take a supporting role.
The goal would be to persuade at least some Taliban leaders to break with al Qaeda and participate in Afghan electoral politics, the article said. But it said the risk would be sparking an ethnic civil war between Pashtuns, from whom the Taliban draw support, and non-Pashtuns.
Talks also likely would be slow and complicated, "atomized and menaced by interference from neighboring governments -- not just Pakistan's but those of Iran, India, Russia Uzbekistan and China," the article said.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a speech on Friday the United States was mounting a "diplomatic surge" to end the war in Afghanistan. She said Washington still intends to begin withdrawing some of the nearly 100,000 U.S. soldiers in the war zone in July with the aim of completing the transition to Afghan responsibility by the end of 2014.
"We are launching a diplomatic surge to move this conflict toward a political outcome that shatters the alliance between the Taliban and al Qaeda, ends the insurgency and helps produce a stable Afghanistan and a peaceful region," Clinton said.
(Writing by Vicki Allen; editing by Chris Wilson)
Back to Top
Back to Top
Attackers raid bank in Afghanistan, kill 8
By Adam Schreck, Associated Press – Sat Feb 19, 2:51 pm ET
KABUL, Afghanistan – Gunmen wearing explosives vests stormed a bank in eastern Afghanistan Saturday as government employees were waiting to be paid, killing at least eight people and wounding scores of others in a standoff punctuated by deadly explosions.
At least 48 people were being treated in the main hospital in Jalalabad, the site of the attack, hours after the midday siege on the Kabul Bank branch, said Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary. Others had already been discharged. He said seven of the dead were Afghan police officers. Three others were also killed, he said, but investigators were trying to determine if two of them were the suicide attackers.
Gunmen launched the raid by firing on bank guards, then overpowering them to seize control of the bank, said Ahmad Zia Abdulzai, a spokesman for the provincial governor. Afghan security forces surrounded the building and heard an explosion inside, he said. That was followed by a gunbattle and another blast, then further clashes between attackers and police. He put the death toll as high as 18.
The wounded included civilians, police and Afghan soldiers, said Dr. Saif ul-Rahman, a physician at the hospital. He said flying shrapnel and gunshots caused the injuries.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, which spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said was aimed at Afghan security forces lined up to collect their pay.
President Hamid Karzai and NATO condemned the attack.
"Terrorists attacked innocent civilians who were in the bank for their daily business or receiving their salaries. Once again, this un-Islamic act of terrorists shows that they don't want Afghan people to live in peace and prosperity," Karzai said.
NATO has been working to recruit and train Afghan security forces in greater numbers as they prepare to take the lead in securing the country. The goal is to hand over responsibility for Afghanistan's security to local forces by 2014.
It was the second deadly attack in Jalalabad this month. The other — a pair of blasts — killed a civilian and wounded six police officers.
In the capital, Kabul, Karzai called for Afghans to have the final say in whether the U.S. should be allowed to maintain a long-term military presence in the country — even as America's top diplomat insisted that the U.S. does not seek permanent bases in the country.
Discussion of permanent bases resurfaced in recent weeks after a leading U.S. senator proposed their establishment last month. Karzai's stance reflects a desire to assert greater control over the country's future as U.S. troops prepare to begin drawing down this year.
Speaking in response to a question at a press conference, Karzai said a number of American officials have raised the issue of establishing permanent U.S. bases in Afghanistan as part of broader negotiations on a long-term security partnership. He didn't say whether any formal requests had been made.
The Afghan people should have the final say on any bases, Karzai said, adding that the decision would need to take into consideration the concerns of Afghanistan's neighbors, which include Iran, Pakistan and China.
"The view of our neighboring countries is very important," Karzai said. "We are not living on an island ... Not only do we have neighbors, but they are big countries in the region. We are living in a region with tensions."
Lindsay Graham, a Republican senator from the state of South Carolina, said in January that having a few U.S. air bases in Afghanistan would give Afghan security forces an edge against the Taliban and benefit the region. He said he wanted the U.S. to have "an enduring relationship" with Afghanistan to ensure it never falls back into militant hands.
The Taliban criticized the proposal, saying allowing permanent bases would be tantamount to a permanent occupation.
In a speech Friday in New York, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made clear the United States does not seek to establish permanent bases in Afghanistan.
"The United States will always maintain the capability to protect our people and our interests. But in no way should our enduring commitment be misunderstood as a desire by America or our allies to occupy Afghanistan against the will of its people," Clinton said, according to a text of her prepared remarks to the Asia Society.
Two NATO service members were killed Saturday in insurgent attacks — one in the south and one in the east. The coalition didn't provide the exact location of the deaths or the nationalities of the personnel.
A total of 23 NATO service members have been killed in Afghanistan so far this month. Last year was the deadliest of the nearly decade-long war for international troops, with more than 700 killed. This compares to about 500 in 2009, previously the worst year of the war.
___
Associated Press writer Rahim Faiez contributed reporting.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Bank scandal highlights Afghan corruption
by Katherine Haddon
KABUL (AFP) – Featuring a world-class poker player, a brother of the president and a reported $900 million in missing cash, the poisonous scandal over Afghanistan's Kabul Bank could be straight out of a thriller.
But the near-collapse of the impoverished war-torn country's biggest commercial lender is very real, highlighting endemic corruption among Kabul's elite and threatening major losses for thousands of ordinary people.
As President Hamid Karzai's government and Western officials trade fresh accusations over the affair, it also underlines stormy relations between the two sides, five months before a limited withdrawal of international troops starts.
Thomas Ruttig, co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network think-tank, said the scandal reveals "the tip of the iceberg of a deeply corrupt system" in one of the world's least developed -- and most corrupt -- nations.
"It's very high figures for a very poor country and it really illustrates how, under Karzai's government, the gap between the poor and the rich is widening, not narrowing," he added of the reported sum that has gone missing.
Kabul Bank's mirrored-glass headquarters is one of a wave of glitzy buildings to have sprung up across the otherwise primitive capital since the Taliban were toppled by a US-led invasion in 2001.
The bank was founded by Sherkhan Farnood, a leading international poker player, in 2004.
Other co-owners include Mahmood Karzai -- a brother of the president who is reportedly being investigated by a US grand jury over alleged racketeering, extortion and tax evasion -- and a brother of vice-president and ex-warlord Mohammad Qasim Fahim.
The bank also contributed money to Karzai's re-election campaign in 2009, finance ministry spokesman Aziz Shams said, insisting this was lawful.
"Kabul Bank was a friend to Karzai and it is natural that they have given money to him," Shams added.
In September, there was a run on the bank amid stability fears and claims that executives granted themselves huge off-the-book loans which were partly used to buy luxury beach properties in Dubai.
This resulted in the bank, which handles some of the payroll for Afghan security forces and government officials, being put under the control of the central bank, Da Afghanistan Bank.
The central bank is working on a plan for dealing with the lender's problems and the attorney-general has started a probe into what happened.
But there are signs of tension between Kabul and the international community over the way forward.
After a visit to Afghanistan, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said last week that the bank should be sold off or wound down.
Central bank spokesman Emal Aashor told AFP, though, that it wanted to "restore it back to a normal status" and said there had been no decision on whether it would be sold.
The IMF is currently considering a financial assistance programme to help stabilise the troubled Afghan economy after a previous three-year $120-million facility ended in September.
It has indicated that this new programme is conditional on an agreement with Afghan officials on resolving the Kabul Bank crisis.
The IMF comments prompted the Afghan finance ministry to issue a statement Thursday partly blaming "ineffective international technical assistance and supervision" for the bank's troubles.
This in turn drew an angry reaction from the international community.
A US official speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity said that responsibility for supervising Afghan banks lay with Afghan authorities and accused them of trying to shirk blame for the affair.
Among ordinary Afghans -- for whom corruption is an unpleasant fact of everyday life -- the biggest fear is that the Kabul Bank scandal may contaminate other banks, causing more problems in an already weak economy.
"Unsolved questions about what happened at Kabul Bank and why was it allowed to happen are being watched by a significant proportion of Afghans," said Dr Sayed Massoud, an economics lecturer at Kabul University.
"This could have a negative effect on people's confidence in banks in Afghanistan."
But the scandal, which analysts say could rumble on for months, also underlines serious issues of corruption amongst Kabul's rich and powerful.
"It will reinforce the impression that there is a political and economic elite interlinked which makes a lot of money," Ruttig said. "It's really about the shameless behaviour of the kleptocracy."
Eighteen people were killed and more than 70 wounded on Saturday when Taliban suicide bombers struck a branch of Kabul Bank in Jalalabad, in the east of the country. The attack did not appear to be linked to the bank's woes.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Afghan leader says U.S. bases depend on neighbors
By Hamid Shalizi – Sat Feb 19, 5:30 am ET
KABUL (Reuters) – The possibility of the United States retaining long-term bases in Afghanistan could only be addressed once peace has been achieved and must take into account the country's neighbors, the Afghan president said on Saturday.
Russia has urged the United States not to establish long-term military bases in Afghanistan, suggesting that even discussing the subject could undermine peace efforts and anger Afghanistan's neighbors.
Often-uneasy ties between Afghanistan's government and its main Western backers have become even more tense of late over a bank corruption scandal, a ban on private security contractors, election fraud and decision by the Afghan government to take over the running of women's shelters.
That deteriorating relationship comes at the same time as Russia tries to increase its influence in Afghanistan, where Soviet troops fought a disastrous Cold War conflict that was followed by civil war in Afghanistan and contributed to the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991.
"Some American officials have suggested the U.S. government wants permanent bases in Afghanistan in the framework of enduring and strategic ties between the two countries," Afghan President Hamid Karzai told a news conference.
"I have heard about Russian concern. We are not living in an island in which its surroundings are empty, we live in a restive region with major neighbors," he said.
Karzai suggested any decision about long-term U.S. military bases would have to be discussed by parliament or a loya jirga, or traditional gathering of elders.
"Any agreement between Afghanistan and U.S. ties on the issue of bases must first result in peace in Afghanistan," Karzai said.
U.S. President Barack Obama has promised to begin drawing down U.S. troops in Afghanistan from July, with Afghan forces to take over security responsibility by 2014.
The pace and scale of that drawdown has not yet been determined and will depend on conditions on the ground.
With the start of the transition only months away, violence across Afghanistan remains at its highest levels since the Taliban were ousted in 2001, despite the presence of about 150,000 foreign troops.
NATO-led forces are frantically trying to train enough Afghan police and soldiers to meet Karzai's 2014 deadline, which was agreed to at a summit of NATO leaders last December.
Karzai has repeatedly said what he calls "parallel structures" -- private security firms protecting international agencies and civilian/military reconstruction teams -- must also hand over to Afghan institutions.
This has caused some anger among Afghanistan's Western backers, who have poured billions of dollars of aid and other assistance into Afghanistan.
"The parallel structures should be removed and there should be no excuse for the transition in 2014 not to take place," Karzai told the news conference at his heavily fortified palace.
Washington has said the U.S. role in Afghanistan will continue beyond 2014, with Defense Secretary Robert Gates saying he would favor joint facilities in Afghanistan for training and counter-terrorism operations.
Russia has helped U.S. and NATO forces fight the Taliban-led insurgency by providing supply routes and weapons for Afghan forces, but has ruled out sending troops and says the campaign must not be indefinite.
The Kremlin also wants the United States out of an airbase in the ex-Soviet Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan once the Afghanistan mission is over.
(Additional reporting by Steve Gutterman in MOSCOW; Editing by Paul Tait)
Back to Top
Back to Top
Russia warns US against Afghan bases
February 19, 2011 Press TV
Russia has warned the US against setting up permanent military bases in Afghanistan, saying the move could undermine peacemaking efforts and anger neighbors.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has confirmed US plans to set up permanent bases in the war-torn country to enable US troops to stay in Afghanistan beyond the 2014 deadline.
Karzai says the US officials are in talks with the Afghan government in this regard.
"This information makes one think and raises questions," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Saturday.
"Why will US military bases be needed if the terrorist threat in ... Afghanistan is ended?"
"Will Kabul be able to combine negotiations on a long-term American military presence with the reconciliation process? How will Afghanistan's neighbors view the deployment of a foreign country's military bases near their territory?" Moscow questioned.
Some 15,000 Russian troops and 1 million Afghans were killed during the former's Soviet Union's 1980s war in Afghanistan that lasted an entire decade. In fact, the disastrous Cold War conflict contributed to the 1991 Soviet collapse.
The Afghan president during his February 9 press conference did not give a date for finalizing the deal with the US, but said any long-term partnership would need to be approved by the parliament and the grand tribal council known as the Loya Jirga.
Karzai also emphasized that long-term US bases would not be "used as (a) base against other countries and that Afghanistan is not a place from where our neighbors could be threatened."
If an agreement is reached on permanent bases, US troops will remain on Afghan soil beyond the planned transfer of security responsibilities by the end of 2014 -- a process scheduled to start in the spring this year.
This is while US President Barack Obama has pledged to begin withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan this year.
Afghanistan's Minister of Energy and Water Mohammad Ismail Khan also strongly rejected the plans for establishing permanent US military bases in his country.
Speaking on Tuesday in a ceremony to commemorate the anniversary of the Soviet troops' withdrawal from Afghanistan, Ismail Khan slammed Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak for his support of the plan.
Ismail Khan pointed out that the defense minister should change his stance as he had ignored the dignity of the Afghan people.
The minister of energy and water further reiterated that the Afghans would be capable of providing security in the war-hit country if foreigners stop interfering.
There are now over 150,000 US-led troops in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Karzai Preconditions Peace to US Permanent Bases
Tolo news February 19, 2011
President Hamid Karzai Saturday preconditioned peace in Afghanistan before any US permanent bases are established in the country.
Addressing a joint press conference with Croatian President in Kabul, President Karzai said any decision on a permanent US military presence in the country must be made by Afghans and after consideration of the concerns of neighbouring countries.
US willingness to set up permanent military bases in Afghanistan has been faced with some opposition within and outside the country.
Previously Russia has opposed the idea of US permanent bases in the country.
In a statement Russian foreign ministry urged the United States of America to stop making any permanent bases in Afghanistan.
"This is not something to be done only by the Afghan government and it neither has the authority. It is Afghans who should come up with a decision," President Karzai said.
"In any case, Afghanistan needs peace as a precondition and it wants to make sure that neighbouring countries don't feel any threats," he further said.
Leader of the major opposition party, Abdullah Abdullah, called on the Afghan President to keep Afghans fully informed about what goes on.
"When they say there has been a suggestion from some US officials about permanent bases, President Karzai is responsible to elaborate to people to what level the suggestion has been made," Dr Abdullah, leader of Change and Hope Coalition, told TOLOnews.
During the press conference, Croatian President Ivo Josipovic said Croatia is participating in international efforts to spare peace in this country and as you know we increase our presence here up to 350 soldiers.
"Croatia is willing to be involved until necessary in this beautiful country," Ivo Josipovic further said. "We discussed today new models of cooperation especially economical cooperation and education as well."
President Karzai said Afghanistan and Croatia will keep in touch in education sector, and moving towards 2014 defence and technical cooperation between the two nations would increase.
Croatia has around 130 soldiers in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, President Karzai again used the press conference to call for an end to night raids conducted by foreign forces.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Croatia backs Afghan peace process: President Josipovic
KABUL, Feb. 19 (Xinhua) -- Croatian government has supported Afghanistan's peace and reconciliation process, visiting Croatian President Ivo Josipovic said here on Saturday.
"We very appreciate your efforts towards peace and national reconciliation," President Josipovic told a joint press conference with his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai here.
Josipovic said that national reconciliation was an important effort to reach viable peace in the war-torn country.
"It is really important efforts and reconciliation is the best way to end the war in Afghanistan," the Croatian leader emphasized.
He said his country would continue to support Afghanistan after 2014 when the Afghan security forces take the full responsibility of security of their own country.
Croatia has 329 troopers serving in Afghanistan within the framework of NATO-led International Security Assistance Force ( ISAF) to help stabilize security in the militancy-hit country.
"After 2014 when the transition process is completed and Afghanistan will take its security responsibilities and protect its people, Croatia and Afghanistan will promote bilateral relations in different fields including economy and education," the Croatian president stated.
For his part, Afghan president expressed gratitude to the people and the government of Croatia for their support in the rebuilding process of the war-torn Afghanistan.
Croatian president arrived in Afghanistan on Friday and visited his troops based there.
Replying a question, President Karzai noted that "pre- condition for any agreement between U.S. and Afghanistan over establishing permanent U.S. bases in Afghanistan is that formation of bases should lead to ensuring peace in Afghanistan. And this is the pre-condition."
Nevertheless, President Karzai emphasized that the final decision with regard to formation of U.S. permanent bases in Afghanistan would be taken by Afghan people through National Assembly and Loya Jirga or Grand Assembly.
Back to Top
Back to Top
3 German soldiers killed in Afghanistan
February 19, 2011 Press TV
A gunman in an Afghan army uniform has opened fire on US-led soldiers in Afghanistan's northern Baghlan province, killing three German soldiers and injuring six others, a report says.
The disguised assailant opened fire on the NATO soldiers at a heavily-guarded military compound in the Puli Khumri district on Friday, while they were performing maintenance on a vehicle, a Press TV correspondent reported Saturday.
A 30-year-old German sergeant was gunned down in the attack, and a second and third soldier who sustained injuries, succumbed to their wounds several hours after the shooting.
The gunman, who was dressed in an Afghan army uniform, was killed during the assault, as US-led troops fired back at the assailant. The incident left six other soldiers injured.
Meanwhile, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle condemned the incident as a "treacherous terrorist attack."
Officials in Berlin provided no immediate explanation of how the attacker entered the base, which is home to some 500 German soldiers.
Germany currently has 5,030 troops in Afghanistan, the third largest foreign force behind the US and Britain. In all, 46 German soldiers have died since the war started in Afghanistan in 2001.
In November 2010, six US soldiers were killed by an Afghan border policeman who opened fire on his American trainers as the group headed to shooting practice.
The gunman lost his life in the shootout in Nangarhar province near the Pakistan border. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the incident, saying the officer had enlisted as a sleeper agent in order to gain an opportunity to kill foreigners.
Last year saw a considerable spike in the number of attacks on US-led troops in Afghanistan with more than 710 soldiers killed.
At least 48 troopers have been killed in the war-torn country so far this year.
Official figures show at least 2,330 foreign soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since the US invasion in 2001.
The upsurge in the number of casualties among US-led foreign forces, in tandem with the heavy civilian casualties, have provoked a barrage of criticism from countries, which have contributed troops to the prolonged Afghan mission.
Some 150,000 NATO troops are currently fighting in war-torn Afghanistan, with plans to stay in the country beyond 2014.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Clinton: Taliban Cannot Outlast US Military Pressure
February 18, 2011 VOA News David Gollust | State Department
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday the Taliban cannot defeat or outlast U.S. military pressure and must break with al-Qaida and reconcile with the Afghan government. In a policy speech in New York, she also announced veteran diplomat Marc Grossman will replace the late Richard Holbrooke as U.S. special envoy for the region.
In a major policy statement on the Afghan conflict, Clinton said the Obama administration's strategy presents the Taliban with a stark choice of breaking with al-Qaida and rejoining Afghan society, or to continue siding with terrorists and face international consequences.
Addressing the Asia Society in New York, the secretary said the administration is conducting three concurrent "surges": a military offensive against al-Qaida and the Taliban, a civilian campaign to bolster the Afghan and Pakistani governments, and an intensified diplomatic push to end the war and chart a secure future for the region.
Clinton said the Taliban made the wrong choice after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 to protect al-Qaida, and that it faces another critical choice now.
"Today, the escalating pressure of our military campaign is sharpening a similar decision for the Taliban: break ties with al-Qaida, give up your arms and abide by the Afghan constitution, and you can rejoin Afghan society," said Clinton. "Refuse, and you will continue to face the consequences of being tied to al-Qaida as an enemy of the international community. They cannot wait us out. They cannot defeat us. And they cannot escape this choice."
Clinton said as the transition proceeds and Afghan leadership strengthens, a process of political reconciliation "will become increasingly viable."
She reiterated the Obama administration's intention to begin withdrawing troops from Afghanistan in July - based on conditions on the ground - and to complete the process by the end of 2014 with no lingering military presence.
"In no way should our enduring commitment be misunderstood as a desire by America or our allies to occupy Afghanistan against the will of its people," added Clinton. "We respect Afghans' proud history of resistance to foreign occupation. And we do not seek any permanent American military bases in their country or a presence that would be a threat to any of Afghanistan's neighbors."
Clinton also lamented the "historic distrust" between Pakistan and Afghanistan and urged greater cooperation.
She said Pakistan should take "decisive steps" to ensure that the Afghan Taliban cannot continue to conduct the insurgency from Pakistani territory.
The Secretary also announced the administration is calling back veteran senior diplomat Marc Grossman from retirement to become the new U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. He replaces the late Richard Holbrooke, whose sudden death of a heart problem in December was a blow to U.S. regional diplomacy.
Grossman, who served in Pakistan and was U.S. ambassador to Turkey, retired in 2005 as undersecretary of state for political affairs - traditionally the highest post for a career foreign service officer.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Pakistani Taliban issue video of slain spy officer
ISLAMABAD, Feb. 19 (Xinhua) -- Pakistani Taliban Saturday released video of the shooting of a former officer of the country' s intelligence agency, who had been kidnapped in March last year in the North Waziristan tribal region.
A Taliban fighter was shown in the video while firing at the slain former officer of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Col. ( retired) Sultan Ameer Tarar, commonly known as Colonel Imam, in the presence of chief of Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud.
Col. Imam and another former ISI official, squadron leader ( retired) Khalid Khawaja, had gone to North Waziristan along with a British TV journalist, Asad Qureshi, to make a documentary on the Pakistani Taliban and victims of the U.S. drone strikes when they were kidnapped in March 2010.
Later, an unknown militant organization, Asian Tigers, claimed responsibility for the kidnapping and accused Khalid Khawaja of spying for the CIA. He was subsequently shot dead on April 30 near Mir Ali town.
Journalist Asad Qureshi and his driver Rustam Khan were released several months later reportedly after his family paid ransom to his kidnappers, who in reality were a group of Mahsud tribal militants and the Punjabi Taliban led by Sabir Mahsud and Usman Punjabi.
He was in the custody of militants affiliated with the Hakimullah Mahsud-led Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Family sources of the veteran intelligence officer said they were hearing rumors since Saturday about his death but till now there was no confirmation from any independent source.
Taliban spokesman Ihsanulah Ihsan had earlier claimed that Col. Imam has been killed.
Col. Imam was widely respected by the Afghan Mujahideen and also by the Taliban due to his role during the Afghan Jihad (1979- 89) against the Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Col. Imam had described himself as "teacher" of Taliban chief Mulla Muhammad Omar in several TV interviews.
He also served as Pakistan's consul general to Afghanistan's western Herat city for some years after the installation of the Afghan Mujahideen government. He had trained and backed the Afghan Mujahideen and was on friendly terms with Taliban supreme leader Mulla Mohammad Omar and other Taliban leaders.
Taliban had demanded money and release of their detained colleagues for the release of Col. Imam.
Chief of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, I.A. Rehman, condemned the murder of Col. Imam and described it as a brutal act.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Pakistani Taliban claims it killed retired spy
By Rasool Dawar, Associated Press – Sat Feb 19, 9:48 am ET
PESHAWAR, Pakistan – The Pakistani Taliban claimed Saturday it shot dead a retired Pakistani spy who once mentored its Afghan brethren and sided with the U.S. against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
The claim contradicted Pakistani government assertions in January that the ex-spy, Sultan Amir Tarar, died of a heart attack while being held captive by militants in northwest Pakistan. If true, the killing of a man who openly sympathized with Islamist extremists would also underscore the degree to which Pakistani Taliban groups are willing to take on the state.
"We have killed him. We shot him," Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan told an Associated Press reporter via phone from an undisclosed location.
Tarar — better known as Col. Imam — once trained at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and gave personal tours of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region to U.S. congressmen interested in supporting Afghan militiamen fighting Soviet occupation in the 1980s.
After the Soviets withdrew in 1989, he became Pakistan's point man with the Afghan Taliban, then seen by Islamabad as allies. He provided the movement with arms and money and was known to be close to Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar.
He remained publicly sympathetic to the Afghan Taliban since the movement's downfall in 2001 in the U.S.-led invasion, but denied any operational ties.
He and another former spy, Khalid Khawaja, accompanied a British TV journalist to Pakistan's northwest in early 2010.
The region is now home to militants battling the Pakistani state, including its intelligence agencies, and al-Qaida leaders also hostile to the pro-U.S. regime in Pakistan. Afghan Taliban factions fighting in Afghanistan that do not directly target the Pakistani state are also based there.
Tarar and Khawaja may have felt their sympathies with militant groups would shield them from any danger, but all three were kidnapped in March. Khawaja was later killed, while the journalist was set free.
A previously unknown militant group calling itself the Asian Tigers initially said it had seized the men. But in July, Tarar appeared in a video saying he was being held by another group and that it was demanding the release of prisoners held by the government in exchange for his release.
Tarar was believed held in North Waziristan, a region bordering Afghanistan that is under effective militant control. The leadership of the Pakistani Taliban is believed to be in the area, where it faces less pressure than in its long-time base of South Waziristan, where the army has waged an offensive.
Ahsan said Saturday that the Pakistani Taliban shot Tarar after the government failed to meet unspecified demands by the group.
"We repeatedly tried to convince the government. It did not listen to our demands. As a result, we killed him," he said.
Geo TV, a private channel in Pakistan, briefly aired parts of what is said was a video showing Tarar being shot. The clips included footage of Hakimullah Mehsud, the Pakistani Taliban chief. However, the channel did not show the actual shooting Saturday, saying it was too graphic to air, and the authenticity of the footage could not immediately be independently verified.
Also Saturday, a court reissued an arrest warrant for former Pakistani military ruler Pervez Musharraf in connection with the assassination of ex-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. The court also told authorities to trace Musharraf's address so they could arrest him, prosecutor Zulfikar Ali Chaudhry said.
Musharraf left Pakistan for London after quitting the presidency in 2008. Bhutto died in a gun and suicide bomb attack in late 2007. Prosecutors allege Musharraf was part of the conspiracy to kill her because he did not do enough to protect her as she campaigned for new elections he reluctantly allowed.
Musharraf denies any wrongdoing. He has talked of returning to lead a new political party in Pakistan.
The next hearing in the case was set for March 5.
___
Associated Press writer Munir Ahmed in Islamabad contributed to this report.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Karzai Introduces Appointed Senators
Tolo news February 19, 2011
President Hamid Karzai Saturday introduced 34 appointed senators after one and a half months delay.
The new list of appointed senators which includes 18 former senators and 16 new senators has been presented to Independent Election Commission for some administrative procedures.
Officials in IEC said the appointed senators will soon would be officially introduced to the Senate.
The new appointed senators included Sebghatullah Mujaddedi, Sayed Hamid Gilani and 32 others.
Prior to the introduction of appointed senators, head of the Senate was elected in a vote by senators, a move that was declared unconstitutional by Constitutional Implementation Commission.
Meanwhile, Afghan lawmakers today ratified an initiative for election of parliament speaker.
Among the three different initiatives that were put on vote, the political settlement plan swept majority of the votes.
Based on the new initiative, all the parliamentarians including the previous ones who ran for the house speaker will be given a chance to re-run for the seat, but considering a political settlement.
Abdullah Abdullah, Leader of Change and Hope Coalition, accused the government of meddling in parliament affairs.
Till coming Tuesday, the new commission which is formed to untie entanglements for the legislators to choose their head, will work to find a figure meeting all requirements of a political settlement.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Canada's top soldier hopes to build trust in Afghanistan's Ambush Alley
By Tara Brautigam, The Canadian Press
NAKHONAY, Afghanistan - Canada's top soldier marches through a narrow lane known among some troops as Ambush Alley, hoping to build trust in an Afghan village that has proven difficult to win over in recent years.
Against the backdrop of a crumbled clay wall — the result of an improvised explosive device last week — Brig.-Gen. Dean Milner offers a sobering assessment of the public mood in Nakhonay.
"I think they are sitting on the fence right now and they're waiting to see who is more capable, who is winning," Milner says.
"They've been intimidated for so long. Right now is that waiting period to understand what the situation is going to be like during fighting season."
Milner joined his troops during Operation Hamaghe Shay, a four-day mission that yielded weapons and IEDs on a daily and nightly basis throughout the Panjwaii district.
It culminated Saturday with a two-hour shura in the nearby village of Haji Baba, where Panjwaii's new governor railed against the Taliban — to the point where he said he would "take a gun and shoot them myself" if they brought harm to the locals.
Haji Fazluddin Agha, who was appointed Panjwaii's governor last month by the Kandahar provincial government, also implored locals to support development projects in the region and not hesitate to air their grievances.
"I need to make sure that I'm aware of all the problems of Panjwaii," he said.
In between sips of tea, Milner told Nakhonay's malik — the equivalent of a mayor — that the Canadian Forces are willing to help advance projects such as roadwork and a clinic.
"My soldiers are poised and ready to help you and this village with development," Milner said to Haji Malim, who proclaimed himself malik in November 2009 after the fatal drive-by shooting of the previous leader.
"We have not been able to do that for the past five or six months because of the challenges with insurgents, the challenges with the IEDs, so if you help us, we are ready to do a lot more for your village."
Malim nodded at times, seemingly in agreement. But like Nakhonay itself, the Canadian military has considered him unco-operative.
Nakhonay, a battle-scarred village of about 1,000 people 15 kilometres southwest of Kandahar city, has been bloodied grounds for Canada. In the last year here, IEDs killed four of the 16 Canadians who died in Afghanistan last year. Scores more have been injured.
"Nakhonay is a difficult nut to crack," said Maj. Frank Dufault, the deputy commander of Canada's battle group in Afghanistan.
Dufault helped co-ordinate Operation Hamaghe Shay in what was one of Canada's last major operations before it concludes its military mission in Afghanistan in July.
About 1,300 Canadian troops took part in the Afghan-led operation, making it the largest for Canada's battle group since 2001. The Royal 22e Regiment spent nearly a year conducting training drills in Canada for the operation. Even the mayor of Victoriaville, Que., got in on the act, playing a malik at simulated shuras.
Afghan and Canadian soldiers, close to 3,000 in all, scoured compounds and fields to secure as many weapons and IEDs as possible ahead of an anticipated surge this summer of hardcore insurgents seeking their stash of weapons for the fighting season.
AK-47s, rockets and IED components including jugs, wiring and ball bearings were a small sample of the weaponry they seized.
"Our goal is to try to clear, inch by inch," Dufault said.
"The more IEDs and weapons we can find now, the less they'll have to use during the fighting season."
Back to Top
Back to Top
Afghanistan will not control all women's shelters
Sat Feb 19, 3:24 pm ET
KABUL (AFP) – President Hamid Karzai said Saturday his government did not plan to take control of all shelters for abused women in Afghanistan, in an apparent contradiction of a previous announcement.
Women's affairs minister Husun Bano Ghazanfar said Tuesday that the government had proposed authorising officials to take over "all existing women's shelters in Afghanistan."
That prompted concerns from the United States and human rights groups, who said the move could put women in the shelters, currently run by rights groups and charities, at risk.
The safe houses are run by foreign and Afghan groups to protect women from domestic violence but some conservatives and clerics accuse them of being fronts for prostitution or set up to remove women from their families.
Karzai told a press conference Saturday that the problem was only with "one or two" shelters which he accused of corruption and "wastage."
"Those shelters which have conducted themselves well, which are in accordance with the procedures established and who have good transparency with what they are doing will not only be kept but supported by the Afghan government," he said.
"Those who are found in violation of the established standards and the rules and regulations will be taken over by the Afghan government."
The US said Thursday it was "concerned" by the proposed changes and urged Afghanistan to support the work of women's shelters.
"While we recognize that the government needs to monitor shelters, it is important that civil society be allowed to operate these facilities independently," said Philip Crowley, assistant secretary of state for public affairs.
US-based group Human Rights Watch (HRW) said this week that it feared government-run shelters were more likely to yield to pressure from disgruntled families to hand back abused women to their families than independent ones.
And on Friday, the Afghan Women's Network group issued an open letter and plea for the government plans to be reversed.
"On many occasions, government officials, pressured by influential people in society or political circles, have exposed the location of women seeking refuge or forced them to return to their families who punish them for trying to escape," it said.
Back to Top
Back to Top
In Afghanistan With Our Warrior Elite
Wall Street Journal By ANDREW EXUM 18/02/2011
Bing West's "The Wrong War: Grit, Strategy, and the Way Out of Afghanistan" is one of the best books yet written on the war in Afghanistan. I disagree with the way Mr. West characterizes the war at times, but "The Wrong War" is filled with both vivid descriptions of the Afghan fighting and sound advice concerning how counterinsurgencies should be waged.
First, the grit. "The Wrong War" contains some of the most compelling descriptions of small-unit combat that I have ever read. Mr. West has argued in the past that the U.S. armed forces have lost their "warrior ethos" and calls them here "a gigantic Peace Corps." But these claims in no way square with what he depicts.
Most of the book is taken up by the author's adventures with Marine and Army infantry units and Special Forces teams in eastern and southern Afghanistan. Mr. West's tales of U.S. soldiers under fire and the heroism they display take the breath away, capturing the difficulty of the combat environment in Afghanistan and the fortitude required to fight a skilled enemy in it. The only writer I know who has captured the essence of small-unit combat as well is C.J. Chivers, whose dispatches for the New York Times from Iraq and Afghanistan are essential reading for anyone interested in how a very small percentage of our nation's men and women have spent the past decade. (That both authors were Marines, and know what it means to lead men in combat, is not coincidental.)
Among the many excellent stories of men under fire here, two stand out. The first is Cpl. Dakota Meyer's. A Marine sniper, on Sept. 8, 2009, he charged into enemy fire not once, not twice but five times in quick succession to rescue fallen Afghan and American comrades. Mr. West's account of Cpl. Meyer's heroism is magisterial—and makes it clear why Cpl. Meyer has been nominated for the Medal of Honor. (Though it also makes one wonder why it took until 2010 for a living veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to be decorated with the Medal of Honor.)
The second story is remarkable for an entirely different reason. Mr. West imagines himself as a Taliban sniper, describing what it might be like to stalk U.S. soldiers while under constant threat of indirect fire and air strikes. It is a sympathetic and revealing account, displaying all Mr. West's skills as a reporter and analyst—and his empathy with fighting men.
It is with "strategy" that Mr. West grows frustrated by the war in Afghan istan—with good reason, I might add— and by the "hearts and minds" approach he sees being applied in U.S. counterinsurgency efforts. "Hearts and minds," for Mr. West, is based on "gratitude theory," the idea that if we build enough hospitals and pave enough roads, the Afghan people will stop supporting the Taliban and throw their weight behind the government.
I agree that gratitude theory rarely works—not in Afghanistan and not anywhere else. But it is also not a characteristic of the present U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine. In fact, the only time the phrase "hearts and minds" appears in the U.S. Army's counterinsurgency field manual is in an appendix—written by Australian expert David Kilcullen— that explains that the hearts-and-minds approach is not about making people like you but about affecting the decisions they make. It is about control, about convincing the population that you are going to win. "Calculated self-interest, not emotion, is what counts," the field manual appendix reads. "Over time, successful trusted networks grow like roots into the populace. They displace enemy networks, which forces enemies into the open, letting military forces seize the initiative and destroy the insurgents." Hearts and minds, correctly understood, very much includes killing the enemy.
If that idea was misunderstood by U.S. units in Afghanistan, I would share Mr. West's frustration. But based on my own combat experiences there as well as recent trips to Afghanistan, I do not think this is the case. Mr. West claims, for instance, that we are not trying to kill insurgents. I have a hard time believing that, having observed U.S. and NATO combat operations in Afghanistan over the past 18 months. Just to give one example: U.S. conventional and special-operations units have decimated the ranks of the insurgent networks in the past year, killing mid-level leaders and enablers by the score.
It is only after spending 251 pages describing the way in which the war in Afghanistan is being fought that Mr. West finally gets around to explaining the third part of his subtitle "the way out." The fact that Mr. West spends only the final three pages on the subject inadvertently supports H.L. Mencken's quip that every human problem has a solution that is "neat, plausible, and wrong." Mr. West is not the first person to argue, as he does, that the U.S. and its allies should transition from a resource-intensive counterinsurgency campaign to a lighter footprint that combines advisory teams with special-operations units. It has escaped very few students of counterinsurgency that, at a time when the Soviet Union had 115,000 soldiers engaged in a losing effort in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the U.S. was quietly winning a counterinsurgency campaign in El Salvador with just 55 U.S. Special Forces advisers. Might we not also wage the war in Afghanistan with fewer resources?
In late 2002, however, the U.S. made the fateful decision to divert the vast majority of its available military and intelligence resources to Iraq. As a result, efforts to train and equip competent Afghan security forces have lagged, while Pakistan increased support for the Taliban as a hedge against Indian influence in a post-NATO Afghanistan. (In El Salvador, of course, U.S. policy makers never had to contend with the risks posed by transnational terror groups.) The U.S. and NATO units in Afghanistan today are waging counterinsurgency operations to create the time and space for Afghan security forces to be trained. The transition away from resource-intensive counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan to the kind of strategy Mr. West prefers will begin in July 2011 and will be completed by 2014, when Afghan President Hamid Karzai's second term ends.
But the process will take time and more U.S. lives. It will not be easy. What is more, insurgent sanctuaries in Pak is tan and a corrupt Afghan government continue to hamper our efforts. But, as Mr. West's book shows, we have an amazing cadre of young men and women who continue to serve with valor and distinction in Afghanistan, and for them as well as for Mr. West's book we should be thankful. —Mr. Exum is a fellow at the Center for a New American Security. A former Army officer, he led light infantry and Ranger platoons in Afghanistan in 2002 and 2004 before returning as a civilian adviser in 2009.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Why American troops in Afghanistan shouldn't have to wear headscarves
Washington Post By Martha McSally Friday, February 18, 2011
In 2001, I was an Air Force lieutenant colonel and A-10 fighter pilot stationed in Saudi Arabia, in charge of rescue operations for no-fly enforcement in Iraq and then in Afghanistan. Every time I went off base, I had to follow orders and put on a black Muslim abaya and head scarf. Military officials said this would show "cultural sensitivity" toward conservative Saudi leaders and guarantee "force protection" - this in a nation where women couldn't drive, vote or dress as they pleased.
To me, the abaya directive, with its different rules for male and female troops and the requirement that I don the garb of a faith not my own, violated the American values of individual freedom and equality I had raised my right hand and pledged I would die for.
I already had tried for years to get the policy changed. In 2002, I sued then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld over the policy. Congress stepped in and approved legislation that prohibited anyone in the military from requiring or encouraging servicewomen to put on abayas in Saudi Arabia or to use taxpayers' money to buy them.
I remember a discussion with congressmen and staffers about whether the legislation should be broadened to cover military personnel serving in any country. We naively decided that Saudi Arabia posed the worst-case scenario; the military would get Congress's intent and would not require servicewomen to wear Muslim attire in any mission elsewhere.
Sadly, we were mistaken. Nearly a decade later, some female soldiers serving in Afghanistan are being encouraged to wear headscarves. Some servicewomen have taken off the regulation helmet and worn just the scarf, even when on patrol outside, in their combat uniforms and body armor, M-4s slung over their shoulders.
The more common practice is to wear the scarf under one's helmet or around the neck, pulling it on as the servicewoman removes her Kevlar helmet upon entering a village or building.
"Within Afghanistan, the donning of a scarf or other type of head covering by our female service members can be done as a sign of respect to the local culture and people they must necessarily interact with," a senior U.S. military official told me via e-mail. "This can help promote greater trust and a fuller interaction with the local population as well as increased access to persons and places that contribute to mission accomplishment."
Unlike in Saudi Arabia, this attire is considered optional and at the discretion of "leaders on the ground," said the official.
However, when a superior tells a military subordinate any practice is optional, the very mention of the practice creates pressure to comply. This is especially true in combat settings, when subordinates must trust their commander's direction to maximize mission effectiveness and protect lives.
Most of the U.S. servicewomen wearing headscarves are assigned to Female Engagement Teams (FETs), charged to reach out to local Afghan women and win their hearts and minds as part of the new counterinsurgency strategy. Wearing the hijab is thought to facilitate this access, since all Afghan women are expected to wear a headscarf when in public.
In the regions where the FETs are working, most local women still wear burqas, the head-to-toe gown that has a net over the eyes. So our female soldiers hardly blend in, with their weapons, boots and camouflage, and that bright scarf over their hair.
One officer told me she refuses to wear the scarf but is unwilling to speak out publicly against it. Yet many female troops defend the practice.
"It's part of the effort to show we're sensitive to the local culture," Marine Capt. Jennifer Gregoire told the Associated Press in 2009. "If you show your hair, it's kind of like seeing a nude picture here, because women are very covered up."
Marine Col. Sheila Scanlon, an adviser to the Afghan Interior Ministry on gender issues, explained it this way to U.S. military bloggers last year: "All of us try not to insult the Afghans and to try to abide by their rules."
I applaud these warriors' desire to do whatever it takes to win this war. But wearing the scarf when in U.S. military uniform is appeasement, not respect. Our troops should not conform to customs that represent the marginalization of people and are incongruent with our fundamental values. Would our military leaders have dared encourage African American troops to submit to local customs if they had been ordered to deploy to South Africa under apartheid?
America has a long history of pride in the military uniform, and the Army has a 362-page directive on proper uniform wear. Included are guidelines that accommodate freedom of religion by outlining what religious attire or jewelry can be worn with the uniform. Anything that interferes with the wear or function of the military hat or protective gear, including the Kevlar helmet, is forbidden. Under these rules, a Muslim soldier stationed in the United States who wanted to wear a headscarf with her uniform would not be permitted to do so.
The Muslim headscarf, a religious custom that aims to deflect sexual attention from non-male relatives, is certainly a point of much controversy. It is currently outlawed by France and Turkey in public institutions. Scholars disagree whether it is even mandated by the Koran. Some label it as a symbol of female subjugation while others call it liberating.
In Afghanistan after Sept. 11, 2001, the world saw the hallmark of Taliban oppression - women who failed to cover up risked death. Now, nine years after the fall of the Taliban government, Afghan women are still required to cover themselves and have hardly moved toward the equal rights and liberties we envisioned. In conjunction, U.S. military women are simply submitting to Muslim practices that symbolize the plight of Afghan women when they put on the scarf themselves.
American servicewomen will continue to be viewed as second-class warriors if leaders push them to take up the customs of countries where women are second-class citizens. The abaya policy in Saudi Arabia and the wearing of the Muslim headscarf in a war zone in Afghanistan are cut from this same flawed thinking. Top military leaders should issue guidance that U.S. servicewomen are not authorized to wear a Muslim headscarf while in their uniform conducting military duties. If they don't, Congress should intervene again, as they did on the abaya, and prohibit its wear.
Our male and female troops are risking their lives every day in Afghanistan while proudly representing and defending the United States. They are there to disrupt and defeat al-Qaeda while assisting Afghans in securing their future from extremist oppression. With our Afghan partners, trust can be built on a foundation of mutual respect, where no one is expected to submit to others' cultural and religious guidelines.
Retired Air Force Colonel Martha McSally is a professor at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Germany. Her views are not necessarily those of the center or the Department of Defense.
Back to Top
Disclaimer:
This news site is mostly a compilation of publicly accessible articles
on the Web in the form of a link or saved news item. The news articles
and commentaries/editorials are protected under international copyright
laws. All credit goes to the original respective source(s).