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Elaborate ruse behind vast Kabul Bank fraud
Washington Post By Joshua Partlow Friday, July 1, 2011
KABUL - The top two officials of Kabul Bank used fake names, forged documents, fictitious companies and secret records as part of an elaborate ruse to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to shareholders and top Afghan officials, according to newly obtained documents and interviews.
Afghan Bus Strikes Land Mine, Killing 18
July 1, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
A passenger bus in southern Afghanistan struck a land mine today, killing at least 18 civilians.
Nimroz Province police chief General Abdul Jabar Pordeli told RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan that about 30 people, including women and children, were injured.
U.S.-led coalition: Pakistan group behind Kabul hotel attack
McClatchy Newspapers By Hashim Shukoor Thursday, June 30, 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan - The U.S.-led military coalition Thursday blamed a notorious Pakistan-based terrorist group for this week's spectacular assault on a hilltop Kabul hotel and said it had killed one of the group's senior commanders, who was suspected of involvement in the attack.
The Kabul hotel attack was destined to happen
Afghanistan's culture is too polite and fatalistic to take security seriously – plus Afghans are in denial over the roots of terrorism
Guardian.co.uk Nushin Arbabzadah Thursday 30 June 2011
It was the first group of security guards at the Intercontinental hotel in Kabul who gave us tips about how to sneak in. "Don't tell them that you just want to hang out in the hotel. Tell them you are here for a meeting."
Some US Aid to Afghanistan Leads to Negative Results
VOA News July 1, 2011 Elizabeth Lee | Los Angeles
Just weeks before United States President Barack Obama announced plans to draw down U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee issued a report saying the close to $19 billion in U.S. aid to Afghanistan has been met with success, but the money could have unintended negative consequences. One Los Angeles based aid organization says it is operating in a way that avoids some of the negative results of helping Afghan people.
Against the clock in Afghanistan
Washington Post By David Ignatius Friday, July 1, 2011
KHOST, Afghanistan - ATaliban prisoner named Mohammed Nazir is brought into the warden’s office here in ankle cuffs and seated on the couch next to me. He is wary but articulate about what ails his country. “The major problem is our justice system. It is corrupt,” he says. And he’s right.
In Brief: WFP refocusing its work in Afghanistan
NAIROBI, 1 July 2011 (IRIN) - The UN World Food Programme (WFP) is being forced by a funding shortfall to cut its recovery programmes in nearly half of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, a spokesperson said.
Tajiks Detain Suspected Afghan Drug Smuggler
July 1, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
QURGHONTEPPA, Tajikistan -- Tajik authorities say a suspected Afghan drug smuggler has been detained with 40 kilograms of drugs in Tajikistan's southern Khatlon Province, RFE/RL's Tajik Service reports.
Afghan Border Commander Resigns Over Pakistan Rocket Attacks
Tolo news June 30, 2011
Top Afghan commander of border forces in eastern Afghanistan on Thursday resigned amid deadly missile attacks from Pakistan into Afghanistan.
Mural Exhibit Depicts Costs to Civilians in Afghanistan
New York Times By KARI LYDERSEN July 1, 2011
John Pitman Weber remembers the 1960s and ’70s in Chicago, when scores of artists would join mammoth marches protesting the Vietnam War and antiwar murals were a common sight on city streets.
Wasteful Afghan projects: Where does the buck stop?
McClatchy Newspapers By LYDIA MULVANY 30/06/2011
WASHINGTON - Inefficient and unsustainable construction projects in Afghanistan have swallowed billions in American taxpayer dollars, and may contribute little to defeating the Taliban, but no one's certain who's to blame.
Pakistani Taliban at odds over suicide attacks
By Muhammad Tahir
ISLAMABAD, July 1 (Xinhua) -- Pakistani Taliban is facing a visible split days after a senior leader quit over suicide attacks at mosques and bomb blasts in public places and formed a new group.
How to get Pakistan to break with Islamic militants
Washington Post By Zalmay Khalilzad Thursday, June 30, 2011
In his Afghanistan speech last week, President Obama said we must “address terrorist safe havens in Pakistan.” He vowed to “press Pakistan to expand its participation in securing a more peaceful future,” “work with the Pakistani government to root out the cancer of violent extremism” and “insist that it keep its commitments.”
Afghan Agony If All for Nothing
Forbes By Tim Ferguson Jun. 30 2011
The Afghanistan-Pakistan portion of the $1.3 trillion-plus U.S. war efforts of the last decade is now, after a detour into “nation-building,” set to wind down as per President Obama’s latest direction.
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Elaborate ruse behind vast Kabul Bank fraud
Washington Post By Joshua Partlow Friday, July 1, 2011
KABUL - The top two officials of Kabul Bank used fake names, forged documents, fictitious companies and secret records as part of an elaborate ruse to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to shareholders and top Afghan officials, according to newly obtained documents and interviews.
The scheme overseen by Sherkhan Farnood, the bank’s former chairman, and Khaililullah Frouzi, the chief executive, helped to cover up a vast disbursal of funds to Afghanistan’s ruling elite, the documents and interviews with bank insiders as well as U.S. and Afghan officials show. Among the major recipients was Mahmoud Karzai, the president’s brother, who allegedly received $22 million in loans; some parliament members, warlords and cabinet ministers, including Mohammed Fahim, Afghanistan’s first vice president, are alleged to have received smaller sums.
Farnood and Frouzi were detained Wednesday night in the first high-level arrests since the scandal began. Both deny responsibility, and neither has been charged with a crime, but Afghanistan’s attorney general, Mohammed Ishaq Aloko, said in a brief interview that the evidence against them is “quite clear.’’
The documents, from the Afghan government and from the bank, provide the most detailed account yet of how the fraud was carried out in the years before it was discovered in 2010, forcing the Afghan government to take over the bank, split it in two, dissolve the shareholders’ assets and spend more than $800 million to bail it out.
The crisis at Kabul Bank has shaken confidence in Afghanistan’s financial system and caused the lapse of the International Monetary Fund’s line of credit, which has stymied tens of millions of dollars of foreign aid to the country. Now the job of recovering as much as possible of the $912 million in loans amounts to perhaps the most serious task for President Hamid Karzai’s government outside of fighting the Taliban.
Without a successful resolution of Kabul Bank’s problems, said one senior U.S. official, Afghanistan could face “the collapse of the banking sector.”
Senior prosecutors in Afghanistan announced the arrests of Farnood and Frouzi several days after a special commission, established by President Karzai last year to investigate charges of improper loans and financial mismanagement at the bank, completed its work and forwarded its findings privately to the government. The chairman of Afghanistan’s Central Bank, Abdul Qadir Fitrat, fled to Virginia this week and declared that his life was in danger because he had revealed the names of prominent loan recipients.
Frouzi could not be reached for comment for this article. But in an interview in May in Kabul Bank headquarters, Farnood called himself a “scapegoat” for a broader conspiracy of government and business leaders in which, he said, Frouzi had played a big part. Farnood, a world-class poker player, acknowledged that the bank had gone to extraordinary lengths to prevent Afghanistan’s Central Bank from discovering the extent of the unsecured insider lending.
To ensure that Central Bank regulators remained compliant and incurious, Farnood and another former executive said, Frouzi had paid monthly bribes to central bank officials.
But Farnood, who asserts that the illegal loans and bribes took place without his knowledge when he was out of Afghanistan, said others also bore significant responsibility. “People need to know who were the real criminals here,” he said. “At the end of the day, people need to know where the money has gone.”
Following the money
After the crisis broke out last August, Kabul Bank’s employees combed through bank records in an effort to document who received Kabul Bank’s money.
After reviewing these records, the Afghan government alleged that Farnood illegally received loans totaling $497.1 million in the name of 163 companies, while Frouzi took $79.6 million associated with 37 companies, according to government documents obtained by The Washington Post. (Farnood said that he did not end up with the vast majority of the money but that bank loans in his name were given to other people.)
To facilitate these transactions, Kabul Bank relied on Shaheen Exchange, a Dubai-based money transfer business that Farnood owned before starting Kabul Bank and that had representatives inside the bank’s headquarters. To skirt regulations about loans to insiders such as shareholders that exceeded legal limits, the bank issued loans in various names and transferred money to Shaheen Exchange, which would then reroute the money back to Afghanistan and keep records of the actual recipients, according to several former bank executives and shareholders.
Among the recipients, the documents show, was Mahmoud Karzai. The documents show that the $22.2 million he borrowed was recorded as 10 separate loans under names such as Abdul Rahim, Dawood and Sultan Mohammad Hafizullah LTD.
Mahmoud Karzai has acknowledged receiving loans, but said that he was unaware of the misleading practices and that he has now paid back all he owes, about one-third of the $22 million. He said he is not responsible for about $14 million because the sum includes a villa in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, owned by Farnood and shares of Kabul Bank that the government has stripped from him.
“They were probably thinking I was not supposed to get a loan so they put in these different names. They did this illegal stuff for all the loans,” Mahmoud Karzai said in an interview.
These lending practices raised red flags within the bank at least two years before the Central Bank takeover last August. Employees in the credit department regularly encountered loan files with missing documents, including absent business licenses and audited financial reports and sent warnings to the leadership about the problems.
Managers ignored the procedures for determining borrowers’ risks. “Whenever I sent any file with a high-risk rating,” one former bank employee recalled, “they’d send it back and say I had to change it to medium or low. So I did that.”
Internal warnings
To create a veneer of legitimacy to fictional loans, financial documents were fabricated for front companies, according to two former bank employees.
In February 2010, six months before the Central Bank would take action, an internal memo addressed to Farnood called the loan portfolio “less than satisfactory.” The memo described the loans as sanctioned “without any proper scrutiny” and said that they were serving “vested, influential, and [concocted] interested parties which needs to be scrutinized at the highest level possible.”
The depth of the bank’s problems, first reported in The Post in February 2010, spooked the bank’s leadership and shareholders. The day after the article, Frouzi’s own Kabul Bank account reached its apex, $19 million. By July 4, it had been largely emptied, never again exceeding $3,000.
Despite the internal turmoil, the loans kept flowing. On July 20, 2010, an employee in the credit department wrote to Farnood about his concerns over being pressured to issue 71 loans that had no documentation. Farnood was warned that such loans were illegal and put “the bank at great risk and in particular me.”
The employee asked Farnood to instruct management to block the loans. “Please treat this mail in good spirit and take necessary action as these practices will lead to collapse of Kabul Bank, Officials and the Banking Industry,” he wrote.
Farnood did not write back. In his defense, Farnood said he was rarely in Kabul and left all authority for day-to-day operations to Frouzi.
Several people involved with the bank disagreed, saying the two men made all key decisions together. The shareholders did not hold meetings. One former executive said: “Sherkhan’s attitude was very simple, it’s like the mafia. ‘I’m the boss. I call you and tell you and you execute.’ You become an integral part of his activities.”
“He is the main perpetrator,” Mahmoud Karzai said of Farnood. “He is the architect of the entire episode.”
The daunting challenge
Among other prominent Afghan officials listed in bank documents as having received loans is Fahim, who is the first vice president and is identified as “Marshal Fahim,” and is said to have received $373,928. Others listed include Zalmai Rasoul, the foreign minister, $105,190; and Younis Qanooni, the former parliament speaker, $1.27 million.
Farnood did not dispute the figures but said they painted an incomplete picture, as bribes and other payments to officials were often recorded as expenses and the recipients not identified in the books by name.
The officials all denied they benefited illegally from Kabul Bank; those who acknowledged receiving loans said they paid them back. A person close to Fahim said that the Kabul Bank money was used to finance his vice presidential campaign in 2009 but that he has not received any money since. An aide to Fahim who uses only a first name, Gulbuddin, said “by no means has he borrowed any money from Kabul Bank or any other bank.’’
Rasoul said through a spokesman that he borrowed money from the bank but paid it back on time. He did not disclose the amount. An aide denied that Qanooni took the $1.27 million from Kabul Bank and said Qanooni would not be available for comment. Qanooni has said in the past that he did not receive gifts but received some donations from Kaubl Bank executives for his parliamentary campaign.
The challenge of fixing Kabul Bank has posed a daunting task for the Afghan government. It has responded, under international pressure, by stripping the shareholders of their ownership, putting the bank into receivership and breaking it into two parts: the “New Kabul Bank” for depositors and functioning loans, and another part functioning as a collection agency for the bad loans.
Under a warrant from the attorney general’s office, Interpol last month put Shokrullah Shokran, a cousin of Farnood’s who was the former deputy chief executive and has left Afghanistan, on a wanted list. In an attempt to follow the money amid competing versions by bank executives, an outside firm has also begun a forensic audit of the bank.
Some borrowers have refused repayment, and the government has collected less than $100 million. The arrests of Farnood and Frouzi on Wednesday were the most significant sign yet that the government was serious about prosecution.
“It’s a ridiculous situation,” said Mohammad Qasim Hashimzai, the deputy justice minister who is on a committee to look into Kabul Bank’s problems. “You can’t trust anybody.”
Correspondent Pamela Constable and special correspondents Javed Hamdard and Sayed Salahuddin contributed to this report.
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Afghan Bus Strikes Land Mine, Killing 18
July 1, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
A passenger bus in southern Afghanistan struck a land mine today, killing at least 18 civilians.
Nimroz Province police chief General Abdul Jabar Pordeli told RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan that about 30 people, including women and children, were injured.
Eighteen of them are in critical condition.
Jabar blamed the Taliban for the incident, but no one has claimed responsibility.
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U.S.-led coalition: Pakistan group behind Kabul hotel attack
McClatchy Newspapers By Hashim Shukoor Thursday, June 30, 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan - The U.S.-led military coalition Thursday blamed a notorious Pakistan-based terrorist group for this week's spectacular assault on a hilltop Kabul hotel and said it had killed one of the group's senior commanders, who was suspected of involvement in the attack.
The International Security Assistance Force didn't say how it had determined that the Haqqani network was responsible for the siege Tuesday night at the Kabul Intercontinental hotel, which left 10 civilians, two policemen and all nine assailants dead.
But it said a senior Haqqani commander, Ismail Khan, was suspected of providing material support for the assault, and that he and several other Haqqani fighters had been killed Wednesday in a "precision airstrike," only hours after Afghan police had retaken control of the hotel.
"The Haqqani network, in conjunction with Taliban operatives, was responsible for the Tuesday night attack on the Kabul Intercontinental Hotel which killed 12 people, including a provincial judge," the ISAF statement said..
Meanwhile, Afghan officials announced Thursday that they'd assume security responsibilities in seven provinces and cities, including Kabul, beginning July 14.
The quick schedule for the transition — previous announcements had suggested it wouldn't begin till later in July — seemed designed to put to rest any suggestion that Tuesday's assault would delay the hand-over.
Dr. Ashraf Ghani, the chairman of the commission that's overseeing the security handover, said the July 14 transition would be largely ceremonial because Afghan forces had been gradually taking control in the seven areas since President Hamid Karzai announced the transition plan in March.
Karzai and President Barack Obama have much at stake in the change in security responsibility. Karzai has argued for months that Afghan forces are strong enough to combat Taliban insurgents, and Obama announced earlier this month an aggressive withdrawal plan that will see 33,000 American troops leave Afghanistan by the end of next year.
Both leaders have said they plan for the international military presence in Afghanistan to end in 2014, a deadline that would be in doubt if the Taliban were to mount a serious challenge to government control in areas where NATO forces are no longer present.
The seven areas are all considered relatively peaceful, though some have seen an uptick in violence since Karzai announced the transition. Three of the areas are cities, Mazar-i-Sharif in the country's north, Mehterlam, the capital of Laghman province in the east, and Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province in the south.
The other four areas are provinces with reputations for relatively little Taliban activity. They include Bamiyan in central Afghanistan, Panjshir, the birthplace of the legendary anti-Taliban commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, in the north, and Herat province.
Kabul, the fourth province, has seen three spectacular terrorist operations since April, including Tuesday's hotel assault, that involved breaching heavily secured facilities. One attack was on the Defense Ministry, and another in the country's main military hospital.
It wasn't clear from Ghani's announcement what the transition to be undertaken this month would involve. While he said it was largely ceremonial, he also said it would take about a week. The hand-overs in all seven locations will begin simultaneously, he added.
Ghani's announcement came at the end of a two-day meeting of Afghan security officials that had been set to take place at the Intercontinental. A Taliban spokesman who claimed credit for the assault said that a reception for conference attendees had been the intended target.
The government moved the meeting to a government media center and conducted the gathering as scheduled.
While Ghani said Afghan police were fully prepared to assume responsibility, noting that they had the necessary "equipment, training and numbers," the country's intelligence chief warned that provincial officials should expect violence.
In his remarks, Rahmatullah Nabeel seemed to be pointing a finger at Pakistan as a likely backer of efforts to disrupt the transition.
"Some neighboring countries do not want that Afghans themselves provide their own security and will always try to derail and disrupt this process," he said.
That comment dovetailed with the ISAF announcement of Haqqani network involvement in Tuesday's hotel attack.
The Haqqani network is based in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal region. U.S. officials have long called it the most resilient of Afghanistan's terrorist groups and say that it's allied with the Taliban and al Qaida. Afghan government officials frequently criticize Pakistan as not doing enough to stop Haqqani-allied fighters from crossing into Afghanistan.
The Haqqani network has been blamed for a wide range of attacks in Kabul, including the bombing of the Indian Embassy in 2008 and a 2009 attack on a well-known shopping mall.
Afghan-led security forces have captured or killed more than 80 Haqqani leaders and facilitators since January, primarily in the Paktika, Paktia and Khost areas.
Initial reports indicate that no civilians were harmed in the airstrike Wednesday, the ISAF statement said.
(Shukoor is a McClatchy special correspondent.)
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The Kabul hotel attack was destined to happen
Afghanistan's culture is too polite and fatalistic to take security seriously – plus Afghans are in denial over the roots of terrorism
Guardian.co.uk Nushin Arbabzadah Thursday 30 June 2011
It was the first group of security guards at the Intercontinental hotel in Kabul who gave us tips about how to sneak in. "Don't tell them that you just want to hang out in the hotel. Tell them you are here for a meeting."
My friend and I thanked them happily. We had fond childhood memories of the hotel – the scene of a suicide attack earlier this week – and just wanted to enjoy seeing our old haunts.
The little wooden cabin where female visitors underwent body searches was even more relaxed. A TV was running in the corner and the women dressed in traditional clothing took only a cursory look into our bags. There was no proper search.
The women who do body searches in "secure" places in Kabul are often too polite or too embarrassed to conduct a proper search. Looking into my bag, one of them said: "Don't worry sister, I know you only have women's stuff in your bag." Frequently, I found myself asking female security staff to search me properly, to look carefully into my bag, but often they refused out of embarrassment.
Whether young or old, male or female, rich or poor, Afghans are exceedingly polite people and it is this culture of politeness that makes conducting a proper search a rather awkward endeavour. A friendly visitor who speaks the language and greets security guards in a friendly and respectful manner unwittingly culturally disarms the guards, rendering them incapable of conducting their search duty vigorously.
This is one reason why security is lax in Kabul and why attacks such as the one in the Intercontinental can easily take place despite security guards and barricades. Hence, this week's attack did not come as a surprise to many of the hotel's visitors.
A friend told me about her recent experience of visiting the Intercontinental. "My driver told me that the security guard had simply asked him whether he had weapons on him and he told the guard that he had none. He was then allowed to drive up and park the car in the upper section of the parking lot."
From the upper parking lot, the driver had an excellent view of the pool area and the ground level. Had he been a terrorist, he would have had a field day.
Afghans are perhaps just too polite to be good security guards. Social interaction is informal and people can be easily persuaded to compromise and not fulfil their security duty vigorously.
Taxi drivers in Kabul are fully aware of the lax security because it makes their job dangerous. According to Mohammad, a driver, "When police stop your taxi, they only look into the glove compartment. They don't look anywhere else and they only look in the glove compartment because they hope to find and confiscate dope there."
Mohammad calls Kabul "Shahr-e Kharbouza" (melon market), a derogatory phrase that sums up not only the security chaos but also the city's nerve-racking traffic.
Kabul's drivers often have little idea of the name or meaning of the city's historical landmarks. The map of the city stored in their brains is full of terrorist attack locations. "This is where the co-ordinated attacks against Serena and Golbahar Centre took place. Here is where I had to turn back because there was a suicide attack. This place is when I called my company to tell them not to send anyone to this address because there was an attack."
The drivers tell their tales of terror in a low and monotonous voice, which powerfully conveys they have resigned themselves to living in a city that can turn dangerous at any time.
The continuation of security threats has two more equally significant sources. First, there's the widespread belief that terrorism has nothing to do with Afghans but is something that outsiders do to Afghans.
Regarding a recent attack on a hospital that resulted in the killing of numerous patients, a young, trendy Afghan told me: "There's no way the Taliban carried out the attack. Our Taliban would never do such a thing. It was al-Qaida with the help of the US."
The denial that terrorism in Afghanistan is also a local problem that needs a local solution is widespread among all classes of people and might be a reflection of a desperate psychological need to believe in Afghanistan as a good and safe homeland which owes all its problems to foreign interference.
Certainly, to accept that one's compatriots can be a people of such brutal cruelty as to not even spare hospitals is tough and this, in turn, makes denial as a psychological coping mechanism understandable. But the downside of denial is that attacks keep happening again and again.
The third factor that allows terrorism to go on is fatalism. When discussing ways to reduce the threat of terrorism, one often encounters a shrug followed by: "Well, if it's your destiny to die, you end up dying. It's not up to you."
To people who are not culturally part of Afghanistan, this fatalistic mindset is seriously disconcerting. But Afghans believe in destiny and that's why they interpret death in suicide attacks as something that is predetermined for the victims rather than a political act of intimidation.
Such belief means that guesthouse and hotel managers neglect to double-check escape routes or make adequate security preparations. "We have an escape door," a guesthouse manager told me, but when I tried to open the door, it was impossible to unlock it, let alone open it. In a less fatalistic society, the door would have been checked every day but not so in Afghanistan.
When I tried to explain to a friend that believing in fate was not a solution to security threats because those who planned attacks were not God but human beings, who plotted them carefully and deliberately, he laughed, and said: "You know what's the only solution for this place? We should all be put into a spaceship and sent into space so that the international community can finally sort this place out in our absence."
This jokingly delivered "solution" was a rare example of Afghan self-criticism. But even though it was delivered laughingly, the bitterness lurking behind the hilarity was hard to miss.
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Some US Aid to Afghanistan Leads to Negative Results
VOA News July 1, 2011 Elizabeth Lee | Los Angeles
Just weeks before United States President Barack Obama announced plans to draw down U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee issued a report saying the close to $19 billion in U.S. aid to Afghanistan has been met with success, but the money could have unintended negative consequences. One Los Angeles based aid organization says it is operating in a way that avoids some of the negative results of helping Afghan people.
Money raised for humanitarian aid
Software and Internet entrepreneur Jim Hake is helping the U.S. military in Afghanistan by buying notebooks, pencils and many other things. "Soldiers and Marines tell us what they need to help the local people. They tell us about sewing machines that are needed for Afghan women, school supplies for local children, tools for men,” stated Hake.
Hake founded Spirit of America, a Los Angeles-based organization that receives private donations through the Internet and uses all of that money to buy supplies for the Afghans. The organization buys most of the needed items in Afghanistan to help the local economy. Hake says the goal is to help the U.S. military built strong relationships with the local people in Afghanistan.
“We can all think of situations where we met someone who helped us. You have a very different impression of that person once you have that personal connection that personal interaction,” he said.
“The aid projects are very well intended. But unfortunately many of them also had unintended consequences,” Andrew Wilder stated. Wilder, of the U.S. Institute of Peace has been studying the effects of aid in Afghanistan. “We found that a lot of development assistance can be effective in achieving development objectives but it’s not effective at achieving the stabilization and security objectives,” he said.
Aid risks, unintended consequences
A recent report by the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, found that stabilization projects may have short-term results, such as developing relationships with the community and providing useful intelligence, but too much aid can destabilize the local economies and even create a recession as the U.S. decreases its presence there.
“We’ve created a war and aid bubble economy and now as we’re transitioning out, there’s a real risk that that’s going to pop,” noted Wilder.
The World Bank estimates 97 percent of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product comes from spending related to the presence of the international military and of aid organizations working to help the local population.
Lack of checks and balances
The money from most international donors, including the U.S. does not go through the Afghan government. The report warns that it weakens the government’s ability to control resources and can fuel corruption. The report says another side effect is that there are thousands of individual projects in Afghanistan with no plans for being sustainable.
But Jim Hake says not every project needs to be long term.
“Sustainability is an important concept but it can sometimes be misapplied. Misapplied in that sustainability is not always important. Initial stability - it’s a process to get a country like Afghanistan, or even a village, to the point where it is self sustaining and peaceful,“ he said.
Hake says once stability is achieved, Afghan security forces can take over and the aid project is no longer necessary.
As to corruption, Hake says his organization works on smaller scale projects so he knows exactly where the money goes.
“We don’t have layers of subcontractors when we source goods in Afghanistan we’re doing it directly with our personnel and the source of those goods,” he explained.
But challenges remain for the foreign aid currently flowing into Afghanistan.
Andrew Wilder advocates a slow decrease of funding over time to avoid a sudden drop in aid. He says the money that goes to Afghanistan should be channeled through the Afghan government to give it more control over its resources.
"It is important for donors to support these national programs, and have checks and balances and mechanisms to ensure accountability. But they have much better likelihood of surviving longer term and being sustained than programs that were conceived outside of government budget,“ he said.
The recent U.S. Senate report says it is important to have continued oversight of aid to the Afghan government and funding should continue only if the government makes progress in fighting corruption and stabilizing its financial system.
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Against the clock in Afghanistan
Washington Post By David Ignatius Friday, July 1, 2011
KHOST, Afghanistan - ATaliban prisoner named Mohammed Nazir is brought into the warden’s office here in ankle cuffs and seated on the couch next to me. He is wary but articulate about what ails his country. “The major problem is our justice system. It is corrupt,” he says. And he’s right.
The Taliban’s greatest asset has been its ability to provide quick justice in a country shattered by war and corruption. It was the recruiting card for Afghans such as Nazir, a 31-year-old mullah with a long black beard and sparkling white teeth, who was convicted of helping plant roadside bombs.
Here lies the biggest challenge for America as it begins to reduce forces in Afghanistan. The United States must help the Afghan government provide justice and other basics of governance in the Pashtun areas where the Taliban took root. An old Pashtun proverb says that “a country without law is a jungle,” and if the jungle remains, the Taliban wins.
I had a glimpse this week of some new U.S. efforts to fill this vacuum of governance, in visits to Khost near the eastern border and Baghlan province in the far north. I came away impressed by these projects but wishing they had begun years ago, at the beginning of the 10-year war in Afghanistan. Now, with American patience exhausted and U.S. combat power on the decline starting this month, there may not be enough time.
The trip to Khost was arranged by Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, who heads a new Rule of Law Field Force. He’s one of the Army’s stars — West Point, Rhodes Scholar, Harvard Law and part of Gen. David Petraeus’s inner circle in Iraq and Afghanistan. To visualize the justice problem, Martins displayed the 88 Afghan districts without government prosecutors and the 117 without judges. The map is very similar to that of the Taliban’s strongholds.
It’s clear in Khost that the United States has some worthy Afghan allies, as well as antagonists such as Nazir. The most impressive colleague was Lt. Mohammed Zareem, a local police commander who was the hero of a May 22 assault. Four Taliban fighters wearing suicide vests had seized a police building and captured four policemen. Zareem and a five-man Afghan police team, partnered with three U.S. soldiers, rescued the hostages, killed the suicide bombers and defused a car bomb outside. Zareem carried a wounded American sergeant away from the building under fire and was shot twice. “That was my job,” he says.
You often hear stories about poor performance by Afghan soldiers and police, but Zareem’s tale made me think again. Working closely with U.S. mentors, such as Col. Chris Toner, the commander of U.S. forces in Khost, the Afghans are performing better.
In Baghlan, I saw another attempt to fill the local governance gap. Lt. Gen. David Rodriguez, the deputy to Petraeus, was making a farewell tour of the north. In the village of Gaji, he met a former Taliban fighter named Noor ul-Hak, who joined the “reintegration” program and now heads a nearly 300-man unit of a new program called the Afghan Local Police.
The scene was something out of a counterinsurgency manual. The 6-foot-5 Rodriguez sat on the floor next to the spindly former insurgent, flanked by U.S. Special Forces soldiers who have been living rough in this valley, mentoring Hak and the other ALP recruits nominated by local tribal leaders. With their bushy beards and faces weathered by the sun, the Special Forces operatives might be mistaken for tribesmen themselves.
The enemy out here is the corrupt and incompetent Afghan government as much as the Taliban. “The government is supposed to solve problems, but it’s the opposite; they create problems,” Hak said, with Rodriguez nodding assent. Indeed, this very week, he had pushed the Afghan interior minister to fire the Baghlan provincial chief of police. The hope is that the ALP, which will eventually have 100 branches, can work through tribal elders to build local security where the government can’t or won’t. But it’s a tricky business. Hak’s tribe may be pleased to see him wielding power with American support, but other local tribes are not.
Rodriguez, who’s finishing his second tour here and, like Petraeus, will be leaving Afghanistan this month, says his main regret is that the United States didn’t implement its current strategy faster. “When I first got here, I didn’t know 10 percent of what I needed,” he explains. “We poured money in here without the proper governance systems.” The United States has learned lessons, but late in the game.
davidignatius@washpost.com
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In Brief: WFP refocusing its work in Afghanistan
NAIROBI, 1 July 2011 (IRIN) - The UN World Food Programme (WFP) is being forced by a funding shortfall to cut its recovery programmes in nearly half of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, a spokesperson said.
“We are having to refocus our activities to continue supporting those who are most in need, especially in provinces that have the largest number of people who are either very highly food insecure or very food insecure,” WFP spokesperson Challiss McDonough told IRIN. “We will also continue school feeding in the south because of the role it plays in getting children, especially girls, to enrol and attend school.”
WFP requires US$200 million to reach the seven million people it wishes to target; at present it is only reaching 3.8 million. “We have had to make some very difficult decisions about how to refocus our work in Afghanistan because of the funding shortage,” said WFP Deputy Country Director Bradley Guerrant.
The cuts in food aid come as Afghanistan braces for a significant food shortage in the coming months.
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Tajiks Detain Suspected Afghan Drug Smuggler
July 1, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
QURGHONTEPPA, Tajikistan -- Tajik authorities say a suspected Afghan drug smuggler has been detained with 40 kilograms of drugs in Tajikistan's southern Khatlon Province, RFE/RL's Tajik Service reports.
Ofoq Qodiri, spokeswoman for the Interior Ministry branch in Khatlon told RFE/RL on June 30 that Aziz valadi Sohib, a resident of the village of Imom-Sohib in Afghanistan's northern Konduz Province, was detained with 16 kilograms of heroin and 24 kilograms of cannabis that he allegedly sought to smuggle into Tajikistan.
The suspect appeared later on June 30 at a press conference in Qurghonteppa and admitted to illegally crossing the border and attempting to smuggle drugs. He said he is a farmer and was tricked by drug smugglers who took him to the border and used him as a courier.
The Tajik authorities said they do not believe that account, and suspect the man is a member of an international organized criminal group active in the region.
Muslihiddin Mardonov, an official in Tajikistan's Antidrug Agency, said members of at least five organized crime groups trafficking drugs have recently been arrested in southern Tajikistan.
Citizens of Tajikistan and Afghanistan work together in two of those groups, Mardonov added.
Veteran Antidrug Agency official Boqi Abdulloev told RFE/RL that it is clear some of these organized crime groups receive help from members of Tajikistan's power structures.
Last year, two officers from the border guard forces of Tajikistan's State Committee for National Security were sentenced to 12 and 17 years in prison for their roles in organized crime groups.
The Tajik authorities said that some residents of Tajikistan's border areas illegally cross the border into Afghanistan and smuggle drugs back into Tajikistan and then into neighboring countries and Russia.
Tajik officials say seven residents of the southern Kulob and Shuroobod districts were recently sentenced to long prison terms for drug smuggling and illegal drug dealing. They added that this year alone, Tajik border guards have prevented 12 illegal border crossings by citizens of Afghanistan.
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Afghan Border Commander Resigns Over Pakistan Rocket Attacks
Tolo news June 30, 2011
Top Afghan commander of border forces in eastern Afghanistan on Thursday resigned amid deadly missile attacks from Pakistan into Afghanistan.
Gen. Aminullah Amarkhil, senior commander of border forces in eastern zone, told TOLO news that he resigned because Pakistan missile attacks into Afghanistan's soil have been neglected by the government and the international community.
Gen. Amarkhil said the government has yet to approve his resignation.
Gen. Amarkhil told TOLO news by phone: "Neither the international community, nor Pakistan -- from president to army chief -- listened to our voice. They [Pakistan] deny attacks into Afghanistan, and I'm responsible as the commander in eastern zone, because people with bodies of their loved ones on their backs come to me."
He urged the Afghan Interior Ministry to confirm his resignation.
On Wednesday National Directorate of Security (NDS) accused Pakistan of launching missiles into Afghan soil and said more than 400 missiles have landed in Kunar and Nangarhar provinces over the past couple of weeks.
In a statement this week Afghan defence ministry said Afghan national army was ready to retaliate the attacks, but the government should authorise it.
More than 60 people have been killed, and many others have been reported injured and displaced.
The Afghan general had earlier sought permission from the government for a counterattack, but the government still holds back defence institutions from carrying out attacks against the Pakistani assaults.
On Wednesday for the second time Afghan President Hamid Karzai called on Pakistani government to put the brakes on their missile attacks into Afghan territory.
But Pakistan denies firing missiles into Afghanistan saying its army is not involved in the attacks.
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Mural Exhibit Depicts Costs to Civilians in Afghanistan
New York Times By KARI LYDERSEN July 1, 2011
John Pitman Weber remembers the 1960s and ’70s in Chicago, when scores of artists would join mammoth marches protesting the Vietnam War and antiwar murals were a common sight on city streets.
Today, public art is much more “domesticated and institutionalized,” said Mr. Weber, the co-founder of the Chicago Public Art Group and one of the city’s best-known muralists. But Mr. Weber hopes a traveling exhibit of murals about civilian casualties in Afghanistan will evoke a past era when murals made bold political statements and spurred frank discussion about foreign policy. The exhibit, “Windows and Mirrors,” runs through July 23 at the ARC Gallery, 832 West Superior Street.
Mr. Weber helped the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker peace group, get the project going last summer, signing up noted muralists from around the country, including himself and seven other Chicagoans.
The 32 murals on exhibit here, which are painted on large panels of parachute fabric rather than walls, are graphic and disturbing: images of women wailing in despair; children playing amid explosions; corpses in an abstract, colorful array that Mr. Weber likens to “a cave painting.”
According to the United Nations, May was the deadliest month for Afghan civilians since it began keeping track in 2007, with at least 368 killed. Human rights groups say the true civilian toll may be significantly higher because many people die of disease, cold or hunger after being displaced from their homes by fighting.
The two murals by Lillian Moats, a Chicagoan, explore the impact of unmanned drones on civilians. One shows people fleeing a drone that casts a blood-red shadow. Another features a woman at a window, unaware that she is framed in digital cross hairs on the computer screen of a remote operator.
Mr. Weber’s piece, based on a news photograph, depicts a young boy learning to walk with a prosthetic leg, below a hodgepodge of low-tech artificial arms and legs jumbled on a shelf.
“The tens of thousands who must learn to live with their mutilations seem to me more dramatic than the mourning of the tens of thousands dead,” Mr. Weber said in his artist’s statement.
The prevalence of amputees is also depicted in drawings by Afghan children displayed alongside the murals. Zaher Wahab, an artist who splits his time between the United States and Kabul, Afghanistan, asked the children to draw situations representative of their daily lives. They drew pictures of children with amputations, a bleeding pigeon and a frowning sun.
The exhibit made its debut in Philadelphia in October and is touring cities across the country. At each stop, artists are working with local schools to create pieces. In Chicago, they have been at Josephine Locke Elementary School and Sullivan, Thomas Kelly and Orr Academy high schools.
Mary Zerkel, the American Friends Service Committee’s national coordinator of “Windows and Mirrors” and a Chicagoan, said she hoped the exhibit would remind people to contemplate the effects of a war that seems endless, even as President Obama last week announced a troop withdrawal in coming months.
“It’s been almost 10 years — my daughter’s entire life — this war has been going on,” Ms. Zerkel said. “People talk about ‘Afghanistan fatigue.’ They’re tired of thinking about it. We hope this makes people talk and remember.”
klydersen@chicagonewscoop.org
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Wasteful Afghan projects: Where does the buck stop?
McClatchy Newspapers By LYDIA MULVANY 30/06/2011
WASHINGTON - Inefficient and unsustainable construction projects in Afghanistan have swallowed billions in American taxpayer dollars, and may contribute little to defeating the Taliban, but no one's certain who's to blame.
Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., questioned representatives from the Department of Defense, the U.S. Agency for International Development and contracting companies at a subcommittee hearing Thursday about who makes decisions about infrastructure projects and spending.
No one knew.
McCaskill, a former prosecutor and state auditor in Missouri, said that while some progress has been made, she still had no one to blame for myriad instances of mismanagement and otherwise questionable decision-making about Afghan construction projects.
Adding urgency to the need for answers is the fact that around $61 billion already has been spent, and President Barack Obama has requested $17.3 billion for reconstruction contracts in Afghanistan in next year's budget. The Defense Department has 90,800 contractors in Afghanistan.
"There's no one that I can really find that wants to say I'm responsible," she said. "It is time that somebody is responsible for money that is spent on roads that will not ever be sustained and for buildings and electrical power facilities that...no one there even knows how to use."
Costs for a recently completed project, the 64-mile Gardez-Khost highway between Afghanistan and Pakistan, ballooned from $69 million to $176 million. Larry Walker, the president of the Louis Berger Group, a consulting company hired to build the highway, said the high price tag was due to the security situation rapidly degrading mid-project. The project experienced 147 direct attacks, and around 150 encounters with explosive devices. Twenty-one employees have been killed and 51 wounded.
Despite out-of-control costs, the project continued. Walker said no one person was responsible for the decision, but that it was "incumbent on all of us."
"That means none of us," McCaskill interjected.
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, criticized power plants in Afghanistan, which have turned the lights on in Kabul and Kandahar, but are too expensive for Afghans to run after Americans leave. The Kabul power plant cost $300 million, up from its $125 million original price tag.
A USAID official, Alexander Thier, said the plants were intended to be short-term and backup power sources.
Thier said the Kandahar plant was a joint decision among the U.S. government, the military, the State Department and USAID, and didn't name anyone who was in charge of making sure the Kabul plant was sustainable.
"If we're building a backup power plant for $300 million that the Afghans aren't using except for peak periods, because they can't afford the fuel, how does that make sense?" Portman said.
Officials expressed further uncertainty over who decided what projects the Defense Department and USAID would undertake, and from whose budget the money would come. McCaskill noted that the defense department is currently building provincial justice centers in Afghanistan, even though such an initiative seems more suited to USAID, an arm of the State Department.
David Sedney, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia, said that some urgent projects through USAID are included in the Defense Department's Afghan Infrastructure Fund even if USAID lacks the funding.
"It looks like to me that somebody in the field has said we need to do this, and so we're just trying to find the money somewhere in the budget to do it and DOD is going with it," McCaskill said. "And that is not the way that you carefully craft this expenditure of federal tax dollars."
Last year, McClatchy completed an extensive investigation of U.S. contracting in Afghanistan. Among its findings: The U.S. spent hundreds of millions of dollars on failed projects with slipshod oversight that allowed banned companies to win new U.S. contracts.
McClatchy also reported that even after a Louis Berger Group employee gave federal investigators evidence that the company was intentionally and systematically overbilling taxpayers, the U.S. government awarded the company $1.4 billion more for projects in Afghanistan.
Several other reports also have documented wasteful spending and fraud associated with reconstruction in Afghanistan.
A recent report from the congressional Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan said the costs run into the tens of billions of dollars. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction has said contracts for 900 facilities costing more than $11 billion were "at risk" because of poor planning. The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners estimates that 7 percent of all revenue is lost to fraud.
Similarly, a report from the Government Accountability Office said that while the Defense Department has improved contract oversight by training supervisors in Afghanistan, there aren't enough supervisors, and they often lack technical or engineering expertise to do the job. The State Department still has no process for vetting non-U.S. contractors.
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Pakistani Taliban at odds over suicide attacks
By Muhammad Tahir
ISLAMABAD, July 1 (Xinhua) -- Pakistani Taliban is facing a visible split days after a senior leader quit over suicide attacks at mosques and bomb blasts in public places and formed a new group.
Commander Fazal Saeed Haqqani, who was leading the Tehrik-i- Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in Kurram agency, said earlier this week he has launched a breakaway faction "Tehrik-i-Taliban Islami Pakistan " (Islamic Movement of Pakistani Taliban) and will not attack Pakistani security forces.
Reports about differences within the TTP had been surfaced on several occasions, especially after the death of the TTP founder Baitullah Mehsood in a U.S. drone strike in South Waziristan tribal region in August 2009, but it was the first time that a key Taliban leader openly condemned the group's policies, staging a rebellion against the Amir (chief) and also launched a new faction.
In a media interaction, Haqqani on Monday declared suicide attacks in mosques and public places as forbidden in Islam. He termed attacks in worship places as terrorism and argued that Islam does not permit such attacks. Haqqani also said that he tried to convince the TTP leadership to stop attacks in public places but the leaders did not give any heed to his opinion.
Pakistani officials said that 35,000 people have lost lives in terrorist attacks in 10 years. Haqqani said that he also opposed kidnapping of civilians, especially Shia Muslims, in the region for ransom. Pakistani media had earlier reported differences and even internal clashes in the Bajaur, Orakzai and Mohmand tribal regions.
Saeed Haqqani is considered a key Taliban commander in Kurram agency, who had been heading the group in the area until he announced a breakaway faction. He has studied in Pakistan's biggest religious school "Darul uloom Haqqani" at Akora Khattak in the northwest. Many Afghan Taliban leaders have also studied in this school and its current head Maulana Sami-ul-Haq publicly supports Afghan Taliban.
Haqqani is also considered important in the region as he has strong links with Afghanistan's Haqqani network, the most wanted by the United States. Sources close to the Taliban said that Haqqani had also fought against the U.S. forces in Afghanistan's eastern provinces along with Haqqani network. The sources added that differences between Saeed Haqqani and TTP Chief Hakimullah Mehsood intensified in recent weeks and the locals said clashes have happened between the two sides.
The differences turned to be much serious in March this year when armed men attacked passenger buses in Bagan area of Kurram agency, killing several people and kidnapping 35 Shia Muslims. Haqqani had accused Hakimullah group for the attacks. He also supported a deal to reopen all roads after three years' closure. The roads were opened with Haqqani consent, which annoyed Hakimullah's commanders in the area.
The TTP also faced a split in the nearby Orakzai agency this week when fighters loyal to TTP local commander Mulla Tufan clashed with another commander under Mulla Nabi, which led to the death of 12 people from Nabi group.
Two Taliban groups, one led by Mulla Nazir in South Waziristan and the other headed by Hafiz Gul Bahadar in North Waziristan, have already struck peace deals with the security forces and they are not opposing the military operations against the TTP.
In North Waziristan, commanders of Hafiz Gul Bahadar group have asked the Hakimullah fighters, who had arrived after the military offensive in South Waziristan, to leave the area.
It means the Hakimullah men would now only be confined to few areas in South Waziristan and it would be difficult for them to show any stiff resistance to the Pakistani forces.
The successful military operations by the Pakistani forces in tribal regions and the northwestern Swat valley have already pressurized the Taliban groups and experts believed that these offensives have badly affected the command and control system of the TTP.
The TTP Deputy Chief, Maulvi Faqir Muhammad, told the media this month that he has crossed into Afghanistan's Kunar province from Bajaur. Several other Pakistani Taliban leaders from Mohmand agency also went to Afghanistan and are taking shelter in remote areas under Afghan Taliban control.
The TTP has now lost a key commander, who also enjoys vast influence in Orakzai agency and his decision to take shelter in Afghanistan has shattered the TTP leadership. It would be premature to predict that how much the new Taliban group would be active and effective, but the Tehrik-i-Islami Pakistan would further mount pressure on the TTP, analysts said.
They said the new group will provide an opportunity to those Taliban commanders who have differences with the TTP and want to quit the main umbrella outfit which suffers split at a time when the group has lost sympathy among the people due to its suicide attacks on civilians.
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How to get Pakistan to break with Islamic militants
Washington Post By Zalmay Khalilzad Thursday, June 30, 2011
In his Afghanistan speech last week, President Obama said we must “address terrorist safe havens in Pakistan.” He vowed to “press Pakistan to expand its participation in securing a more peaceful future,” “work with the Pakistani government to root out the cancer of violent extremism” and “insist that it keep its commitments.”
Missing from the president’s remarks was a strategy on how to induce a Pakistani break with Islamic militants. For the past decade, this shortcoming has hamstrung our efforts in Afghanistan and in the broader struggle against extremism and terrorism.
Even with Osama bin Laden dead, the nexus between the Pakistani state and a syndicate of Islamic extremists remains a threat. Pakistan’s military continues to support the Taliban, the Haqqani network and Hizb-e-Islami against coalition and Afghan forces. The number of Pakistani operatives fighting for the Taliban and other insurgents has increased over the past year, senior Afghan officials say.
Pakistan has not been forthcoming about its motives, but several are plausible. It could be defensively hedging against a strong Afghan government that is close to India, Pakistan’s regional adversary. Islamabad might be concerned that Afghanistan could reduce cross-border water flows by building dams on the Kunar River and attempt to press for concessions on territorial disputes, or that India and Afghanistan might use Afghan territory to support Pakistani groups hostile to the government.
In sustaining the extremist threat, Pakistan may see a way to keep the United States engaged in the region and, therefore, financially supportive of its military and civilian government.
Alternatively, Islamabad could view installing a subordinate regime in Kabul as a first step in an ambitious plan to consolidate regional hegemony in Central Asia. When the city of Herat fell to the Taliban in 1996, the Pakistani former intelligence official Sultan Amir Tarrar — better known as Col. Imam — was helping Taliban forces. He reportedly messaged headquarters: “Today Herat, tomorrow Tashkent.”
The U.S. approach since Sept. 11 has not obliged Pakistan to clarify its intentions. Islamabad continues to deny that it is even aiding insurgents. So having a frank discussion — one that might lead to pragmatic, mutual accommodation — has been impossible. As we draw down our forces in Afghanistan, persuading the Pakistani military to abandon its strategy of supporting extremism and backing Afghan insurgents will become more critical and more difficult. Without Pakistan’s cooperation, the insurgency will continue, but in light of our announced departure, Islamabad will see even less reason to stop sponsoring proxies as it prepares for the post-U.S. struggle in Afghanistan.
Yet a destabilizing outcome is not inevitable. Washington has considerable leverage that it has not used to optimal effect. Pakistan relies on the United States and international organizations to remain solvent; its economy would be on the ropes but for a two-year $7.6 billion International Monetary Fund loan package. Coalition support funds from the United States alone are equal to about 25 percent of Pakistan’s defense budget.
Meanwhile, the expansion of northern routes through Central Asia provides the United States with alternatives to Pakistani supply lines. The drawdown of forces will further reduce Washington’s logistical requirements, giving it greater freedom to launch unilateral operations against terrorist sanctuaries in Pakistan.
In the short term, the United States should implement a two-phase strategy to insist on real change in Pakistan’s hostile policies.
To preclude Pakistan from manipulating different departments and senior officials, the Obama administration, as a united front, should offer a stark set of positive and negative inducements. A clear choice will clarify whether Pakistan’s intentions in Afghanistan are principally guided by fear or by ambition.
In exchange for Pakistan playing a constructive role in Afghanistan, the United States should be willing to: support expanded IMF and other multilateral assistance; sustain financial and military aid; and promote a major, multilateral diplomatic effort to mediate disputes among Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. The initial focus must be accepting a reasonable agreement between Afghanistan and Pakistan and reconciliation with Pakistan-backed insurgents who accept U.S. red lines, followed by an India-Pakistan peace and normalization process. We should also support multilateral investment in infrastructure projects that would integrate Pakistan in regional commerce.
If positive inducements prove insufficient in securing reliable Pakistani cooperation, the United States should curb military assistance; mobilize coordinated financial pressure against Pakistan through allies and the IMF; and expand military operations against insurgent and terrorist targets in Pakistan.
We should also continue to expand the northern corridor that now transports more than 40 percent of U.S. supplies delivered by land to Afghanistan.
Should Pakistani intransigence persist, the United States will need a long-term strategy that manages the threat from Pakistan and embraces a broad multilateral effort to assist those Pakistanis who seek to transform their country. This would, in part, require the United States to maintain a military presence in Afghanistan to counter the terror threat and assist in preventing the victory of Pakistani proxies in Afghanistan. We would also need to consider accelerating security ties with India as part of a containment regime against Pakistan. Most important, the United States would have to channel bilateral assistance to Pakistan in a way that empowers moderate civil society but reduces support for the military.
There is no guarantee this approach will overcome the ideological and religious allegiances that inspire Pakistani support for the insurgency in Afghanistan. Ultimately, only the Pakistani people and a new generation of civilian leadership can rein in the country’s military leaders.
The writer, a counselor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, was U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq and the United Nations during the George W. Bush administration.
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Afghan Agony If All for Nothing
Forbes By Tim Ferguson Jun. 30 2011
The Afghanistan-Pakistan portion of the $1.3 trillion-plus U.S. war efforts of the last decade is now, after a detour into “nation-building,” set to wind down as per President Obama’s latest direction.
This foreign entanglement has not been a business-centered policy, even if the territories at stake have rich resources that not only Americans but also those from non-combatant countries are trying to exploit. Commercial considerations probably would not have led anyone to places like Kandahar. Instead, the primary motivations have been put in terms of security and regional stability.
The Afghanistan mission, mired in the corrupt Kabul government, the feudal country’s various warlords and of course the Taliban jihadists, appears destined to have bought little besides time (and Osama Bin Laden’s head, ultimately). A bitter epitaph appears in the current New Yorker from Dexter Filkins, one of the era’s most noteworthy U.S. war correspondents.
Although the “conclusion” of the bigger U.S. war in Iraq appears to some a more satisfying one, that is also subject to doubt. We may live to see that country ruled by another Islamist, Muqtada al Sadr, which would be a curious counterbalance to the noxious rulers of Iran.
All the while, other nations have gone about economic development (and been spared the budget busting military burden). This is the opportunity cost of war in Iraq-Afghanistan-Pakistan.
The most acute toll from this misbegotten batch of conflicts has been 6,000 U.S. (alone) dead, and more still left seriously wounded or psychologically maimed. For those whose “ultimate sacrifice” was in the defense of the Hamid Karzai regime in Afghanistan, the hardest thing to bear (hardest for survivors, especially) would be the seemingly most likely outcome: they died for nothing.
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