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U.S. Envoy: Kabulbank Was 'Vast Looting Scheme'
July 15, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
KABUL -- The outgoing U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan has described a corruption-ridden Afghan bank as being like a "giant looting scheme" at the time of its near collapse and said those responsible for fleecing depositors should be brought to justice.
First US Troops Begin to Leave Afghanistan
VOA News July 15, 2011
Several hundred American soldiers left Afghanistan this week, the first group of about 10,000 U.S. troops to be withdrawn from the country by the end of the year.
Afghan Civilian Deaths on Rise as Transition Begins: UN
TOLOnews.com Thursday, 14 July 2011
Afghan civilian casualties have increased by 15 percent in the first half of 2011 compared to the same period last year, the UN said on Thursday.
Ahmed Wali Karzai’s killer had been a Taliban foe<br> Washington Post By Joshua Partlow Friday, July 15, 2011
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - The man who murdered President Hamid Karzai’s half brother spent years as an ally of the United States in the war against the Taliban.
Ex-Afghan envoy raises doubt about Karzai assassination theory
Postmedia News By Tobi Cohen July 14, 2011
OTTAWA - Conspiracy theories surrounding the brazen assassination of Ahmed Wali Karzai abound — and a former Afghan ambassador to Canada is doing little to quell them.
5 killed, 1 injured in roadside bomb blast in Afghan Helmand province
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan, July 15 (Xinhua) -- Five civilians were killed and another seriously injured on Friday when their mini-bus ran over a roadside bomb in Sangin district of Helmand province with Lashkar Gah as its capital 555 km south of capital city of Kabul, district chief of Sangin said.
Death of Karzai's brother stirs questions over U.S. strategy in Afghanistan
by Matthew Rusling
WASHINGTON, July 15 (Xinhua) -- With the funeral of Afghan President Hamid Karzai's half brother on Thursday, questions arise over whether his death will disrupt the political climate in the embattled country and impact the U.S. drawdown.
U.S. Quietly Halts Scholarship For Afghan Students
NPR By Quil Lawrence July 14, 2011
The U.S. State Department has funded international student exchanges for decades, looking to form lifelong bonds and increase understanding across borders.
Snow Leopards Found In Afghanistan
July 15, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Endangered snow leopards have been spotted in one of the more peaceful areas of Afghanistan.
The World Conservation Society said the usually solitary animals have been tracked across the Wakhan Corridor, in the northeast of the country where militant activity is low.
General Petraeus leaves a still deadly Afghanistan to head CIA
The Globe and Mail Susan Sachs Thursday, Jul. 14, 2011
KABUL - When U.S. General David Petraeus was named supreme commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan one year ago, he had the reputation of something of a military miracle worker.
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U.S. Envoy: Kabulbank Was 'Vast Looting Scheme'
July 15, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
KABUL -- The outgoing U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan has described a corruption-ridden Afghan bank as being like a "giant looting scheme" at the time of its near collapse and said those responsible for fleecing depositors should be brought to justice.
Karl Eikenberry made the comments about Kabulbank in an interview with RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan in Kabul.
Fraud and mismanagement at Kabulbank brought the country's largest private lender to the brink of collapse last year after it emerged that fraudulent loans worth hundreds of millions of dollars had been made to influential customers.
"Kabulbank was, before it went into receivership by the Afghan government, probably not to be categorized as a bank at all. It was a giant looting scheme, it was what we call a Ponzi scheme, just a shell game where money is looted from depositors," Eikenberry said.
"It's one of the most severe banking crises in global history given the size of the Afghan economy and the banking sector. On a relative basis it's a massive, massive scandal," he said.
"Clearly there were problems and deficiencies with the oversight of the bank, but the people who looted money from depositors -- those are the people who conducted criminal activities.
"Those people [need] to be brought to justice and they need to repay the money. Regardless of what their political affiliation is, they need to return the money. That's an obligation not only to the small depositors of the bank but also the people of Afghanistan."
U.S. officials say Kabulbank issued unsecured, undocumented loans of up to $850 million to some of its shareholders, including ministers, President Hamid Karzai's elder brother, and other powerful members of Afghanistan's elite.
Last month, the head of the Afghan central bank quit his post and fled to the United States, saying his life was in danger over his investigation into corruption at Kabulbank.
The Afghan authorities dismissed the claim, saying Abdul Qadir Fitrat himself was a fugitive from the law and that Afghanistan would seek his return to face prosecution over alleged bribe-taking.
RFE/RL asked Eikenberry if he thought the United States would hand over Fitrat to Afghanistan.
Eikenberry said Fitrat is a permanent resident of the United States and so Washington has no reason not to allow him to stay in the country.
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First US Troops Begin to Leave Afghanistan
VOA News July 15, 2011
Several hundred American soldiers left Afghanistan this week, the first group of about 10,000 U.S. troops to be withdrawn from the country by the end of the year.
U.S. military officials confirmed Friday that around 650 U.S. army troops serving in the northern Afghan province of Parwan left for the United States on Wednesday.
Military officials say the soldiers will not be replaced by another unit.
U.S. President Barack Obama announced last month that 33,000 American forces would leave Afghanistan by September of 2012, ending a troop surge that he ordered in 2009.
The remainder of the 100,000 U.S. troops serving in Afghanistan are expected to return home by the end of 2014, when Afghan forces are supposed to take full responsibility for their country's security.
The Afghan war has become increasingly unpopular with the American public. With a trillion dollars spent on wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the last decade, President Obama said in a speech last month that it was time to focus on “nation-building at home.”
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Afghan Civilian Deaths on Rise as Transition Begins: UN
TOLOnews.com Thursday, 14 July 2011
Afghan civilian casualties have increased by 15 percent in the first half of 2011 compared to the same period last year, the UN said on Thursday.
Nearly 1,500 civilians have been killed over the past six months, with 80 percent attributed to insurgents, an increase of 28 percent in civilian deaths linked to anti-government elements from the same period in 2010, a UN report said.
"Afghan children, women and men continue to be killed and injured at an alarming rate," said Staffan de Mistura, UN special envoy in Afghanistan.
"The dramatic growth was mainly due to the use of landmine-like pressure plate improvised explosive devices (IEDs) by Anti-Government Elements (AGEs)", the report said.
Roadside bombs have been the weapon of choice for the Taliban and other insurgent groups to target Afghan and Nato forces. UN called it the "single largest killer" of civilians.
A further 14 percent of civilian deaths were attributed to pro-government forces, down nine percent from the same span in 2010.
The UN said six percent of civilian deaths were not attributed to any party to the conflict.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai recently warned Nato-led forces to avoid killing civilians and stop air strikes.
The foreign troops would be perceived as "occupiers" if they continue to kill Afghan noncombatants, Karzai had said in a press conference last month.
Nato commanders have called air strikes a significant component of their mission to target militants.
With 368 civilian deaths, May 2011 was the deadliest month for Afghan civilians since United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (Unama) began documenting civilian casualties in 2007.
In the first six months of 2011, 79 Afghan civilians were killed by air strikes, a 14 percent increase in civilian deaths from air strikes compared to the same period in 2010.
Taliban-led insurgency has intensified this year as Nato forces have begun transitioning responsibility for security of the country to disrupt the process, the UN report noted.
The report also noted that the insurgent groups have expanded their use of unlawful means of warfare, particularly IEDs and cannot distinguish between a military target and a civilian.
"This tactic violates Afghans' basic right to life and contravenes the international humanitarian law principles that all parties to the conflict are bound to uphold to minimise civilian loss of life and injury," said Georgette Gagnon, Director of Human Rights for Unama.
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Ahmed Wali Karzai’s killer had been a Taliban foe
Washington Post By Joshua Partlow Friday, July 15, 2011
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - The man who murdered President Hamid Karzai’s half brother spent years as an ally of the United States in the war against the Taliban.
The killer, Sardar Mohammad, a police commander, met on several occasions with U.S. and British military officials, shared intelligence with Americans and played a part in Afghan arrests of scores of Taliban fighters, according to three relatives interviewed on Thursday in his home near Kandahar.
The reasons behind the dramatic switch that turned the 35-year-old officer against Ahmed Wali Karzai, perhaps the most powerful figure in southern Afghanistan, are still not understood. But one of Karzai’s brothers and a senior Afghan official said they were now convinced that the Taliban somehow won Mohammad’s allegiance in recent months and convinced him to carry out an assassination on the group’s behalf.
The official said that investigators are trying to determine whether Mohammad was a long-term Taliban sleeper agent or just recently joined the insurgents. A NATO spokesman in Afghanistan referred questions about Karzai’s killing to Afghan authorities.
Mahmood Karzai, one of the president’s brothers, said the family has learned since the assassination that Mohammad traveled to the Pakistani city of Quetta within the past three months to meet with Taliban insurgents. He had also acted erratically in recent weeks, sleeping poorly, changing houses at night, acting suspiciously toward his men and demanding to know who they were talking to on their phones.
“All of a sudden, he changed,” Mahmood Karzai said in an interview Thursday. “This is the work of the Taliban.”
The senior Afghan official, interviewed separately, said he had heard about the Quetta visit but could not confirm its accuracy. He said Mohammad had attended a Pakistani madrassa in his youth before returning to Afghanistan. The senior official said that “the Taliban and the forces behind Taliban’’ were responsible for the killing.
The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the killing, and if it was indeed the group’s work, it would be one more example of the insurgents’ ability to attack even the most closely guarded targets. On Thursday, a man hid a bomb in his turban and killed four people at Ahmed Wali Karzai’s memorial service.
At Mohammad’s home, a relatively spacious concrete dwelling protected by military-style barriers — in a poor village of ancient-looking mud hovels — the police commander’s relatives adamantly denied that he would have worked on behalf of the Taliban. One of his brothers-in-law, Abdul Malik, said that Mohammad had not been in Pakistan for 20 years. On the walls of the sitting room are large photographs of Ahmed Wali Karzai and President Hamid Karzai, men he was devoted to, said his relatives.
“We were just like one family,” said one relative who declined to be named. “Until today, there wasn’t any dispute between us.”
A long history
Mohammad had known the Karzai family for many years and began working with Ahmed Wali Karzai, the leader of Kandahar’s provincial council, after the fall of the Taliban. Mohammad had been opposed to the Taliban’s regime because his village’s close proximity to the Karzai family’s ancestral home village down the road led the Taliban to harass them, according to relatives.
With Karzai’s help, Mohammad, who had been a melon farmer with a wife, three sons and four daughters, eventually became a police commander responsible for about 200 men who guarded eight checkpoints, the relatives said. Among his duties were to guard Karzai family homes and the cemetery where Ahmed Wali Karzai was buried on Wednesday.
He met six days a week with Ahmed Wali Karzai, who would pay his policemen’s salary if it was late and also provide additional money for him, Malik said. Their relationship was so close that Karzai brought his mother to Mohammad’s home. And just days before his death, Karzai asked the government for more equipment and personnel for Mohammad, according to the senior Afghan official.
Mohammad also met with U.S. and British military officials, and would be introduced to the new commanders when they rotated into Kandahar, the relatives said. Two of Mohammad’s brothers-in-law said they work as guards at a Central Intelligence Agency base in Kandahar — situated on a hillside at the former home of Taliban leader Mohammad Omar — as part of the agency-run paramilitary group called the Kandahar Strike Force.
These relatives, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Mohammad was not a member of the strike force, which Karzai helped recruit to fight the Taliban, but that he shared intelligence with U.S. officials and arrested hundreds of insurgents over the years.
“If there was something Sardar could do that the Americans couldn’t, they would ask him to do it,” Malik said. “If American forces were suspicious of someone, they were asking Sardar to make the arrest.”
On the morning of the killing, Mohammad walked into Karzai’s bustling home, asked for a private moment, and showed him a document listing the names of men who worked for him. As Karzai looked at it, Mohammad pulled out a pistol and shot him. One bullet struck the right side of his face and exited behind his ear; another hit near his heart, according to his death certificate. He died before he reached nearby Mirwais Hospital; while there, a doctor said, someone stole his watch.
After the shooting, Karzai’s guards entered the room and riddled Mohammad with bullets — his death certificate said he was shot in the skull and had 11 other gunshot wounds. Mohammad’s body was taken into the streets and strung up from a building by a rope, before eventually arriving at the hospital. Despite Islamic custom demanding a swift burial, on Thursday morning Mohammad’s corpse was still in the hospital’s refrigerated morgue in a white body bag. Nobody has come to retrieve it and the relatives said they are waiting for it to be delivered.
“We feel sorry for both of them,” said one relative. “We don’t know what caused this killing.”
The families were still so close, he said, that he helped dig Ahmed Wali Karzai’s grave.
Special correspondent Javed Hamdard contributed to this report.
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Ex-Afghan envoy raises doubt about Karzai assassination theory
Postmedia News By Tobi Cohen July 14, 2011
OTTAWA - Conspiracy theories surrounding the brazen assassination of Ahmed Wali Karzai abound — and a former Afghan ambassador to Canada is doing little to quell them.
Omar Samad says it's "probably premature" to accept at "face value" the assertion that the Taliban is responsible for the death of Afghan President Hamid Karzai's half brother.
"The first thing that we need to do is figure out, and it might take a few days to do so, is get more facts on the assassination itself," he told Postmedia News during an interview in Ottawa.
"We know who did it but we need to figure out what were the motives and who was behind it."
Ahmed Wali Karzai, a powerful but controversial leader in Kandahar with alleged links to the drug trade, was shot in the head and chest Tuesday by a trusted body guard named Sardar Mohammad during a private meeting at Karzai's home.
Mohammad was subsequently gunned down and the Taliban immediately claimed responsibility. The assassination was followed up with a deadly suicide bombing at a memorial service held Thursday in his honour.
But at the same time, questions began to emerge about whether Karzai's death actually might have been the result of a family dispute over how money from lucrative service contracts for Kandahar Airfield were being divided.
A source told Postmedia News that Karzai caught Mohammad stealing money and threatened him — and that he was killed in retaliation.
Samad, who served as the Afghan ambassador to Canada from 2004-09, noted the Taliban claims are "not entirely substantiated yet."
Afghans needs to ask "if not the Taliban, what else could have been behind this," he said.
The next step, he added, is to assess the impact of the assassination on the province of Kandahar, on the country as a whole and on key ongoing government and military activities.
Those activities include the reconciliation process with insurgents who may be willing to lay down their arms and switch allegiance, the success and continuity of America's troop surge in the south and the transfer of security responsibility to Afghan forces.
The "draw down" of foreign troops and the as-yet unresolved political tension between the country's executive, legislature and judiciary are also factors to consider, he said.
So too is the still-unresolved controversy over the September parliamentary election which, he said, is causing "a lot of angst and tension" between different groups. A special tribunal backed by Hamid Karzai moved last month to throw out 62 lawmakers, a quarter of the 249-seat lower house, over allegations of ballot-rigging in polls last September.
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Karzai's assassination came less than a week after Canada officially ended its combat mission in Kandahar. After more than five years of heavy fighting in the restive south, about 950 Canadian troops will remain in the Kabul area to train Afghan security forces.
Samad, who said he's taking a break from government, was in Ottawa visiting friends weeks after completing a posting as Afghanistan's ambassador to France.
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5 killed, 1 injured in roadside bomb blast in Afghan Helmand province
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan, July 15 (Xinhua) -- Five civilians were killed and another seriously injured on Friday when their mini-bus ran over a roadside bomb in Sangin district of Helmand province with Lashkar Gah as its capital 555 km south of capital city of Kabul, district chief of Sangin said.
"The bloody incident occurred at around 08:30 a.m. local time when a civilian mini-bus touched off a roadside bomb near Sangin district bazaar triggering a powerful blast that killed five civilians on the spot and injured another," Mohammad Sharif told Xinhua.
The district official also said all the victims were adult men, adding one more passenger was seriously injured in the blast.
Notorious for growing poppy and militancy, the Helmand province has been regarded as Taliban hotbed in southern part of country.
The number of civilian casualties has been soaring in the militancy-plagued Afghanistan as a total of 1,462 Afghan civilians have been killed in the first half of 2011 which indicates a 15 percent rise in non-combatants' deaths compared with the same period in 2010, the United Nations said in its mid-year report released in Kabul on Thursday.
Taliban militants have often attacked Afghan and NATO-led forces with Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and roadside bombs but the lethal weapons also inflict casualties on civilians.
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Death of Karzai's brother stirs questions over U.S. strategy in Afghanistan
by Matthew Rusling
WASHINGTON, July 15 (Xinhua) -- With the funeral of Afghan President Hamid Karzai's half brother on Thursday, questions arise over whether his death will disrupt the political climate in the embattled country and impact the U.S. drawdown.
Ahmed Wali Karzai, who was assassinated earlier this week, was an influential player in the Karzai administration and played a crucial role in trying to garner Pashtun support for Karzai. His death came during the lead-up to the U.S. troop withdrawal, to be completed by 2014.
Wali Karzai's funeral was marred by a suicide bombing, deepening the sense that violence is worsening in a region where U.S.-led coalition forces claimed to have made gains. The political uncertainty left by the assassination raises questions about the U.S. political strategy, said Lisa Curtis, senior research fellow for South Asia at the Heritage Foundation.
Although the Karzai administration says it is seeking to exploit openings for talks with the Taliban, there are no visible signs the Taliban is ready to compromise for a political solution, she said.
Instead, the Taliban appear committed to proving they are still a force to be reckoned with on the battlefield and continue to rely on targeted killings and suicide bombings to cow the Afghan people, she said.
The assassination demonstrates the complexity of the U.S. effort to stabilize Afghanistan and reinforces that the Taliban remain a powerful force in the country, she said.
Malou Innocent, foreign policy analyst at Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, said the assassination and funeral attack were Taliban attempts to send a message that the Karzai government is a target and, what's more, that the government is incapable of protecting itself.
Stratfor, a global intelligence company, noted on its website that Karzai has struggled to create a support base among his fellow ethnic Pashtuns, especially in the Taliban heartland in the south. The Taliban movement represents the single largest group among the Pashtuns.
Wali Karzai, however, went to great lengths to work with an array of elements in establishing a sphere of influence in Kandahar, the province in which the Taliban movement was founded in 1994. His efforts earned him immense notoriety, especially among the Karzai regime's principal patron, the United States, Stratfor argued.
Critically, his death will likely weaken the president's position in his native south -- and by extension, in the entire country -- at a time when the Afghan leader is navigating the drawdown of U.S. forces. Karzai had intensified efforts to talk to the Taliban, and Wali Karzai's death means he will be negotiating from a position of weakness and will, Stratfor contended.
Pashtun tribal forces that have thus far been aligned with the president as a result of Wali Karzai's efforts will now be forced to re-evaluate that alliance, given that the Taliban have the upper hand in negotiations for a post-NATO Afghanistan. Losing ground among his fellow Pashtuns could in turn weaken his position among his non-Pashtun partners, who are already wary of the Karzai administration's efforts to seek a political settlement with the Taliban, Stratfor contended.
Washington, meanwhile, needs all anti-Taliban forces to be on the same page so they can serve as an effective counter to the Pashtun jihadist movement and facilitate an orderly drawdown of U.S. forces from the country, according to Stratfor.
For its part, the Obama administration said on Tuesday the troop reduction will go forward based on what commanders see on the ground.
"The president has drawn the larger map, but the commanders and our new ambassador will make the call as to how we ensure working with Afghan security partners and our international partners -- where, how, when -- to ensure that the gains that have been made through the surge are not lost," said U.S. State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.
Michael O'Hanlon, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, said the argument that Wali Karzai's death could improve the situation is just as powerful as the argument that his death could make things worse. O'Hanlon emphasized that he does not condone the killing.
"The idea that we should be lamenting his death and become even more despondent over the state of the mission, I think, probably goes too far. It's a sad day in human terms, but in political terms, there are reasons to hope that what comes next might be better," he said.
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U.S. Quietly Halts Scholarship For Afghan Students
NPR By Quil Lawrence July 14, 2011
The U.S. State Department has funded international student exchanges for decades, looking to form lifelong bonds and increase understanding across borders.
One program brought hundreds of Afghan high school students to small communities in the U.S. beginning in 2004.
But this year, the U.S. has quietly suspended the popular youth exchange. The reason? Fear of a dark future in Afghanistan was prompting too many of the students to bail out of the program and seek asylum elsewhere.
Deciding To Flee To Canada
When Afghan high school student Sam, whose name has been changed, won a prestigious spot in the U.S. State Department's Youth Exchange and Study program, known as the YES program, he had no intention of becoming a refugee. Sam was a few months into a school year in San Antonio when the first worried call came from home.
"It's just, my mom ... she thought I'd be in danger if I returned to Afghanistan," Sam says.
Sam spoke to NPR at a noisy shopping mall in his new home, Toronto. He left Texas in April 2009 and crossed into Canada, which has a government program for minors seeking asylum.
The calls from home had gotten worse. The local mullah had lectured Sam's father about allowing his son to be corrupted in the West, and then his family says it started getting threats.
Sam's family members are Hazaras, a Shiite minority in Afghanistan that in the past were singled out for persecution by the Taliban. With talk of a U.S. troop drawdown, Sam's family told him to stay in the West, and perhaps help them escape someday.
"I miss my family, especially my mom, because every time I talk to her on the phone she just starts crying. I don't miss Afghanistan, but I miss my family a lot," he says.
Sam's case is far from unique, and what started as a small leak of students jumping the program soon became a torrent. Last year, half the students on the program fled to Canada to claim asylum. This winter, the State Department quietly suspended the YES program — with great sorrow, says Matt Lussenhop of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.
"We certainly had to weigh the cost and benefit, because the benefit of these kids coming back is huge, really huge. But the cost of them not coming back is also huge for this country. This year, we decided that the costs are outweighing the benefits," Lussenhop says.
Hoping For Revival
The program was beginning to constitute a brain drain of Afghanistan's talented youth, says Lussenhop. But he says he hopes the program can be revived again, since the students who return to Afghanistan bring great talent, experience and usually a long-lasting connection with the U.S.
Alumni of the program also hope it will be revived. Eliyas Saalami, who was an exchange student in Seattle, says he is angry at the kids who skipped out and ruined it for the others. Though he was sometimes within walking distance of the Canadian border, he didn't cross.
"I got this opportunity to experience a year of being [an] exchange student in America. If I come back to Afghanistan ... I would be able to help my fellow Afghans and also this program will go on for longer. That was my agreement with myself," he says.
Saalami had just the kind of experience the program is designed for. Before he went to the U.S., his head was full of questions and stereotypes about Americans planted by friends and teachers in Afghanistan.
"They're like ... they might change your religion, they might change your idea, they might brainwash you. And when I went there, there was a lot of respect for my religion, my ideology, my everything," he says.
'I Don't Blame Them For It'
Another alum from the program, Zia Maliki, went to high school near Dayton, Ohio, back in 2006. During his year, only a few students fled to Canada; Maliki says it's because five years ago the Taliban insurgency wasn't as bad, and the departure of Americans troops wasn't imminent.
"In 2006-7, there was this hope that the international community will continue helping Afghanistan, and at that time the students had this hope that if they come back they probably have a future in Afghanistan," Maliki says. "But right now as we hear, you know, from news ... the international troops will go out [from] Afghanistan, and so what will they do if they come back to Afghanistan?"
That's doubly true for the young women who experience living in the U.S.
"Personally, myself, I liked it better there than here. It's easier to be a woman in [the] States than here," says Meetra Alakozy, who did her senior year of high school in Colorado last year.
Alakozy says she is angry with the students who fled and ruined the chance for others to go. But at the same time she understands.
"I don't blame them for it. In my group, there were two girls who were from Jalalabad and they both went to Canada — they were sisters. ... I'm pretty sure it was because if they go back to Jalalabad, then people will create problems for them just because they've been to [the] States, and it's a very restricted area — girls don't go out a lot and stuff," Alakozy says.
Rising Concern As U.S. Troops Leave
In much of Afghanistan, simply having been to the United States is enough to taint the reputation of a young woman, and in many cases parents pressure their children not to return home. That pressure might increase with U.S. troops starting to leave this summer. The U.S. Embassy's Lussenhop says America will support Afghanistan long after the troops leave, despite rumors to the contrary.
"Its part of the overall misperception about, oh my god, the Americans are leaving. ... The transition is going to be spread out over a period of years. ... We're not going to abandon Afghanistan," Lussenhop says.
But Alakozy isn't convinced.
"I am worried about NATO forces leaving, because I know that if they leave, [the] Afghan army is not that powerful to maintain the security in Afghanistan. As an Afghan girl, there will be challenges for me. Maybe I cannot go out again, maybe I cannot go study, if they leave and if Taliban come because ... then I cannot go to school anymore, I have to stay home, I cannot work and I cannot do anything, so I am worried about it," Alakozy says.
Embassy officials say they want to restart the YES program, but only if they can ensure students won't jump the program to claim asylum.
That may be difficult until the students and their families gain some confidence that Afghanistan has a brighter future.
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Snow Leopards Found In Afghanistan
July 15, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Endangered snow leopards have been spotted in one of the more peaceful areas of Afghanistan.
The World Conservation Society said the usually solitary animals have been tracked across the Wakhan Corridor, in the northeast of the country where militant activity is low.
Listed as globally threatened, only some 4,500 to 7,500 snow leopards exist, scattered across a dozen nations in the high mountain ranges of Central Asia.
The cats are poached for their pelts and killed by shepherds guarding their flocks from the potential predators.
"This is a wonderful discovery. It shows that there is real hope for snow leopards in Afghanistan. Now our goal is to ensure that these magnificent animals have a secure future as part of Afghanistan's natural heritage," Peter Zahler, the World Conservation Society's deputy Asia director, said in a statement.
The World Conservation Society has been working in the Wakhan Corridor since 2006 to preserve wildlife like the Marco Polo sheep and the ibex.
In tandem with the U.S. government's aid arm, USAID, the World Conservation Society says it works with all schools in Wakham to teach conservation. It says it has also trained 59 rangers to monitor wildlife. The New York-based group has also started a scheme to compensate shepherds for livestock lost to predators.
compiled from agency reports
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General Petraeus leaves a still deadly Afghanistan to head CIA
The Globe and Mail Susan Sachs Thursday, Jul. 14, 2011
KABUL - When U.S. General David Petraeus was named supreme commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan one year ago, he had the reputation of something of a military miracle worker.
He was dubbed King David, the man who set unruly Iraq to rights, and lauded as the most influential general of his era, a warrior-scholar and the brilliant mind behind the American military’s new gospel of counterinsurgency.
As he headed off to Kabul last July, he exuded confidence in public. “We are in this,” he declared then, “to win.”
In the end, Gen. Petraeus had just one year to work his magic on what has become an increasingly deadly, dirty and diffused conflict that he admits is far from won.
The general’s war was fought with more resources than any NATO commander before him had and more than any commander after him is likely to get. But the insurgency he vowed to beat has outlasted him, for now, and Afghanistan has become a far deadlier place for Afghans and foreign soldiers alike.
Gen. Petraeus, who arrived with a nimbus of star power, goes out with success still eluding him.
Next week, he turns his command over to U.S. Marine Lieutenant General John Allen and heads off to his new civilian job as director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
“He’s handing off Afghanistan better than what it was when he took control, but he didn’t get everything he needed and he got outmanoeuvred politically,” said Bill Roggio, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
“While he achieved some things, he wasn’t able to achieve the wider goal of turning over security to the Afghan security forces from a position of strength,” Mr. Roggio added. “Instead he’s handing over from a position of weakness.”
He leaves at a decisive juncture.
NATO country leaders have set the end of 2014 for withdrawing their forces and leaving Afghans in charge. Those local forces are largely untested and their leaders are still being trained. The first experiment in transition is only just beginning, involving seven areas of the country where Afghan forces are to take the lead in providing security.
Gen. Petraeus had 140,000 multinational troops under his command, the biggest and best-equipped fighting machine ever fielded in NATO’s decade-long Afghanistan war. His successor will command a shrinking force, following President Barack Obama’s decision to withdraw one-third of the American troops over the next 15 months. Other NATO countries announced they will soon follow suit. Canada’s combat troops are completing their final withdrawal from Afghanistan this month.
In recent interviews, Gen. Petraeus has cited some gains. The number of insurgent attacks dipped in May and June compared with the same period last year, he said, an indication “they have been degraded somewhat.”
Coalition commanders in southern Afghanistan, including the Canadians who just ended their combat mission, say the Taliban is having trouble resupplying its fighters. Special Forces operations and NATO air strikes, which increased dramatically under Gen. Petraeus, have apparently decimated the ranks of mid-level insurgent commanders.
His admirers in the Afghan government and the diplomatic corps here say he also achieved some success in the parallel NATO effort of trying to get the government to take charge of the country. He managed, by quiet force of personality, to corral Afghan security officials into sharing information with each other and pushed NATO commanders to start sharing strategy with the Afghans.
The general issued several tactical directives on use of force and air strikes during his tenure, the latest just last week, aimed at minimizing civilian deaths at the hands of coalition troops. A United Nations report released Thursday said the number of Afghan civilians killed by NATO forces dropped slightly in the first six months of this year compared to the same period last year.
But each incident, the latest involving six people killed in a night raid by NATO forces in Khost province, has eroded Afghan confidence in the general’s, and NATO’s, war.
His regular video-conference meetings with commanders were legendary for their cool focus on the number of suspected insurgents killed or captured each day.
“He sits in a chair for four hours and doesn’t move,” said a European diplomat who attended some of them. “Each person has seven minutes. Everything is timed to the minute. It’s extraordinarily impressive, but it makes war everything. Everything becomes militarized.”
Gen. Petraeus had more than double the number of Afghan and foreign soldiers under his command than were available to fight the Taliban just three years ago. They created a new dynamic that critics say made Afghanistan a more violent place and spread the insurgency.
More foreign soldiers on the ground meant more fighting, drew more insurgent attacks and created more targets for the insurgents’ new weapon of choice, IEDs, or improvised explosive devices.
“It upped the overall ambient violence,” said Nic Lee, director of the Afghan NGO Safety Office (ANSO), a security service and monitoring group that advices non-governmental organizations. “As it gets more kinetic, more people are going to get hurt.”
Since June of 2009, when the United States started boosting its manpower on the ground, insurgent attacks have increased by 119 per cent, according to a soon-to-be published ANSO report. And Afghanistan became significantly more dangerous for aid workers, both Afghan and foreign.
“The contesting is what made it more dangerous,” Mr. Lee said, “not the contestants.”
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