Afghanistan News July 21 2011


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July 21, 2011

Afghans take over security in Herat
By Aref Karimi | AFP News
NATO troops on Thursday made Afghan security forces responsible for the city of Herat, the country's western capital where two British men were reportedly arrested.

U.S. welcomes decision to remove former Taliban from sanctions list
By David Ariosto, CNN July 21, 2011
Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- The United States on Thursday said it welcomes a U.N. decision to remove sanctions against 14 former Taliban leaders in what is perhaps the latest signal of its willingness to reconcile with militants who break ties with al Qaeda.

2 British passport holders detained in Afghanistan
By the CNN Wire Staff July 21, 2011
London (CNN) -- Two British passport holders were detained by British troops in Afghanistan during an International Security Assistance Force operation, the Ministry of Defence said Thursday.

Huge poppy seed cache confiscated in Afghanistan
By David Ariosto, CNN July 21, 2011
Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Nearly half a million of pounds of opium poppy seeds have been confiscated in southwestern Afghanistan during a joint raid by NATO and Afghan National Security forces, officials said.

War on Drugs in Afghanistan Complicates War on Terror
By Jessica Rettig | US News
The recent assassination of political strongman Ahmed Wali Karzai put in plain sight for Americans something in Afghanistan that has been off the radar for many: drug-related corruption. Half-brother to the president and head of the elected provincial council in Kandahar, the late Karzai was known in southern Afghanistan

Pakistan, Afghanistan must end border incursions - PM
By Myra MacDonald
LONDON (Reuters) - Pakistan and Afghanistan must redouble efforts to end fighting along their border to prevent this jeopardising an improvement in relations, Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani said on Thursday.

Afghanistan War ‘Fragile’ but Doable, General Says
By KATRIN BENNHOLD The New York Times July 20, 2011
PARIS — Gen. David H. Petraeus, the incoming chief of the Central Intelligence Agency who until this week was the top American commander in Afghanistan, on Wednesday gave a cautiously optimistic assessment of the United States’ longest-running military campaign but called recent gains in the decade-old Afghan war “fragile and reversible.”

Afghan National Army prepares for life after Nato
A fledging force made up of tens of thousands of new recruits and a few experienced officers is performing quite well
Guardian.co.uk By Jon Boone Wednesday 20 July 2011
In many ways the platoon of soldiers heading into the fields of Zhari, near Kandahar city, could have been on one of the hundreds of patrols Nato forces conduct every day in Afghanistan. Nothing about their behaviour was exceptional. In an area thick with IEDs, they kept apart from each other. The captain leading the patrol kept

Secure Pakistan or the handover will fail, warns Afghan leader
The Daily Telegraph By Ben Farmer July 20, 2011
The handover of security to Afghan forces in Helmand will fail unless the porous border with Pakistan can be secured, the provincial governor has warned as British commanders formally gave up control.

Hamid Karzai's grip has slipped
Corrupt, unpopular, weak and seen as a stooge. The Afghan president should no longer be propped up by the west
The Guardian By Mehdi Hasan 20/07/2011
Not long ago Hamid Karzai was being feted in western capitals as a model leader. He was articulate, educated, westernised – even stylish. In 2004 Esquire magazine included the Afghan president in its list of "best-dressed men in the world", praising his "multicultural" outfits. "As a new player on the international scene, he must appeal at home and abroad," noted the magazine's writers. "His clothes reflect that."

Australia to sue ex-Gitmo inmate over book
By Amy Coopes (AFP) – July 21, 2011
SYDNEY — Australia on Thursday said it was preparing to sue ex-Guantanamo Bay inmate David Hicks for the royalties from his tell-all book, claiming they should be considered proceeds of crime.

Ancient Silk Road continues to wait for World Heritage status
by Xinhua writer Yu Fei
BEIJING, July 21 (Xinhua) -- A timetable for the submittal of an application to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for adding historical sites along China's 2,000-year-old Silk Road to the organization's World Heritage List has been postponed numerous times, with the project having been in the works for over five years.

Cross-border attack kills two in Pakistan
(AFP)
KHAR, Pakistan — Mortar shells fired from across the border in Afghanistan hit a house in Pakistan on Thursday killing two people and wounding several children, officials said.

At Kabul airport, exodus of U.S. aid goes on
Washington Post By Jason Ukman 20/07/2011
Kabul’s international airport has long been seen as a virtual black hole for foreign currency, the perfect venue through which travelers can smuggle out hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid that was intended for development projects.

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Afghans take over security in Herat
By Aref Karimi | AFP News
NATO troops on Thursday made Afghan security forces responsible for the city of Herat, the country's western capital where two British men were reportedly arrested.

Herat is the fourth of seven areas to transition to Afghan control this week, but critics say the timetable is politically motivated and not reflective of Afghan abilities to ward off the Taliban with violence at a 10-year high.

Underscoring the threat, a suicide bomber killed four people on Wednesday in the north's Mazar-i-Sharif, considered one of the safest cities in Afghanistan and due to be transferred on Saturday.

In Herat, a ceremony took place at NATO's International Security Assistance Force headquarters in the city, attended by the defence minister, other senior Afghan officials and Italy's economic development minister Paolo Romani.

Italy is in charge of coalition efforts in Herat.

"We don't want a parallel security force. The ANA (army), ANP (police) and our intelligence forces are prepared to defend our country and crush the enemy," said Ashraf Ghani, head of the national transition authority.

A separate ceremony was later held at an Afghan army base in the city.

Transition comes with US and Afghan officials trying to reach out to the Taliban to broker a peace deal as NATO-led troops begin a gradual withdrawal designed to recall all foreign combat troops by the end of 2014.

But the speed of the drawdown and transition has been criticised by experts who say Afghan forces are not ready to take control for security on their own.

An MP for Herat and deputy speaker for parliament, Ahmad Behzad, said that the city, which lies close to the Iranian border, is largely safe but is still plagued by unrest nearby in the province, in particularly in Shindand district.

"Herat city and the province is under threat by these places," said Behzad.

Foreign forces have been absent from the city for some time he said, but Afghan troops are still heavily reliant on the NATO presence for air support and other military equipment.

Britain's newspaper The Times reported Thursday that two British men were arrested at a hotel near the Iranian border as part of a counter-terrorism raid to thwart a possible attack against British interests.

Rival newspaper The Sun said they were arrested in the southern province of Helmand. It and the BBC said they were suspected of fighting for the Taliban.

Afghan interior ministry and intelligence officials said they had no information about the reported arrests.
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U.S. welcomes decision to remove former Taliban from sanctions list
By David Ariosto, CNN July 21, 2011
Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- The United States on Thursday said it welcomes a U.N. decision to remove sanctions against 14 former Taliban leaders in what is perhaps the latest signal of its willingness to reconcile with militants who break ties with al Qaeda.

"We recognize and welcome the efforts made by the High Peace Council to work towards peace, stability and reconciliation generally and its contributions to the July 15 decision," the U.S. Embassy in Kabul said in a written statement.

Among the list are four members of a committee called the High Peace Council of Afghanistan, a group formed last year in September by Afghan authorities.

The United Nations identified the four men as Arsalan Rahmani Daulat, Habibullah Fawzi, Sayeedur Rahman Haqani and Faqir Mohammad, though it is not clear who else is on the list.

The so-called "1267" list, which takes its name from U.N. Security Council Resolution 1267, prevents travel and freezes funds and other financial assets of Taliban affiliated members.

The U.S. said the delisting came at the request of the Afghan government and demonstrates the international community's willingness to engage with reconciled Taliban members who "abandon violence and abide by the Afghan Constitution, including its provisions on respect for the rights of all Afghans, including women."

German Ambassador to the U.N., Peter Wittig, who heads the Security Council for the month of July, said "the message is clear: engaging for peace pays off."

The Taliban, who were driven from power by U.S.-led forces in 2001, have traditionally insisted that foreign powers leave Afghanistan before negotiations can take place.

In June, then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the U.S. was engaging in peace talks with the Taliban, but also cautioned of the potential for false representatives.

"Who really represents the Taliban?" Gates asked. "We don't want to end up having a conversation at some point with somebody who is basically a freelancer."

The U.N.'s sanctions committee was established in 1999 when the Taliban controlled much of the country and offered sanctuary to al Qaeda, headed by former leader Osama bin Laden.

It was Taliban's backing of bin Laden following the al-Qaeda attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, that prompted the U.S.-led campaign against Afghanistan.

Bin Laden was killed May 2 in a clandestine U.S. raid in Pakistan.

Thursday's announcement coincides with a formal handover ceremony in the western city of Herat, one of the country's largest cities, to Afghan security forces.

Herat city is the fourth area to be transferred to national control, and is among seven areas apart of the first round of transitions.

Last week, the first group of departing U.S. soldiers left Afghanistan, beginning a draw-down of 10,000 American troops scheduled to leave by year's end.

The full drawdown is expected to take place by the end of 2014, gradually transferring responsibilities to Afghan government forces.
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2 British passport holders detained in Afghanistan
By the CNN Wire Staff July 21, 2011
London (CNN) -- Two British passport holders were detained by British troops in Afghanistan during an International Security Assistance Force operation, the Ministry of Defence said Thursday.

The operation was "conducted jointly last week by UK forces with Afghans in support," the ministry said in a prepared statement. "The individuals, a male and a female, are currently being held in a secure facility in Kandahar for questioning.

"Detention operations are a vital element of protecting UK, ISAF and Afghan forces and Afghan civilians from those who are assessed to pose a threat regardless of their nationality," the ministry statement said. The detentions are conducted "in accordance with international law and strict policy frameworks."

The ministry said no further information "will be released at this stage."

Britain has about 9,500 troops in Afghanistan, the second-largest international force currently deployed in the region after the United States.

British Prime Minister David Cameron has said that number will decrease to 500 troops by the end of 2012.
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Huge poppy seed cache confiscated in Afghanistan
By David Ariosto, CNN July 21, 2011
Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Nearly half a million of pounds of opium poppy seeds have been confiscated in southwestern Afghanistan during a joint raid by NATO and Afghan National Security forces, officials said.

The operation took place Wednesday in the Delaram district of Nimroz province, which borders Iran.

The find represents the largest uncovered by Afghan and coalition forces this year, according to Ministry of Interior spokesman Sediq Seddiqi.

The opium poppy can be used to make heroin and other drugs, and is considered a staple of insurgent funding.

Afghanistan is considered the world's leading cultivator of opium poppy, ahead of Myanmar, according to a 2011 United Nations report.

The country accounts for 63% of the world's total areas under opium poppy cultivation, despite a smaller harvest last year due to an unspecified disease in opium plants.

Locally, one gram of heroin costs around $4, the U.N. reported. After the product is transported to illicit markets in the United States or northern Europe, the same amount is worth between $170 to $200 per gram.

In a separate operation in Kandahar province, security forces also uncovered 4,400 pounds (nearly 2,000 kilograms) of hashish and 33 pounds (15 kilograms) of ammonium nitrate, which can be used in fertilizers and as an explosive component.
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War on Drugs in Afghanistan Complicates War on Terror
By Jessica Rettig | US News
The recent assassination of political strongman Ahmed Wali Karzai put in plain sight for Americans something in Afghanistan that has been off the radar for many: drug-related corruption. Half-brother to the president and head of the elected provincial council in Kandahar, the late Karzai was known in southern Afghanistan for his wealth and power--both of which, some allege, he derived in part from his influence in the illicit drug trade.

After his death, media reports labeled him as a suspected player in his region's narcotics business. And according to Vanda Felbab-Brown, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who specializes in illicit economies, in a country like Afghanistan where narcotics made from opium poppy, like heroin, contribute to an estimated third or more of its economy, it would have been hard to impossible for Karzai to achieve the status he did without some drug involvement. "It's very much the economic engine of the country," she says. "Under such circumstances, anyone who wants to have any level of power or any level of economic security will somehow participate in the drug trade, at least in terms of cultivation of poppy."

Although it was hardly mentioned during the recent debate over U.S. withdrawal, the outcome of the war and the future of Afghanistan depend significantly on the opium business, which has been a prominent under-the-table source of funds for many Afghans, including government officials. Therefore, U.S. anti-drug efforts in the country involve a sort of give and take, choosing the lesser of two evils. Western forces try to target Afghanistan's drug producers when they know profits go to the Taliban or to terrorist groups like al Qaeda. But when the illicit cash goes to allies of the Afghan government, they're more likely to look the other way, says Felbab-Brown.

And for all the problems with that line of action, it might just be the best strategy available. According to Mark Kleiman, public policy professor at University of California-Los Angeles and author of Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know, even if U.S. law enforcement and the military could accurately target Afghanistan's top officials for involvement with narcotics--in turn, weakening an already unstable government--drugs would still be produced. Take the case of Karzai, for example. "If we'd arrested Wali Karzai, convicted him, imprisoned him, would a single kilo of heroin not have left Afghanistan that's now going to leave? Of course not," he says. "It's worth making sacrifices if you're getting some gain, but not just for ritual."

Though Myanmar has increased its output in recent years, Afghanistan remains the world's top cultivator of opium poppy, producing 63 percent of global supply in 2010, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime's 2011 World Drug Report. It's difficult to quantify how much money that actually means for the people of Afghanistan, but based on the street prices in consumer nations, primarily in Europe and Asia, Afghan opiates generated approximately $65 billion on global markets in 2010, according to Brian Nichols, principal deputy secretary of secretary of state for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. To put that in perspective, Afghanistan's legal gross domestic product was roughly $15.6 billion in the same year.

These economic realities make it difficult for Americans to go after the drug problem, and some would argue, are enough reason to just leave it alone for now. According to Kleiman, counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan, like in parts of Latin America, often end up empowering enemies, which in this case are the Taliban and terrorist groups the country has been at war with for nearly a decade. By trying to limit the supply of drugs, he argues, "We are keeping prices high, [which is] good for the bad guys, and we are forcing drug traffickers into areas that are not maintained by the government, [which is] also good for the bad guys. It could not be a more counterproductive approach."

Still, Americans continue to the effort. Supporters of drug control, like California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, co-chairs of the Senate Caucus of International Narcotics Control, argue that it helps national security goals by cutting off a central source of funding for terrorists and insurgents. In a hearing on the issue held Wednesday by the caucus, they pushed for greater law enforcement and punishment--including extradition to the United States--for Afghanistan's major narcotics players.

In recent years, the Obama administration has backed away from large-scale poppy eradication efforts, which were more expensive and alienated rural farmers, threatening to push them away from the legitimate government and under the wing of the insurgents. Instead, according to testimony from the Drug Enforcement Agency, Pentagon, and the State Department, U.S. agencies partner with local law enforcement to crack down on individual drug labs, most of which are run by the Taliban. In 2010, Nichols reported in his testimony, the Counternarcotics Police of Afghanistan and their American partners seized over 11 metric tons of heroin on such operations.

As far as drug-related corruption in government, that's been more difficult to pinpoint, and partly as a result, less of a priority. According to Nichols, fighting bribery and corrupt practices has been most difficult among the country's top officials. "There has been important progress against mid-level officials, but there is a tremendous amount of work that needs to be done in terms of high-level corruption," he told senators Wednesday.

Indeed, although rumors circulate about Afghan government officials' involvement with drug trafficking, there's hardly ever a smoking gun. Nevertheless, Thomas Harrigan, assistant administrator and chief of operations at the DEA, says that if agents had the evidence against top officials, there would be nothing stopping them from pursuing it. "We're concerned with levels of corruption in the Afghan government, but the bottom line is that we don't know what we don't know," he testified Wednesday.

To get a legal economy--one that could compete with the black market--up and running is another problem that U.S. officials are trying to deal with before security is transferred to the Afghans. There have been efforts by the U.S. State Department to promote agricultural alternatives and to educate rural populations about the dangers of narcotics cultivation. But for farmers who often struggle just to survive, it's difficult to walk away from the profits. According to the most recent Afghanistan Opium Survey released in January by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, leaders of more than three quarters of villages said their main motivation for growing poppy was the high price of opiates. Poverty was the second most dominant reason.

Harrigan says the DEA is committed to remaining in Afghanistan to deal with the drug problem even after American troops leave, and they're making an effort to train and equip Afghan law enforcement to take care of the problem in the future. Nevertheless, according to Felbab-Brown, if and when troops leave, the fight against drugs likely won't be a priority for the Afghan government or security forces, especially given the economic benefits of the industry. "When we significantly scale down ground operations in Afghanistan, the pressure will be very hard to resurrect eradication," she says. "That said, we will either have to do it against the will of the Afghan government, or somehow buy them or force it down their throat."
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Pakistan, Afghanistan must end border incursions - PM
By Myra MacDonald
LONDON (Reuters) - Pakistan and Afghanistan must redouble efforts to end fighting along their border to prevent this jeopardising an improvement in relations, Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani said on Thursday.

In an interview with Reuters, Gilani said he hoped India could "play a good role" in Afghanistan, as warming ties between Islamabad and New Delhi reduce the deep mistrust which has seen the two countries battling for influence there.

"It is in the interest of Pakistan for a stable, peaceful, independent, sovereign Afghanistan," Gilani said. "We are part of the solution and we are not part of the problem."

He said both Afghanistan and Pakistan -- which have had difficult relations in the past over Pakistan's alleged support for the Taliban -- had realised they needed to unite to fight their "common enemy" in Islamist militants.

But a flare-up in fighting along the border has put that understanding at risk.

Pakistan has attributed the clashes to incursions by militants which it had previously chased out of its tribal areas and who then took refuge in eastern Afghanistan.

Afghanistan says at least 42 civilians have been killed by Pakistan army shelling, though President Hamid Karzai has over-ruled senior ministers who wanted to return fire.

Pakistan has denied large-scale shelling, saying only that a few accidental rounds may have crossed the border when it pursued militants who had attacked its security forces.

Gilani said both he and Karzai were under "tremendous pressure" over the border incursions.

"Therefore I am regularly in touch with President Karzai so that there should be no misunderstanding, but we should avoid all these incursions because it can create problems."

The border fighting, often in areas where the United States had thinned out its troops in order to focus on population centres in southern Afghanistan, has alarmed U.S. analysts.

"If this becomes routine -- if Afghanistan starts responding in kind to Pakistani attacks on its territory, then we could very easily see a full-scale war," U.S. Afghan expert Joshua Foust wrote on his blog, Registan.net.

Gilani, however, said that Pakistan was committed to helping bring stability in Afghanistan including through reconciliation with Taliban insurgents.

"I am in favour of political reconciliation which should be Afghan-owned and Afghan-led. Therefore we are ready to support any reconciliation process which is initiated by Afghanistan."

But he said the United States, Pakistan and Afghanistan must all work together -- a prospect which diplomats say has become harder because of strained ties between Washington and Islamabad following the May 2 killing of Osama bin Laden by U.S. forces.

"They should be on the same page because any political settlement we want to be doubly sure that in future that would not affect Pakistan's stability therefore whatever the roadmap be, it should be shared with us."

INDIA THAW
With the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan due to meet in New Delhi on July 27, Gilani said that, "we really want to make it meaningful and we really want that there should be good results and we want excellent relations with our neighbour".

The two countries resumed in February formal peace talks broken off by India after the November 2008 attack on Mumbai by Pakistan-based militants who killed 166 people. They have since made incremental, but steady progress.

"We decided to discuss all irritants and all core issues so that we should move forward," Gilani said, when asked about what he expected to come out of the foreign ministers' talks.

Though Afghanistan is not officially covered by that peace process, an improvement in relations would also make it easier for them to find common ground there.

The alternative could see Pakistan and India backing rival factions if civil war intensifies in Afghanistan as the United States gradually pulls out combat troops.

"We both have good relations with Afghanistan -- India and Pakistan," Gilani said. And while Pakistan had an important role to play in Afghan stability, "I do hope that India can also play a good role."

He said Pakistan was willing to work with the United States to track down militant leaders, including Ayman al Zawahri, who succeeded bin Laden as head of al Qaeda.

"We have offered them that we should work together and even for other high value targets we should have a mutual cooperation," he said.

"If they have some actionable and credible information, they can share with us. We can jointly work on that."

But he said this did not mean Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) men operating alongside officers of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency -- as had happened in the past.

"Not on the ground. There can be some mechanism because we already have some mechanism of intelligence-sharing and joint operations. Therefore whatever in-built mechanism, that can be worked on."

Pakistan has cracked down on U.S. activities on its territory after its suspicions the CIA was running an independent spying operation were confirmed when U.S. forces found and killed bin Laden in the garrison town of Abbottabad.

The United States said it did not trust Pakistan enough to share the information about bin Laden's whereabouts.

"Previously the CIA and the ISI, they have been cooperating for many years ... Even for the Abbottabad incident, some of the initial information was passed on by the ISI," Gilani said.

"Therefore we feel let down when we saw the unilateral action from the United States in Abbottabad. That was something that was not liked by the people of Pakistan."

(Editing by Maria Golovnina)
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Afghanistan War ‘Fragile’ but Doable, General Says
By KATRIN BENNHOLD The New York Times July 20, 2011
PARIS — Gen. David H. Petraeus, the incoming chief of the Central Intelligence Agency who until this week was the top American commander in Afghanistan, on Wednesday gave a cautiously optimistic assessment of the United States’ longest-running military campaign but called recent gains in the decade-old Afghan war “fragile and reversible.”

Stressing the importance of rebuilding fraying ties with Pakistan, he also suggested that there was now an opportunity to rekindle trust. He said he had just been to Rawalpindi to meet the Pakistani chief of staff, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, while Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the head of Pakistan’s main intelligence agency, had just been to Washington.

After the deep rift that formed between Pakistan and the United States over the secret raid to kill Osama bin Laden, an operation that infuriated both General Kayani and the Pakistani Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, known as the I.S.I., Mr. Petraeus said he hoped the two visits represented a moment when the countries could begin to repair their vital relationship.

He said he had gone “to see if this is the moment where we can start, in a sense, reviving, once again strengthening the relationship” rather than “seeing it spiral further down.”

“I’d like to think that we are at that point and that we can indeed do that,” he said. “Certainly this relationship is in a difficult stage. But however difficult the relationship may be, it is one that we need to continue to work. It is one where we need to recognize what our Pakistani partners have done,” sacrificing several thousands soldiers and police officers in their own counterinsurgency efforts.

Speaking at the Forum for New Diplomacy in Paris at an event cohosted by the International Herald Tribune, Mr. Petraeus called the Afghan Army and police forces “increasingly credible.” He also described how they were steadily taking more responsibility from NATO allies as a gradual withdrawal of tens of thousands of U.S. troops looms.

Afghan forces participate in all counterterrorism night raids and take the lead in 20 percent of them, he said, and there are now 43 validated Afghan police districts across the country, counting some 6,938 members among their ranks. The number of insurgent attacks has spiked less than expected during the current fighting season, declining in eight of the last 12 weeks compared to the same period in past years, while allies have made some important territorial gains, he said.

But the general stressed that “those gains remain fragile and they remain reversible.”

“We are there to ensure that that country does not once again become a sanctuary to Al Qaeda or other terrorists,” he said. “The only way to achieve that is to ensure that the Afghans secure themselves and govern themselves.”

It has been a long and slow process, he admitted, and one that is far from accomplished. Out of 160 Afghan battalions, only one is considered truly independent in terms of its capability; the majority still depend on U.S. advice or active assistance. Some 2,303 former insurgents have been reintegrated into local communities — a “great success,” Mr. Petraeus said, though he acknowledged that in a country with as many as 35,000 insurgents the national impact of that program had not yet been felt.

Gen. Petraeus said little about his plans at the helm of the C.I.A., stressing only that the battle against terrorism must not distract the United States and its allies from other monumental challenges facing Western countries, like the emergence of China as a political and economic heavyweight.

“We must continue the effort against extremists, but we cannot get so riveted on that that we lose sight of what we loosely term the global coverage mission,” he said, shorthand for “gathering information and intelligence on other activities around the world, being sure that we’re not surprised by the next developments in the Arab Spring, that we understand what is going internally in China where the dynamics are vastly complex.”

The appointment of a war general who was a chief architect of the fight against terrorism in the Bush administration to the helm of the C.I.A., a nominally civilian agency, has raised some eyebrows at a time when war fatigue is rapidly spreading in United States and caused some worry that his focus will be too much on terrorism.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, the country has spent $1.3 trillion on operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, a sum that has taken on a different meaning in the current economic crisis.

Polls show that since the raid that killed Bin Laden, support for deployments in the Middle East has plunged even lower. If liberal Democrats were once the main protagonists of the anti-war lobby, now several Republicans are joining the calls to bring American soldiers home “as soon as we possibly can,” according to Mitt Romney, one of early the front-runners in the Republican race for the presidential nomination.
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Afghan National Army prepares for life after Nato
A fledging force made up of tens of thousands of new recruits and a few experienced officers is performing quite well
Guardian.co.uk By Jon Boone Wednesday 20 July 2011
In many ways the platoon of soldiers heading into the fields of Zhari, near Kandahar city, could have been on one of the hundreds of patrols Nato forces conduct every day in Afghanistan. Nothing about their behaviour was exceptional. In an area thick with IEDs, they kept apart from each other. The captain leading the patrol kept in constant touch by radio with his colleagues near the town of Sanzeray. At several points, he ordered his men to drop to one knee and scour nearby tree lines through the sights of their brand new M16 rifles.

In fact, these men tramping around the sweltering countryside were something very rare indeed: an entirely Afghan unit operating completely independently of foreign forces.

Captain Halim Khan did not even bother informing his US colleagues that he was taking his men for a march into the surrounding countryside. The only thing out of the ordinary was the fact that Khan, a hardened former mujahideen who fought against the Russians, had not felt the need to put on any body armour or a helmet.

"It is good for officers to show they are not afraid of the enemy," he said.

It was a sight that would delight western policymakers, who have staked all on an exit strategy in which the Afghan National Army (ANA), along with the police, will take complete control of the country's security by the end of 2014. At that point nearly all foreign troops will have either left Afghanistan or fallen back into non-combat support roles.

It cannot come a moment too soon for the US rank-and-file who typically conduct two joint patrols a day in Zhari with their Afghan colleagues. The Afghans in turn do at least one independently.

Many of the US soldiers make no attempt to disguise their weariness with a war that they think has dragged on too long and cost too much money. "A lot of us don't understand why we are still here," said one US soldier, on his third tour in Afghanistan.

The frantic, multibillion dollar effort over the past two years to get the ANA ready to shoulder responsibility has been one of the most extraordinary episodes in the west's 10-year engagement in Afghanistan. On taking command of the military training mission in November 2009, the US general William Caldwell declared himself horrified with almost everything that had been done in the years before his arrival.

The ANA was largely illiterate, the private sector contractors paid to train them were doing a hopeless job and attrition rates were so high that in some months the total size of the force actually decreased. Realising the depth of the problem, the US threw money at the mission, running crash courses in reading and writing, getting rid of as many contractors as they could and raising ANA salaries to push up recruitment. This year alone $12bn (£7.4bn) will be spent on building the ANA, a sum equivalent to Afghanistan's entire economy.

Even though an army of sorts has existed since 2001, the net effect of this scramble is that the ANA is now a fledgling force made up of tens of thousands of new recruits and a sprinkling of experienced officers. So it is remarkable that this instant army is performing quite well, even in a place such as Zhari, a long-time Taliban stronghold where the terrain could almost have been purpose-built for guerrilla warfare.

Part of the 205th "Hero" Corps, widely regarded as one of the ANA's finest, the soldiers in this area have developed capabilities that would have been undreamt of just a few years ago.

After the patrol, Khan goes to a cupboard in his office and scoops up armfuls of night-vision goggles. It is the sort of hi-tech kit the Americans have long resisted giving to the Afghans, fearing they would be lost or, worse, sold so that the highly restricted technology would end up in enemy hands. But in Zhari the ANA are trusted enough to be lent the equipment, allowing them to carry out patrols at night.

"They can be incredibly aggressive in a fight," said Max Ferguson, an American captain who lives side by side with the ANA in another outpost near the village of Kandalay.

In one recent case an ANA platoon leader spotted a group of concealed insurgents and sent four of his men to apprehend them. "In American terms that would be a suicide mission, but the Afghans just went and did it," Ferguson said. "They are like dune buggies that can just zoom about, while we are like big heavy tanks that can't do anything quickly."

During a previous visit to Zhari in 2008, the Guardian occasionally saw tiny contingents of ANA wearing mismatching uniforms, carrying a bizarre assortment of old weapons and meekly following the Canadian forces.

Three years on, what one US official in Kabul calls "Caldwell's New Model Army" has done much to complement the security gains won by the huge number of US troops sent to Kandahar and Helmand as part of Barack Obama's surge strategy.

With the risk of ambushes greatly diminished on the main roads, the ANA now move around in smaller, lighter convoys. The commander of the 205th Corps, Brigadier General Abdul Hamid, points to progress in the districts where he says people from outlying areas can now come to the office of the local government boss to discuss problems. Insurgents are still active, but operating in smaller groups they are struggling to inflict the damage they once did, he said.

However, there is still a long way to go. The Americans say discipline within the ANA needs to improve. At 5am, when a patrol was supposed to leave, the Afghans were still waking up, praying and getting their kit together while the Americans, ready to go, had to sit around for an hour.

A few weeks previously the ANA had lost a pair of the precious night-vision goggles on a night patrol and then showed no inclination to go and find them. The goggles had been lost after a piece of string that was meant to keep them permanently attached to the soldier was hacked off.

The Afghans are also far less assiduous than Nato troops about only walking on the most difficult and arduous terrain in an effort to avoid the low metal IEDs that are invisible to traditional detection devices. Presented with an inviting gap in one of the towering two-and-a-half metre walls that cut up the countryside, US troops will nearly always avoid such an obvious place for an IED. More often than not the ANA watch their US colleagues haul themselves over the wall and then take the easier route.

But Ferguson's biggest concern is the mundane business of logistics and the struggle the Afghans have keeping themselves supplied with food, water and fuel for even a 24-hour period. "It's partly our fault because sometimes we spoil them by stepping in and taking care of this stuff for them," he said.

In the three ANA companies the Guardian spent time with, we did not meet a single Pashtun soldier who hailed from the south, where recruitment has bumped around at less than 3%. Although around half the soldiers were Pashtuns from eastern provinces, the remainder were from other ethnic groups from the north and could not speak Pashtu.

Several analysts have raised this as a key weakness of the ANA, saying it is seen in the south as an occupying force. Tom Johnson, professor of national security affairs at a military university in Monterey, California, believes the under-representation of Pashtuns is far worse than reported as some non-Pashtuns simply lie about their ethnicity.

But in opinion polls and interviews, Afghans nearly always declare the ANA to be the institution they respect the most, in sharp contrast to the police who tend to be locals and therefore mixed up in tribal disputes.

"One hundred percent of the locals see us as much better than the Americans because we are Afghans and Muslims," said Mohammad Farza, a charismatic lieutenant and platoon leader, whose efforts to speak Pashtu, his second language, raise smiles among the locals. "But they hate the police who are always stealing money and causing problems for them."

In addition to the weak police, the office of the district governor is "weak, ineffective and corrupt", said Ferguson.

For their part, Afghan officers complain about their equipment, particularly the hand-me-down Humvees that the Americans gave up driving years ago. Instead they want tanks, heavy weapons, and artillery and fighter planes – all things ruled out for now.

Johnson thinks the ANA stands almost no chance of holding on to gains by the time the US quits. He pointed to the fact that an April report by the US defence department admitted that in the entire country just one ANA unit was capable of operating independently.

"My students who have served in Afghanistan tell me that there is no way they would ever trust the ANA to guard their rear flanks – that for me is the bottom line," he said.

One cause for mild optimism is the fact that transition has been done before, by the Soviet Union when they pulled out all combat troops in 1989. To the surprise of most observers the regime they left behind did not immediately crumble, but fended off the mujahideen, a far stronger force than today's Taliban, for three years. The government was finally overwhelmed only after the Soviet Union collapsed and stopped paying the bills of the Afghan army of the day.

The biggest question may not be the ANA's ability to turn up on time for patrols but whether the US will agree to pay for its running costs. Estimates suggest that after 2014 the ANA and the police will require $6-8bn a year. Although that is a fraction of the $120bn the US is spending on its own military operations in Afghanistan this year, it is a vast sum that would see the country consuming more direct US military aid than Israel and Egypt combined.

"With all the constraints on the US economy and the collapse in public support for this war I think it is going to be very hard to continue to spend billions and billions of dollars," said Johnson.

"I don't think we have the luxury of being able to follow the Soviet model."
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Secure Pakistan or the handover will fail, warns Afghan leader
The Daily Telegraph By Ben Farmer July 20, 2011
The handover of security to Afghan forces in Helmand will fail unless the porous border with Pakistan can be secured, the provincial governor has warned as British commanders formally gave up control.

Gulab Mangal called on Nato to stop Taliban infiltration from Pakistan and warned that the border threat risked derailing the departure of British troops.

Mr Mangal spoke as Afghan police and soldiers formally took control of Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital, where the British have been stationed since 2006.

The symbolic handover marked the first step in a gradual withdrawal of British troops from a decade-long campaign that has resulted in 377 forces' deaths.

Mr Mangal told a ceremony marking the handover: "We want Nato to secure the border. The home of terrorism is not in Afghanistan, it's in Pakistan. If they secure the border, this transition will be successful. If they can't control the border then the situation will only get worse and this process will be unsuccessful."

Nato commanders and Afghan leaders have said that the Taliban appear to operate from inside Pakistan and have alleged that the insurgents have support from elements of its military.

Helmand's desert border region is almost untouched by coalition or Afghan forces and is easily breached by smugglers, opium traffickers and insurgents.

The coalition's 30,000 troops in Helmand have focused instead on securing more fertile regions of the north and centre, where most people live.

Lashkar Gah is peaceful compared with the rest of the province. Only 635 of Britain's 9,500 troops are stationed in the area and the city centre is almost totally under Afghan control.

Afghan police have effectively been in control of the city for at least a year.

Lt Col Tim Purbrick, a spokesman for British forces, said: "We have not been asked to support the Afghan national police for pretty much a year." More violent British-garrisoned districts, including Nad-e-Ali and Nahr-e Saraj are unlikely to be begin handover for at least 18 months, officials have said.

The Nato allies have come under growing domestic pressure to pull back forces, with polls showing that voters are disillusioned with a conflict they see as a quagmire. David Cameron announced 450 British troops will leave the country this year and a further 500 next year.

President Hamid Karzai's forces are scheduled to take responsibility for the entire country by the end of 2014, leaving a much-reduced Nato force in the background to train and support locals.

Afghan forces are taking charge of seven largely peaceful cities and districts this week, with a second tranche of areas expected to follow at the end of the year.

Violence remains at record levels and there are doubts that the weak and ineffective Kabul regime can fill the void left by a Nato withdrawal.

It is also unclear if the Afghan army and police, which have been built almost from scratch, will be ready to take over.

Col Amin Jan, an Afghan army officer, said before the ceremony that the timetable for transition was "very short". "We still lack some equipment," he said.

In Mazar-i-Sharif, a northern trading hub due to be handed over later this week, a bomb planted on a bicycle killed five civilians, including a child, and wounded 12, police said.
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Hamid Karzai's grip has slipped
Corrupt, unpopular, weak and seen as a stooge. The Afghan president should no longer be propped up by the west
The Guardian By Mehdi Hasan 20/07/2011
Not long ago Hamid Karzai was being feted in western capitals as a model leader. He was articulate, educated, westernised – even stylish. In 2004 Esquire magazine included the Afghan president in its list of "best-dressed men in the world", praising his "multicultural" outfits. "As a new player on the international scene, he must appeal at home and abroad," noted the magazine's writers. "His clothes reflect that."

Seven years and two presidential elections later, whatever appeal Karzai – and his wardrobe – may have had is fast ebbing away, both domestically and internationally. The Afghan president has been exposed as weak and unpopular, corrupt and incompetent. He is viewed by millions of Afghans as a US stooge. The obvious historical analogy is between Karzai and Ngo Dinh Diem, the pro-US president of South Vietnam, hailed by Lyndon Johnson as the "Churchill of Asia" but then executed by his own generals in 1963, with American approval, after his thuggish and corrupt behaviour exacerbated the Vietcong insurgency.

Karzai, like Diem before him, is seeing his grip on power starting to slip. During the past fortnight, for instance, ordinary Afghans have witnessed the high-profile assassinations of the president's own brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, who was shot in his Kandahar home by his head of security, and the president's close adviser and confidante, Jan Mohammad Khan, who was shot in his Kabul home by two intruders. An emboldened Taliban claimed credit for both killings – and for last month's brazen attack on the supposedly secure Intercontinental hotel in Kabul, resulting in a five-hour gun battle which left two policemen and 11 civilians dead in the heart of the country's capital.

These are not random or gratuitous acts of violence: they are part of a coherent strategy by insurgents to undermine the authority of Karzai and his Kabul-based administration, and create a sense of fear and insecurity among the population. For the west's counterinsurgency plan to have any chance of working in Afghanistan, members of the public have to be made to feel safe; if civilians are to be persuaded to co-operate with the government and not the Taliban, they have to be protected from violence. Yet, according to the latest figures from the UN, noncombatant deaths were up 15% in the first half of 2011 compared with a year earlier.

As the 10th anniversary of the war in Afghanistan approaches, the country continues its descent into chaos. The president, meanwhile, has shamelessly surrounded himself with some of the country's most notorious warlords. Karzai's campaign team in 2009's presidential election, for instance, included Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Uzbek general accused of slaughtering hundreds of prisoners in 2001, and Muhammad Fahim, a former defence minister accused of kidnappings, land grabs and other human-rights abuses. Then, of course, there is the way in which the president spent the past few years turning a blind eye to the involvement of his (late) brother in the booming drugs trade in the south of the country(Diem, too, appointed a drug-smuggling brother to a senior position in the South Vietnamese government). "The Karzai family has opium and blood on their hands," one Western intelligence official told the New York Times in 2009.

But, of course, seeing no instant or appealing alternative to Karzai on offer, cynical western governments backed his re-election campaign two years ago and overlooked the way in which his "victory" was secured with the aid of more than a million fraudulent votes. This despite the fact that in November 2009, the then US ambassador in Kabul, Karl Eikenberry, sent two diplomatic cables to the White House in which he argued that Karzai "is not an adequate strategic partner" and "continues to shun responsibility for any sovereign burden," adding: "He and much of his circle do not want the US to leave and are only too happy to see us invest further." In other cables, revealed by WikiLeaks, Eikenberry described the Afghan president as "paranoid" and "weak", with "an inability to grasp the most rudimentary principles of state-building".

Several leading diplomats share the former US ambassador's assessment. Peter Galbraith, who served as a UN envoy to Afghanistan until 2009, has since publicly questioned the "mental stability" of Karzai and even suggested that the Afghan president may be using drugs. How else, after all, to explain Karzai's erratic behaviour? In April 2010, for instance, he threatened to quit politics and join the Taliban if the west put any further pressure on him to reform his government.

Today British troops handed over responsibility for security in Lashkar Gah, the capital of war-torn Helmand province, to Afghan forces. There is no doubt that in the fight for Afghan hearts and minds, the west has to have a credible Afghan partner. It is high time Karzai's western patrons recognised that the hapless and discredited president they are propping up is part of the problem, not the solution, in Afghanistan.
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Australia to sue ex-Gitmo inmate over book
By Amy Coopes (AFP) – July 21, 2011
SYDNEY — Australia on Thursday said it was preparing to sue ex-Guantanamo Bay inmate David Hicks for the royalties from his tell-all book, claiming they should be considered proceeds of crime.

Hicks was captured in Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks and spent five-and-a-half years in the US-run prison at Guantanamo Bay before being convicted by a military commission of providing material support for terrorism.

He returned to Australia in April 2007 and spent nine months in prison completing the commission's sentence before finally being freed, on strict conditions that he report to police and not give interviews for a year.

Now 35 and living in Sydney, Hicks broke his silence last year with an autobiography detailing his time in Guantanamo and the events that led up to his capture. It has reportedly sold 30,000 copies.

"The Director of Public Prosecutions has applied for a restraining order and a literary proceeds order," a government spokeswoman told AFP, adding the case would be heard in the Supreme Court of New South Wales state on August 3.

Formerly an outback cattleman and once dubbed the "Aussie Taliban", Hicks is not permitted to profit from his book under amendments to Australian proceeds of crime law made specifically to recognise his case.

The lawsuit has surprised some legal watchers, who say it will be a test of his conviction by the US Military Commission and could challenge the controversial quasi-judicial system's authority in Australia.

"It may well be that this takes twists and turns, and may even up possibilities for David Hicks to gain recognition that his offence was not one that should be recognised under Australian law," said constitutional lawyer George Williams.

"He may well (raise) issues going to the nature of his plea, whether duress was involved, whether it was a plea that should be recognised under the Australian legal system, and that could go to quite fundamental questions about the rule of law and the types of proceedings that can be properly recognised under Australian law," Williams told ABC radio.

Williams added he would not be surprised to see the case end up in the nation's top court, the High Court of Australia, to decide "some quite important matters of principle."

Hicks's memoir "Guantanamo: My Journey" describes "six years of hell" in the prison in Cuba, where he endured deprivation and witnessed acts of brutality.

He details paramilitary training in Afghanistan and Pakistan and involvement in conflicts in Kosovo and Kashmir, but claims he was a "political scapegoat" and said he never had extremist intentions.

"If I had been treated according to the law no one would ever have heard my name," Hicks said in a rare interview last December.

He said his training in Afghanistan was "very far removed from acts of terrorism such as bomb-making, hijacking or targeting civilians."

Hicks' father Terry, who was a vocal advocate for his son during the years of detention, said the lawsuit was a cynical move by the government.

"Here you have someone who the Americans have said there's no crime that's been committed against them and there's no international crime," Terry Hicks told The Australian newspaper.

"He's a person who signed a piece of paper to get out of a hellhole," he added. "I think it's the most disgusting thing."

Hicks' publishers Random House and Attorney-General Robert McClelland declined to comment.
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Ancient Silk Road continues to wait for World Heritage status
by Xinhua writer Yu Fei
BEIJING, July 21 (Xinhua) -- A timetable for the submittal of an application to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for adding historical sites along China's 2,000-year-old Silk Road to the organization's World Heritage List has been postponed numerous times, with the project having been in the works for over five years.

"Our plan to submit the final application in 2012 has fallen through, as several obstacles have caused our work to progress slowly," said Tang Wei, director of the Division for World Heritage of China's State Administration of Cultural Heritage.

The newest timetable, created during the second meeting of the Silk Road joint application project's coordination committee in Turkmenistan, states that the application should be submitted on Feb. 1, 2013.

However, Chinese officials are not optimistic about the new schedule.

"Every meeting concludes with the creation of a new schedule, but none of them have been fulfilled," said Tang.

China and several central Asian countries, including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, launched an effort to have the road listed back in 2006.

The six countries signed an agreement in Paris in October 2007 that determined the application plan and process. It also stated that historical sites along the Silk Road in China and central Asia would be first in line to apply for the World Heritage List.

"However, the central Asian countries lack expertise, funds and knowledge of cultural heritage protection and management. We still have a long way to go in meeting the list's international requirements," said Tang.

Jing Feng, chief of the Asia and Pacific section of the UNESCO World Heritage Center, said that such a large-scale multinational joint application is unprecedented.

"The joint world heritage application for the Silk Road provides a good opportunity for international and regional cooperation. However, the difficulties the project is facing are not small," said Jing.

"The Silk Road project involves a wide range of countries, and the situations in different countries are very complicated," Jing said.

"The UNESCO World Heritage Center can only help promote the application. The actual application work has to be accomplished by the applying countries, depending on inter-governmental coordination," said Jing.

Jing added that several of the central Asian countries involved have unstable political situations. These are all obstacles delaying the application process, he said.

Starting from the ancient city of Chang'an, now known as Xian, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, the ancient Silk Road extends to the Mediterranean region in the west and the Indian subcontinent in the south. The total length of the Silk Road is over 10,000 km, with 4,000 km located within China.

As the longest and most culturally influential trade route in the world, the Silk Road played an important role in bridging the East and West and creating opportunities for prosperity and wealth for the denizens of both regions.

China has added 48 historical sites along the Silk Road, located in the provinces and autonomous regions of Henan, Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia and Xinjiang, to the application waiting list. The six provinces and autonomous regions have compiled application documents and implemented a series of cultural heritage and environmental protection projects at the selected sites.

China's central government spends 80 million yuan (about 12.38 million U.S. dollars) every year to protect heritage sites along the Silk Road in its western Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. The government of Xian has invested 12.2 billion yuan toward a protection project for the Daming Palace, which is also on the application list.

Enthusiasm for the application has been spreading. The nations of Japan, the Republic of Korea, India, Nepal, Afghanistan and Iran have also joined the project. However, this has also complicated the application process, as Japan, Iran and India have been aiming to take a leading role in the process.

"Although the number of countries participating in the project has increased to 12, we have always believed that China and the five central Asian countries are the core members," Jing said.

"What I worry about is that if the joint application for China and the central Asian countries continues to be postponed, other countries might apply ahead of us," said Tang.
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Cross-border attack kills two in Pakistan
(AFP)
KHAR, Pakistan — Mortar shells fired from across the border in Afghanistan hit a house in Pakistan on Thursday killing two people and wounding several children, officials said.

They blamed Pakistani Taliban, saying the militants are hiding in eastern Afghanistan and launching across the border attacks on Pakistani troops.

Six people including three children were wounded.

In the latest attack, four mortar shells hit the house in Banda-Gai village in Mamoond area, 60 kilometres (40 miles) northwest of Khar, the main town of Bajaur tribal district.

"Two people including a woman were killed and six others were injured. Militants fired the mortars across the border from Afghan side," Tariq Khan, a senior administrative official, told AFP.

"They are Pakistani militants hiding there in Afghanistan."

Shah Naseem, another official, said the target of the attack was Pakistani troops at the border but they remained safe and the shells missed them.

Taliban and other Al-Qaeda-linked militants have carved out strongholds on both sides of the porous border. Afghanistan and Pakistan blame each other for several recent cross-border attacks.

On Tuesday, more than 20 mortar shells from Afghanistan killed four Pakistani soldiers and wounded two others in South Waziristan, part of the lawless tribal district.

Pakistani officials blamed the Afghan army for that attack.
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At Kabul airport, exodus of U.S. aid goes on
Washington Post By Jason Ukman 20/07/2011
Kabul’s international airport has long been seen as a virtual black hole for foreign currency, the perfect venue through which travelers can smuggle out hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid that was intended for development projects.

More than a year after The Washington Post first disclosed American concerns about the airport, a report released Wednesday by the U.S. special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction concludes that attempts to choke off the exodus of cash have been plagued by a hard-to-fathom set of obstacles.

The installation of currency-counting machines to better trace illicit funds at the airport — one of the centerpieces of a plan by the Department of Homeland Security — was delayed by seven months because U.S. and Afghan officials could not agree on where to put them.

Once the machines were installed, in April, Afghan customs officials began using them to count the cash but not to record serial numbers or to report financial data, necessary steps to determine whether the money being carried out of the country had been siphoned from aid flowing in.

It took eight months for U.S. and Afghan officials to agree on where to place signs at the airport informing passengers of the requirement to declare cash totalling more than $22,000. Americans officials were unable to get approval to place the signs at the entrance to the airport, so they are now located beyond the point where passengers pass through customs.

“As a result,” the report noted, “passengers are not informed of the requirement to declare the currency until it is too late.”

Meantime, VIPs are still allowed to leave the airport without having their cash scanned through the currency counters — one of the main points of concern for U.S. officials, who believe some businessmen are carrying bagfuls of illicit cash to the Persian Gulf and elsewhere.

Since 2002, Congress has appropriated more than $70 billion to implement security and development assistance projects in Afghanistan. There are growing concerns that much of that money is lost through waste, fraud and other abuses.

The airport represents only one of many potential loopholes when it comes to safeguarding U.S. cash, according to the new audit from the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, known as SIGAR.

The report found that U.S. agencies also are not fully coordinating their efforts to track American cash as it enters Afghanistan. The Afghan government has been reluctant to prosecute some financial crimes. And contractors are allowed to use unlicensed “hawala” money-transfer systems to pay subcontractors.

U.S. agencies have “limited visibility over U.S. cash that enters the Afghan economy — leaving it vulnerable to fraud and diversion to the insurgency,” SIGAR said in a statement.

The report also noted that Afghan President Hamid Karzai has banned U.S. advisers from working at Afghanistan’s central bank. In a statement attached to the report, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul wrote: “Treasury currently has no plans to re-engage at the Central Bank as the working conditions there for advisors have become hostile.”

No further explanation was provided.
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