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The Afghan misadventure
By Lionel Barber Financial Times
Nearly a decade after the invasion, it is time for the west to learn from its mistakes and craft a realistic exit strategy
In early 2010, I accepted an invitation to join the head of the RAF and several other senior British military officers on a lightning visit to Afghanistan. Over two days, our VIP group received more than a dozen briefings in Kabul, Kandahar and Camp Bastion, the desert strip now handling more planes than Luton airport.
Afghanistan’s biggest need: a flourishing economy
Washington Post By Robert B. Zoellick Saturday, July 23, 2011
American and NATO troops will soon be moving out of Afghanistan, and people are asking whether the Afghan army will be able to provide security. An equally important question is: Will the Afghan economy be able to provide for the country?
Afghanistan, US at Loggerheads on Strategic Deal: Spanta
Tolo news July 23, 2011
There is no guarantee that Afghanistan and the United States would reach a consensus on strategic partnership agreement between the two nations, Chief of Afghan National Security Council said on Saturday.
Report Finds Vast Waste in U.S. War Contracts
Panel Says $34 Billion Was Misspent In Iraq, Afghanistan in 10-Year Period
Wall Street Journal By NATHAN HODGE JULY 23, 2011
The U.S. has wasted or misspent $34 billion contracting for services in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a draft report by a bipartisan congressional panel, the most comprehensive effort so far to tally the overall cost of a decade of battlefield contracting in America's two big wars.
Over 100 militants killed in 3 days in Afghanistan
By Abdul Haleem
KABUL, July 23 (Xinhua) -- Afghan security forces backed by NATO-led troops, have eliminated more than 100 anti-government militants in the militancy-plagued Afghanistan over the past three days, officials said Saturday.
Clash leaves 8 insurgents dead in N. Afghanistan: Police
PUL-E-KHUMRI, Afghanistan, July 23 (Xinhua)-- Conflict between police and anti-government militants left eight militants dead in Baghlan province, 160 km north capital city Kabul, provincial police chief Abdul Rahman Rahimi said Saturday.
Anti-Taliban Tribesmen Kill Militants in Pakistan
VOA News July 23, 2011
Pakistani officials say anti-Taliban tribesmen have killed at least seven militants in the volatile northwestern part of the country near the Afghan border.
Since 9/11: Winning Canada, losing Afghanistan
Toronto Star By Charles Rex Arbogast 23/07/2011
Yours and mine weren’t the hearts and minds Canadian soldiers were aiming for when they first landed in Kandahar amid the stratospherically high hopes of early 2002.
A tough, bloody Afghan mission ends with Canadian legacy unclear
The Globe and Mail By CAMPBELL CLARK Friday, Jul. 22, 2011
OTTAWA - The last command team from the last Canadian Forces’ fighting mission in Afghanistan returned home to Canada on Friday. And as the task force’s ranking enlisted man, Chief Warrant Officer Gerald Blais, walked off the plane to hug his wife, he told her that this time he wouldn’t be going back.
The real AfPak deal
Inside al-Qaeda and the Taliban: Beyond Bin Laden and 9/11 by Syed Saleem Shahzad
Asia Times By Pepe Escobar 22/07/2011
Think of Saleem Shahzad as a made in Pakistan Predator drone carrying words, not bombs, flying all over AfPak. Instead of taking out "terrorists" - and the odd Pashtun wedding party - what his Hellfire missiles actually do is smash most assumptions and the concentric walls of disinformation disseminated in the West about AfPak.
Afghan de-miners put life at risk to safeguard citizens
by Farid Behbud, Abdul Haleem
KABUL, July 23 (Xinhua) -- "I know it is a risky job, but I would like to serve my people and save their lives from the hidden enemy -- land mines," said Baryali, an Afghan de-miner.
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The Afghan misadventure
By Lionel Barber Financial Times
Nearly a decade after the invasion, it is time for the west to learn from its mistakes and craft a realistic exit strategy
In early 2010, I accepted an invitation to join the head of the RAF and several other senior British military officers on a lightning visit to Afghanistan. Over two days, our VIP group received more than a dozen briefings in Kabul, Kandahar and Camp Bastion, the desert strip now handling more planes than Luton airport.
The verdict on the war effort was cautiously positive. Under the fresh leadership of US General Stanley McChrystal, Nato had recaptured the initiative against a resurgent Taliban; the “clear, hold and build” strategy of combining military gains with civil reconstruction was taking root in the violent southern province of Helmand. Encouraged, we asked a top Nato officer to define success in terms of the mission. The tongue-in-cheek response was instructive: “When Afghanistan becomes like any other normal third-world basket case.”
These words came back to me while reading Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles’ account of his time as British ambassador in Kabul and as special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Cowper-Coles, who served in these posts between 2007 and 2010, is a diplomat who speaks truth to power. Cables from Kabul describes in deliciously indiscreet prose his journey from wary loyalist to hardened sceptic about the Afghan venture. While his views may have been tinged by the disappointment of being passed over for one of the Foreign Office’s plum posts, his concluding judgments about poor policy, process and execution are devastating and worth quoting in full.
“The enterprise has proved to be a model of how not to go about such things, breaking all the rules of grand strategy: getting in without having any idea of how to get out; almost wilful misdiagnosis of the challenges; changing objectives, and no coherent or consistent plan; mission creep on an heroic scale; disunity of political and military command, also on an heroic scale; diversion of attention and resources [to Iraq] at a critical stage in the adventure; poor choice of local allies, who rapidly became more of a problem than a solution; unwillingness to co-opt the neighbours into the project, and thus address the mission-critical problem of external sanctuary and support; military advice, long on institutional self-interest, but woefully short on serious objective analysis of the problems of pacifying a broken country with largely non-existent institutions of government and security; weak political leadership, notably in subjecting to proper scrutiny militarily heavy approaches, and in explaining to the increasingly, and now decisively, sceptical domestic press and public the benefits of expending so much treasure and blood.”
The history of Afghanistan is littered with examples of misguided foreign interventions, from the massacre of British imperial forces at Maiwand in 1880 to the Soviet invasion and retreat a century later. The west’s latest foray into the Afghan morass began in 2001 as a punitive US-led mission to destroy the al-Qaeda network responsible for the September 11 attacks and topple the Taliban regime that harboured Osama bin Laden’s terrorist group. It has since morphed into an altogether more ambitious venture: to establish a client state with a semblance of democracy in a hostile region with no tradition of strong independent institutions or basic human rights.
Cowper-Coles excels in highlighting the muddled thinking that has bedevilled western efforts to stabilise Afghanistan ever since it served as a buffer state between British India and Imperial Russia. He argues persuasively that the war against the Taliban is unwinnable because it is at heart a Pashtun insurgency that enjoys broad support in the south of the country as well as covert sponsorship in neighbouring Pakistan. The best hope is that military pressure will create the conditions for a political settlement. Yet despite the courage shown by British forces, of which more later, a political solution to the conflict remains as elusive as ever.
The author has a keen eye for detail, capturing the frenetic atmosphere in Kabul where canapés and suicide bombers are part of normal diplomatic life. He has little time for “the post-conflict stabilisation industry” of officials, aid workers and private security contractors, many of whom have been transplanted from Baghdad and Basra to Kabul and remain addicted to the high allowances, generous leave and high adrenalin of working in a danger zone. Nor is he seduced by special forces, the lean bearded men who exist on one meal pack a day and can kill with their bare hands. He quotes a British woman diplomat on the amorous Australian contingent: “The odds are good but the goods are odd.”
The overall impression is a whirl of often pointless meetings, endless VIP visits – apologies, Sir Sherard – and scant time to cultivate local sources. The frustration becomes palpable when Cowper-Coles is promoted to envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan (by then dubbed “AfPak”), mirroring the appointment of Richard Holbrooke, Washington’s veteran diplomatic troubleshooter who died last year. His portrait of Holbrooke as a brilliant if incorrigible show-boater is deft, if slightly unfair. Whatever his irrepressible, thuggish manner (and his three mobile phones), Holbrooke was a man of principle unafraid of taking unpopular positions. His was an impossible task.
For those seeking to understand the origins of the west’s modern entanglement in Afghanistan, Peter Tomsen’s The Wars of Afghanistan offers deeper historical context. He covers the period after the Soviet invasion, when the US combined with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan’s ISI intelligence agency to finance, arm and train the Mujahideen resistance movement. A US Foreign Service officer of 30 years standing, Tomsen served as special envoy to Afghanistan charged with bringing together the main actors into a shadow government ready to assume power once the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul was toppled. He was close to all the main actors, including the then youthful Hamid Karzai, later elected Afghan president.
Tomsen recounts blood-curdling tales of corruption, double-dealing and murderous violence among the warring clans, each enjoying powerful foreign sponsors in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran. In the 1980s, the Mujahideen were often miscast in Washington as freedom fighters in the mould of the American revolutionary forces who defeated the British. The reality was that the US engaged in a deadly embrace with warlords, many of whom were radical Islamists such as bin Laden.
The story of how the Reagan administration allowed itself to be manipulated by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan in the cause of defeating the Soviets in Afghanistan is still best told in Steve Coll’s gripping Ghost Wars (2004). But Tomsen brings us up to date, focusing presciently on the fast-deteriorating relationship between Washington and Islamabad. He argues plausibly that the US has been hoodwinked by Pakistan, which has long used Afghanistan as a means of creating “strategic depth” against India and fomenting jihad against the west. He documents ISI support and protection for terrorist groups, many of which have found sanctuary in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas in the north. His call for a reassessment of US policy is especially relevant in the wake of the killing in May of bin Laden, who was traced to a safe house in Abbottabad, a major Pakistani army base. Scarcely anyone in Washington these days believes the ISI – or sections within the ISI – was unaware of bin Laden’s presence.
Tomsen’s second proposition is that the west’s approach to Afghanistan has been flawed from the outset. He does not go as far as some commentators in arguing that the US should have delayed the 2001 invasion to allow the Taliban to deal with the al-Qaeda in their midst. But he thinks that the heavy US military intervention has been counterproductive. Americanisation, he says, creates dependency and resentment among a proud if ethnically riven population. That has certainly been true of Karzai, an increasingly disillusioned figure. Tomsen shares Cowper-Coles’ view that western policy has been too controlled by the military and intelligence community, whose interests are often driven by short-term tactical gains rather than pursuing a long-term strategy for stabilising and then exiting the country.
The counter-argument is that under President Barack Obama such a strategy has finally taken shape. But the Afghan “surge”, with its emphasis on building up the Afghan army, protecting and winning the trust of the local population, and establishing proper governance in the provinces while bloodying the Taliban, still does not amount to a coherent long-term plan. This strategy is, after all, the stuff of Roman legions. Western patience – not to mention western budgets – will not stretch that far. By 2012, thousands of US troops will be returning home. Spending $120bn a year to stabilise Afghanistan is simply too heavy a burden to bear for a hobbled, inward-looking superpower.
The impression of a well-intentioned if futile venture is hard to dispel when reading Dead Men Risen, Toby Harnden’s account of the Welsh Guards’ campaign in Helmand. The author – a veteran Daily Telegraph foreign correspondent – offers a window on modern warfare, giving voice to young soldiers who are thrilled yet often traumatised by their experience on the front line. His portrait of the conflict is a sober reminder of how the Blair government badly underestimated the scale of the challenge in 2006 when it announced it was sending reinforcements to Afghanistan.
The word from Whitehall at the time was that the Helmand campaign would not amount to much. In fact, southern Afghanistan has been the theatre for the fiercest fighting British forces have encountered since the Korean war. The Taliban proved resourceful opponents, deploying deadly improvised explosive devices (IEDS) that have contributed to a British death toll standing at 377 troops, including officers, at the time of writing. Judging from the experience of the Welsh Guards, the effort was undermined at the outset by faulty intelligence and under-resourced units.
Harnden, echoing Cowper-Cowles, suggests that the British army was keen to deploy more units to Afghanistan after the humiliating retreat from Basra in Iraq the previous year. The implication is that the army was obliged, in military jargon, “to use it or lose it”. General Sir Richard Dannatt, commanding officer of the British army at the time, robustly denies this. Yet as a recent House of Commons select committee report shows, senior officers rapidly realised that they were under-equipped and under-prepared for the campaign, to the point where the general himself warned in an interview that the army risked being “broken” over the dual deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan.
At times, Harnden’s account is deeply depressing. While US forces gad about on helicopters, British grunts (and officers) are trapped in hell-holes, often outgunned and unable to evacuate the wounded. Despite the pride and professionalism of the ground troops, the impression is one of a post-imperial power struggling to keep pace with the Americans. The reader’s frustration grows as the military gains prove temporary and the absence of a coherent political strategy becomes obvious.
So what are the lessons to be drawn from this sorry affair? First, the west needs to set a higher bar for military intervention, especially when a punitive mission turns into a semi-permanent occupation. Second, the Nato alliance, if it is to continue to act with the US out of its traditional European theatre, must revisit the terms of engagement for its members. The current emphasis on unanimity dictates that all must in theory bless action but in practice numerous “caveats” allow countries to opt out of the hard stuff. (The Libya campaign is the latest example of Nato as tethered goat.)
Third, the west, principally the US and Britain, must restore the original goal of preventing Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for al-Qaeda. Inevitably that will mean an exit strategy that falls short of turning Afghanistan into a quasi-democratic client state. Finally, the west must confront the most serious long-term risk it faces in the region: an imploding Pakistan that threatens to slide into a radical Islamist nuclear-armed state exporting jihad to the rest of the world.
These precepts were visibly absent when President George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Afghanistan a little less than a decade ago. His act, while understandable in the aftermath of 9/11, grossly underestimated the cost and scale of the challenge. Nearly 10 years on, what looked like a clear-cut military victory over the Taliban has turned out to be another Afghan misadventure.
Lionel Barber is editor of the Financial Times
Cables From Kabul: The Inside Story of the West’s Afghanistan Campaign, by Sherard Cowper-Coles, Harper Press, RRP£25, 352 pages
The Wars of Afghanistan: Messianic Terrorism, Tribal Conflicts and the Failures of Great Powers, by Peter Tomsen, PublicAffairs, RRP£25, 912 pages
Dead Men Risen: The Welsh Guards and the Real Story of Britain’s War in Afghanistan, by Toby Harnden, Quercus, RRP£18.99, 640 pages
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Afghanistan’s biggest need: a flourishing economy
Washington Post By Robert B. Zoellick Saturday, July 23, 2011
American and NATO troops will soon be moving out of Afghanistan, and people are asking whether the Afghan army will be able to provide security. An equally important question is: Will the Afghan economy be able to provide for the country?
Without a viable economy, there is little prospect of Afghanistan ever paying for its own security; little hope of its government gaining legitimacy; and not much chance of creating opportunity to counter the insurgency.
Afghanistan’s economy is at risk of a “negative multiplier”: A withdrawal of funds that precipitates an abrupt slowdown. Afghanistan has been growing strongly, at an annual rate of more than 10 percent, over the past five years. But this performance has been fueled by massive inflows of international military spending and aid. From 2010 to 2011, military spending was estimated at more than $100 billion, while spending on aid could be as high as $15.4 billion. Total gross domestic product is about $16.3 billion. As the troops withdraw, support will shrink. Private consumption is closely linked to military spending and aid.
Afghanistan is a poor country that can ill afford an economic reversal, especially when it faces rising security challenges. It languishes near the bottom of development rankings, placing 155th on the U.N. Human Development Index in 2010 for its performance in health, education, income and other indicators. The withdrawal of military spending and external aid will hit hardest in construction and services, particularly transportation, distribution and security.
Afghanistan’s partners need to anticipate the effects of this spending drawdown to better soften the blow. Given tight budgets, Afghanistan will need more efficient aid combined with proven delivery mechanisms to ensure that every dollar helps the Afghan people.
First, militaries and donors could do more to increase spending within Afghanistan. Total aid to Afghanistan last year was equivalent to 91 percent of its economy, but most military and other aid was spent outside the country. Even if these amounts decline, they will still be big numbers for the Afghan economy. Redirecting more funding to local contractors and suppliers so that it is spent in Afghanistan and employs more Afghans could have a significant softening effect.
Second, more aid should go through the Afghan government. Only 15 percent of aid is expended through the government’s budget. Connecting aid to the budget can raise the share of contracts won by local businesses. Donors will, of course, need to build capacity within the Afghan government, including rigorous anti-corruption safeguards. Yet the able Finance Ministry has used financing through the budget to increase transparency, fiduciary oversight and supervision of other ministries. The World Bank and the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund deliver assistance through the budget in partnership with Afghan ministries. Afghans cannot take control of their destiny if donors bypass the government. Development does not work without local ownership.
Third, Afghans can help themselves if they can pay for more themselves. Current trends show that domestic revenue could increase 16 percent a year, climbing to around 13 percent of GDP by 2019, largely driven by progress in customs reforms, a new value-added tax in 2014 and collection of mining revenue. But if external support declines rapidly, the gap between money coming in and going out will grow. That gap will have to be filled for a period by foreign donors.
Donors can support all these objectives by recommitting to the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund. The fund is financing many of the programs that represent success stories, including the National Solidarity Program, a community-driven development initiative; other successful programs include education for boys and girls; rural access roads; a basic health program; and a credible public financial management system.
Fourth, more needs to be done to increase private-sector investment. Afghanistan ranks 167th in the World Bank’s Doing Business report. Beyond security and corruption, obstacles that businesses face include expensive and unreliable power, no proper land registration system and weak legal structures. Yet Afghanistan has a wealth of resources in the largely neglected, underfunded mining sector. With private investment to help fund exploration, improve capacity and build appropriate infrastructure, mining, oil and gas could boost the country’s economic development. Agriculture can improve on its traditional place as Afghanistan’s economic mainstay; more investment will be needed in irrigation and across the production chain to get produce to domestic and foreign markets.
Afghans have made real, measurable economic progress in recent years. We need to build on that progress — not abandon it. The security transition strategy needs a complementary strategy for economic transition. An army without an economy is doomed. A precipitous and unplanned economic withdrawal will throw away gains paid for with blood. Afghanistan needs to stand on its own. But Afghanistan’s partners need to plan now — together, coherently and with the government — for how the country will reach that point.
The writer is president of the World Bank.
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Afghanistan, US at Loggerheads on Strategic Deal: Spanta
Tolo news July 23, 2011
There is no guarantee that Afghanistan and the United States would reach a consensus on strategic partnership agreement between the two nations, Chief of Afghan National Security Council said on Saturday.
The Chief of National Security Council, Dr Rangin Dadfar Spanta and Foreign Minister Zalmai Rasoul were called over by the House of Representatives to update parliamentarians on the ongoing talks about a strategic agreement between Afghanistan and the US.
Mr Spanta told lawmakers that Afghan President Hamid Karzai and US President Barack Obama are still discussing the strategic agreement through video conferences.
Legalisation of US presence in Afghanistan is one of the top issues emphasised by the Afghan government, Spanta said.
The government also insists that all inmates in US-controlled prisons should be handed over to the Afghan government and there should be assurance that Afghan security forces will be financially supported and equipped before the strategic agreement is signed, he said.
Mr Spanta said the United States is suggesting to have an enduring presence based on an invitation from Afghans, but Afghan government strongly opposes it because the US is staying in Afghanistan to help resolve security challenges.
Serious fight against terrorism and a stop on searches of houses of Afghans in an arbitrary manner are part of what the Afghan government suggests that should be considered in the deal, he said.
"The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan believes that the deal should not be a statement, but a contract and agreement," Mr Spanta said.
He said one of the things that the Afghan government and the US have agreed upon is that the agreement will hold its validity until the end of 2024 and after that both nations should decide whether to extend or terminate it.
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Report Finds Vast Waste in U.S. War Contracts
Panel Says $34 Billion Was Misspent In Iraq, Afghanistan in 10-Year Period
Wall Street Journal By NATHAN HODGE JULY 23, 2011
The U.S. has wasted or misspent $34 billion contracting for services in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a draft report by a bipartisan congressional panel, the most comprehensive effort so far to tally the overall cost of a decade of battlefield contracting in America's two big wars.
The three-year investigation comes from the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, which was established by Congress in 2008.
Its final report, expected to be sent to Capitol Hill in the next few weeks, lays out in detail the failure of federal agencies to properly manage and oversee grants and contracts set to exceed a total of $206 billion by the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.
The draft report, which was viewed by The Wall Street Journal, identifies myriad instances of projects that were poorly conceived. They include a $300 million U.S. Agency for International Development agricultural development project with a "burn rate" of $1 million a day that paid Afghan farmers to work in their own fields.
It flags diversion of funds to insurgents, such as a subcontractor on a community-development project in eastern Afghanistan paying 20% of their contract to insurgents for "protection." And it touches on cases where the host government was unable to sustain a U.S.-funded project, like a costly water treatment plant in Nasiriya, Iraq, that produced murky water and lacked steady electric power and the construction of an Afghan military academy that would cost $40 million to operate and maintain, far beyond what the Afghan government budget could afford.
Around 75% of the total contract dollars spent to support operations in Iraq and Afghanistan has gone to just 23 major contractors, but the federal work force assigned to oversee those contracts hasn't grown in parallel with the massive growth in wartime expenditures.
The report warns that the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops and assistance poses the risk of "massive new wastes of money," because both the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan may be poorly prepared to manage projects begun with U.S. taxpayer funds.
Clark Irwin, a spokesman for the panel, declined to comment on the report's total preliminary estimate of wasteful spending, saying the commission was "working on a finalizing an estimate of the range."
Mr. Irwin said the commission had publicly discussed a "conservative estimate" that 10%—or around $20 billion—of the total was likely wasted. That doesn't include losses from unsustainable projects that may be abandoned in the future, or fall victim to fraud. Potential losses, he said, "may be significantly higher" than $20 billion.
The U.S. government depends heavily on what it calls "contingency contracting" to support the war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hired hands do everything from cleaning latrines and serving food on military bases to maintaining and operating sophisticated military equipment. The government has also spent heavily on contracted reconstruction projects, building roads, repairing schools and refurbishing power plants.
The report says the U.S. at one point employed more than 209,000 people in Iraq and Afghanistan. That figure outstrips the total number of U.S. troops currently serving in combat: 46,000 in Iraq and 99,000 in Afghanistan.
The Department of Defense, the U.S. agency that has spent the most on battlefield contracting, didn't respond to requests to comment.
Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, said the figures discussed by the commission were in line with his agency's audits of Iraq reconstruction projects.
The 10% estimate of potential waste, he said, was supported by rigorous audits, but estimating losses from poorly sustained projects, he added, was "difficult to measure."
The U.S. government's controversial reliance of private security contractors has been another focus of the commission. The report says the inappropriate use of contract security has at times inadvertently undermined the aims of U.S. foreign policy.
Private security guards have been the most problematic aspect of wartime contracting. In Iraq, a 2007 shooting incident involving security contractor Blackwater (now called Xe Services LLC) sparked a political and diplomatic crisis. Senate investigators last year found evidence that the mostly Afghan force of private security guards the U.S. military depends on to protect convoys and bases in Afghanistan often had ties to criminals, insurgents and local warlords.
The draft report calls for a major overhaul of the way the U.S. employs contractors in wars and crises overseas.
"Delay and inactivity are not good options, for there will be a next contingency, whether the crisis takes the form of overseas hostilities or response to a declared national emergency like a mass-casualty terror attack or natural disaster," the draft says.
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Over 100 militants killed in 3 days in Afghanistan
By Abdul Haleem
KABUL, July 23 (Xinhua) -- Afghan security forces backed by NATO-led troops, have eliminated more than 100 anti-government militants in the militancy-plagued Afghanistan over the past three days, officials said Saturday.
In a new development, eighty anti-government insurgents have been killed in Paktika province 155 km east of Afghan capital Kabul over the past three days, a statement released by provincial administration on Saturday said. "The combined operation of Afghan and international troops have left 80 armed militants dead in Paktika province over the past three days," the statement added.
According to the statement, the combined operation is covering Marizko and Armai villages in Sar Rowzah district with the objective to ensure security there.
The operation is continuing with the support of air power, it further said.
Spokesman for Paktika's provincial administration's spokesman Mukhils Afghan in the statement emphasized that there were no casualties on civilians and security personnel during the operation.
Taliban militants fighting Afghan and NATO-led troops have yet to make comment.
In a similar statement released by Helmand's provincial administration Saturday said that Afghan troops backed by NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) eliminated 16 anti- government militants during an overnight operation in Taliban hotbed Helmand province 555 km south of Afghan capital Kabul. "Afghan and ISAF security forces conducted a special operation on insurgents and drug traffickers co-center in Baghran district of Helmand province. Operation resulted in killing of 16 insurgents," the press statement said.
Also on Friday night police raided a Taliban hideout in Baghlan province 160 km north of Afghan capital Kabul killing eight insurgents, provincial police chief Abdul Rahman Rahimi said Saturday.
"Police raided Taliban hideout in Dand-e-Ghori district Friday night as a result eight rebels were killed," Rahimi told Xinhua.
Taliban outfit has yet to make comment on the claim.
Spring and summer have been traditionally regarded as " fighting season" in Afghanistan as warring sides attempt to consolidate their positions before falling winter in the conflict- ridden country.
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Clash leaves 8 insurgents dead in N. Afghanistan: Police
PUL-E-KHUMRI, Afghanistan, July 23 (Xinhua)-- Conflict between police and anti-government militants left eight militants dead in Baghlan province, 160 km north capital city Kabul, provincial police chief Abdul Rahman Rahimi said Saturday.
"Police raided Taliban hideout in Dand-e-Ghori district Friday night as a result eight rebels were killed," Rahimi told Xinhua.
One insurgent was injured and another made captive during the operation lasted for a while, the police chief further said.
There were no casualties on the police side and civilians, he stressed.
Taliban militants fighting Afghan and NATO-led troops have yet to make comment.
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Anti-Taliban Tribesmen Kill Militants in Pakistan
VOA News July 23, 2011
Pakistani officials say anti-Taliban tribesmen have killed at least seven militants in the volatile northwestern part of the country near the Afghan border.
Several tribesmen were wounded in the gunbattles, which took place in the Kurram tribal region.
Also Saturday, gunmen on at least one motorcycle shot and killed five workers at a construction site for a mosque in southwestern Pakistan.
The incident occurred in Baluchistan province, which has faced an Islamist militancy, a local insurgency and sectarian violence between majority Sunnis and minority Shi'ite Muslims.
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Since 9/11: Winning Canada, losing Afghanistan
Toronto Star By Charles Rex Arbogast 23/07/2011
Yours and mine weren’t the hearts and minds Canadian soldiers were aiming for when they first landed in Kandahar amid the stratospherically high hopes of early 2002.
But as the last of our combat troops trickle home nearly a decade later, few would dispute it is Canada they won. Death by death, injury by injury, the hard slog of the longest war transformed not only the Canadian Forces, but the way Canadians see them.
Afghanistan remains, at best, an open question. At worst, a lost cause.
But the “new” Canadian army — bloodied, battle-hardened and better equipped than at any point since the Cold War — occupies the Canadian consciousness in a way old hands can’t remember since the 1950s.
It’s not just a question of resources, though the money has freely flowed. Canada’s annual military spending has surged by half since 9/11 — we now rank 14th globally in military outlay, with a 2010 infusion of $22.8 billion, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
But arguably more significant, the national embrace of the dust-encrusted rank-and-file: the Highway of Heroes, the Red Fridays, the yellow stickers on cars; the lone bagpiper at the ramp ceremonies that accompanied 157 soldiers’ coffins home.
“Our soldiers are not outsiders anymore. They are embedded in Canada’s consciousness in a way we haven’t seen since the Korean War,” said Col. (Ret.) Brian MacDonald, senior analyst with the Conference of Defence Associations.
“That connection was lost around 1966, when the military dropped its presence on Canadian campuses. The Forces lost contact with the people, to a large extent.
“But now we have a Highway of Heroes running into the heart of our cities. And when the motorcades go by, people line the bridges. It’s a striking change.”
As they come home, the Canadian Forces also find themselves kitted as well, or better, than many of their NATO peers. A self-contained, modernized army, replete with the once-missing pieces —Chinook helicopters and a fleet of four massive CC-177 Globemaster aircraft — for whatever comes next.
What might that be? And what sort of work might they do when they get there? It depends on whom you ask.
To the military’s sharpest critics, the legacy of these last 10 years includes an acute absence of debate as the army shed its “peacekeeping” image.
“I view it as a fight for the soul of Canada and the way we view the world — and the fight continues,” said Steven Staples, who has locked horns with Canada’s military brass from his perch as president of the Ottawa-based Rideau Institute, an independent research and advocacy group.
“The abandonment of peacekeeping arguably started pre-9/11, but it has certainly been stuck in the basement ever since.
“But the massive increase in Canada’s military spending has come with a massive expansion of the military’s political power in Ottawa. . . There is plenty more money and power in play, but not nearly enough questions about what we want the Canadian Forces to be doing on Canada’s behalf.”
Staples readily acknowledges Canadians are now “more aware and supportive of soldiers.” But he suggests the transformation came about, in part, by design, courtesy of the Department of National Defence headquarters in Ottawa.
“I’m not saying it is a façade. There is a very real increase in people attending Nov. 11 ceremonies. But the military spends millions in pubic relations campaigns and that, in part, is what delivers its political clout. So how much of this is a legitimate shift and how much of it is very well-crafted emblems for the media to cover. I’m not sure.”
One especially outspoken critic is Col. (Ret.) Pat Stogran, who led the very first mission to Kandahar in 2002. Today, he doubts the Canadian Forces have actually changed as much as some believe. Neither, he says, has Canada.
When Stogran landed in early 2002, the Kandahar Airfield that would eventually grow into a veritable NATO city, with Tim Hortons double-doubles and a ball-hockey rink, was a burned-out wasteland mired in ankle-deep dust.
But nearby Kandahar City was then a place where foreign journalists could tread unhindered, even after nightfall. One encountered grinning Pashtun tribesmen everywhere, not only delighted to be free of austere Taliban rule but anticipating their lives were about to be transformed for the better by these welcome outsiders.
Stogran, who was ousted from his later position as Canada’s Veterans Ombudsman for being too adamant on behalf of vets, returned to Kandahar three months ago as a civilian. He came away with deep misgivings — convinced Canadians have effectively “lost” the war, yet immensely proud of what rank-and-file soldiers made of the impossible task they were handed.
“The units on the ground did tremendously well — they never lost a single tactical engagement. They truly are worthy of every scrap of praise Canadians can offer,” Stogran told the Star.
“But in my view, the generals let down the troops with a flawed strategy. Instead of focusing on building up Kandahar, economically and diplomatically, we ended up just blindly going in and started whacking Taliban.”
Canada’s charismatic former top soldier, Gen. Rick Hillier, is widely regarded as the key to the Canadian Forces rebranding. The shoot-from-the-hip Newfoundlander seemed, midway through the 9/11 decade, to have achieved a rare fusion with Canadian popular opinion.
But Hillier’s hawkish rhetoric — like his famed denunciation of the Taliban as “scumbags and murderers” — came with a battle posture that “did more to disadvantage Canadian Forces in the longer term anything else,” said Stogran.
“Hillier lost the war with Vietnam-style tactics. We should have been there like a police force. We didn’t need tanks, we needed to hound CCM to build a bicycle factory and create some jobs. Instead, we ended up clawing over and killing a lot of Afghan civilians in the rush to get at the bad guys.
“The U.S. will declare victory, undoubtedly, and pull out in 2014. And by 2016, probably, the bubble will break like Saigon. It’s a travesty.”
There was a time, Stogran admits, when he resented the “Canadian peacekeeper” label, because the frontline-troop reality in past missions to places such as Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda never matched the myth.
“I hated the word ‘peacekeeper’ when I got back from Bosnia because it implied some sort of bloodless offering with no real danger.. . . It was war, and yet a soldier injured in the line of duty was supposedly no more than an industrial accident,” said Stogran.
“But when I left Afghanistan, I found myself with a new appreciation for our ‘peacekeeping’ legacy because what we were facing in Kandahar, I would submit, is not really all that different.
“That’s where the lessons learned are going to be important. Because in this new security environment we live in, if the future is about winning hearts and minds, Canada has the potential to be a superpower. As long as we don’t believe in flexing our muscles to kill people.”
The other paradox throughout the 9/11 years has been access — an unprecedented flow of journalists to the front lines, even as the flow of information tightened with each passing year.
Simple questions that once prompted immediate answers began to drag out into multi-day delays, as public affairs officers on the ground passed the query up the food chain for approval from Ottawa.
It’s a dynamic familiar to Sharon Hobson, one of Canada’s longest-serving defence correspondents, who has written for Jane’s Defence Weekly since 1985. Hobson, who sits on the advisory council of the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, says the information flow from DND HQ has tightened to a trickle.
OPSEC — or operational security — is often cited when reporters get shut down on basic queries. But unlike many of Canada’s NATO allies, the long shadow of OPSEC extends to the wounded, with the extent of injuries in recent years a de facto state secret.
U.S. forces, by contrast, update casualty counts once a month, while the U.K. freshens its tally of killed and injured in Afghanistan every two weeks. Canada is not expected to reveal its number of wounded for 2011 until early next year. And we may never know how badly the survivors were hurt.
OPSEC also stretches like a blanket over Joint Task Force 2, Canada’s special forces, a unit that is widely believed to have seen more action since 9/11 than any other. But the elite team, which doubled in size to approximately 600, has never been glimpsed in the field. Or rather, those among us who’ve seen them have never been allowed, under the terms of embedding, to write about it.
Says Hobson: “Of course we all understand the obvious need for secrecy when it comes to special forces. But what about six months or a year later, when the mission is long over? We should know the kinds of things they are engaging in. It can be done because other countries do it. We just don’t do it here.
“Now with the embedding program, the irony is there are more reporters than ever getting to know something about the military — but you can’t get detailed information like before. You rarely get interviews. Instead, what you get is an email with bullet points approved by the Privy Council Office and very general. We used to be let in on the big picture. Now you just get fragments.”
Which, argues Hobson, is not merely an occupational annoyance. Our ability as citizens to weigh in on Canada’s military future is at risk.
“The Canadian public needs to know what the Canadian military is doing in its name. We, as citizens, have a responsibility to make decisions,” she says.
“But that depends on getting the information. If Canadians don’t even know about it, they can’t think about it, let alone ask questions.”
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A tough, bloody Afghan mission ends with Canadian legacy unclear
The Globe and Mail By CAMPBELL CLARK Friday, Jul. 22, 2011
OTTAWA - The last command team from the last Canadian Forces’ fighting mission in Afghanistan returned home to Canada on Friday. And as the task force’s ranking enlisted man, Chief Warrant Officer Gerald Blais, walked off the plane to hug his wife, he told her that this time he wouldn’t be going back.
“Done,” he told her.
For Canada’s military, the day was a coming home where the end of a tough mission was the most important thing, even if the mission’s legacy remains unclear. After more than five years of combat in Kandahar, the outcome is now in the hands of other troops from other nations, and Afghans. But the hot, tough and bloody job of the Canadian Forces combat mission is done.
Children jumped up and down, waiting for their fathers and mothers to walk off the plane; families waited anxiously for soldiers, some of whom had been gone for as long as 11 months.
Friday’s return home was, in a sense, a way to mark the return home of the Kandahar combat mission. The last Canadian commander overseeing combat troops there, Brigadier-General Dean Milner, flew in on a Canadian Forces Airbus with more than 100 of his team. An CF-18 fighter escorted them into Ottawa, where the top brass, Defence Minister Peter MacKay, and anxious family waited to greet them.
“It’s a bit of a timeless scene, I think: soldiers returning from active service and the overwhelming sense of joy and relief as they come off the plane and see their loved ones,” Mr. MacKay said. “You can’t help but feel very proud as a Canadian to recognize that these are exceptional citizens that do so much for our country, that do so at great sacrifice to themselves, to their families.”
Brig.-Gen. Milner steered clear of answering all the questions about whether the return home is bittersweet when the battle rages on, and the baton has been passed to the American troops taking over Kandahar.
“We feel good, we feel proud of the accomplishments,” he said. “We definitely flattened the fighting season which normally happens this time of the year and a little bit earlier on [and] assisted with governance and development. ”
“Our goal was to set up the Americans for success, and we feel very good about what we accomplished.
There has been talk of a new, more substantial memorial to the mission in Afghanistan, but Lieutenant-General Peter Devlin, suggested that the real, permanent commemoration will wait: there are still 950 troops heading to Afghanistan as trainers, and the army is conscious that its men and women will still be on a mission there, he said.
Mr. MacKay, like Prime Minister Stephen Harper, argued that the mission’s accomplishment was in the suppression of the export of terrorism from Afghanistan, and more hope from development projects. “I don’t despair,” he said.
Canada’s top general, Chief of Defence Staff Walter Natynczyk, cited things like the transformation of an al-Qaeda training site in Kandahar, the Tarnak Farms, into an experimental farm, or the re-opening of 41 schools in the province’s Dand district, as signs of real progress. The troops are proud of their accomplishments, he said, but the overall legacy will take years to judge.
“When you talk about legacy with the military, it always takes a very long time,” he said. “I think it’s going to take a few years before we find out how things unfold.”
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The real AfPak deal
Inside al-Qaeda and the Taliban: Beyond Bin Laden and 9/11 by Syed Saleem Shahzad
Asia Times By Pepe Escobar 22/07/2011
Think of Saleem Shahzad as a made in Pakistan Predator drone carrying words, not bombs, flying all over AfPak. Instead of taking out "terrorists" - and the odd Pashtun wedding party - what his Hellfire missiles actually do is smash most assumptions and the concentric walls of disinformation disseminated in the West about AfPak.
Pluto Press - as an act of compassion - should mail a copy of this book to self-billed counter-insurgency ace and now Central Intelligence Agency chief General David Petraeus, not to mention his coterie of sycophant boots not on the ground as well as "terrorism experts" of the comfy think-tank variety - so they would actually have a clue about what's really been happening on the ground.
[Disclosure: Saleem Shahzad was a colleague and a friend. We worked in tandem immediately after 9/11 - he was in Karachi, I was in Islamabad/Peshawar. Afterwards, we met on numerous times in Karachi. Oddly enough, we never traveled to the tribal areas or to Afghanistan together - I always used other fixers, Punjabi or Pashtun.]
It was after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 that Saleem - Asia Times Online's Pakistan bureau chief - staked his ground as the foremost reporter investigating the labyrinth of the Pakistani tribal areas. By one of those tragic quirks of history, his book was launched only three weeks after the targeted assassination of Osama bin Laden in the Abbottabad raid; and roughly a week before Saleem himself was kidnapped, tortured and murdered. No, he was not killed by "al-Qaeda"; as the investigation about his murder in Pakistan is going nowhere (and will stay there), still the insider bet is on a not so rogue faction of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), with clearance at the highest levels.
No pain, no gain Even for those familiar with Pakistan, the tribal areas and Afghanistan, reading this book can be as unforgiving as a trek in the Hindu Kush - especially because of the effort of keeping up with a dizzying cast of characters which Saleem himself, in a nifty twist, bills as "al-Qaeda's version of One Thousand and One Nights".
So here we have Saleem as a Pakistani Sir Richard Burton, translating to the world the hardcore adventures of essential players such as the ruthless Uzbek warlord Tahir Yaldochiv and his private army of 2,500 throat-slitting jihadis; or Captain Kurram and his elder brother Major Haroon - sterling examples of middle cadres who resigned from the Pakistani armed forces and found their true mission, revamping the Taliban's Medieval guerrilla tactics by applying the lessons of the Vietnam War.
Haroon, for instance, correctly evaluated that the Pakistani Army's support for the Afghan Taliban has always been purely tactical - part of Islamabad's official policy of creating "strategic depth" against India; same about the support for the Lashkar-e-Taiba militia, which is a convenient Pakistani tool in a proxy war against India.
It was Haroon who recruited most of the best and most ideologically committed young warriors for the already legendary - in AfPak terms - 313 Brigade of commander Ilyas Kashmiri.
And it was Haroon who conceptualized the killer strategy of severing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO's) supply lines of containers traveling from the southern port city of Karachi - the lifeline of the occupation, 80% going to the Khyber Pass and 20% going to Kandahar.
And if Haroon is to be believed, next year is going to be hell on earth. He told Saleem in Karachi that this is when the Mahdi will finally reappear, "to command the Muslim forces in the Middle East and defeat the Western forces led by the Antichrist (Dajjal)".
Burning of the midnight lamp The staggering amount of information contained in this book can keep Hindu Kush addicts awake for years. Among other lapis lazuli (gem) items, one learns:
How al-Qaeda managed to unite two tribes, the Mehsud (the "panthers" of the 19th century Great Game) and the Wazir (the "wolves") to get complete control of the South Waziristan tribal area - which was originally no more than a sort of Taliban outpost of Helmand province, under the influence of the Afghan Taliban; and how al-Qaeda preferred "looser" North Waziristan to establish its international headquarters.
How this was the game plan for the reconstruction of al-Qaeda and the Taliban after 9/11.
How the legendary Jalaluddin Haqqani - always showing his vanity by dying his hair and beard, always in close contact with the ISI - never ceased to be the leading Taliban warlord in North Waziristan; and how the ISI told him that their offensives against him were only for show.
How Haqqani's son Sirajuddin in North Waziristan, and Baitullah Mehsud in South Waziristan, configured themselves as trusted lieutenants of Taliban leader Mullah Omar; and how Sirajuddin became the most dangerous Afghan Taliban commander fighting NATO.
How a top al-Qaeda ideologue, the Egyptian Sheikh Essa al-Misri, "sold" their strategy to the leaders of the tribal areas.
How the Taliban's major comeback in their 2006 spring offensive - when Washington assumed they were dead and buried - was also an al-Qaeda success story, turbocharged by roughly 4,000 foreign fighters, Chechens, Uighurs, Uzbeks and a sprinkling of Arabs.
How the Islamic State of North Waziristan and the Islamic State of South Waziristan managed to congregate, in the North, over 10,000 jihadis from Karachi, Lahore, Quetta and Peshawar, plus 12,000 tribals - of which 3,000 were Afghans and 2,000 were foreign; and in the South, 13,000 tribals, including a few hundred Uzbeks and a sprinkling of Arabs. Thus Mullah Omar could start counting on an army of at least 40,000 warriors.
How Omar's top emissary, Mullah Dadullah - profiting from close contacts with the Sunni Iraqi resistance - sold to the tribals the concept of suicide bombing as a legitimate form of jihad.
But most of all, how al-Qaeda "fashioned a parallel entity, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (Pakistani Taliban TTP), to reinforce its positions in the natural fortresses of seven of Pakistan's tribal agencies".
Few may know that the TTP were created in fact as a diversionist tactic - so al-Qaeda could carry on its caliphate-driven ideology of global jihad, which was never Mullah Omar's wish (he basically wants foreign armies out of Afghanistan). The Afghan Taliban though could not condemn the TTP, because they were helping Afghans fight against the US/NATO forces.
The ultimate tribal franchise That's in fact the central thesis of the book - that al-Qaeda "cloned" the Afghan Taliban into the Pakistani Taliban - out of myriad militant groups - so they could carry on an Islamic revolution inside Pakistan through an al-Qaeda franchise; as Saleem puts it, "The first-ever popular local and fully tribal supported al-Qaeda franchise in the world." Some in the Pentagon and Langley may have gotten a glimpse of the big picture - but as far as AfPak is concerned, a bit too late.
The term AfPak itself was coined by the late Obama envoy Richard Holbrooke in March 2008. The problem is he was beaten to the punch, by a long mile, by al-Qaeda itself, as early as 2002.
Saleem convincingly argues, based on his interviews with key players, that had al-Qaeda not conceived "a battle plan against two hostile armies [NATO in Afghanistan and the Pakistani army in Pakistan], its guerrilla operations in Afghanistan would have died down by the end of 2002 and its retreating forces would have been rounded up and decimated by early 2003".
That's exactly the same impression I got on the ground in Afghanistan in the autumn of 2002. And the fact is that by late 2008, all seven of Pakistan's tribal agencies were under the influence of al-Qaeda.
Al-Qaeda was betting that Washington would eventually surrender to some kind of accommodation with the historic Taliban, Afghan-based, in conjunction with the Pakistani army; in fact the situation would somehow be back to what it was in the mid-1990s. But this time the Pakistani Taliban would be there to spoil the party - and remind the Afghans that jihad was not confined to Afghanistan, it had to go global.
What al-Qaeda certainly did not count on was that Washington might cunningly seduce the Taliban with some sort of power-sharing agreement (that's more or less where we are now). One doubts whether Mullah Omar will go for jihad when he can have his say in Kabul, not to mention getting a cut of the transit fees in case the US$10 billion saga of the TAP (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan) pipeline ever reaches its conclusion.
Even if al-Qaeda did not anticipate the massive US drone war over the tribal areas, it could not but rejoice over the humanitarian crisis the all-out droning provoked - as over 1 million people have been displaced in five of the seven tribal agencies, and for that these 1 million and their extended families will fight Americans forever.
Saleem argues that the drone war has forced al-Qaeda to entrench itself even deeper in the Hindu Kush and its connected mountains; so while it cannot prevail in the deserts of Yemen or Iraq, or in the jungles of Somalia, it does in the tribal areas, alongside a Pakistani Taliban "which roams as free as the mountain eagle can survive and fight".
The American eagle might entertain different ideas - taking this as the definitive proof that the only way to "win" the war in the tribal areas is to literally drone them to death.
Where's Osama? It's interesting to note what Saleem does not say about Osama bin Laden. It's implied that Osama and current al-Qaeda Ayman al-Zawahiri, along with a few hundred jihadis, at least after they escaped Tora Bora in late 2001, were holed up in Shawal, literally a no-man's land at the crossroads of eastern Afghanistan, South Waziristan and North Waziristan.
Then Osama disappears from the narrative - after all he was indeed "invisible" for years. He reappears after the 2007 Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) debacle in Islamabad - al-Qaeda's push to open a front in the capital itself - when, according to Saleem, he appointed Abu Obaida al-Misri to organize a revolt in Pakistan and make the country ungovernable.
If Washington's Abbottabad narrative is to be believed - and that's a major if - Osama at the time was already living in Abbottabad and perfectly up to date with everything going on in Pakistan.
Saleem subscribes to the al-Qaeda thesis that the 9/11 attack was organized to lure the US into an Afghan trap; the Pentagon for its part used 9/11 as the perfect excuse to implant itself in the crucial crossroads of Central and South Asia; and there's always the possibility that 9/11 was allowed to happen, so the Pentagon could expand on what later was codified as the Full Spectrum Dominance doctrine.
As much as Osama is relatively absent from the narrative - reflecting his role over these past years as a symbol - the real star is indeed Ilyas Kashmiri, whom Saleem, and no one else, interviewed. (See Al-Qaeda's guerrilla chief lays out strategy Asia Times Online, October 15, 2009.) Rising among a series of changeable operational jihadis, each with his modus operandi, Kashmiri impressed the al-Qaeda ideologues so much that he was promoted to head of the military committee and charged to expand the jihad to Central Asia.
He sees the central theater of war always as Afghanistan and the Pakistani tribal areas, until the jihad in Central Asia - and in India - picks up momentum. What's extraordinary is that this was the ISI's plan of 30 years ago; building a theater of war to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan and have Kashmiris be self-determined in India. It's no less than another major historical irony that a Kashmiri now is in charge of the same plan - but for al-Qaeda's global jihad purposes.
A case can be made that Saleem attributes larger than life powers to al-Qaeda. As the book ends, he writes that al-Qaeda's aim its to exhaust the West and then announce victory in Afghanistan. As much as the Afghan Taliban - and not al-Qaeda - are running rings around NATO full time, the West will not leave Afghanistan; because of Pipelineistan; because of those juicy military bases so close to Russia and China; because of NATO's expansion aims; because of so much mineral wealth to be exploited.
And when Saleem relays al-Qaeda's objectives, that's even more far-fetched; "al-Qaeda next aims to occupy the promised land of ancient Khurasan, with its boundaries stretching from all the way from Central Asia to Khyber Paktoonkhwa through Afghanistan, and then expand the theater of war to India."
It won't happen. But what's certain is that this "vision" simply won't vanish. Especially with Americans/Europeans occupying Afghanistan and the Pakistani tribal areas being droned to death.
And what about Iran? There are minor problems in the book - such as Saleem's assertion that in the mid-1990s then Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani and his minister of defense, the "Lion of the Panjshir" Ahmad Shah Massoud, "allowed Osama bin Laden to move from Sudan to Afghanistan"; actually Osama arrived when the Taliban were already in power and Massoud's Tajiks were their only armed opposition.
And a major problem is what Saleem bills as the normalization of al-Qaeda relations with Iran (we had some very lively discussions about that via e-mail). Saleem argues that when an Iranian diplomat was kidnapped in Peshawar in 2008 the complex tribal web led to Sirajuddin Haqqani. After several months, and through Sirajuddin, Tehran swapped their diplomat with high-value al-Qaeda operatives held in Iran - including Abu Hafs al-Mauritani, Suleiman Abu Gaith, Iman bin Laden - one of Osama's daughters - and the Egyptian Saif al-Adil.
It's been impossible since then to get any kind of confirmation from Tehran; but it's doubtful that even with Tehran allowing al-Qaeda jihadis safe passage towards Iraq, Central Asia or Turkey, Tehran and al-Qaeda got somehow "intimate". Especially because al-Qaeda had and still has a real close relationship with the hardcore Sunni outfit Jundallah - which specializes in targeted assassinations in the Iranian province of Sistan-Balochistan.
This gripping, sometimes puzzling, sometimes infuriating but always terrific reporter's notebook from what many will see as a heart of darkness - but it's in fact one of the most fascinating terrains, in social, anthropological and even geological terms in the whole planet - certainly could have profited from sharp editing to eliminate redundancies and to provide essential context.
After all, Saleem used to think in Urdu - and then translate it into English. In contrast, the English-language Saleem that became known to readers of Asia Times Online and other media is the merit of hours and hours of painstaking work over the years by Editor Tony Allison.
But in the end what really matters is that he was our vanishing point out there. This is not a book about "terror"; it's the cracking narrative of a man alone in an immense tribal land, armed only with a strong moral compass, in search of the truth. And for that he was killed. By the state within the state in Pakistan - not by tribal Pashtuns.
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Afghan de-miners put life at risk to safeguard citizens
by Farid Behbud, Abdul Haleem
KABUL, July 23 (Xinhua) -- "I know it is a risky job, but I would like to serve my people and save their lives from the hidden enemy -- land mines," said Baryali, an Afghan de-miner.
The conflict-ridden Afghanistan is one of the most mine- contaminated countries in the world. Millions of mines and unexploded ordnances, planted by various warring sides and left over from the past three decades of wars, still claim the lives of Afghans, mostly non-combatants including women and children.
"Detection, defusing and destroying the land mines, anti-tank mines, booby traps and other explosive ordnance is a tough and extremely dangerous job," Baryali, who like many Afghans uses one name, told Xinhua while searching for anti-tank mines in Mir Bacha Kot district, some 30 km north of capital city of Kabul on Tuesday.
Land mines often target innocent civilians, including women and children, killing or making them lifetime crippled.
"By detection and defusing a landmine, booby-trap or anti-tank mine, we save the lives of several innocent people," Baryali, who has been working for a non-government de-mining agency -- Halo Trust -- for the past seven years, went on to say.
"An estimated of 2,000 Afghans with majority of them civilians become disabled each year. They lose legs, hands or other parts of their bodies in mine blasts or other explosive devices in Afghanistan," Najmuddin Helal, head of Orthopedic and Rehabilitation department of International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC)'s Kabul office told Xinhua recently.
According to Helal, some 50,000 out of around 100,000 disabled people in the war-torn Afghanistan are victims of landmines.
Halo Trust has been endeavoring to sweep out 3,015 square meters covering several villages in Mir Bacha Kot district from landmines and other unexploded ordnances left over from the past wars, according to Sayed Qasim, a team leader within the de-mining agency.
"The landmines and other explosive devices that had been left over from the former Soviet Union occupation forces and factional fighting over the past 30 years have prevented the villagers to cultivate their agricultural lands or rehabilitate their vineyards, " Qasim told Xinhua.
According to Qasim, a total of 52 anti-tank mines and other explosive devices have exploded in Mir Bacha Kot district over the past couples of years, lefting 65 people including several children dead.
Under the Otawa Treaty, also known as the Mine Ban Treaty for which Afghanistan is a signatory since 2003, the war-torn country has committed to clearing all mines and explosive devices by 2013.
However, the protracted war and Taliban-led insurgency has added to using mines and other explosive devices in Afghanistan and eventually added to mine-related tragic incidents in the country.
A total of 1,462 civilians had been killed in the first six month of 2011, a 15 percent rise on civilian deaths compared with the same period in 2010, according to a United Nations report released earlier this month.
The pressure plate-like mine, the Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and suicide attacks, the tactics used by Taliban and other anti-government elements, were accounted for nearly half of all civilian deaths and injured in the past six months of this year.
"Civilian deaths from IEDs increased 17 percent from the same period in 2010, making IEDs the single largest killer of civilians in the first half of 2011. IEDs killed 444 civilians, composing 30 percent of all civilian deaths in Afghanistan during this period," the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said in a report released on July 14.
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