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Afghanistan won't fire back on Pakistan: Karzai
By Hamid Shalizi Tue Jul 5, 2011 8:54am EDT
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan's security forces will not respond with military force to weeks of cross-border shelling from Pakistan, President Hamid Karzai said Tuesday, as the Afghan parliament called on him to sever ties with Islamabad over the issue.
4 ISAF troops killed in Afghanistan; British PM visits
By the CNN Wire Staff July 5, 2011
Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Four NATO-led troops were slain in separate incidents in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday as the country's president met with the prime minister of Britain, now mourning the death of a British soldier the day before in the south.
Three Senators Call For Afghanistan Withdrawal By End Of 2012
07/ 5/11 11:25 AM ET The Huffington Post
WASHINGTON -- Two Democratic senators and one Republican senator are calling for the removal of all regular combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2012, a timetable that is significantly shorter than the one President Obama recently announced.
Missing British soldier found dead in Afghanistan
July 04, 2011|By the CNN Wire Staff
A British soldier who was reported missing from a checkpoint in Afghanistan early Monday was found dead later in the day, the British Ministry of Defense announced.
Canada hands over Kandahar battle to U.S.
The Canadian Press Jul 5, 2011
Canada's desert war came to an end Tuesday when soldiers of the Royal 22nd Regiment stood down and formally handed over their Kandahar battlefield to American units.
Taliban could have political future, says Cameron
By Danny Kemp | AFP News
British Prime Minister David Cameron Tuesday said the Taliban could have a future in the mainstream politics of Afghanistan, with the 10-year war resolved like the conflict in Northern Ireland.
U.S. troop pullout points up Karzai's woes
Afghan President Hamid Karzai is locked in a fight over his bid to oust dozens of lawmakers and is grappling with a scandal surrounding Kabul Bank that has curtailed foreign aid. Then there are allegations that he's trying to claim a third term.
Los Angeles Times By Laura King July 5, 2011
Kabul, Afghanistan - As U.S. commanders prepare to bring home 10,000 troops from Afghanistan by year's end, the drawdown is calling fresh attention to the tangle of woes confronting the administration of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
Cameron's deal to trade Speakers with Kabul
By James Landale Deputy Political Editor, BBC News, Afghanistan 5 July 2011
By their deeds, ye shall know them.
You can often tell what people - and politicians - are thinking not by what they say but by what they do.
Take for example David Cameron. Today in Kabul he announced a package of measures to improve Afghanistan's democratic institutions.
Departing U.S. Envoy Sees Progress in Afghanistan, and Pitfalls Ahead
By ALISSA J. RUBIN and ROD NORDLAND The New York Times July 4, 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan — When Karl W. Eikenberry’s father knew he had only a few months left to live, he told his son his greatest regret was that he would not be around to see what happened next.
Five years in Afghanistan: fighting a war within a larger war
The Globe and mail By SUSAN SACHS Monday, Jul. 04, 2011
KANDAHAR - Canadian troops formally end five years of combat and counterinsurgency in the dust-blown badlands of southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, heading home in the midst of a guerrilla war of steadily intensifying violence.
To win Afghan war, we must fix the politics
USA TODAY By Michael O’Hanlon 04/07/2011
In recent weeks, Washington has fixated on President Obama's decision about how fast to reduce U.S. troops in Afghanistan. But equally important is helping repair the sorry state of Afghanistan's destructive politics.
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Afghanistan won't fire back on Pakistan: Karzai
By Hamid Shalizi Tue Jul 5, 2011 8:54am EDT
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan's security forces will not respond with military force to weeks of cross-border shelling from Pakistan, President Hamid Karzai said Tuesday, as the Afghan parliament called on him to sever ties with Islamabad over the issue.
Some 300 people also protested against the shelling in Asadabad, the capital of eastern Kunar province, demanding an end to the shelling and calling for revenge.
Hundreds of rockets have hit Afghanistan since early June, officials say, and killed dozens of civilians, infuriating Afghans from ordinary villagers to the top echelons of power.
A top Afghan police general last week offered his resignation over the government's response to the attacks, and there have been at least two demonstrations.
Karzai said his Interior and Defense Ministers had sought permission to open fire if more rockets landed.
But the president said he had refused because returning fire risked creating more innocent victims in Pakistan.
"Afghanistan never wants to harm civilians in Pakistan with its response," Karzai told a joint news conference in Kabul with visiting British Prime Minister David Cameron.
"Afghanistan is seriously engaged in talks with Pakistan to solve this issue," he added.
Karzai's parliament, despite facing internal turmoil after a government-backed court ruled in June to unseat 62 lawmakers, has focused debate on the attacks for the last three days, and wants to see sterner action.
"The parliamentarians called on the government to cut ties with Pakistan because its non-stop shells have killed many innocent civilians," said Fraidoon Momand, a lawmaker from eastern Nangarhar province, which has been hit.
"We have long demanded that Pakistan explain the shelling but they didn't," he added.
DISPLACED, INJURED, DEAD
The Interior Ministry says nearly 800 rockets have been fired since early June, killing 12 women and girls and 30 men. Some 55 have been wounded, and 120 houses destroyed.
Pakistan last Monday rejected Afghan allegations of large scale cross-border shelling, saying that only "a few accidental rounds" may have crossed the border when it pursued militants who had attacked its security forces.
It is impossible to verify independently exactly what is happening on the remote, porous and disputed mountainous border, but there are insurgent groups on both sides.
Pakistan has in the past fiercely contested cross-border attacks by NATO forces chasing insurgents on its territory.
Fazlullah Wahidi, the governor of Kunar province, said 635 rockets had been fired into Kunar province killing 22 people and wounding 40. Local people said they would take revenge if they could find weapons.
"My weapon was taken by foreign troops long ago. Now how can I defend my people from brutal rockets from Pakistan," said protester Ahmad Khan.
"If the NATO forces cannot protect us, they should give back our weapons so we could revenge our people."
(Additional Reporting by Mohammad Anwar in Kunar; Editing by Emma Graham-Harrison and Yoko Nishikawa)
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4 ISAF troops killed in Afghanistan; British PM visits
By the CNN Wire Staff July 5, 2011
Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Four NATO-led troops were slain in separate incidents in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday as the country's president met with the prime minister of Britain, now mourning the death of a British soldier the day before in the south.
Tuesday's violence occurred in two undisclosed locations in the east. NATO's International Security Assistance Force said three of the four died in a bombing; the fourth after an insurgent attack. The nationalities of those slain were not immediately released.
On Monday, a British soldier, who was reported missing from a checkpoint in Helmand province, was found dead after an "extensive search" by fellow ISAF members, who found his body in the Nahr-e Saraj District of Helmand Province.
Lt. Col. Tim Purbrick, spokesman for Task Force Helmand, said in a statement the soldier had suffered gunshot wounds. His identity was not immediately released.
British Prime Minister David Cameron had been visiting troops at the time of the incident and canceled some of the activities on his itinerary so the soldiers could focus on the search. He was quoted as saying his "thoughts all day have been with that young man and trying to help the military find him."
The prime minister, whose ISAF contingent is the second largest after the United States, was able to greet troops at Camp Bastion in Helmand on Monday and address U.S. and British soldiers. On Tuesday, he met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and both met with reporters.
Karzai, who said Cameron "has taken very serious and decisive steps toward Afghanistan peace process, security and cooperation," passed along his condolences for the death of the soldier, from the Highlanders, 4th Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland.
"Today we spoke regarding our long-term relationship and security transition program and economic improvement," said Karzai, who underscored his hopes that both countries will continue cooperation for the coming years.
Cameron said Britain has been successful in its fight to oust terrorists, stabilize the Afghan government and help build the country's institutions. Referring to the planned U.S. pullout of some troops, he said the Afghan National Army will be growing as those forces leave.
"If we forget and leave Afghanistan then the problems will come from here to our homes," Cameron said, referring to terror, the drug trade, and migration.
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Three Senators Call For Afghanistan Withdrawal By End Of 2012
07/ 5/11 11:25 AM ET The Huffington Post
WASHINGTON -- Two Democratic senators and one Republican senator are calling for the removal of all regular combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2012, a timetable that is significantly shorter than the one President Obama recently announced.
"We commend the president for sticking to the July date he had outlined for beginning the withdrawal. However, his plan would not remove all regular combat troops until 2014," Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Tom Udall (D-N.M.) wrote in a Tuesday op-ed in The New York Times.
"We believe the United States is capable of achieving this goal by the end of 2012. America would be more secure and stronger economically if we recognized that we have largely achieved our objectives in Afghanistan and moved aggressively to bring our troops and tax dollars home," the senators continued.
In the op-ed, they said the U.S. is spending $10 billion a month in Afghanistan while back home, the United States is struggling with "high unemployment and a flood of foreclosures, a record deficit and a debt that is over $14 trillion and growing."
"It is not too late to change course in what has become the longest American war in history. In light of our considerable national needs, both security and domestic, we urge the president to bring our troops home at last," they concluded.
All three senators have been critical of a lengthy withdrawal timeline for quite some time, but Tuesday's op-ed is the most direct call from them for removing combat troops by the end of 2012.
Merkley, Paul and Udall were co-signers on a June 15 letter to Obama calling for "a sizable and sustained reduction of U.S. military forces in Afghanistan." Twenty-four other senators signed on.
On June 22, Obama announced to the nation that 33,000 U.S. troops will be pulled out of Afghanistan by fall 2012. Five thousand troops will be pulled out immediately, with another 5,000 leaving at the end of 2011. The new plan left many of the president's fellow Democrats disappointed that the withdrawal would not be more robust.
On Tuesday, Obama and Vice President Biden are scheduled to meet with U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker and Lt. Gen. John Allen, who is taking over as the top commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. In the afternoon, they will be meeting with Leon Panetta, who just took over as secretary of defense.
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Missing British soldier found dead in Afghanistan
July 04, 2011|By the CNN Wire Staff
A British soldier who was reported missing from a checkpoint in Afghanistan early Monday was found dead later in the day, the British Ministry of Defense announced.
"It is with great sadness that I announce the death of a soldier from The Highlanders, 4th Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland," said Lt. Col. Tim Purbrick, spokesman for Task Force Helmand, in a statement.
After an "extensive search," fellow members of NATO's International Security Assistance Force found his body in the Nahr-e Saraj District of Helmand Province, Purbrick said.
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Canada hands over Kandahar battle to U.S.
The Canadian Press Jul 5, 2011
Canada's desert war came to an end Tuesday when soldiers of the Royal 22nd Regiment stood down and formally handed over their Kandahar battlefield to American units.
The country's legal command responsibility for the western district of Panjwaii will continue for several days.
But Brig.-Gen. Dean Milner's headquarters will be directing U.S. combat units.
Almost all Canadian troops are out of the killing fields of Kandahar, save for a handful of soldiers who will serve for a short while longer attached to American platoons.
Parliament ordered an end to the Canadian combat mission in southern Afghanistan back in 2008 and set July 2011 as the deadline.
The Conservative government has since announced that 950 soldiers and support staff will carry out a training mission in the Afghan capital until 2014.
The transfer of battle group command took place at Ma'sum Ghar, the crusted, petrified volcanic mountain soaked in Canadian blood at the onset of fighting in 2006.
The ceremony was an almost understated ending to a war that mesmerized and horrified the country in equal measure, but has now largely fallen off the public agenda.
If Kandahar was a national trauma, Ma'sum Ghar was at its epicentre.
The Van Doos battle group commander says the base is symbolic of much of the sacrifice of Canadians over the last 5½ years.
"Everywhere in battle where Canadian soldiers have sacrificed their lives, we have examples of similar places in a number of our conflicts," said Lt.-Col. Michel-Henri St-Louis. "So Ma'sum Ghar is symbolic and had been at the centre of our deployment and was witness to much of our sacrifices."
The mountain was first captured by troops in the summer of 2006 as fighting raged throughout the districts of Panjwaii and Zhari.
It was turned into camp and used as the launching point for the landmark battle Operation Medusa that fall.
The formal signing ceremony took place in the compound of Afghan National Army troops, whom Canadians have trained and mentored throughout the war.
Lt.-Col. Steve Miller, commander of the 3rd Battalion 21st U.S. Infantry Regiment, said the region he inherited is much quieter than he expected.
"We actually expected this fight to be more kinetic than it had been in the last 30 days," he said. "This area has not seen the spike [in violence] that usually occurs here during the spring following the poppy harvest."
The majority of the lull can be attributed to the Van Doos, who uncovered and seized large weapons caches over the last six months, he said.
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Taliban could have political future, says Cameron
By Danny Kemp | AFP News
British Prime Minister David Cameron Tuesday said the Taliban could have a future in the mainstream politics of Afghanistan, with the 10-year war resolved like the conflict in Northern Ireland.
On a day that four NATO soldiers were killed in eastern Afghanistan, he also announced the creation of a Sandhurst-style military academy to train Afghan officers ahead of the pullout of Western combat forces by 2015.
"In terms of the political process and political reconciliation, firstly I would say to the Afghan people, we are with you, we want to help you," Cameron told a joint news conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul.
"To the Taliban my message is very clear. Stop bombing, stop killing, stop fighting, put down your weapons, join the political process and you can join the future of this country."
Violence in Afghanistan has been at record highs, nearly 10 years after US-led troops invaded to bring down the Taliban regime for refusing to give up Osama bin Laden after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
"I have seen in it in my own country. In Northern Ireland, we had people trying to bomb and kill police and now they are taking part in politics themselves," said Cameron.
The Taliban have always refused to lay down arms until all foreign forces leave Afghanistan, but in recent weeks officials have said efforts are being made to establish contact between the insurgents, Kabul and the United States.
Cameron said a British-led military academy hoped to open its doors in 2013 and would train 1,350 Afghan officers a year, with around 120 British military trainers, attracting a funding pledge of $38 million from the United States.
"Today the president and I have been discussing our plan to build an Afghan Sandhurst to train the officers of the future that will form the backbone of the already successful Afghan army," said Cameron.
He also defended plans to increase British aid to Afghanistan, despite austere budget cuts at home, branding opponents "hard-hearted".
The Department for International Development said that British aid to Afghanistan this financial year was £102 million ($164 million) and would be £178 million ($287 million) next financial year.
Cameron declared progress in Afghanistan to be "on the right track" as he sought to regain momentum in a two-day trip overshadowed by the death of a British soldier who had earlier gone missing from his Helmand base.
"This is a great example of a country that if we walk away from, and if we ignore, if we forget about, the problems will come visited back on our doorstep," Cameron said.
He said "some progress" in Helmand province where the bulk of British troops are based, would allow for a "modest" drawdown to be announced for next year.
The British soldier's mysterious death in Helmand province, for which the Taliban claimed responsibility, overshadowed Cameron's earlier announcement that security had improved enough for Britain to withdraw some troops soon.
Cameron said he would make an announcement in parliament on Wednesday about the level of troop drawdowns next year, with weekend media reports saying he would order the withdrawal of 500-800 soldiers by the end of 2012.
Britain has a total force of 9,500 in Afghanistan -- the second largest contingent of foreign troops in the country after the United States.
Cameron arrived in Helmand on Monday on a previously unannounced visit but decided to abandon a planned trip to the provincial capital Lashkar Gah, one of a handful of towns earmarked for an early handover to Afghan forces.
The soldier went missing from a checkpost in the early hours of Monday and London later announced that his body had been found with gunshot wounds.
The top Afghan army commander for Helmand said the soldier had drowned after going for a swim on his military base, and that his body had been carried away by a strong current and later shot by Taliban insurgents.
Lashkar Gah was one of seven areas in Afghanistan identified by NATO for an initial handover of security ahead of a full transfer of responsibility across the country and the withdrawal of all Western combat troops.
Cameron's announcement comes nearly two weeks after US President Barack Obama said he would withdraw 33,000 US "surge" troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2012, bringing total US forces there down to 65,000.
The speed of that drawdown has been criticised by senior Republican lawmakers and met with a cool reception from US military commanders.
In recent days a row between Afghanistan and Pakistan over claims of cross-border attacks by both sides has heightened tensions between the neighbours, threatening to disrupt any negotiated peace.
Cameron struck a diplomatic note over the issue and said Britain backed an improvement in Afghanistan-Pakistan relations.
"Now is the time for Pakistan and Afghanistan to sit and meet and talk on how we are to ensure what we need to do," he told reporters.
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U.S. troop pullout points up Karzai's woes
Afghan President Hamid Karzai is locked in a fight over his bid to oust dozens of lawmakers and is grappling with a scandal surrounding Kabul Bank that has curtailed foreign aid. Then there are allegations that he's trying to claim a third term.
Los Angeles Times By Laura King July 5, 2011
Kabul, Afghanistan - As U.S. commanders prepare to bring home 10,000 troops from Afghanistan by year's end, the drawdown is calling fresh attention to the tangle of woes confronting the administration of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
For much of his second term, which got off to an acrimonious start in 2009 with a fraud-tainted election, the Afghan leader has seemingly lurched from one crisis to the next. But recent weeks have seen an unusual convergence of complex and, in some cases, long-festering problems. The president is locked in an escalating confrontation with Afghan lawmakers over his bid to oust dozens of parliament members based on the ruling of what opponents charge was an illegally created tribunal. The morass of scandal enveloping the nation's largest private financial institution, Kabul Bank, has sharply curtailed international aid.
Political rivals have stepped up accusations that Karzai intends to try to change the Afghan Constitution to allow him to lay claim to a third term in 2014. At the same time, the Taliban and other insurgent groups have intensified a campaign of attacks across the country, even as the Afghan president redoubles his appeals for peace talks.
Taken separately and together, these difficulties pose a potentially grave challenge to Karzai's ability to govern, Western diplomats and other observers warn. Moreover, the West hopes to hand over security responsibilities to Afghan forces during Karzai's current term, a highly sensitive period in which the coalition will desperately need effective leadership from his administration.
As the heat of a dusty, flyblown Afghan summer takes hold, major changes loom in the American military and diplomatic hierarchy in Kabul. Gen. David H. Petraeus, who was tapped to head the CIA, is to be replaced as commander in Afghanistan by Lt. Gen. John Allen, and veteran envoy Ryan Crocker will step in for departing Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry.
Both Petraeus and Eikenberry put considerable effort into forging a solid relationship with the often-mercurial Afghan leader, and both achieved only limited success. Recent months have been marked by escalating anti-Western outbursts on Karzai's part, including a suggestion that the NATO force risked being viewed by Afghans as an occupying army.
Some of Eikenberry's pent-up frustrations found unusual public expression when, in a speech to students last month in the western city of Herat, he unleashed a broadside clearly aimed at Karzai, though he did not mention him by name.
"I must tell you I find occasional comments from some of your leaders hurtful and inappropriate," the ambassador said. "When Americans, who are serving in your country at great cost, in terms of lives and treasure, hear themselves compared to occupiers, told that they are only here to advance their own interest, and likened to the brutal enemies of the Afghan people they are filled with confusion and grow weary of our effort here."
The rare public rebuke spotlighted the balancing act Karzai apparently believes he must attempt when it comes to the massive Western troop presence in a country that prides itself on resisting outsiders.
On the one hand, the president wishes to ally himself with public anger over perceived use of excessive force on the part of NATO's armies, particularly when civilian casualties are involved. But the extent of his government's reliance on the Western military is periodically thrown into stark relief, as during last week's assault on the luxury Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul, which was carried out in concert by the Taliban and an offshoot, the Haqqani network, and left at least 19 people dead.
Private assessments by Western officials of the response by Afghan police suggested that without the intervention of elite NATO forces and helicopters, the attackers might have carried out a lengthy siege, seizing hostages and methodically executing foreigners.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization subsequently hunted down and killed the Haqqani network commander who helped mastermind the attack, which was described by a spokesman for Karzai's premier intelligence service as resulting from a "loophole" in security.
With President Obama having acknowledged that U.S. contacts with Taliban-allied figures have taken place as a prelude to possible negotiations, Karzai's public pronouncements about the Taliban have a jarring dissonance. He consistently refers to the insurgents as brothers and compatriots, appealing to them to claim a rightful place in Afghanistan's political life. But the record numbers of civilian deaths from insurgent attacks compel him, as he did Saturday, to denounce the brutality of "enemies of the people," referring to the insurgents.
One of Karzai's hallmark qualities is a tendency to deflect problems until they swell to unmanageable proportions. Both the Kabul Bank scandal and the parliamentary standoff have been many months in the making, with an array of missed opportunities at resolution.
The bank scandal — centering on Kabul Bank's inability to account for nearly $900 million in funds, some of it loaned to members of Karzai's inner circle — might be farcical if not for the seriousness of its repercussions. A loss of international and investor confidence in the banking sector could prove catastrophic to the country's nascent financial system. And investigators have hinted that another major bank is in trouble.
The first high-level detentions in the Kabul Bank debacle came just last week, and even then the two former top executives were held only briefly and not formally charged.
The head of the central bank, which took over Kabul Bank after its near collapse, fled last week to the United States. Abdul Qadir Fitrat said he feared for his life because of attempts to bring key figures to account, including associates of the president. A Karzai spokesman accused him of treason.
Some of the lawmakers who find themselves on opposite sides of the dispute over who has the right to sit in parliament have one bit of common ground: blaming Karzai for the impasse. Parliament is widely viewed as one of the few real checks on the president's power.
"President Karzai wants to have control over the parliament, and add and subtract lawmakers when he wants," said Fawzia Kofi, a parliament member from Badakhshan province who opposed the president's creation of a special tribunal that overruled the findings of the country's main electoral body. "I believe our very democracy is at stake."
laura.king@latimes.com
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Cameron's deal to trade Speakers with Kabul
By James Landale Deputy Political Editor, BBC News, Afghanistan 5 July 2011
By their deeds, ye shall know them.
You can often tell what people - and politicians - are thinking not by what they say but by what they do.
Take for example David Cameron. Today in Kabul he announced a package of measures to improve Afghanistan's democratic institutions.
There will be lots of "shared best practice" and other ghastly bureaucratese. But crucially there will be an exchange programme for the Speakers of the British and the Afghan parliaments.
In other words, the prime minister has condemned Commons Speaker John Bercow to many long flights to Kabul.
It is not quite exile but I can imagine the wry smile creeping across the Downing Street face as he signed off on that one.
Note to Speaker: Don't interrupt the prime minister too often in the Commons. He can do more to you than you can do to him.
Take too the Union Flag flying behind Mr Cameron at his press conference with Hamid Karzai at the presidential palace.
The soldier standing guard over the pole wiped his nose on the flag several times. The flag was also flying upside down.
Now you could think: Who cares, apart from my old teacher and the sort of people who write letters to the Daily Telegraph? There are certainly more important things to worry about.
But it was a gentle reminder of Britain's place in the world, that Mr Cameron is just another foreign leader passing through. This afternoon, no doubt, the president's guards will perhaps be getting another flag wrong for another travelling dignitary arriving to tell them how to live their lives.
And as for Mr Cameron himself, he revealed his true thinking not just by his words at the press conference but in the way that he presented them.
He said there were three questions: Why are British troops still here? How will the mission be completed? And what will Britain's long term relationship with Afghanistan?
All fair enough. But he also said, right at the top, that these were not his questions but those of the British public back home. The gradual withdrawal of British forces may be 'conditions based' and dependent on the growth and improvement of the Afghan army, but it is driven above all by David Cameron's sense that the British public have got fed up with Afghanistan and they want out.
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Departing U.S. Envoy Sees Progress in Afghanistan, and Pitfalls Ahead
By ALISSA J. RUBIN and ROD NORDLAND The New York Times July 4, 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan — When Karl W. Eikenberry’s father knew he had only a few months left to live, he told his son his greatest regret was that he would not be around to see what happened next.
That is how Mr. Eikenberry says he feels now, as he prepares to step down as the American ambassador to Afghanistan, after nearly a decade of working here, as a general during two tours, as a NATO official and for the past two and a half years as ambassador.
“One of the hard parts of leaving is you just don’t know how some of the big things are going to turn out,” said Mr. Eikenberry, quoting his father and drawing the parallel to his own imminent departure.
He will not be the only person to leave with that question: in the same three-week period, two other powerful figures will leave. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commanding general here, will lead the Central Intelligence Agency, and Lt. Gen. David M. Rodriguez, the No. 2 commanding general and the man who has been running the war day to day, will run the United States Army Forces Command, which prepares troops going overseas.
The three have presided over a period when American military and civilian power and spending in Afghanistan were at their zenith, and their departures mark the end of an era.
From an American policy standpoint, the changing of the guard means little, but from the Afghan standpoint, in which a leader’s personality can determine the policy, the triple departure, along with President Obama’s June 22 speech on the withdrawal of troops, has stoked fears of abandonment, especially for Afghans who have depended on the Americans.
“Ambassador Eikenberry and General Petraeus, both of them leaving at the same time, maybe it doesn’t affect the policy, but it affects the morale of the people,” said Fawzia Koofi, a member of Parliament and a strong advocate of women’s rights.
All three men have emphasized that the strategic partnership agreement — now under negotiation — will help guarantee firm American support.
They have said they are “cautiously optimistic” about Afghanistan, in the words of Mr. Eikenberry and General Rodriguez, but they have also made clear that questions loom about the government’s capacity to provide services, about Pakistan’s intentions and about the ability of the relatively inexperienced Afghan security forces to protect the country.
Afghans, by contrast, see a deeply unsettled landscape, where disaster is at least as likely as survival, where the decrease in NATO troops could make the country more vulnerable both to rapacious neighbors and to the Taliban. They see a government unable to accept the rulings of its own institutions in the case of elections and a dangerous standoff with the International Monetary Fund over how to overcome the paralyzing fraud at Kabul Bank, the nation’s largest financial institution.
“The announcement of a significant drawdown and discussion of 2014 makes people afraid,” said Ahmad Nader Nadery of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission.
“By 2014, all security responsibility will be in Afghan hands, so the leverage of the Taliban and support for the Taliban will be much more, and they will either take over or set terms that the government will have to listen to,” he said. “People are thinking how to prevent a total collapse,” Mr. Nadery added.
Mr. Eikenberry, whose career here has tracked the trajectory of the war, from the almost heady optimism of the early days after the Taliban’s fall to the recent foreboding that large portions of the country were at risk of again falling under Taliban influence, spoke enthusiastically about the United States’ efforts, but did not try to predict the future.
The ambassador gave a rare on-the-record interview to The New York Times last week.
He warned that the current political impasse over Parliament could have long-term consequences for Afghanistan’s future as a democracy and conveyed his sense that with the exception of the Afghan Army, which many Afghans already regard highly, there were profound questions about whether Afghan institutions would survive.
Ten days ago, a special court convened by President Hamid Karzai, which election officials and the international community say is illegal, ordered nearly a fourth of the seats in Parliament overturned. Parliament has responded by voting to censure judicial officials.
“Whenever the dust settles, it has to be a parliament that is accepted by the Afghan people,” Mr. Eikenberry said.
The Kabul Bank crisis is another major concern, said international advisers, including the United Nations special representative for Afghanistan, Staffan de Mistura, because the International Monetary Fund has refused to renew its main credit program for Afghanistan, effectively halting aid from several major donors. Afghan efforts to reach an agreement with the monetary fund have fallen short. Longer-term economic issues are also looming.
An estimated 95 percent of the country’s economic activity is derived from foreign aid and Western military expenditures, and Mr. Eikenberry warned of an economic collapse in Afghanistan as donors begin to reduce their spending here.
This year foreign aid from the United States peaked at $4 billion, but in the next fiscal year only $2.5 billion is planned for Afghanistan. The annual military budget now stands at nearly $120 billion and includes large amounts for development projects, more than $600 million in trucking contracts for Afghans to supply the NATO troops and nearly $12 billion annually to pay for Afghanistan’s security forces.
“We are concerned there could be an economic recession or recessionary effects will be felt in 2013 and 2014,” Mr. Eikenberry said.
General Rodriguez, who made his farewell tour of eastern Afghanistan last week with stops in Paktika and Ghazni and at Bagram Air Base, is acutely aware of the amount of money and jobs the military funnels into the Afghan economy and said he, too, was concerned about how to cement gains.
“We have to figure out how to build durability,” he said. “Progress has to improve exponentially.” The general added, “That is clearly doable.”
The American ambassador said he was departing with particular pride in two achievements. “I’ll leave here with the moniker of being the father of the Afghan Army, and for me that’s a very big deal because it’s one of the few institutions here in the state that’s looked at as all national and credible.”
“The second major achievement is having led the civilian surge,” he said, referring to the State Department’s increase in diplomats to Afghanistan to 1,200 from 325; 400 of them are in the provinces working on reconstruction.
“I think on our watch we did make a difference.”
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Five years in Afghanistan: fighting a war within a larger war
The Globe and mail By SUSAN SACHS Monday, Jul. 04, 2011
KANDAHAR - Canadian troops formally end five years of combat and counterinsurgency in the dust-blown badlands of southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, heading home in the midst of a guerrilla war of steadily intensifying violence.
They do not leave with any illusions that they have done more than create some breathing space for the Afghan government to assert itself. Nor do they venture any predictions beyond saying that they may have weakened, perhaps only fleetingly, the resilient Taliban insurgency. That realism is perhaps their strongest legacy for the allies who will continue the fight.
“We are involved in a contest of wills,” said Lieutenant Colonel Michel-Henri St-Louis, the commander of the last battle group, the 1st Battalion 22nd Regiment, known as the Van Doos.
“What you have is a political problem,” he added in a recent interview. “You can’t kill an idea, and you can’t kill everyone that disagrees with the government. All you can do is show that there is an alternative.”
Canada’s years in Kandahar were a war within that larger war, though it was fought on one of its least hospitable battlegrounds. The fight cost the lives of 157 Canadian men and women. Year after year, successive Canadian battle groups chased shadows across Kandahar’s orchards and villages, losing soldiers to mines and gunfire from an enemy that seemed to vanish from one spot only to reappear somewhere else.
During the past year, reinforced by an infusion of more than 10,000 American and Afghan soldiers, the last battalion could point to some gains: record numbers of hidden weapons found this spring, a drop in attacks on their outposts, the implantation of a district government and children permitted to attend a newly refurbished school.
At the same time, much of the countryside they leave behind still teeters on the edge of Taliban control. Kandahar city, the sprawling urban centre they were to defend at all costs, has become the murder capital of a country where violent death is a daily fact of life.
Canada entered the war after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, when the United States invoked the collective defence provisions of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to launch strikes on the Taliban regime that was harbouring Osama bin Laden.
When the NATO mission extended beyond the capital of Kabul, Canadian forces took on Kandahar province, where the Taliban movement was born. In 2006, they fought a pitched battle with insurgents to protect Kandahar city. Operation Medusa, as it was called, was the first and last fight with any resemblance to conventional warfare.
In the years that followed, the Taliban shifted tactics in Kandahar and elsewhere in Afghanistan. Homemade bombs, hit-and-run sniper attacks and rockets fired at Canadian outposts became the template for the war. A flourishing drug trade, corruption and tribal vengeance created an overlay of dangerous rivalries that fuelled more violence that endangered Canada’s overstretched troops.
While their departure date was decided three years ago in Ottawa, it has turned out to be the prologue to the end of the larger multinational war. The same weariness that drove Canada’s 2008 decision to withdraw – weariness with mounting casualties and with the chronically feeble Afghan government – is now evident in its allies.
In Europe, other NATO leaders say they will follow suit and start downsizing their troop levels this summer. The United States, with nearly 100,000 soldiers in the country, will pull out more than one-third of its forces by next September.
When Major Martin Larose, the senior operations officer for the Van Doos, arrived for his second tour in Afghanistan last fall, an offensive was in full swing to disrupt Taliban movements and supply lines in the districts surrounding Kandahar city.
It seemed the Canadians could turn a corner in their frustrating hit-and-run war. The United States had more than doubled its troops on the ground, with most of the newly deployed soldiers in the restive south. The Afghan army in the province had acquired three brigades with some 2,500 newly trained soldiers.
The Van Doos were assigned a concentrated piece of territory in the Panjwai district, a Taliban stronghold that had been a killing ground for Canadian troops for years. In an interview in late December, about a month into the operation, Major Larose was buoyant about the prospects for tangible progress.
“In 2006, we had one battle group for almost all of Kandahar province, and we were just putting out fires,” he said then. “My company had an area of 150 kilometres by 90 kilometres and we were hopping left and right.”
This time, he predicted, the Canadians would focus their muscle in one manageable swath of territory. They would build a paved roadway to replace the old switch-back gravel roads that were mined-laced death traps. Afghans would be grateful. And as local government had a chance to establish a presence in Panjwai, people would reject the Taliban and their weakened fighters would slink away.
Clear, hold and build – classic counterinsurgency doctrine. Protect the population, help create accountable governance, sink your teeth into the insurgents “and don’t let go,” as U.S. General David Petraeus, the outgoing NATO commander in Afghanistan, instructed coalition forces last August.
As his tour began, Major Larose was hoping he and the Van Doos might see those steps through. “The way we’re going to tackle this,” he predicted, “is to show them we are going to stay, and to create conditions for Afghans to see an alternative to the insurgents.”
Seven months later, as the battalion was preparing to leave Canada’s longest combat engagement since the Second World War, the major had a more measured assessment of its impact on both the insurgency and the Afghans.
“You clear. You hold. And the holding can be long. It can be two or three years,” Major Larose said. “It depends on the local powerbrokers, on the approach. It takes a long time for the population to trust you. The problem is that the insurgents come back, because you cannot be everywhere at once. There’s only so much you can do.”
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To win Afghan war, we must fix the politics
USA TODAY By Michael O’Hanlon 04/07/2011
In recent weeks, Washington has fixated on President Obama's decision about how fast to reduce U.S. troops in Afghanistan. But equally important is helping repair the sorry state of Afghanistan's destructive politics.
The Obama administration glossed over such issues in announcing that 33,000 GIs would come home by next summer. In his June 22 speech to the nation, the president emphasized progress in killing terrorists in Pakistan, and on building up the Afghan army and police, but talked of little else.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in testimony the next day, discussed progress in education and health care, as well as peace talks with the Taliban. But the former accomplishments have not prevented the resurgence of the Taliban since 2006. And the peace talks remain a long shot at best.
Fixing Afghan politics is not about nation building. It is about avoiding defeat. If the Afghan political system is dominated by a few individuals and patronage networks, and if all the money flowing into the country is gobbled up by a few key families and tribes, disenfranchised Afghans will continue to revolt and rebel, and the war will continue.
U.S. officials take a light touch in addressing these problems, especially the matter of political competition, because Afghanistan is a sovereign country. Discussing how parliament can become stronger and courts more independent, or how political parties can be more influential, or how candidates can mount presidential campaigns when Hamid Karzai must step down from office in 2014 are seen as matters largely beyond foreigners' proper influence.
Hogwash. It is a simple fact that democracies cannot succeed without checks and balances. Afghans, relatively inexperienced in democracy themselves, need to hear such lessons from us and other countries, even if they must decide how to fix the problems.
Moreover, we largely created this mess. First of all, the United States led the selection of Karzai as president back in 2001, a decision that gave him a leg up in the two elections he later won. Second, we helped write a constitution in 2003 that gave the Afghan president almost autocratic powers. Only he can hire and fire local governors. Only he can propose a budget for the country. Only he has set most ground rules for elections — powers Karzai then used to discourage the formation of strong political parties nearly a decade ago.
Whatever the merits of the decision, then, it leaves Afghanistan with no natural way to help select a successor in 2014. It also makes very difficult the organization of parliament into meaningful blocs of power based on anything except personality, ethnicity and patronage networks.
One of America's most accomplished modern diplomats, Ryan Crocker, is expected to take over the U.S. mission in Kabul. That will be a good opportunity for several steps to be considered:
•Use quiet diplomacy and public rhetoric to remind everyone including Karzai that he must step down in three years — not out of deference to Washington but out of respect for Afghanistan's constitution.
•Dramatically increase funding and technical help for political parties.
•Encourage parliament to create research bodies modeled after the Congress' Congressional Research Service and Congressional Budget Office to help develop and evaluate new policy ideas, and ask the president to allow parliament to propose legislation.
•Create a multiethnic presidential advisory board to evaluate provincial and district governors, making it harder for Karzai or future presidents to fire them capriciously.
Such measures are needed — not to build some perfect nation, but because reshaping Afghanistan's political competition is the only way to end tribalism, mitigate corruption and ultimately defeat the insurgency.
Michael O'Hanlon is co-author of Brookings' Afghanistan Index and co-author with Hassina Sherjan and Gretchen Birkle of Toward a Political Strategy for Afghanistan.
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