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Pentagon dances around Karzai's rebuff of any Taliban negotiations
By Charley Keyes, CNN Senior National Security Producer Mon October 3, 2011
Washington (CNN) -- The Pentagon was walking carefully Monday around the latest apparent rift with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai about talking peace with the Taliban.
Angry Pakistan rejects Afghan charges on Rabbani
By Augustine Anthony
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan has angrily rejected allegations from Afghan officials that its intelligence agency masterminded the assassination of Kabul's chief peace negotiator with the Taliban.
Haqqanis Deny Killing Afghan Peace Envoy in BBC Interview
VOA News October 3, 2011
The BBC says it has interviewed the operational leader of the Haqqani Network, the Taliban-allied militant group.
Karzai strikes softer tone on Pakistan
By Amir Shah and Heidi Vogt - The Associated Press Monday Oct 3, 2011 15:22:38 EDT
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan’s president said Monday that Pakistan has broken promises to help end the Taliban-led insurgency but that he hopes the two countries can work together like brothers — softening his rhetoric after days of tough talk in which he had suggested relations were about to break down.
Pakistan Safe Havens Biggest Challenge for U.S. After 10 Years in Afghanistan
By MARTHA RADDATZ (@martharaddatz) and KRISTINA WONG (@kristina_wong) Oct. 3, 2011 BBC News
This week marks 10 years of fighting in Afghanistan. Gen. John Allen is now the eighth U.S. commander in charge of the war, charged not only with fighting the unpopular war but bringing it to an end.
Suicide attack in Afghanistan kills 1, hurts 19
From Ruhullah Khapalwak, For CNN Mon October 3, 2011
Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- One person was killed and 19 injured when a suicide bomber in a motorcycle bomber prematurely detonated his explosives near Kandahar City, Afghan officials said.
In the Afghan villages where Taliban still rule
3 October 2011 BBC News
The invasion of Afghanistan that forced the Taliban from power began 10 years ago this week but the Taliban were not completely defeated. The BBC's Paul Wood in Kabul looks at the state of the insurgency today and asks: "Could they be back?"
Afghan Army's next hurdle: logistics<br> If the Afghan Army is to take over security in Afghanistan, it must be able to effectively resupply weapons, food, and other supplies without foreign air support or technical assistance.
By By Tom A. Peter | Christian Science Monitor
Most US soldiers say the Afghan Army has become a capable combat force. US Army Capt. Craig Halstead even credits a group of Afghan soldiers with saving the lives of several of his men during a recent firefight.
Poll: Nearly 2 in 3 want troops in Afghanistan decreased
By Stephanie Condon CBS News October 3, 2011 6:30 PM
CBS News Poll analysis by the CBS News Polling Unit: Sarah Dutton, Jennifer De Pinto, Fred Backus and Anthony Salvanto
After 10 years of war in Afghanistan, nearly two-thirds of Americans want troop levels in the country to be reduced, a new CBS News poll shows.
‘You Have the Watches, We Have the Time’
Oct 2, 2011 10:00 AM EDT Newsweek
Afghanistan: Ten years of war in a land where your enemy will fight you forever.
Holed up at a mud-brick house in eastern Afghanistan’s mountainous Paktika province, 28-year-old Mujahid Rahman says he can’t remember how long he’s been battling the Americans. Seven or eight years is his best guess. The past three years have been particularly tough, the Taliban subcommander says. He tells of being held prisoner
Kabul set for gains through new Silk Road
Oct. 3, 2011 at 11:49 AM
WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 (UPI) -- Afghanistan is set to make substantial economic gains through so-called new Silk Road, an infrastructure network that includes a gas pipeline, an official said.
Afghanistan on brink after decade of war
By Katherine Haddon AFP – Sun, Oct 2, 2011
A decade of war costing thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars has left Afghanistan with a corrupt government, a widely criticised Western troop presence and only dim prospects for peace.
Americans Raid Byways of Haqqani Insurgents in Afghanistan
The New York Times By C. J. CHIVERS October 2, 2011
CHARBARAN, Afghanistan - The first helicopter landed in the bluish gray gloom before dawn. More than 20 members of an American reconnaissance platoon and Afghan troops accompanying them jogged out through the swirling dust, moving into a forest smelling of sage and pine.
Most Afghan women fear return of Taliban-style govt-survey
By Zhou Xin
KABUL (Reuters) - The vast majority of Afghan women are worried about a return to power of a Taliban-style government and over a third say the departure of foreign troops will make the country worse off, according to a survey released on Monday.
Afghan yuppies get rich on ten years of war
By Usman Sharifi | AFP
"Business is booming, I have made good profits since the Taliban were ousted," said a smiling Sayed Habib as he showed Western dresses to young women in one of Kabul's glitziest shopping malls.
Blasts Kill 3 in Southern Afghanistan
VOA News October 3, 2011
Two bomb blasts in southern Afghanistan have killed at least three people.
Officials say at least two civilians were killed Monday in an explosion near the southern city of Kandahar.
11 insurgents killed, 16 arrested in Afghanistan
KABUL, Oct. 3 (Xinhua) -- Afghan security forces, backed by NATO-led Coalition forces, have eliminated 11 insurgents and detained 16 others in different provinces over the past 24 hours, Afghan Interior Ministry said on Monday.
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Pentagon dances around Karzai's rebuff of any Taliban negotiations
By Charley Keyes, CNN Senior National Security Producer Mon October 3, 2011
Washington (CNN) -- The Pentagon was walking carefully Monday around the latest apparent rift with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai about talking peace with the Taliban.
"We still believe reconciliation is a critical part of this process," Pentagon spokesman Capt. John Kirby said. "I don't want to get in President Karzai's head here and try to decipher what he meant or exactly what he said."
Karzai seemed to suggest in recent news reports that he wants to pull the plug on peace initiatives with the Taliban and turn attention instead toward Pakistan, especially since the man he put in charge of establishing links with the Taliban was assassinated last month. High Peace Council Chairman Burhanuddin Rabbani was killed in a suicide bombing attack by people he believed might be willing to talk peace.
Kirby, speaking to journalists in his Pentagon office, carefully said any decisions about peace talks, or reconciliation of the warring parties, has to be led by Afghanistan. And the spokesman could not say whether Karzai has given U.S. officials word that he is turning away from negotiations.
The two-step policy by American soldiers and diplomats has been aimed at improving security for Afghanistan citizens to help them resist the intimidation of the Taliban and then work on reconciliation, urging individuals, as well as Taliban leaders, to put down their arms and rejoin society.
The United States has announced the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, a policy that depends both on the steady improvement of Afghanistan's security forces as well as a decrease in the number of insurgent attacks. Formal programs are under way to persuade insurgents to leave the fight and return to their villages, usually accompanied by a government stipend or a job.
Adm. William McRaven, the U.S. Special Operations commander, brought that strategy home to Congress last week in explaining that talking and not just shooting is the way to fulfill the mission. "We are not going to be able to kill our way to victory in Afghanistan," McRaven told a House Armed Services subcommittee.
Kirby said that "the idea that reconciliation may not be as far along as it ought to be or the idea that there are still challenges to be overcome in reconciliation does not negate the security work we are doing with Afghan and coalition partners."
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Angry Pakistan rejects Afghan charges on Rabbani
By Augustine Anthony
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan has angrily rejected allegations from Afghan officials that its intelligence agency masterminded the assassination of Kabul's chief peace negotiator with the Taliban.
An investigative delegation established by President Hamid Karzai said evidence and a confession provided by a man involved in Burhanuddin Rabbani's killing on September 20 had revealed that the bomber was Pakistani and the assassination had been plotted in Pakistan.
"Instead of making such irresponsible statements, those in positions of authority in Kabul should seriously deliberate as to why all those Afghans who are favorably disposed toward peace and toward Pakistan are systematically being removed from the scene and killed," Pakistan's foreign ministry said in a statement.
"There is a need to take stock of the direction taken by Afghan Intelligence and security agencies."
Rabbani's killing derailed efforts to forge dialogue with the Taliban to end the 10-year war and raised fears of a dangerous widening of Afghanistan's ethnic rifts.
Hundreds of Afghans took to the streets of Kabul on Sunday to condemn recent shelling of border areas by Pakistan's army and accused the country's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency of involvement in Rabbani's killing. [nL3E7L2039]
In another sign of rising Afghan frustration with Islamabad, the peace council which Rabbani headed reiterated earlier comments by Karzai that negotiations should continue, but with Pakistan, rather than the Taliban, suggesting Islamabad was directing some militants from behind the scenes.
Afghan leaders have long questioned Islamabad's promises to help bring peace to their country. Pakistani intelligence is suspected of ties to militant groups in Afghanistan, especially the Haqqani network, one of the deadliest.
Pakistan sees the group as a strategic asset, a counterweight to the growing influence of rival India in Afghanistan, analysts say.
ISI chief Lieutenant-General Ahmed Shuja Pasha told Reuters last week that Pakistan never provided a single penny or bullet to the Haqqani network.
The network's leader, Sirajuddin Haqqani, told the BBC in an interview broadcast on Monday his group was not linked to the ISI.
U.S. CRITICISM
Pakistan has also came under sharp criticism from its ally the United States -- the source of billions of dollars in aid -- over its performance against militancy.
The top U.S. military officer has accused Pakistani intelligence of supporting an attack allegedly carried out by the Haqqani group, which is close to al Qaeda, on the U.S. embassy in Kabul on Sept 13.
In the face of Pakistani indignation, the White House and State Department appeared to quietly distance themselves from the remarks by Admiral Mike Mullen, who stepped down this week as chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The United States wants Pakistan to crack down on the Haqqani network, which it believes is based in North Waziristan in the Afghan border, and other anti-American militants.
Pakistan says it has sacrificed more than any other country that joined the U.S.-led global campaign against militancy after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, losing thousands of soldiers and security forces.
It has been presenting that argument more vigorously since U.S. special forces found and killed Osama bin Laden in a secret raid in May in a Pakistani town, where he apparently had been living for years.
Analysts doubt Pakistan will launch an offensive against the Haqqanis, but might instead try to rein them in to avoid further friction with Washington.
"I think Pakistan will definitely at least try to give an impression and also make some efforts toward distancing itself from them so that it doesn't get embarrassed," said retired army general and analyst Talat Masood.
"I don't think they will launch a military operation, but they will make sure that they (the Haqqanis) don't create more problems for us."
Instead of escalating attacks on militants, Pakistan seems to be searching for other ways to create stability in the unruly tribal areas near the Afghan border that offer sanctuaries.
Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani was quoted by Pakistani newspapers on Monday as saying the government was ready to talk peace with militants.
"We should give peace a chance in the first place by holding dialogue with militants," The Nation quoted him as saying.
The Express Tribune quoted him as saying: "If negotiations fail to work. The government will launch military operations in the tribal areas."
Previous government peace deals with militants provided the groups with space to impose what many Pakistanis say was a reign of terror designed to impose their view of Islam in areas they controlled.
(Additional reporting by reporters in Kabul and Washington; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Robert Birsel)
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Haqqanis Deny Killing Afghan Peace Envoy in BBC Interview
VOA News October 3, 2011
The BBC says it has interviewed the operational leader of the Haqqani Network, the Taliban-allied militant group.
In an interview posted on the BBC website Monday, Siraj Haqqani denied that his group killed Afghan peace envoy Burhanuddin Rabbani.
Haqqani also said the Haqqani Network, which has been blamed for a string of recent attacks on Western targets in Kabul, has not had recent links to Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI.
The outgoing chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, told a Senate hearing last month the Haqqani Network acts as a "veritable arm" of the ISI, and that its fighters planned and conducted the assaults on the U.S. embassy in Kabul and on a NATO base in Afghanistan.
The BBC says a face-to-face interview was not feasible because of "security concerns." The British broadcaster said the questions were delivered through an intermediary who returned with the audio response. The BBC says it believes the audio response is genuine.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP.
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Karzai strikes softer tone on Pakistan
By Amir Shah and Heidi Vogt - The Associated Press Monday Oct 3, 2011 15:22:38 EDT
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan’s president said Monday that Pakistan has broken promises to help end the Taliban-led insurgency but that he hopes the two countries can work together like brothers — softening his rhetoric after days of tough talk in which he had suggested relations were about to break down.
The two countries’ relations have become increasingly strained since the assassination of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani two weeks ago. A host of Afghan officials have publicly accused Pakistan and its spy agency of supporting the militants who killed Rabbani. And Afghan President Hamid Karzai has suspended a series of talks with Pakistan and the United States aimed at improving cooperation in combating the Taliban.
Karzai’s speech — prerecorded and broadcast on state television — appeared to be an attempt to soothe relations while still calling for Pakistan to do more to rein in insurgents that maintain havens within its borders.
“We hope the Pakistani government will think about the interests of the Pakistani people, who also want peace and stability,” Karzai said. “Our two countries should cooperate.”
Afghanistan and Pakistan have long been uneasy allies against the Taliban insurgency, largely because of a long history of the Pakistani government backing insurgents as a way to keep a check on Afghan administrations it worries might ally with its arch rival, India.
But the Afghan government appeared emboldened in recent days by a strengthening of U.S. criticism of Pakistan.
On Sept. 22, the outgoing chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, said the Haqqani network, which is affiliated with the Taliban and al-Qaida, “acts as a veritable arm” of Pakistan’s intelligence agency. Mullen accused the Haqqani network of staging an attack against the U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters in Kabul and a truck bombing that wounded 77 American soldiers last month. He claimed Pakistan’s spy agency helped the group.
Karzai has followed by issuing some of his strongest statements yet against Pakistan.
On Saturday, Karzai released a video of a meeting he held with the nation’s top religious leaders in which he said he has given up trying to talk to the Taliban and demanded Pakistan prove that it is working for peace.
Pakistan has denied any involvement with insurgents or the killing of Rabbani.
Karzai’s latest remarks come ahead of a trip to India. The visit had been planned weeks ago, but its timing has drawn attention to Pakistan’s worst fears — that Afghanistan will ally with India and present Pakistan with two hostile borders.
The Afghan president leaves Tuesday for the two-day trip. He is expected to meet with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and sign documents strengthening relations. Karzai is also scheduled to give a speech at the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi think tank.
In the south, meanwhile, a pair of bomb blasts killed three Afghans in Kandahar province. Civilian deaths have increased greatly in Afghanistan in recent years, largely because of insurgent bomb attacks.
In the first blast, a motorcycle-rickshaw packed with explosives blew up, apparently prematurely, on the outskirts of Kandahar city, killing two civilians, officials said.
However, a government minister said his car was nearby, suggesting he may have been the target. He was not injured.
Meanwhile, a suicide bomber in an army uniform tried to force his way into a branch of Kabul Bank, which pays military salaries, on an army base in Kandahar city.
A soldier guarding the entrance saw the explosives strapped to the man’s body and shot him, killing the attacker but also detonating the bomb strapped to his body, said Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, a spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry. Both men were killed, Azimi said.
Associated Press writer Mirwais Khan contributed to this report from Kandahar, Afghanistan.
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Pakistan Safe Havens Biggest Challenge for U.S. After 10 Years in Afghanistan
By MARTHA RADDATZ (@martharaddatz) and KRISTINA WONG (@kristina_wong) Oct. 3, 2011 BBC News
This week marks 10 years of fighting in Afghanistan. Gen. John Allen is now the eighth U.S. commander in charge of the war, charged not only with fighting the unpopular war but bringing it to an end.
Allen's biggest challenge is the attacks on his troops by fighters coming from safe havens in Pakistan, he said, a nation to which American gives billions of dollars a year.
"It makes me mad every day but, look, I got to deal with what I can deal with, and I deal with it as it comes to the border," he said.
Cross-border attacks increased 500 percent in the past year, from about 60 to more than 300, according to the military.
Allen said the problem with safe havens has gotten worse in the past 10 years.
"That's a question we have to ask the Pakistanis, in the end," he said. "My mandate ends at the border and I'll deal with the Taliban and the Haqqanis as they come across."
The Haqqanis are the arm of the Taliban that U.S. forces encounter mostly in the east.
"Those are the ones we are going to try to prevent from coming across over the border from the safe havens and when they do, we'll seek to deal with them," Allen said.
Allen said the majority of explosives were "probably" coming from Pakistan. The number of improvised explosive devices coming across the border hit a record high this summer at more than 5,000, killing at least 63 troops, according to the military.
"I have ordered a review of relationship of ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] with Pakistan and the intent will be to try to create opportunities for us to collaborate and cooperate in controlling that border," Allen said.
But Allen said the United States was seeking a "constructive relationship" with Pakistan.
"There's much worse than a bad relationship with Pakistan, which is no relationship with Pakistan," he said. "There are complicated dimensions to the relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and Pakistan and the United States, and Pakistan and the international community. It's a complicated and multilayered development."
Dealing with the threat from Pakistan is getting harder. Allen's popular predecessor, now-CIA Director David Petraeus, had 100,000 troops to work with. By this time next year, Allen will have 40 percent fewer forces. Still, Allen is optimistic.
"I happen to believe we can be successful in doing this and I intend to lead this force to be successful," he said.
Allen takes charge at a time when the United States is increasingly becoming impatient with America's longest war. Public support for drawing down U.S. forces in Afghanistan as soon as possible spiked to 56 percent from 48 percent immediately after the killing of Osama bin Laden, according to the Pew Research Center.
Despite bin Laden's killing, Allen said the United States still has a job to do in Afghanistan.
"We came to this region for two reasons: go after al Qaeda," he said, "and to make sure the Taliban don't unseat this government and don't return to power."
Despite 10 years of war, 1,777 U.S. service members killed and $557.1 billion already spent -- for a public whose biggest concern is the faltering economy and lack of jobs -- the war is still worth fighting, Allen said.
"It is, it is," he said. "On the 11th of September, we were attacked by people who had planned, organized and executed the attack on the United States."
Allen said it is hard to tell how many Taliban there are today.
"The problem is, of course, the Taliban are a very large organization. It's a syndicate, almost a criminal syndicate in so many ways. Nobody really knows how many there are. Our [intelligence] estimates would put them between 25 and maybe 30,000, max. But they are distributed all over," he said.
"Some of them are in the safe havens where they have an opportunity to rest and refit. Some of them are in transit and many are only in support roles and then some are gun toting, infantry, they are measured in the thousands on any given day."
Allen said he does not buy the notion that Americans do not support the war, and that deep down they know success in Afghanistan is as important as it has ever been. But he said he also knows that 10 long years of war have brought terrible pain to troops, families and friends.
"Whenever I hear of someone who's been killed, my first thought is that there's a family at home asleep that doesn't know yet that their loved one is gone or will never be the same again. That's the first thought I get. And then, of course, writing the letters," he said.
"And when I address those letters to the children, those are the toughest letters to write."
As for what he tells those children back home, he said, "That your father was a hero. That your mother was a hero and that they died in a great cause, and that we'll keep faith with them."
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Suicide attack in Afghanistan kills 1, hurts 19
From Ruhullah Khapalwak, For CNN Mon October 3, 2011
Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- One person was killed and 19 injured when a suicide bomber in a motorcycle bomber prematurely detonated his explosives near Kandahar City, Afghan officials said.
Officials believe the attacker's target was Asadullah Khalid, the border and tribal affairs minister and President Hamid Karzai's main representative in southern Afghanistan.
The attack took place in Karz, said Zalmai Ayoubi, the spokesman for the Kandahar provincial government.
Among the wounded are six children, he said.
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In the Afghan villages where Taliban still rule
3 October 2011 BBC News
The invasion of Afghanistan that forced the Taliban from power began 10 years ago this week but the Taliban were not completely defeated. The BBC's Paul Wood in Kabul looks at the state of the insurgency today and asks: "Could they be back?"
The wind blows in from an empty desert plain, whipping around a hunched figure kneeling, blindfolded and chained, on the ground. He is about to be executed by the Taliban.
Insurgents with rocket-propelled grenades strapped to their backs assemble an expectant crowd. Many watching have camera-phones - it is how we obtained the pictures.
Standing to one side are three young women wearing burkas. They will kill him.
The man is their uncle. He murdered their parents and two siblings in a dispute over family honour. Their mother was committing adultery, the villagers said. Their father, the condemned man's brother, refused to do anything. The uncle, shamed and enraged, opened fire at a car carrying the whole family.
The man has to pay for killing four people. Blood for blood. Taliban fighters help the girls to hold a heavy Kalashnikov. They are just inches from the man about to die.
"Pull the trigger," says one of the Talibs. "It's easy."
One by one, the women shoot him.
A large crowd has turned out for the execution. They jostle for space on the roof of the smart new community centre built by a Danish NGO. Some, no doubt, are there out of fear of the Taliban. Others enthusiastically shout "God is Great" as sentence is carried out.
"People were happy this man was shot like this," one of those present recalls.
"The Taliban control 20 to 30 villages around here. They catch thieves. People like what they do. The government doesn't punish criminals but the Taliban do."
It is 10 years since the invasion of Afghanistan but Nato still has not beaten the Taliban. So they remain in charge in remote areas like this, a village 60 miles from Herat, in the west of the country.
The execution, with the three young women being pushed forward to pull the trigger, was a shocking, even a ghoulish, spectacle. It will draw the condemnation of human rights groups.
But where the Taliban have support, largely in the conservative countryside, it is because of this harsh brand of justice, not in spite of it.
Still, many - probably most - Afghans do not want to see the Taliban back.
They worry about what might have to be given up if the insurgents get even a measure of influence over the life of the nation once again. Over the past week there have been demonstrations in Kabul against doing any kind of deal with the insurgents.
That will depend on what happens on the battlefield. Where Nato has reinforced, in the south, it is pushing the Taliban back. But elsewhere, in the east for instance, the militants have gained ground.
We spoke to militants across the country about why they were fighting.
Many said they had joined the insurgency after relatives were killed by Nato bombing. Some were tired of the conflict but said they would not give up until Nato had left Afghanistan. Most said they could move openly in areas where they once hid from Nato or the Afghan forces. They seemed confident of victory.
One fighter, Mullah Mushk Alam, from Sari Pul province, is worth quoting at length, simply because he is so typical.
"I joined the Taliban about seven or eight months ago," he says.
"I am carrying out jihad against the infidels because they invaded our country. I joined the Taliban because the foreigners kill a lot of people, because they search our houses with dogs, because they search our women and our children in an improper way.
"I joined the Taliban because of this corrupt government.
"Two of my brothers and my uncle were killed by Nato bombing. When they brought the dead bodies to my house, that was the day I decided to start fighting Nato.
"It's not just me; there are many like me. Day by day the number people joining the Taliban is increasing. Where there were 10 Taliban fighters in one village, now there are 100.
"The Taliban do not pay us. We spend the money to fight from our own pockets. We are winning because Islam will always be victorious."
Most of those interviews were carried out by local cameramen because foreigners stand a good chance of being kidnapped if they travel to Taliban-controlled areas. But I did go to see one Talib fighter, in a house we chose for the interview on the outskirts of Kabul.
I wanted to meet him because his brother is a serving officer in the Afghan army. That seemed extraordinary - though further research revealed that such divided families are not as unusual as you might think.
Sitting cross-legged on the carpeted floor, "Rahimullah" told me he was aged 20 and had been in the Taliban since he was 16. I asked him if he was prepared to kill his brother, the army officer, if necessary. The answer, calmly delivered, was chilling: "Whoever joins the infidels, we will fight them.
"Even if it is my brother, even if it is my father. Our religion requires this."
That seemed both tragic and evidence of the kind of ruthless campaign the Taliban are accused of waging. Did he support, for instance, the use of child suicide bombers by the insurgency?
"We don't force people to do suicide attacks," he said. "They want to sacrifice themselves for their religion."
His older brother, "Abdul Rashid", was not at all ideological. He told me he was in the army just to collect a salary. He did not support either side but, when pressed, said he thought Nato were "infidels", and he feared the insurgents.
"The Taliban control my village," he said. "Elsewhere in the province they have checkpoints on the roads at night everywhere. Without my brother in the Taliban I could be stopped and taken away."
A lieutenant, he was second-in-command of 80 men. Would he help the Taliban if they asked him? An officer in uniform could be a valuable asset to the insurgents.
High-profile attacks
"If the Taliban put pressure on me, I will have to do it for them," he replied miserably.
That was just one family, in one province, Wardak. But the contrast between the reluctant army officer and his committed Talib brother is not good for Nato. The whole strategy to get out of Afghanistan relies on handing over to the local forces, which Nato hopes will fight the Taliban vigorously.
Nato believes that, overall, things are going its way. According to its figures, violence is down nationwide 7% over the year, falling 27% in one of the most difficult provinces, Helmand.
But behind the statistics are high-profile attacks like those in Kabul recently, which have massive strategic impact. The Taliban are not winning but they are not exactly losing, either.
Following the assassination of former President Burhanuddin Rabbani, the Afghan government has suspended efforts to reach out to the insurgents.
But few doubt that, eventually, they will have to talk to the people behind the attacks in Kabul and executions in the countryside.
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Afghan Army's next hurdle: logistics
If the Afghan Army is to take over security in Afghanistan, it must be able to effectively resupply weapons, food, and other supplies without foreign air support or technical assistance.
By By Tom A. Peter | Christian Science Monitor
Most US soldiers say the Afghan Army has become a capable combat force. US Army Capt. Craig Halstead even credits a group of Afghan soldiers with saving the lives of several of his men during a recent firefight.
Despite the growing abilities of its soldiers, though, the Afghan Army must now catch up in another area: logistics. If the Afghan Army is to outlast the US and NATO presence here, it must be able to effectively resupply weapons, food, and other supplies without foreign air support or technical assistance.
“The capability exists at the boots-on-the-ground soldier level,” says Capt. Halstead, commander of Bravo Company, 2-28 Infantry Battalion, laying the foundation for a successful Afghan takeover. But, he continues, “Success depends on the unity of effort and communication between the Afghan Army, Border Police, and National Police.”
US and NATO forces have kept the Afghan military supplied in large part until recently. Ending this cycle has proved a challenge for Afghan soldiers who’ve become accustomed to getting whatever they need from foreign troops.
In recent years, Afghan forces have made considerable progress building their supply system, but development remains stymied by a complicated bureaucratic process, overreliance on NATO, a limited budget, and limited coordination between different Afghan security organizations.
In Kunar Province, the Afghan Border Police complain that they have mortars, but no rounds to fire. On long missions throughout Afghanistan, the Afghan Army often doesn’t bring enough water or food to last the entire patrol. Paperwork is often held up by small errors.
In remote areas with a strong insurgent presence, the problems of resupplying Afghan forces are most acutely felt. Along a remote border area of Kunar Province, Afghan Border Police are unable to truck in food supplies because they say insurgents will attack the convoys if they know the supplies are for the police.
“We try to buy supplies here, but the prices are extremely high. Our police are paying three times the market rate for food,” says Lt. Haji Mohammed Gul Haymad, an Afghan Border Police officer. He adds that the police provide them with a small stipend for food, but it only covers half the soldiers’ food costs; the rest they pay out of pocket. For soldiers who only make a very modest salary, expenses like these can make a noticeable difference in their income.
Western forces and their Afghan counterparts have worked to create a logistics system to make Afghan forces more self-reliant. The system depends on Afghan forces filling out paperwork to request supplies through their chain of command, as happens in most militaries. US soldiers working with the Afghan security forces say the system has given them much optimism that these hurdles can be overcome.
“The foundation of the logistical resupply system is in place. The trick is to get them to use it,” says Capt. Adam Maneen, executive officer for Bravo Company, 2-27 Infantry Battalion in Kunar Province. “They would use it, I think, if that was their only option. It’s hard cutting people off, [hearing] them say ‘we have nothing,’ and you’ve got to say 'keep waiting, keep filling out those forms.' ”
But much of developing an effective logistics system for the Afghans may rely on finding a happy medium between Western and Afghan methods.
“Until now, most of the logistics is sent by air and it’s done by the foreigners. Since we don’t have a full air force now it will be a bigger problem after the withdrawal of the foreign forces,” says Abdul Rahman Shaheed, a former police officer who is currently a member of parliament for Bamiyan Province. Mr. Shaheed says that rather than attempt to follow the Western model, which may break apart when the West leaves with its Air Force and other resources, Afghans should focus on supporting themselves as they did before US troops came to Afghanistan.
Rather than wait for NATO to supply bottled water, for example, Shaheed says Afghan troops should dig their own wells.
Still, the Afghan Army will remain dependent on foreign support for years to come. During the last Afghan fiscal year, March 2010 to March 2011, the Afghan government was only able to contribute a sum equivalent to about 4 percent of the $11.6 billion that the US government invested in Afghan security forces during 2011.
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Poll: Nearly 2 in 3 want troops in Afghanistan decreased
By Stephanie Condon CBS News October 3, 2011 6:30 PM
CBS News Poll analysis by the CBS News Polling Unit: Sarah Dutton, Jennifer De Pinto, Fred Backus and Anthony Salvanto
After 10 years of war in Afghanistan, nearly two-thirds of Americans want troop levels in the country to be reduced, a new CBS News poll shows.
Sixty-two percent said troop levels should be decreased immediately, according to the poll, conducted Sept. 28 - Oct. 2. Twenty-four percent want troop levels kept the same for now, while 7 percent want them increased. In 2009, as discussions to deploy additional troops to Afghanistan were underway, about a third supported increasing the number of U.S. troops there.
Americans were also asked when they think large numbers of troops should come home. The percentage who want large numbers to return from Afghanistan within a year stands at 38 percent, up from 33 percent in July 2010. Another 24 percent said they'd be willing to have troops there for one to two more years. Ten percent said they'd accept two to five more years, while 18 percent said they'd be willing to have troops there "as long as it takes," down from 26 percent in summer 2010.
President Obama deployed a 30,000-troop "surge" in Afghanistan in 2009. This past summer, he committed to pulling out 10,000 troops by the end of this year and another 23,000 by September 2012. That would leave roughly 68,000 American troops in Afghanistan to continue the decade-long war.
To mark the 10th anniversary of the war's beginning this week, "CBS Evening News" anchor and managing editor Scott Pelley is broadcasting reports on the war from Kandahar, Afghanistan, on Monday and Tuesday nights.
Just one in three Americans believe fighting there is the right thing for the U.S. to do, the poll shows, while 57 percent think the U.S. should not be involved in Afghanistan - similar to views last June. While Democrats and independents largely say the U.S. should not be involved there, a slim majority of Republicans, 51 percent, say it's the right thing to do.
Mr. Obama receives better marks for his handling of the war in Afghanistan than he does for his handling of domestic issues such as the economy. But even on that issue, fewer than half approve of his performance. In May, his approval rating on the issue rose to 61 percent after the killing of Osama bin Laden; it now stands at 47 percent, while 36 percent disapprove.
In the wake of the killing of bin Laden, U.S. objectives in Afghanistan are unclear to more than four in 10 Americans. Fifty percent of Americans say they do have a clear idea of U.S. goals there, but nearly as many, 43 percent, do not. More Republicans than Democrats or independents say they have a clear idea of U.S. goals there.
Clarity about U.S. goals in Afghanistan impacts views on whether the U.S. should be fighting there. Fifty percent of those who say they have a clear idea of U.S. goals think the U.S. is right in fighting there, but that drops to just 18 percent among those who do not have a clear idea of U.S. goals.
Military action against Afghanistan was begun in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Ten years later, Americans are mixed when it comes to the war's impact on terrorism directed at the United States. As many as 47 percent think it has made the U.S. safer from terrorism. However, 40 percent think it has had no impact, and 10 percent say it has made the U.S. less safe.
The public's views on the war's success are mixed. Fifty percent of Americans think the war in Afghanistan has not been a success for the U.S., while just 39 percent think it has been.
A majority of Americans, 53 percent, thinks the war in Afghanistan is going badly for the U.S. - but that's been the case for years now.
Looking back, there is no consensus about what the U.S. ought to have done about Afghanistan. Thirty-nine percent think the U.S. was right to remove the Taliban from power and remain in Afghanistan to help stabilize the country. Nearly as many, 32 percent, think the U.S. ought to have removed the Taliban from power and then left afterwards. One in four thinks the U.S. ought not to have gotten involved there at all.
Once U.S. troops leave, 28 percent of Americans expect there to be more violence in Afghanistan, but 52 percent think the level of violence will not change.
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‘You Have the Watches, We Have the Time’
Oct 2, 2011 10:00 AM EDT Newsweek
Afghanistan: Ten years of war in a land where your enemy will fight you forever.
Holed up at a mud-brick house in eastern Afghanistan’s mountainous Paktika province, 28-year-old Mujahid Rahman says he can’t remember how long he’s been battling the Americans. Seven or eight years is his best guess. The past three years have been particularly tough, the Taliban subcommander says. He tells of being held prisoner by the Americans at Bagram Airfield from early 2009 to August 2010, and then enduring an even grimmer month and a half at an interrogation center run by the Kabul government’s intelligence agency. He speaks of comrades who have been killed, disabled, or captured, and how he and his small band of fighters were driven away from their home base in neighboring Ghazni province. He sounds worn out, on the verge of giving up.
But he stiffens when a Newsweek reporter asks if the Taliban should strike a deal with the Americans and the Kabul government. “No!” he practically shouts. The fight will continue until the Americans are defeated, he insists, no matter how long it takes and what the sacrifices. He recalls a prison guard at Bagram who was gleefully preparing to return home to America. The soldier gave Rahman a bottle of juice as a farewell gift and asked how long the Afghan expected to remain behind bars, and what he hoped to do afterward. “Time in jail and time in the jihad mean nothing to us,” Rahman claims to have told the American. “Your watch’s battery will run down, and its hands will stop. But our time in the struggle will never end. We will win.”
His words continue to haunt us. We’ve covered the war in Afghanistan from the start, and we’ve always been fascinated by the contrast between the two sides’ attitudes toward the conflict. It’s summed up in an expression often attributed to a captured Taliban fighter: “You have the watches. We have the time.” The insurgents seem utterly confident that both God and time are on their side. Everything else is irrelevant detail: the anniversaries, deadlines, and timelines, and all the economic, financial, and political constraints that occupy the waking hours of U.S. policymakers. The insurgents show no interest in numbers or statistics or schedules; they focus only on the victory they’re sure will someday be theirs.
When Mullah Mohammed Omar and his religious students launched their battle against the country’s brutal and rapacious mujahedin warlords in 1994, they didn’t set a target date for the capture of Kabul; they just started fighting. Later they would recall their surprise at how quickly they took the capital, after just two years of fighting; they had assumed the war would take far longer. Five years later, when America attacked, they were no less surprised by how fast their Islamic emirate collapsed. But they set about rebuilding their shattered movement, still with no set time frame. “We never have calendars, watches, or calculators like the Americans do,” says a former Taliban government minister who is now a leading member of the insurgency’s propaganda cell. “From the Taliban point of view, time has not even started yet.”
Oct. 7 marks the 10th anniversary of America’s war in Afghanistan, the longest in U.S. history. On that date in 2001, American bombs began raining down on the Taliban’s forces, decimating their ranks. Thousands of Omar’s men were killed and wounded; stunned survivors of the massive explosions could only stagger around aimlessly, some bleeding from the nose and ears. The Taliban seemed finished. And yet a decade later the United States is still fighting a war that has taken the lives of nearly 1,800 U.S. troops and now costs more than $9 billion a month, according to the Congressional Research Service. Many Americans have grown fed up with the seemingly endless carnage and expense. President Obama has set a 2014 deadline for the withdrawal of most, if not all U.S. forces, but that’s not fast enough for a lot of Americans.
In fact, at least four of the Republican presidential candidates have urged a quicker pullout. “My hunch is the American people want to be out of there as quickly as we can get it done,” former Utah governor Jon Huntsman said on a TV talk show earlier this year. Opinion polls suggest he’s right. For the GOP candidates, the tantalizing question is whether they can find a way to subscribe to that view without laying themselves open to the charge of being weak on national security. It’s clear that America’s Afghanistan commitment will be an issue on Election Day 2012.
By then the White House desperately wants to show real progress in Afghanistan. This past June, when then–defense secretary Robert Gates made his farewell tour of U.S. bases in Afghanistan, he repeatedly told the troops that he expected positive strides there by the end of the year—and sure enough, the Taliban have been largely expelled from their longtime stomping grounds in the south and east—even from their birthplace, Kandahar. But those impressive gains have been mostly ignored in favor of headline-grabbing insurgent strikes in Kabul: the Mumbai-style rampage at Kabul’s Inter-Continental Hotel in June, the 20-hour siege outside the U.S. Embassy on Sept. 13, the suicide-bomb assassination of former president Burhanuddin Rabbani by a supposed Taliban peace envoy on Sept. 20.
And while Americans argue about whether Afghanistan is worth the effort, the Taliban are fighting for their homes. Some have been making war ever since the creation of the Taliban in 1994, and at least a few are veterans of the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, back in the 1980s. Now they’re taking encouragement from the onset of the U.S. military drawdown. “We have not warmed up yet, but the enemy is already leaving,” gloats Mullah Abdul Jabar, a Taliban subcommander from Helmand province. That rush to the exits is not good, according to Seth Jones, a RAND Corporation specialist on the Afghan war. In an analysis of Obama’s withdrawal timetable published this past May, he warned: “As Winston Churchill observed over a century ago during the British struggles in the Northwest Frontier, time in this area is measured in decades, not months or years. It’s a concept that doesn’t always come easy to Westerners.”
No senior commanders of any consequence have switched sides or given up the fight.
As tenacious as the Taliban may be, they still have serious weaknesses. For one thing, they’re almost totally dependent on their safe havens in Pakistan, where their leaders live openly. Pakistan is also the Afghan insurgents’ chief portal for cash, supplies, munitions, and explosives, without which the Taliban would be hard-pressed to survive. And yet Pakistani authorities seem unwilling to interfere with Taliban leaders or their operations. In fact, senior American officials say the Pakistanis are pouring resources into the Haqqani network, a Taliban-allied group of Afghan insurgents who are believed to have played major roles in the Rabbani assassination and the attacks on the Inter-Continental and the U.S. Embassy. (The Pakistanis vehemently deny any such collusion.)
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has repeatedly given Pakistan what amounts to an ultimatum. “The message they need to know is: we’re going to do everything we can to defend our forces,” Panetta told reporters two days after the embassy siege. “I’m not going to talk about how we’re going to respond. I’ll just let you know that we’re not going to allow these types of attacks to go on.” The CIA already has paramilitaries leading local forces inside Pakistan’s tribal areas, but so far their targets have been limited to Al Qaeda commanders. Will their mission now expand to target the Haqqanis? Or will the administration nerve itself to send regular troops over the border? One U.S. official with vast experience of Afghanistan tells Newsweek he thinks it’s “more than evens” that the U.S. could send troops over the border by the end of the year.
Meanwhile, America’s forces try to intercept Taliban recruits, funds, weapons, and explosives as they pour in from Pakistan. U.S. and Afghan patrols on the border keep discovering and destroying massive caches of explosives—often a ton or more—waiting to be moved deeper into Afghanistan and used in the IEDs, truck bombs, and car bombs that cause most coalition casualties these days. Only 40 pounds or so are needed for an IED that can destroy an armored vehicle. “We found 300 percent more caches this past winter than the previous winter,” says Australian Maj. Gen. Michael G. Krause, a senior coalition planner in Kabul. “Already we believe the enemy is running short of ammunition and supplies.” A senior U.S. intelligence officer agrees. “We can hear commanders squawking about the lack of ammo and supplies,” he says. “We hope the tension will break down the sense that they can wait us out.”
But the Taliban insist it’s the Americans who will quit first. “When a U.S. soldier arrives here, he starts his stopwatch, counting every second, minute, and hour until he gets home,” says the former government minister. Unlike American soldiers, young Taliban have few home comforts to miss, he says. “Our young fighters are having an ideal life with a motorbike, an AK-47, an RPG, long hair, and a holy cause to fight for,” he says. “They are not thinking of time and consequences, only of the endless fight for victory.” He says that if the young fighters measure time, it’s only by the length of their hair: “It takes about a year for their hair to grow one-half-meter long.”
The incessant boasts about their endurance may sound like propaganda, but when challenged on that score, the fighters have a compelling answer: despite all the deaths and injuries, the long stretches in prison, the lack of funds, food, and medical care, and their spartan existences far from their loved ones, relatively few Taliban have ever defected. No senior commanders of any consequence have switched sides or given up the fight, and only a few thousand low-level fighters have joined the Kabul government’s amnesty and reintegration programs. “If the Taliban were worried about the length of the war and how much longer they can sacrifice, there would have been big defections already,” says the former minister. “That just hasn’t happened. And we still get all the new recruits we need.”
Thanks to the insurgency’s dauntingly high casualty and capture rates, those youngsters are the Taliban’s lifeblood. Most of them know nothing of recent history and have no interest in the past or future, according to the older hands. “Sixty percent of our fighters are too young to remember Sept. 11 or the Taliban’s collapse,” says a senior Taliban operative known as Zabibullah. “They only know that there are invaders and their puppets occupying our land, and that they must be defeated no matter how long it takes.” That attitude is what keeps the insurgency going, he adds: if the Taliban worried about how long the struggle will take and the odds against them, the insurgency would have collapsed years ago. “The U.S. never believed we could survive for long against B-52s, drones, SEAL commando raids, and an endless supply of dollars thrown at us by the richest nation on earth,” he says. “If we ever thought about the odds and time frames, we would be finished.”
Jabar is another insurgent who looks at first glance like a beaten man. The 26-year-old Taliban subcommander is encamped in a village near the Pakistani border, where he’s being treated for migraines and a left hand that is partially paralyzed and missing three fingers. That doesn’t keep him and his seven fighters from engaging in firefights with U.S. and Afghan forces. “Only Allah knows how many times we have ambushed and attacked the enemy over the past few years,” he says. “I can only remember a dozen of them.” He joined the Taliban as soon as he could grow a beard, he says, and he recalls being present as a new recruit at a speech by the brutal senior commander Mullah Dadullah Akhund shortly before he was killed in 2007. “There is no time limit in winning this war,” declared Dadullah, who had lost his left leg fighting the Soviets in the 1980s.
Jabar says he hasn’t seen his wife and three children since February 2010, when U.S. Marines drove him and his men out of Marja, his home district. Occasionally he phones home, but he knows he’s taking a chance: the call might give away his position and bring down a Special Forces raid or a drone strike. On the phone to his eldest son, Jabar says that if he dies in combat he hopes the boy will grow up to take his place in the Taliban’s ranks. “I’m sure we’ll still be fighting when my son becomes a man,” Jabar says. “He’ll be proud to take my place.” The boy is about 6 years old.
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Kabul set for gains through new Silk Road
Oct. 3, 2011 at 11:49 AM
WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 (UPI) -- Afghanistan is set to make substantial economic gains through so-called new Silk Road, an infrastructure network that includes a gas pipeline, an official said.
The Asian Development Bank announced it approved of $754 million in new financing to help link Afghanistan's mineral and energy sector to the region. The ADB-funded projects are part of the so-called new Silk Road in the region. It includes a pipeline that would carry natural gas from Turkmenistan, through Afghanistan, Pakistan and into India.
Robert Hormats, the U.S. under secretary for economic, energy and agricultural affairs, was quoted by Pakistani newspaper The Nation as telling delegates in Washington the new Silk Road could bring substantial economic gains to Afghanistan.
"The Afghanistan of today is beginning to emerge from its economic isolation," he was quoted as saying of the project.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, during meetings last month on the new Silk Road, that fostering investments in major infrastructure "like the so-called (TAPI) pipeline to run from Turkmenistan, through Afghanistan, Pakistan and into India," would promote regional economic stability.
TAPI is favored by Western powers over Iran's rival gas pipeline project to Pakistan because of diplomatic concerns with dealing with Tehran.
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Afghanistan on brink after decade of war
By Katherine Haddon AFP – Sun, Oct 2, 2011
A decade of war costing thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars has left Afghanistan with a corrupt government, a widely criticised Western troop presence and only dim prospects for peace.
The United States and Britain launched an air assault on October 7, 2001, less than a month after the 9/11 attacks, followed quickly by a ground invasion aiming to topple the Taliban and destroy Al-Qaeda safe havens.
Initially, there was euphoria among many Afghans oppressed by the Taliban's brutal regime, which banned girls from going to school and women from working outside the home as well as music and most sports for all.
A decade on, high-rise buildings, shopping centres and modern technology have transformed parts of Kabul, but many Afghans now see the 140,000 foreign troops under US command as occupiers not liberators.
President Hamid Karzai, once hailed in Western capitals, has become one of the international community’s harshest critics, particularly over civilian casualties, and his government is seen as corrupt and weak.
When the Taliban were ousted, they fled, badly weakened, to Pakistan and violence was low for several years. But they rebuilt and 10 years later, 2011 is on track to be the deadliest year yet for civilians in Afghanistan.
"Since I've known my right hand from my left hand, we have had war in Afghanistan," said Sharif Siddiqui, a 35-year-old engineer in Kabul.
"When the Taliban were overthrown, we believed that the international allies would bring good security to our country but that didn’t happen. Instead, they have killed our civilians rather than killing Taliban militants."
Efforts to broker peace with the Taliban had made scant progress even before Karzai's peace envoy Burhanuddin Rabbani was assassinated last month, fanning ethnic tensions and threatening to further weaken the president’s government.
With US-led foreign combat troops due to leave in 2014, some experts fear the country is sliding back towards the kind of civil war that killed and displaced thousands of people in 1992-96.
"The fear that many people have here is that if the politics aren't dealt with, what we will see is when the international forces pull out, there will be a proper civil war," said Kate Clark from the Afghanistan Analysts Network.
Research from Brown University says at least 33,877 people -- foreign and Afghan troops, civilians, insurgents and others -- have died overall.
So far, the conflict has cost the United States alone at least $444 billion.
Operation Enduring Freedom drove the Taliban from power in just two months with help from Afghan fighters in the Northern Alliance.
Schools reopened, Karzai was appointed and some -- although by no means all -- women shed their burqas, while American attention switched increasingly to war in Iraq.
Today, NATO's US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) admits that early complacency may have helped the Taliban rebuild.
"Nobody thought they could ever revive. Perhaps blinded by success, we made a mistake then," ISAF spokesman Brigadier General Carsten Jacobson told AFP.
It took 10 years to track down and kill Osama bin Laden in a suburban home in the shadow of Pakistan's top military academy in May this year.
The killing handed the United States a victory, but it also showed that the invasion designed to wipe out Al-Qaeda safe havens had simply pushed them across the border into Pakistan.
Some say that was not the only mistake at this stage.
Experts cite a disconnect between the US’s lofty ambitions for nation-building in Afghanistan and realities on the ground.
"The veneer of success was intoxicating; it encouraged an expansion of US ambition and rhetorical commitments even as the war in Iraq preoccupied the Bush administration...
"The resulting mismatch of sweeping, noble American aims with meager resources was disastrous," said Daniel Markey, senior fellow for India, Pakistan and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, a US think-tank.
Violence flared back up in earnest in 2007 and 2008, after the Taliban had regrouped in rear bases in Pakistan's tribal belt.
Seventy foreign soldiers died in 2002. By 2008 the figure had risen to 295 and to 521 in 2009, according to the independent website iCasualties.org.
When US President Barack Obama took over from George W. Bush in 2009, he made ending the war in Afghanistan a foreign policy priority.
His answer was to send an extra 50,000 troops into Afghanistan and appoint the American credited with bringing peace to the Balkans, Richard Holbrooke, as his special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
With surge forces fighting to defeat the Taliban, last year was the deadliest on record with 711 foreign military deaths.
Holbrooke died last year and the United States is preparing to withdraw 33,000 of its 100,000 troops by mid-2012. Britain and France will also lower troop levels by next year.
The crux of the entire strategy is handing over security to the fast-growing Afghan army and police.
Local police and soldiers are due to number 352,000 by November 2012 under a huge programme costing $11.6 billion this year alone, but concerns over retention, capability, literacy and human rights standards remain.
The head of the training mission, US Lieutenant General William Caldwell, concedes that up to 3,000 international trainers may have to stay in Afghanistan until around 2020.
Yet despite American claims to be winning, the Taliban have exacted a series of stunning assassinations and headline-grabbing suicide attacks increasingly focused on the Afghan capital.
The United Nations has said violent incidents rose 39 percent in the first eight months of 2011 on the same period last year. ISAF disputes these figures.
Efforts to wipe out Afghanistan’s drug trade which helps fund the insurgency have also had limited success with the United Nations predicting only a small drop in poppy cultivation this year.
Regardless who is winning, experts say military might alone will not bring stability unless widespread official corruption is also addressed.
"If you look at where and how the insurgency has grown and has been supported, there's been a reaction to a very, very predatory Afghan state," Clark said.
Rabbani's death has also led some to suggest that the Northern Alliance -- of which he was political leader -- could rearm in revenge.
"The likelihood of civil war has been rising for years but it may have leapt upward significantly," after Rabbani's death, said Shashank Joshi of the Royal United Services Institute think-tank.
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Americans Raid Byways of Haqqani Insurgents in Afghanistan
The New York Times By C. J. CHIVERS October 2, 2011
CHARBARAN, Afghanistan - The first helicopter landed in the bluish gray gloom before dawn. More than 20 members of an American reconnaissance platoon and Afghan troops accompanying them jogged out through the swirling dust, moving into a forest smelling of sage and pine.
Three more helicopters followed, and soon roughly 100 troops were on the floor of this high-elevation valley in Paktika Province, near the border with Pakistan. They were beginning their portion of a brigade-size operation to disrupt the Haqqani network, the insurgent group that collaborates with the Taliban and Al Qaeda and that has become a primary focus of American counterterrorism efforts since Osama bin Laden was killed.
The group, based in Pakistan’s northwestern frontier, flows fighters into Afghanistan and has orchestrated a long campaign of guerrilla and terrorist attacks against the Afghan government and its American sponsors.
Its close ties to Pakistan’s intelligence service, and Pakistan’s unwillingness to act against the Haqqani headquarters in Miram Shah, a city not far from the Afghan border, have drawn condemnation from Washington and escalated tensions between two nations that officially have been counterterrorism partners.
Against this backdrop, the helicopter assault into Charbaran this past week highlighted both the false starts and the latest set of urgent goals guiding the American military involvement in Afghanistan.
The Pentagon plans to have withdrawn most of its forces from the country by 2014. Talk among many officers has shifted sharply from discussions of establishing Afghan democracy or a robust government to a more pragmatic and realistic military ambition: doing what can be done in the little time left.
In the tactical sense, this translates to straightforward tasks for units in the security buffer along the border. While they still have their peak troop presence, American commanders are trying to bloody the strongest of the armed antigovernment groups and to put thousands more Afghan police officers and soldiers into contested areas.
The long-term ambition is that Afghan forces will have the skills and resolve to stand up to the insurgency as the Americans pull back.
And yet, even while looking beyond 2014, American units must fight a day-to-day war.
One element lies in trying to prevent more of the carefully planned attacks that have shaken Kabul, the Afghan capital, several times this year. The attacks — striking prominent targets, like the capital’s premier hotel and the American Embassy — have often been organized by the Haqqanis, and have highlighted the Afghan government’s vulnerability and the insurgents’ resiliency.
Lt. Col. John V. Meyer, who commands the Second Battalion of the 28th Infantry Regiment, which used two companies to cordon off the Charbaran Valley and another to sweep the villages, called the operation “a spoiling attack to prevent a spectacular attack in the Kabul area.” It was also intended, he said, to gather intelligence.
The Charbaran Valley has become one of the main routes for Haqqani fighters to enter Afghanistan. They generally come in on foot, American officers say, and then, after staying overnight in safe houses and tent camps, they work their way toward Kabul or other areas where they have been sent to fight.
Mid-level Haqqani leaders also meet in the valley’s villages, American officers said, including near an abandoned school and the ruins of a government center that the United States built earlier in the war but that local fighters had destroyed by 2008.
It was 2010 when the last conventional unit entered the valley. An infantry company, it landed by helicopter and was caught in a two-hour gunfight as it left.
When the American and Afghan troops fanned out this time, their mission faced a familiar law of guerrilla war: when conventional forces arrive in force, guerrillas often disperse, setting aside weapons to watch the soldiers pass by.
The operation was also probably no surprise to the Haqqani fighters in the valley, American officers said, because during the days of preparation some of the Afghan troops probably leaked that the assault was coming.
As the soldiers climbed the hills — laden with body armor and backpacks heavy with water and ammunition — they almost immediately found signs of the fighters’ presence.
In the first house they entered, not far from the landing zone, only two women and several children were home. The men had all left.
Inside, the Afghan troops uncovered a case of ammunition fired by both PK machine guns and Dragunov sniper rifles. They also found two bandoleers of .303-caliber ammunition for the dated Lee-Enfield rifles that remain a common insurgent arm.
Capt. Nicholas C. Sinclair, the company commander, ordered the Afghan troops to confiscate the ammunition. The younger woman protested loudly.
“There have been many American soldiers here, and they always left it,” she said.
This, the Americans said, was most likely a lie. An Afghan police officer packed away the ammunition. The company walked off.
Later, at the now-abandoned school, which the Haqqani and Taliban fighters had forced to close, the soldiers were greeted by a taunting note written in white chalk above the main entrance.
“Taliban is good,” it read, in English.
The school, the soldiers said, was evidence of an earlier setback. According to those who advanced the counterinsurgency doctrine that swept through the American military several years ago, building schools was supposed to help turn valleys like this one around.
Instead, it was shut down by the same fighters who overran the government center and chased the police away. It stands empty — a marker of good intentions gone awry, and of time and resources lost before this latest battalion inherited duties in the province.
More signs of the fighters soon emerged. At the edge of the Charbaran bazaar, where the Haqqani and Taliban fighters were said to gather, Second Lt. Mark P. Adams, a fire support officer, glanced into a woodpile he was using for cover and saw a makeshift bomb.
The weapon — fashioned from 120-millimeter and 82-millimeter mortar rounds attached to roughly 10 pounds of homemade explosives — was powerful but not armed. It apparently had been hidden there but was meant to have been moved to a road frequented by the Afghan and American troops.
Staff Sgt. Robert Blanco, an explosive-ordnance disposal specialist, put a small explosive charge against it and detonated the bomb in place.
Soon the soldiers climbed a mountain, joining the rest of the battalion, to sleep in the relative safety of a higher ridge.
The next morning, as the sweep resumed, one elder, Ghul Mohammad, sat with First Lt. Tony E. Nicosia, an American platoon leader, as Afghan and American soldiers searched the shops a second time.
There was a ritual familiarity to their exchange, a product of a war entering its second decade.
“When you come here, that’s a big problem for us,” the elder said. “Because after you leave the Taliban comes and asks us about you, and they take our food and are not paying for it.”
Whether this was true could not be determined from this conversation alone; many villagers, the Afghan and American soldiers said, support Taliban and Haqqani fighters.
The soldiers also said that at least some of the men gathered around them were probably fighters, at least part time, who had set down their weapons for the brief period that the Americans had a large presence in the valley.
“We understand your concerns and, hopefully, we can push some security in here,” Lieutenant Nicosia said politely.
Ghul Mohammad nodded. “I cannot do anything about it,” he said. “I want my God to bring security here.”
The Americans shouldered their equipment and began the walk to the next buildings, on the opposite side of the valley.
Throughout the operation, hidden fighters were occasionally heard over the two-way radios that Afghan interpreters were monitoring for intelligence. The guerrillas had threatened to ambush the reconnaissance company.
After the American and Afghan soldiers reached the opposite slope, the guerrillas managed their only attack: they fired four mortar rounds from outside the cordon.
The rounds exploded well behind the soldiers, near the abandoned school, causing no harm but making clear that Charbaran, which had fallen almost silent as the company moved through, remained out of government hands.
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Most Afghan women fear return of Taliban-style govt-survey
By Zhou Xin
KABUL (Reuters) - The vast majority of Afghan women are worried about a return to power of a Taliban-style government and over a third say the departure of foreign troops will make the country worse off, according to a survey released on Monday.
The survey of 1,000 Afghan women by charity ActionAid revealed a majority believed they were safer, and their lives had improved, since the Taliban were toppled from power.
If the hardline group took control of the country again it would put at risk a decade of gains made by women, it said, and some professionals including teachers, politicians and activists said they might be forced to leave the country.
The Taliban, which ruled most of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, was infamous for its strict laws marginalizing women, that deprived them of the rights to work, study or move freely.
Afghanistan's constitution now stipulates that men and women have equal rights, but many independent agencies say women in the conservative country are still subject to widespread discrimination and oppression.
The survey, conducted by STATT Consulting and Awaz Women and Children's Welfare Organization between June 26 and August 15, sought women's opinions about living through a decade of war and the government's efforts to engage with the Taliban to find a peace settlement.
The London-based rights organization said women were being excluded from the reconciliation process and warned their lack of involvement could undo gains made in the past 10 years and lead to more instability.
"Women are being frozen out of the process and are worried that their rights are being traded away for peace," Belinda Calaguas, ActionAid Director of Policy, said in a statement.
LIVES IMPROVING
Of the 1,000 women surveyed in five provinces, 491 were from rural areas and 509 from urban centers. It found that 66 percent felt safer now than 10 years ago and 72 percent believed their lives had improved.
Despite such improvements, Afghanistan still has a high maternal mortality rate, with 1,400 deaths during childbirth for every 100,000 women, and a level of gender inequality that was one of the highest in the world, according to the latest data from the United Nations Development Program.
London-based charity Oxfam released a separate report on Monday calling for Afghanistan to promote better access to education, health and justice for women and boost the number of women working in state institutions and the justice system.
It echoed ActionAid's call for women to play a part in peace moves.
"The more that women feel involved in and committed to a political settlement which safeguards their rights, the more likely they are ... to promote changes in attitude and genuine reconciliation -- essential for a lasting peace," Oxfam said
Oxfam last week urged the international community to encourage Afghan police to recruit more women, because victims of physical, sexual or psychological abuse tended only to report the crimes to other women.
According to the interior ministry, there are 142,000 police officers in Afghanistan, of which 1,300 are women. President Hamid Karzai wants to have 5,000 policewomen on duty by the time NATO-led coalition troops leave.
(Editing by Martin Petty)
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Afghan yuppies get rich on ten years of war
By Usman Sharifi | AFP
"Business is booming, I have made good profits since the Taliban were ousted," said a smiling Sayed Habib as he showed Western dresses to young women in one of Kabul's glitziest shopping malls.
Habib, 34, is one of a new generation of rich young Afghans driving flashy cars and wearing designer labels who have made fortunes in Afghanistan's war economy since the US-led invasion 10 years ago.
His shop is one of many signs that some in the Afghan capital are now very wealthy -- although Kabul's mirrored glass malls and lavish mansions often sit on dusty roads dotted with children begging for money, highlighting wider, ingrained poverty.
And despite their wealth, many of the city's yuppies are worried that the withdrawal of US-led combat forces in 2014 will mean security declines and the economic boom turns to bust.
"Not only me but every investor I know expects the bubble that created this economy will burst as soon as foreign aid is cut or when foreign troops leave in 2014," said entrepreneur Ahmad Lais.
Afghanistan receives around $15 billion annually in security and civilian aid from overseas but the figure is set to fall sharply as troops withdraw.
A US Senate committee report in June warned this could trigger "a severe economic depression".
Thousands of Afghans -- many in Kabul but also in the rest of Afghanistan -- are employed to work with the NATO-led military force and other international organisations or, like Lais, have set up businesses to provide for them.
Many more, including Habib, have seen their firms thrive as these Afghans spend their disposable income.
Such pockets of wealth in what remains one of the world's poorest countries were unthinkable under the Taliban, whose imposition of a strict version of sharia law after a devastating civil war left little room for economic growth.
Lais has two houses in Kabul, dresses in smart, Western-style suits and drives a brand new Toyota Land Cruiser, the favoured vehicle for wealthy Afghans and expatriates.
"I came back to Afghanistan as soon as the Taliban regime collapsed," he explained.
"Our company won a contract to supply fuel to international troops. I used the profits I made to open two new factories and employed 150 workers.
"My factories produce construction materials that are used in thousands of homes that are being built in Kabul."
But his fuel supply business is currently not doing well, he said, because contracts from NATO forces are drying up and the security situation is deteriorating.
The United Nations has said violent incidents in the war rose 39 percent in the first eight months of this year, although the NATO-led foreign force in Afghanistan disputed this, saying attacks were down two percent.
Khan Jan Alakozai, deputy head of the Afghanistan Chamber of Commerce and Industries, said foreign troop withdrawals which got under way in July this year had already prompted some investors to flee.
"When Obama announced all troops will be pulling out, our international business partners, many of them Westerners, began preparing to leave the country," he said.
"We try to assure them that it will not be risky to make investments here, but they come and they see the situation, they see that even the US embassy in Kabul is not that safe."
The comment was a reference to a 19-hour attack last month which saw militants launching rocket-propelled grenades at the American mission in Kabul, one of the capital's most tightly-guarded sites.
Alakozai added that while pulling out foreign troops might be a good move politically for countries fighting an unpopular war, it could be disastrous for Afghanistan's new generation of businessmen.
"At this stage, Afghan security forces cannot be trusted," he said, referring to the 300,000-strong Afghan force being handed increasing control of security as foreign troops leave.
"Everybody invested in Afghanistan trusting that the US and NATO forces would stay here for the long run. But if they leave so soon, it's no longer safe for the business community to invest in Afghanistan."
Another young Afghan entrepreneur, car dealer Haji Zabiullah, echoed many of his wealthy countrymen by suggesting he could take his wealth elsewhere, for instance Dubai, if the economic and security situation gets too bad.
"I might have to transfer my investments to another country if the Americans leave," he said.
The vast majority of Afghans, who remain dirt poor and locked into a predominantly agrarian economy, do not have that option.
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Blasts Kill 3 in Southern Afghanistan
VOA News October 3, 2011
Two bomb blasts in southern Afghanistan have killed at least three people.
Officials say at least two civilians were killed Monday in an explosion near the southern city of Kandahar.
Afghan Border and Tribal Affairs Minister Asadullah Khalid said he was nearby and was targeted in the attack, but authorities say there is no evidence the blast was aimed at Khalid.
At least 10 other people were wounded in the bombing.
In a second attack, a suicide bomber wearing an army uniform struck inside an Afghan army base in Kandahar city. Army officials say a guard, along with the attacker were killed. Two soldiers were wounded in the blast.
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11 insurgents killed, 16 arrested in Afghanistan
KABUL, Oct. 3 (Xinhua) -- Afghan security forces, backed by NATO-led Coalition forces, have eliminated 11 insurgents and detained 16 others in different provinces over the past 24 hours, Afghan Interior Ministry said on Monday.
"Afghan National Police (ANP) in collaboration with Afghan National Army (ANA) and Coalition Forces launched six joint operations in surrounding areas of the Kunar, Kandahar, Wardak, Logar, Helmand and Khost provinces, killing 11 armed insurgents and arresting 16 other suspected insurgents," the ministry said in a statement, providing daily operational updates.
Separately, the ANP have also arrested a senior commander of the insurgents named Mullah Ahmad Shah in Shindand District of western Herat province in the same period of time, the statement added.
A handful of weapons and ammunition were also found and seized by joint forces, it said.
Afghan officials often use the word "insurgents" referring to the Taliban militants.
The insurgent group, who has stepped up their attacks on Afghan troops and about 130,000 NATO-led Coalition troops stationed in the country since a spring rebel offensive was launched in May this year in the country. It has yet to make any comment.
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