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U.S. Blames Kabul Assault on Pakistan-Based Group
By JACK HEALY and ALISSA J. RUBIN The New York Times September 14, 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan — Raising the death toll sharply, American and Afghan officials said Wednesday that the complexity and execution of the hours-long siege of the American embassy and NATO headquarters in Kabul bore all the hallmarks of a militant group based in Pakistan that has become one of the American military’s most implacable foes here.
Afghan militants dressed as women to smuggle weapons for Kabul attack
By Ernesto Londoño and Javed Hamdard, The Washington Post
KABUL — Shortly after security forces gunned down the last assailant involved in a brazen attack in Kabul Wednesday morning, officials said they believe the attackers were dressed as women to smuggle a huge stockpile of weapons into a building overlooking the U.S. Embassy and the NATO headquarters.
For the U.S. to Leave Afghanistan, It Has to Be Ready to Stay
by Aryn Baker Tuesday, September 13, 2011 time.com
When former Saudi Ambassador Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud suggested last week at a terrorism conference hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington that the U.S. should have used the death of Osama bin Laden in May as an excuse to immediately pull troops out of Afghanistan, he was met with enthusiastic applause.
Fraud fighting effort in Afghanistan criticized
By RICHARD LARDNER - Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — An Afghan-owned security company accused of operating an illicit protection racket received "a slap on the wrist" from the Defense Department despite ample evidence of wrongdoing, according to a senior House Democrat critical of the military's efforts to combat corruption in Afghanistan.
Car bombing kills 2, injures 8 in Afghanistan
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan, Sept. 14 (Xinhua) -- Two people were killed and eight others injured Tuesday when a car bomb went off in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province, the provincial administration said on Wednesday.
No big deal? US ambassador gives Afghan assault a baffling reception
Ryan Crocker was in bullish mood following the 20-hour militant assault on Kabul, but, around him, citizens are suffering
Jeremy Kelly in Kabul guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 14 September 2011
To Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Afghanistan, a 20-hour assault on Kabul from militants firing from a high-rise building on the US embassy and Nato compound while suicide bombers targeted police buildings across the city was "not a very big deal".
China calls for early stabilization in Afghanistan after U.S. embassy attack
BEIJING, Sept. 14 (Xinhua) -- China on Wednesday called for an early resumption of stability in Afghanistan one day after the U.S. embassy in Kabul was attacked by Taliban militants.
Taliban attacks near US embassy in Kabul raise questions of infiltration
The Christian Science Monitor By Zubair Babakarkhail, Ben Arnoldy Tue Sep 13, 2011
Kabul, Afghanistan; and New Delhi - Gunmen stormed a high-rise building under construction in the Afghan capital Tuesday afternoon, raining rockets and small-arms fire on the nearby US embassy and homes of the elite. Other fighters raided an Afghan Border Police base across town.
Afghan life expectancy has improved by 20 years since 2001?
The US ambassador to Afghanistan said so in a recent interview, and it's a stunning statistic if true. But it's probably not.
Christian Science Monitor By Dan Murphy, Staff writer September 13, 2011
Jackson Diehl, the hawkish deputy editor of The Washington Post's editorial page, wrote up an interview with US Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker on Sept. 11 calling for "strategic patience" on the conflict there.
ISI helped Osama bin Laden to escape US dragnet in Tora Bora
The Economic Times 13 Sep, 2011
NEW YORK - Pakistan's military-run ISI could have provided protection to slain al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden for a period of time, suggests the latest issue of 'The New Yorker' magazine.
Weight Problem Could Squander New Afghan Roads
RFE/RL By Naz Nazar September 13, 2011
It's a strange thing when the same people who benefit most from highways do the most to destroy them.
But in Afghanistan, truck companies so routinely overload their vehicles that no paved road can hope to survive for long.
Helmand Farmers Threaten Return to Opium
Switch to cotton hasn’t worked because the cash crop doesn’t sell, growers say.
IWPR By Gol Ahmad Ehsan 13 Sep 11
Afghanistan - Farmers in Helmand have threatened to go back to growing opium poppy because the Afghan government has not helped them market the alternative crops it encouraged them to grow.
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U.S. Blames Kabul Assault on Pakistan-Based Group
By JACK HEALY and ALISSA J. RUBIN The New York Times September 14, 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan — Raising the death toll sharply, American and Afghan officials said Wednesday that the complexity and execution of the hours-long siege of the American embassy and NATO headquarters in Kabul bore all the hallmarks of a militant group based in Pakistan that has become one of the American military’s most implacable foes here.
Gen. John R. Allen, the NATO commander here, said that a total of 16 people had been killed in the attack — five Afghan police and eleven civilians, including at least six children — double the number from Tuesday. He and other officials blamed the assault on the Haqqani network.
The Haqqani group is a key ally Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s border region and has also been a longtime asset of Pakistan’s military and intelligence services, used to extend their influence in Afghanistan. For years Pakistan’s military chiefs have resisted pressure and entreaties from American officials to go after the Haqqanis, which make their primary base in North Waziristan, a part of Pakistan’s tribal areas.
Instead, the group has become a main focus of American drones strikes, conducted by the C.I.A. The Pakistan military is now doing its best to shut down that campaign as relations with the United States soured this year with the killing of Osama Bin Laden by American commandos deep inside Pakistan.
The Haqqanis have been blamed for high-profile attacks in Kabul and elsewhere in Afghanistan in the past, including the bombing of the Indian embassy in 2008, which killed 54 people. Afterward, American intelligence officials confronted their Pakistani counterparts with intercepts showing that Haqqani fighters had received support and direction from Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the Inter Services Intelligence Directorate, or ISI.
The hallmarks of attacks linked to the Haqqani network include multiple assailants, targets that are often symbolic of their arch-enemies, the Afghan government and their Western backers, careful planning and often instructions delivered by phone to the attackers as they carry out their mission.
“The Haqqanis have been attacking Kabul for a long time, because Kabul for so much of this country represents not just the spiritual heartland of this country, it represents the future,” General Allen said at a briefing.
General Allen said he acknowledged that the insurgents had scored a propaganda victory with the attack, which paralyzed central Kabul, bogged down security forces for hours and illustrated how insurgents still have the ability and will to attack some of the most heavily guarded areas of the capital.
With the United States and other NATO members prepare to withdraw most of their troops by the end of 2014, the attack underlined fears that the Afghan security forces would not be able to prevent high-profile violence and secure the country.
On Wednesday an uneasy veneer of calm settled across Kabul as security forces finished clearing the unfinished concrete high-rise from which at least six militants launched rocket-propelled grenades and sprayed bullets into one of the capital’s most heavily secured districts. The government declared the assault to be over at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, about 19 hours after the first explosions rocked Kabul.
All of the attackers inside the building were killed, as were at least three other suicide bombers who attacked targets in other parts of the city.
Six international soldiers were also wounded, three by rocket-propelled grenades that landed in a military installation near NATO headquarters, and another three during the overnight operation to clear the building, said a NATO spokesman, Lt. Col. Jimmie E. Cummings, Jr.
Still, General Allen and other American military and diplomatic officials said Tuesday’s attack had no military significance, and that no Western soldiers or civilians had been killed.
“Afghanistan is a little like a boxer,” said Simon Gass, the senior civilian NATO representative in Afghanistan. “It is going to take some blows along the way, but it will keep coming forward and it will prevail over its enemy.”
Officials said the attack had actually demonstrated the growing capability of Afghan security forces. They said Afghan army and police units responded quickly and ably and worked methodically to clear the 11-story building, each floor a treacherous warren of small rooms and potential hiding places for attackers.
The American ambassador to Afghanistan, Ryan C. Crocker, downplayed the attack as “harassment” that had made for a hard day at the embassy, but was not a game-changer.
“This really is not a very big deal,” Mr. Crocker said. “If that’s the best they can do, you know, I think it’s actually a statement of their weakness.”
Mr. Crocker indicated such attacks were likely to continue because the insurgency has strong support in Pakistan.
“You can’t keep every evildoer out of the city,” Mr. Crocker said. “You do have an insurgency that’s going on in the country. It’s particularly hard to do when you have safe havens. And the information available to us, is that these attackers, like those who carried out the bombing in Wardak are part of the Haqqani network,” he added, referring to a truck bombing there on Sunday.
On Wednesday morning, dozens of Afghans gathered outside the scene of the siege to watch police remove the attackers’ bodies. Though the streets were once again open and street vendors were grilling meat and corn in the shadow of the building, there remained a still unsettled sense of insecurity among men who said they neither supported insurgent attacks, nor trusted the police to keep them safe.
“We are mad at both,” said Farid Hotak, who lives in an apartment complex across the street and seethed at the memory of watching crying girls run for cover. “At the Taliban for doing these types of attacks, and at the government for failing to prevent them. Fear and panic rules.”
In the building a few hours after the firefight ended, the bodies of the attackers still lay on a high floor. All appeared to be young, no older than 25, and one looked perhaps even younger than that. The fighters had enough ammunition to keep shooting until the final attacker was killed on Wednesday and appeared to have provisions of bottled water and fruit juice, said police officers at the scene.
The attackers were clad in traditional Afghan shaalwar kameez, which are loose shirts and trousers and wore sandals, though the Interior Ministry also suggested that the attackers had tried to conceal themselves by dressing as women, saying they had found burqas — the face-covering robes worn by many Afghan women.
The youngest fighter had tried to surrender to officers, but the others would not let him, said Mr. Sediqi, the Interior Ministry spokesman.
An Afghan Army sergeant, Mohammed Daoud, who had spent the previous afternoon shooting at the attackers from a copse of trees across the road, returned with dozens of other security officers on Wednesday afternoon to inspect the bloody litter of the attack and view the corpses. He blamed the assault on the presence of Western forces, and professed himself clueless as to how police and soldiers could prevent the next one.
“It’s so difficult to stop these suicide bombers,” Sergeant Daoud said. “Ordinary people have a better chance of stopping them than Afghan security forces.”
Ray Rivera, Sangar Rahimi and Abdul Waheed Wafa contributed reporting.
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Afghan militants dressed as women to smuggle weapons for Kabul attack
By Ernesto Londoño and Javed Hamdard, The Washington Post
KABUL — Shortly after security forces gunned down the last assailant involved in a brazen attack in Kabul Wednesday morning, officials said they believe the attackers were dressed as women to smuggle a huge stockpile of weapons into a building overlooking the U.S. Embassy and the NATO headquarters.
The last of six assailants who launched rockets and sprayed the heavily secured compound with rifles for hours was gunned down at 8:30 a.m., police spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said. The attack, which exposed the vulnerability of the Afghan capital as U.S. forces begin to withdraw, began at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday and involved at least three suicide bombers who detonated explosives elsewhere in the city.
Sediqqi said authorities found burqas — the blue garments worn by many Afghan woman that drapes them from head to toe — inside the van the assailants used to transport weapons into the building.
“We strongly believe they used burqas to reach this place,” Sediqqi said, speaking outside the building as reporters took photos of the six bodies of the assailants. “The police respect the women too much.”
Sediqqi said the siege ended only after Afghan and NATO special forces stormed the building Wednesday morning as NATO attack helicopters provided backup.
NATO said six coalition “personnel” were wounded in the attack. A NATO spokesman, Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings, said three of the troops were wounded Tuesday in a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) attack on the base. The other three were wounded while clearing the building overnight, he added.
U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker said Wednesday that the attack was likely carried out by the Haqanni network, a Taliban offshoot group that has been linked to some of the boldest attacks in the capital.The Taliban had claimed responsibility for the attack Tuesday.
Crocker downplayed the significance of Tuesday’s attack, which kept the capital under seige for nearly 20 hours.
“These were five guys that rumbled into town with RPGs under their car seats,” Crocker said. “This is not a very big deal, a hard day for the embassy and my staff, who behaved with enormous courage and dedication. But look, you know a dozen RPG rounds from 800 meters away — that isn’t [the] Tet [offensive], that’s harassment.”
Crocker said between six and seven rounds landed inside the embassy compound. He said he was heartened by the Afghan government’s response to the attack and by what he described as a lately inconsequential attack.
“If this is the best they can do, I find their lack of ability and capacity and the ability of Afghan forces to respond to it, actually encouraging,” he said.
Transition of responsibility for security from NATO to Afghan security forces “will proceed on pace,” he added.
Crocker spoke to a Wall Street Journal reporter Tuesday morning who was asked by the embassy to share a transcript of the interview with the rest of the Kabul press corps.
Residents watched in horror as lightly armed police officers wearing no body armor fought assailants who fired rockets into diplomatic and military enclaves while holed up in an unoccupied building in what is perhaps the most secure part of the capital.
The NATO headquarters and the embassy went on high alert after the initial blasts rang out Tuesday afternoon, with diplomats barricading themselves in bunkers. American attack helicopters had joined the fight, diving down to strike at the assailants.
Kabul has seen its share of high-profile, chilling attacks this year, including recent strikes on the Intercontinental Hotel and the British Council. But the attack Tuesday was rich in symbolism in an impoverished country, scarred by years of war, where the United States has spent billions of dollars over the past decade in an elusive attempt to bring stability.
To gain access to the unoccupied 15-story building that overlooks the sprawling diplomatic and military compounds, the assailants drove into the basement, then climbed to one of the top floors and took up positions behind cement pillars, Afghan authorities said. The building is under construction.
The prolonged fighting around NATO’s nerve center in Kabul, the headquarters for top U.S. commanders, exposed serious shortcomings in security and intelligence. Early reports suggested that at least seven Afghans were killed in the attack.
A Taliban spokesman said the attack was intended to remind Afghanistan’s government and the United States about the power the insurgents still wield. “We have not run out of patience, and we want to fight to end their occupation,” said the spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid. “We have the ability to strike when we want.”
The Afghan government took formal control of security in a number of districts around Kabul this summer as part of a plan to gradually transfer responsibility from foreign to Afghan forces over the next three years. The first phase is seen as a key test of the competence of the U.S.-funded-and-trained Afghan forces, which the Obama administration hopes will be able to secure Afghanistan with little foreign help by the end of 2014. Kabul has effectively been under Afghan security control for several years.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the attack and vowed that it would “embolden people’s determination in taking the responsibility for their country’s own affairs.” To many Afghans, such condemnations have begun to ring hollow as the Afghanistan war nears its 10th year, with levels of violence rising and the prospect of a negotiated settlement appearing increasingly distant.
“The government is too weak to protect us,” said Ismail Agha, 38, who lives near the tall building from which the assailants launched the attack. “They should let us go after the terrorists and fight them ourselves.”
The attack Tuesday jolted expatriates, who have grown accustomed to sporadic violence in Kabul.
Hamid M. Khan, a rule-of-law adviser in the Kabul office of the U.S. Institute of Peace, said he and his colleagues spent hours huddled in a safe room at their compound as blasts and gunshots thundered nearby at the site of the main attack.
“The entire staff is hunkered down,” he said, using BlackBerry Messenger to communicate. “We’re very tense and alarmed by how close the rocket attacks and gunshots keep coming.”
At the World Bank office, a few blocks from the U.S. Embassy, more than 35 staffers were holed up in a basement bunker that had no bathroom or provisions.
Elsewhere, as the clashes unfolded, Noorullah Mehirjoy, 60, a government worker, spent hours trying to find his young daughter, Zorah.
She had been at a graduation ceremony, where Karzai was supposed to have awarded diplomas. But a security adviser approached the president soon after the first explosions were heard and whispered in his ear, Mehirjoy said.
“Karzai left the hall without saying goodbye,” he said.
In an interview last week, the new U.S. ambassador, Ryan C. Crocker, said he was pleasantly surprised by the situation in Kabul, having last been there in 2002.
“The biggest problem in Kabul is traffic,” said Crocker, who has noted that Afghanistan’s problems are serious and will take a long time to solve.
Special correspondent Sayed Salahuddin contributed to this report.
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For the U.S. to Leave Afghanistan, It Has to Be Ready to Stay
by Aryn Baker Tuesday, September 13, 2011 time.com
When former Saudi Ambassador Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud suggested last week at a terrorism conference hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington that the U.S. should have used the death of Osama bin Laden in May as an excuse to immediately pull troops out of Afghanistan, he was met with enthusiastic applause. Not so in the Afghan capital of Kabul, where his assertion that, “Killing bin Laden would have been the perfect moment [to set] the timetable… for withdrawal of troops and goodbye and good luck,” caused a flurry of consternation. As it is, few Afghans believe that the 2014 withdrawal date, set by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and confirmed by U.S. President Barack Obama, gives the nascent national security forces enough time to confidently take over. Today's brazen attack by the Taliban on a high security area of Kabul that houses government offices and the US embassy only underscores the fragile security situation. Afghan lawmaker Ismael Qasimyar lashed out at Prince Turki on local TV station Tolo, calling him “irresponsible” and saying that a premature withdrawal of foreign troops risked sinking the country into further chaos.
It was a shockingly insouciant comment to come from someone who ostensibly knows Afghanistan so well – as a former intelligence chief for Saudi Arabia during the anti-Soviet Jihad, he was instrumental in funneling cash to the mujahidin fighting in Afghanistan, then, once the Soviets withdrew, witnessed the fallout from international neglect, a collapse into civil war, and the rise of the Taliban. More interesting, however, was that the denunciation came not from pro-West liberals in government, but from a senior member of Afghanistan's High Peace Council, the group tasked with conducting negotiations with the Taliban. The Taliban hold that no reconciliation talks will take place as long as foreign forces remain on Afghan soil.
Does this mean that the Afghan government is having second thoughts about reconciliation?Not exactly. But the rhetoric of “upset brothers” in reference to the Taliban has been supplanted by a renewed sense that the insurgent group is an enemy that must be weakened before it comes to the negotiating table. “While we appreciate the achievements made so far in the peace process, we need to negotiate from a position of strength,” says Deputy National Security Advisor Shaida Mohammad Abdali. “And when the international forces speak of withdrawal, it becomes propaganda for the enemy. So the enemy should know that when international forces speak of withdrawal it does not mean defeat. It does not mean abandonment. And they will know that their hope is lost to come back. And then we can start talking about reconciliation.”
Essentially, he says, if the Americans want to leave Afghanistan in a position of strength, they have to commit to stay.
The issue of the U.S.'s commitment in Afghanistan is up for discussion this week as senior American and Afghan lawmakers meet for a third round of discussions on a long-term security arrangement that would allow for a limited U.S. troop presence in the country beyond 2014. As U.S. public opinion on the war in Afghanistan wanes in the face of an economic downturn and battle fatigue, Afghans are increasingly concerned that they will face a repeat of 1990, when, after the defeat of the Soviets, the West turned away. The agreement, which Abdali says is “80 percent complete,” would give U.S. forces use of jointly run bases after the scheduled 2014 withdrawal. Largely, this presence would be geared for training and equipping the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), but Abdali didn't rule out continued combat operations, especially if the training doesn't go as well as projected. “If we have an army and police as ill equipped and ill trained as they are right now, dependent on foreign troops' transportation, then naturally we will not be capable to fight without help.”
The Americans, says Abdali, might have to stay for “10 years, maybe more,” depending on how long it takes for the ANSF to get up to speed. “It will take years before we have a professional army, maybe even generations.”
The Afghan government would also like to see economic assistance, enhanced trade relations—“perhaps we could be a most-favored-nation trading partner”— and an enhancement of Afghanistan's regional security, conducted through the might of American diplomacy, says Abdali. The Americans, recognizing Afghan fears of abandonment and seeking to establish terms for continued counterterrorism and counter narcotics operations, are eager to spell out assurances that they will not turn away, but the two sides disagree on several points, namely how binding the agreement should be.
The Afghan government wants to see a strategic declaration with the weight of an international treaty. It is only with that kind of backing, says Abdali, that the country can truly fend off insurgents or neighboring countries seeking to fill the vacuum left in the wake of the international troops' withdrawal. Such an agreement will not be well received in the neighborhood, he adds, but "we are ready to take all the risk that it [the strategic agreement] carries, provided it's worth it. We want a commitment, not just to the ANSF, but to all other aspects of life in Afghanistan — from economy to social development. We need to know in advance that the Afghan people will not be left alone again at times of difficulties.”
If Afghanistan sounds like the insecure partner in a ‘where is this relationship going?' conversation, the U.S. seems to be less interested in commitment—for good reason. Not only would it be impossible to convince Congress that we need to indefinitely fund a government that is widely perceived to be inefficient and corrupt, there is a need to battle the perception that foreign forces, whatever the number, would be sacrificing their lives in vain. The newly arrived U.S. Ambassador to Kabul, Ryan Crocker, saw this first hand at his confirmation hearings. Finally, he says, he “discovered an issue on which there is a strong sense of bipartisanship…that we should be out of Afghanistan a week from Tuesday.”
Despite the squabbles on the Hill, the U.S., says Crocker, is committed to Afghanistan for the long term. That doesn't mean we should, or even can, sign a pre-nup. “There are things we can't do under [the American political] system,” Crocker told TIME in an interview in Kabul. “Congress has to vote funds on a yearly basis. We can talk about intentions. But we cannot deliver a commitment that we can't make good on.” What the Afghans and Americans can agree upon, says Crocker, is a strategic partnership that seeks to ensure a stable and democratic Afghanistan going forward. If such a vague premise sounds like it leaves a lot of wiggle room, that may be the point.
Like it or not, what happens in Afghanistan's future will have a direct impact on the United States. If Afghanistan can come out of its decades of war able to stand on its own and with a functioning government, it will be seen as vindication for America's expenditure in blood, treasure and political might. If it crumbles into civil war and becomes, once again, a center for transnational terror, it will be held responsible. And while strengthening the ANSF can help with stability, nothing is more essential to defeating the insurgency than good governance. A strategic agreement can't stop corruption. But promises of economic, military and civilian assistance can provide leverage with a leadership acutely aware that it depends on all three for its very survival. In this way at least, the Afghan leadership's venality works in our favor.
Aryn Baker is TIME's Middle East Bureau Chief, based in Beirut. Find her on Twitter at @arynebaker. You can also continue the discussion on TIME's Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIMEWorld.
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Fraud fighting effort in Afghanistan criticized
By RICHARD LARDNER - Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — An Afghan-owned security company accused of operating an illicit protection racket received "a slap on the wrist" from the Defense Department despite ample evidence of wrongdoing, according to a senior House Democrat critical of the military's efforts to combat corruption in Afghanistan.
The complaint from Massachusetts congressman John Tierney, detailed in a Sept. 13 letter to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, sets the stage for a contentious congressional hearing scheduled for Thursday on how aggressively the Pentagon is holding contractors working in war zones accountable for fraud and bribery.
In the letter, Tierney summarizes the findings of "Warlord, Inc.," an investigation he led last year which concluded that Ahmad and Rashid Popal, the owners of the Watan Group, and Haji Ruhullah, a former assistant manager for the company, bribed local Afghan officials and used heavy weapons prohibited by the $2.16 billion Army transportation contract they were working under. They all denied funneling money to the Taliban, Tierney said, but evidence gathered by his staff "raised doubts about those claims."
Based on the findings of Tierney's investigation, Army officials in December proposed barring Watan's security arm, Watan Risk Management, and Ruhullah from doing business with the U.S. government. Armed with American attorneys, the Popals and Ruhullah separately challenged the actions. Ruhullah won. The Army cited his status as a subordinate at Watan and said his inability to speak English meant he could not understand the terms of the contract or the investigators from Tierney's staff who interviewed him.
Gerald Posner, Ruhullah's lawyer, responded by sending a 14-page letter to Panetta on Wednesday in which he calls the congressman's letter "factually inaccurate." Posner said Ruhullah cooperated fully with Army officials. Ruhullah told them he never personally paid a bribe or a payoff to anyone and never knowingly violated weapons restrictions.
Posner also said Tierney's investigative staff did not provide a professional and unbiased translator when they met with Ruhullah and the Popals in Dubai in May 2010. During one session, Rashid Popal did the translating. But relations between Ruhullah and the Popals were strained at the time due to Ruhullah's plans to leave the company, he said. As a result, Ruhullah's statements were "erroneously translated" and then became "the basis for flawed conclusions" in Tierney's investigation, Posner wrote.
Watan did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tierney's letter. But the company, represented by the Washington law firm Venable, challenged its proposed debarment in federal court. A judge dismissed the suit. In court filings, Watan said the Army was well aware of the steps the company had to take ensure trucking convoys bound for U.S. bases arrived without being attacked.
In a separate document submitted to the Army in January, Watan's attorneys said the "so-called bribes" referred to in Warlord, Inc. were actually "facilitation payments" necessary for police protection and security when transporting cargo throughout Afghanistan.
The Army decided not to debar Watan, opting instead for an administrative agreement that says the company may not bid on any convoy security contracts paid for with U.S. tax dollars for the next three years. However, the ban does not affect the other companies owned by the Popals, which include oil, gas, steel, construction and telecom businesses.
Tierney said Watan had already made a decision to exit the mobile security business in Afghanistan, making the penalty insignificant. He added that the proposed debarment of Watan and Ruhullah was initially hailed by U.S. officials as a sign of how serious they were about stemming corruption in U.S. contracting.
"This summer, in a stunning reversal of course, Army officials inexplicably stopped the debarment proceedings and settled with Watan Risk Management and Commander Ruhullah for nothing more than a slap on the wrist," he told Panetta.
But Uldric Fiore, the Army official who decided to end debarment proceedings against Watan and Ruhullah, defended the moves. In an interview, Fiore said the suspension and debarment actions are intended to protect U.S. interests, not to punish contractors. Agreements such as the one Watan signed require companies to make specific improvements so they become assets to the government, he said.
"It's the court's job to punish," Fiore said. "The purpose is to have responsible contractors, the more the merrier."
The Associated Press reported in August that a special U.S. task force in Afghanistan estimated $360 million in U.S. contracting dollars has ended up in the hands of people the American-led coalition has spent nearly a decade battling: the Taliban, criminals and power brokers with ties to both.
More than half of the losses flowed through the Army transportation contract, known as Host Nation Trucking. Eight companies served as prime contractors and hired a web of nearly three dozen subcontractors for vehicles and convoy security to ship huge amounts of food, water, fuel and ammunition to American troops stationed at bases across Afghanistan. That contract has been replaced with a new arrangement for moving supplies that will reduce the risk of money being lost.
A senior U.S. military official in Kabul said debarment decisions do not preclude authorities in Afghanistan from continuing to investigate allegations of corruption and fraud in U.S. contracting. They pass information about profiteering, bribery and extortion on to the U.S. Justice and Treasury Departments for action, said the official, who requested anonymity to discuss the investigation into the movement of U.S. contract money in Afghanistan.
But Pentagon witnesses scheduled to appear Thursday before the House Oversight and Government Reform national security subcommittee will likely encounter lawmakers clamoring for swifter action. The independent Commission on Wartime Contracting said in its final report released late last month that as much as $60 billion has been lost to waste and fraud over the past decade in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The commission said the government has become too reliant on the private sector for battlefield support and said U.S. agencies need to better manage and oversee work being done by contractors.
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Car bombing kills 2, injures 8 in Afghanistan
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan, Sept. 14 (Xinhua) -- Two people were killed and eight others injured Tuesday when a car bomb went off in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province, the provincial administration said on Wednesday.
"A unit of police were conducting a routine search mission along a road in Ghartala area of Musa Qala district in Helmand province on Tuesday morning but a car bomb went off near a checkpoint. As a result, a policeman and a civilian were killed," the provincial administration said in a statement on Wednesday.
Eight more civilians, including three women, were injured in the blast, the statement said.
However, the statement did not provide more details whether police were the target of the attack.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack so far.
Notorious for growing poppy and militancy, Helmand province has been branded as the Taliban hotbed in the southern part of the insurgency-hit country.
The Taliban launched in May this year a spring offensive against Afghan and NATO forces.
The militant group claimed responsibility for the coordinated suicide attack gun fighting that broke out in Kabul on Tuesday till Wednesday dawn.
However, a total of nine militants were killed as security forces completed the operation on militants in Kabul Wednesday morning.
At least seven people were killed and 17 others injured in the Kabul attacks that occurred in the diplomatic area of city.
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No big deal? US ambassador gives Afghan assault a baffling reception
Ryan Crocker was in bullish mood following the 20-hour militant assault on Kabul, but, around him, citizens are suffering
Jeremy Kelly in Kabul guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 14 September 2011
To Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Afghanistan, a 20-hour assault on Kabul from militants firing from a high-rise building on the US embassy and Nato compound while suicide bombers targeted police buildings across the city was "not a very big deal".
Earlier in the week he had told the Washington Post in an interview that the Afghan capital's biggest problem was the traffic. The attack that began on Tuesday and concluded Wednesday morning with the killing of the last of seven Taliban fighters armed with rocket-propelled grenades (RPG) and automatic weapons had at least solved that problem.
Streets were relatively scant of vehicles as many Kabulis steered clear out of fear of more attacks, or as Crocker put it, "harassment" in the form of the RPGs.
"That isn't Tet," he said, in reference to the offensive in Vietnam. Putting the two wars in the same sentence, even as a contrast, was unlikely to have been approved by his media advisers.
"If that's the best they can do, you know, I think it's actually a statement of their weakness and more importantly since Kabul is in the hands of Afghan security it's a real credit to the Afghan national security forces," Crocker said.
Later, he released a statement, with a more measured tone, that mourned the civilians, police and foreign forces killed or wounded and praised the security personnel that were "up to the task of thwarting such operations".
Yet few ordinary Afghans see it that way. They struggle to understand how the attackers could get so close with such an arsenal. They believe the militants have help on the inside of their indigenous security forces. And their trust in their own government is such that many don't even believe the "official" death tolls following terrorist attacks.
Kabul shopkeeper Mohammad Bashir Suleiman Khil summed up the thoughts of many. "Every 10 days there are attacks in Kabul," he said. "There is no work, there is no business. People are not coming out of their homes today. We don't have any hope here."
The Arabic-speaking Crocker, coaxed out of retirement by President Barack Obama, returned to Afghanistan this year as head of the embassy he reopened in 2002. He has had front-row seats to several attacks on or near US embassies over his long diplomatic career, which might explain his initial take on the 20-hour siege.
He escaped a Beirut truck bomb that killed 60 at the US embassy in 1983, was airlifted from the same location eight years later because of terrorist fears and was bunkered down when protesters attacked the US embassy in Damascus in 1998. On the day he was sworn in as the US's top man in Iraq in 2007, suicide bombers struck, killing 104 people in the city.
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China calls for early stabilization in Afghanistan after U.S. embassy attack
BEIJING, Sept. 14 (Xinhua) -- China on Wednesday called for an early resumption of stability in Afghanistan one day after the U.S. embassy in Kabul was attacked by Taliban militants.
"The Chinese side has noted the incident and gives its attention to the security situation in Afghanistan," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said in response to a question on the attack.
A number of armed insurgents on Tuesday attacked different parts of Afghanistan's capital of Kabul, including the U.S. embassy and NATO headquarters.
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the assaults were aimed at thwarting plans to hand over security to Afghan forces but they will not succeed.
"We hope that the parties involved will sincerely take responsibility for helping Afghanistan improve its capabilities when handing over security to Afghan forces," Jiang said.
"As a friendly neighbor of Afghanistan, China hopes that Afghanistan will resume stability, and achieve ethnic reconciliation and peaceful reconstruction on an early date," she added.
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Taliban attacks near US embassy in Kabul raise questions of infiltration
The Christian Science Monitor By Zubair Babakarkhail, Ben Arnoldy Tue Sep 13, 2011
Kabul, Afghanistan; and New Delhi - Gunmen stormed a high-rise building under construction in the Afghan capital Tuesday afternoon, raining rockets and small-arms fire on the nearby US embassy and homes of the elite. Other fighters raided an Afghan Border Police base across town.
Fighting continues several hours later, but initial reports indicate no embassy or NATO staff have been wounded, while six Afghans have been killed and 15 more injured.
Insurgents have targeted Kabul landmarks before, but this attack’s proximity to the city’s most secure zone further undermines confidence in the government’s ability to take over security from withdrawing international forces. In particular, the attack raises questions about Taliban infiltration into the ranks of even the most sensitive forces.
RELATED: Taliban attack signals focus on infiltrating security forces
“We’ve suspected for quite awhile that the Taliban have deeply penetrated the Afghan security forces but to be able to do this in this secure zone shows a great deal of penetration,” says Kamran Bokhari, an analyst with Stratfor, a Texas-based intelligence analysis firm.
He says the intent of an attack like this is to sow seeds of mistrust. âIt becomes more and more difficult for international forces to trust their Afghan counterparts.â
The attack began in the early afternoon with an unknown number of fighters taking over a partially constructed high-rise building about 300 meters from the US embassy. Intended to be a shopping mall, the roughly 14-story building is mostly just cement without windows or doors.
A small school bus parked along a nearby road appeared heavily damaged, with children’s book bags still in the backseats. Nearby, shopkeeper Abdul Wasi says the school minivan was fleeing the fighting in the area packed with kids. He heard a blast followed by the shattering of glass, but when he reached the bus he didn’t see any children injured.
“All the time we feel in danger,” says Mr. Wasi. “How come the Taliban can get into a building during the day when everyone can see them bringing their weapons? The security forces are sleeping and are not putting attention to this bad situation in Kabul.”
Other Afghans echo his frustration. Fouzia Jahani, a woman who works in a nearby government ministry, spoke hurriedly as she rushed home to soothe her worried family.
“We are fed up with this kind of situation in Kabul. In all my life I’ve seen this kind of situation in Kabul. May Allah help us to get rid of this,” she says.
In the premier neighborhood of Wazir Akbar Khan, which abuts the US embassy, wealthy families crammed into cars and fled. Security forces shut many of the roads around the capital, however, forcing large numbers of people to evacuate offices and homes on foot.
“For me, I’ve grown up in such situations, but it was really bad for my kids,” says Shukria Barakzai, a leading member of Parliament whose house came under fire. “Still they are under shock, they can’t believe such a thing has happened.”
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid says the targets were the headquarters of the international military forces, the Afghanistan spy agency, and the American embassy.
“Mujahideens are targeting only military bases and residential areas of the enemy. Civilians are not allowed to live or roam free in that area,” he says.
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Afghan life expectancy has improved by 20 years since 2001?
The US ambassador to Afghanistan said so in a recent interview, and it's a stunning statistic if true. But it's probably not.
Christian Science Monitor By Dan Murphy, Staff writer September 13, 2011
Jackson Diehl, the hawkish deputy editor of The Washington Post's editorial page, wrote up an interview with US Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker on Sept. 11 calling for "strategic patience" on the conflict there.
In a classic case of bad timing given the extended Taliban attack in Kabul today, Ambassador Crocker told Mr. Diehl that "the biggest problem in Kabul is traffic."
Leaving aside concerns about endemic Afghan government corruption and the abuse of citizens by many anti-Taliban warlords who have been given prominent positions in the police and military by President Hamid Karzai's government, it's certainly true that Kabul has, by and large, been a safer place than Baghdad – another capital where Crocker has served – was at the height of the civil war there.
But a line in Diehl's article really jumped out at me. "Life expectancy [in Afghanistan] has increased by 20 years in the past decade." In the overall context of an article arguing for an extended involvement in Afghanistan based on humanitarian concerns, that's a stunning statistic.
It brought me up short because I'm aware of few, if any, countries in modern history where life expectancy improved dramatically in the course of a war, let alone by such a nearly unbelievable number. I asked a friend, who studies the public health effects of war, if he thought there was any possibility that Afghans today are living 20 years longer than they were 10 years ago, and he answered, "no."
I e-mailed Diehl asking where the number came from, pointing out that it seems to diverge from the CIA's reporting on Afghan life expectancy substantially. He was kind enough to reply, and said it was supplied by Crocker.
While data collection of all sorts is questionable and haphazard in Afghanistan, particularly since so many parts of the country are no-go zones for researchers and telephone penetration is low, it's possible that the ambassador is working off a data set that I'm not aware of.
But the CIA does keep track of such things. The CIA World Factbook, updated in August, says that the average Afghan life expectancy at birth is 45.02 years, ranking 220 in the world. The CIA's estimate of life expectancy in 2001 was 46.24.
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ISI helped Osama bin Laden to escape US dragnet in Tora Bora
The Economic Times 13 Sep, 2011
NEW YORK - Pakistan's military-run ISI could have provided protection to slain al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden for a period of time, suggests the latest issue of 'The New Yorker' magazine.
Former Afghan intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh told the magazine' writer Dexter Filkins, a Pulitzer prize winner, that an ISI operative Syed Akbar Sabir had escorted bin Laden from the Pakistani region of Chitral to Peshawar, passing through Kunar Province, in Afghanistan, along the way.
"We believed that he was part of the ISI operation to care for bin Laden," Saleh, who directed the Afghan intelligence service from 2004 to 2010, said.
He said the ISI operative had been arrested by Afghan intelligence in 2005 when he narrated the events unfolding in Afghanistan, post 9/11.
The article talks about another ISI agent Fida Muhammad, who too had been arrested by Afghan intelligence agents.
The article says Muhammad, who described himself as a civilian employee of ISI, said in May that for much of the past decade, he had escorted Haqqani fighters from their sanctuaries in Pakistan into Afghanistan, where they fought against the Americans.
Muhammad said his most memorable job came in December, 2001, when he was part of a large ISI operation intended to help jihadi fighters escape from Tora Bora--the mountainous region where bin Laden was trapped for several weeks, until he mysteriously slipped away.
Muhammad said that when the American bombing of Tora Bora began, in late November, he and other ISI operatives had gone there, and into other parts of eastern Afghanistan, to evacuate training camps whose occupants included al-Qaeda fighters.
Muhammad was part of a four-man team, and there were dozens of such teams. He estimated that the ISI teams evacuated as many as 1,500 militants from Tora Bora and other camps: "Not only Arabs but Pakistanis, Uzbeks, and Chechens. I didn't see bin Laden. But there were so many Arabs."
The operation had been sanctioned at the highest levels of the ISI. However the ISI has denied Muhammad's account.
The magazine quotes Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer saying that former ISI chief Nadeem Taj was "deeply involved with Pakistani militants, particularly those fighting against India".
Riedel, who oversaw President Barack Obama's initial review of strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, said, "Taj was very close to the militant networks. And his fingerprints were on everything."
The magazine said, "Before taking over the ISI, Taj was the commandant of the Pakistani military academy in Abbottabad. That is, he was the senior military official in Abbottabad at the time that American officials believe bin Laden began living there.
"Taj retired from the Pakistani Army in April, just days before the raid in Abbottabad. Attempts to track him down in Pakistan were unsuccessful."
Riedel said, "Taj is the right person at the right time. If the ISI was helping to hide bin Laden, then it would make sense to park him somewhere permanently. Who better to be the park policeman than Musharraf's favorite general?
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Weight Problem Could Squander New Afghan Roads
RFE/RL By Naz Nazar September 13, 2011
It's a strange thing when the same people who benefit most from highways do the most to destroy them.
But in Afghanistan, truck companies so routinely overload their vehicles that no paved road can hope to survive for long.
The danger is largely overlooked by officials, whose immediate concern is instead the security of the roads. The international community has spent well over $1 billion during the past decade to rebuild the country's main arteries and it's a constant challenge to protect from sabotage by the Taliban and clear them of bandits.
Yet those who know the roads best -- truckers -- warn that the overloading could be just as fatal to the roads' goal of boosting trade in Afghanistan and kick starting the economy as is insecurity.
"The highway from Herat to Kabul, and from Mazar-e Sharif to Kabul, are built to take a maximum load of 40 tons," one trucker tells Radio Free Afghanistan. "But a trailer by itself weighs about 22 tons, and [truck companies] add to that another 70 tons, for a total of more than 90. How can any asphalt road survive that?"
The trucker asks to remain anonymous because his words could easily cost him his job. But his outrage points to a slew of problems with the way Afghanistan's truck traffic is regulated.
Powerless To Help?
In all countries, highways are protected by weight limits on how much individual trucks can carry. The trucks' loads are regularly checked by a network of roadside weigh stations equipped with truck scales, and officials are authorized to fine overweight trucks and even impound cargos.
Afghanistan, too, has official weight limits and weigh stations. But the Ministry of Public Works, which is responsible for them, has so little power that compliance virtually depends on the goodwill of the trucking companies themselves.
Wali Mohammad Rasooli, a former deputy minister for Public Works, says there are some 25 weigh stations dotted along Afghanistan's main highways but there is little coordination with the police to make trucks stop at them or pursue those that speed by.
"The problem is that the weigh-station staff tries to flag down a truck but the driver just speeds by at 80 kilometers an hour," Rasooli says. "Even if we could stop them, we have no depot to hold overweight goods."
The difficulty, as so often within the Afghan government, is lack of communication worsened by an unwillingness to share resources.
Awareness Not Enough
Rasooli notes that even when the Ministry of Public Works sets up special mobile weigh stations for surprise checks on truck traffic, local police departments did not allocate officers to help. He declines to explain why, but the most common reason for noncooperation throughout the government is competition among powerful officials. Many politically appointed government officials treat their departments like fiefdoms responsible only to them.
That leaves one recourse: for ministries to lobby their counterparts and the public to cooperate with it. Rasooli says the Ministry of Public Works has done both, holding "several meetings" with the Transport Ministry and with organizations like the truck owners association in hopes of raising awareness of the danger facing the highways.
But if persuasion often seems like a good way to proceed in conflict-ridden Afghanistan, it may not be enough to guarantee that the roads serve the country anywhere near their intended lifetime.
"If a road is designed for a 20-year lifetime, it will be reduced to five to six years. There are dozens of trucks, including Afgan army, NATO, and ISAF [the NATO-led International Security and Assistance Force] trucks, which are overloaded and which should observe the designed weight load," Rasooli says.
He adds, "I can tell you that if the roads are not controlled, after 15 years Afghanistan will be back to where we were in 2001. We spent millions of dollars to build the roads and now we are destroying them."
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Helmand Farmers Threaten Return to Opium
Switch to cotton hasn’t worked because the cash crop doesn’t sell, growers say.
IWPR By Gol Ahmad Ehsan 13 Sep 11
Afghanistan - Farmers in Helmand have threatened to go back to growing opium poppy because the Afghan government has not helped them market the alternative crops it encouraged them to grow.
Although the opium grown in this southern province is still the source of most of the world’s heroin, a two-year eradication campaign conducted by the Afghan government and the international community has shown some results. The area under cultivation this year was seven per cent down on 2010, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, UNODC.
The main substitute crop chosen for Helmand was cotton, which had been successfully grown there between the 1960s and 1980s.
Farmers like Mohammad Jan, from the Marja district, say they are not selling enough to make a living these days.
“I haven’t grown poppy for the past two years; I’ve grown cotton instead,” Mohammad Jan said. “But I failed to feed my family. I’ve been disappointed this year, too, because there’s no market for cotton. The government won’t buy it from us, and the price the traders pay isn’t profitable for us.”
As a result, this farmer has made a difficult decision.
“If things go on like this, I will grow poppy again next year, and I will defend the crop [from eradication officers] as well, because it’s better to be killed than to die of starvation,” he said.
Sherin Khan, director of the Bost cotton gin in Helmand, says the plant cannot afford to take all the raw cotton produced in the region.
“We cannot buy all the cotton, because the finance ministry provides us with a budget to buy only 3,000 tons,” he said. “That’s why we cannot solve the farmers’ problems.”
The Bost plant closed after civil war broke out with the collapse of President Najibullah’s government in 1992. Until then, much of the cotton was bought up by the state. In the chaos that followed, the factories that used the cotton to manufacture fabric also closed down.
The head of the provincial agriculture department, Ahmadullah Ahmadzai said it was proving difficult to find new markets.
“We have talked to foreign donors and organisations about finding international markets for Helmand products, particularly cotton. They have made promises to us, but so far we haven’t made any progress,” he said.
Daud Ahmadi, spokesman for Helmand’s provincial governor Gulab Mangal, recognises the danger of the cotton project failing.
“There’s concern that if farmers don’t have markets for their produce and are unable to sell them, they may start growing poppy again in the coming years,” he said.
At the same time, Ahmadi said the governor’s office bore no responsibility for the Bost cotton gin’s inability to buy up the whole crop.
With local processing capacity limited, farmer sell the surplus to commercial middlemen.
The head of the economics department in the provincial government, Abdul Rashid, accused these middlemen of paying rock-bottom prices.
Traders retorted that prices were low because of lack of demand for cotton both in Afghanistan and abroad, principally in Pakistan.
“I bought some cotton last year myself,” Ali Ahmad Naseri, who heads the provincial branch of a traders’ association, said. “At that time the price was over one [US] dollar a kilogram. But I was unable to sell the cotton – I still have it. The price has fallen by 50 per cent this year, because so much cotton was grown. I’ve made a big loss.”
He added that many others related similar experiences, and they were now reluctant to buy more cotton.
The head of counter-narcotics in Helmand, Abdul Qader Zahir, warned that opium production remained illegal whatever the economic circumstances, and would not be tolerated.
“If there is no market for the farmers’ cotton, that does not mean they can grow poppy,” he said. “There are markets for all of Helmand’s agricultural products and business is good here. There are problems only with cotton, because the government is unable to buy up as much as it used to take.”
As well as disappointing cotton sales, another factor motivating farmers to switch back to opium may be the rising prices paid for the latter. Average farm-gate prices for dry opium reached 274 dollars a kilo in March 2011, from 98 dollars a year earlier, according to UNODC.
Matiullah, a farmer in Helmand who spoke to IWPR, reported earning 300 dollars a kilo this year.
In 2010, he said, his earnings did not even cover his outlay on running a generator to pump well water for irrigation, so he planted poppy this year to recoup his losses.
“I thought I’d make a loss if I grew cotton or other crops,” Matiullah said. “I decided to grow poppy, reasoning that if I harvested it, I’d make a profit, and if they [eradication squads] destroyed the field, I’d have made a loss anyway. So I grew poppy and earned good profits – I sold it [opium] at 300 dollars a kilogram. If I don’t grow anything for another two years, the profits will still have been enough for me.”
Gol Ahmad Ehsan is an IWPR-trained reporter in Helmand province.
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