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Pakistan warns US against hot pursuit on its soil
By ASIF SHAHZAD - Associated Press
ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan's foreign minister on Saturday warned the United States against sending ground troops to her country to fight an Afghan militant group that America alleges is used as a proxy by Pakistan's top intelligence agency for attacks in neighboring Afghanistan.
US abandons pretence over Pakistan’s proxies
Financial Times By Matthew Green September 23 2011
Islamabad - Frustrated with its failure to persuade Pakistan to crack down on its Afghan proxies, the US has resorted to a public showdown that may do more to anger the country’s generals than convince them to abandon long-serving allies.
Protests break out at Afghanistan peace negotiator's funeral
Supporters of assassinated Afghan politician Burhanuddin Rabbani aim their anger at President Hamid Karzai when they are barred from his burial.
Los Angeles Times By Laura King September 23, 2011
Kabul, Afghanistan - Angry protests against Afghan President Hamid Karzai erupted Friday at the burial of his government's chief peace negotiator, who was killed this week by a suicide bomber posing as a Taliban envoy.
Reconsidering reconciliation in Afghanistan
Foreign Policy By Candace Rondeaux Wednesday, September 21, 2011
The last time I met with Burhanuddin Rabbani, he had just taken up his post as head of Afghanistan's High Peace Council. He was looking unusually fit and energized and was in a jocular mood, his dark eyes laughing as he regaled his visitors with witty appraisals of Afghanistan's nascent peace process
Suicide blast kills 2, wounds 2 in Afghan town
KABUL, Sept. 24 (Xinhua) -- A suicide bomber in attempt to target headquarters of Khushi district in Logar province 60 km south of Afghan capital Kabul blew himself up, leaving two people including himself dead and injuring two policemen on Saturday, a local television channel reported.
27 insurgents killed in Afghanistan: gov't
KABUL, Sept. 24 (Xinhua) -- Afghan and NATO-led forces during operations have eliminated 27 insurgents and detained 14 in different parts of the country over the past 24 hours, Afghan Interior Ministry said in a statement on Saturday.
The Endgame in Afghanistan: How Do We End the Proxy Wars?
TIME.com By Aryn Baker Friday, September 23, 2011
When top U.S. military officer Adm. Mike Mullen described the Haqqani Network as a "a veritable arm of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence [spy] agency," to the U.S. Senate on Thursday you could almost hear the ‘I told you so' chorus echoing all the way from Afghanistan. Mullen accused the ISI of fighting a proxy
Pakistan Scorns U.S. Scolding on Terrorism<br> New York Times By JANE PERLEZ September 23, 2011
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - The public assault by the Obama administration on the Pakistani intelligence agency as a facilitator of terrorist attacks in Afghanistan has been met with scorn in Pakistan, a signal that the country has little intention of changing its ways, even perhaps at the price of the crumpled alliance.
Partnership, Not Pressure, Will Win Pakistan’s Help: Vali Nasr
Bloomberg By Vali Nasr Sep 23, 2011
Now that the U.S. has openly accused Pakistan of helping plan and conduct the attack earlier this month on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, the Obama administration’s exit strategy from Afghanistan is looking increasingly cloudy.
Australia is wasting resources in Afghanistan: experts
By Vienna Ma
CANBERRA, Sept. 24 (Xinhua) -- Australia's military campaign in Afghanistan is a serious policy failure with no serious prospect of achieving, defense experts said in an interview with Xinhua recently, adding that the on-going spending on the war will constitute a drain on resource.
German shot dead in Afghanistan: local officials
By Usman Sharifi (AFP) – September 24, 2011
KABUL — A German tourist was shot dead by armed motorcyclists while travelling in central Afghanistan Saturday, local officials said.
Military dogs and handlers patrol in Afghanistan
By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA - Associated Press
FORWARD OPERATING BASE JACKSON, Afghanistan (AP) — After the suicide bombing, the U.S. Marine dog handler lay on a stretcher, his bloodied legs laced with shrapnel. They brought in his wounded dog, too. Blood dripped from the haunches of the Belgian Malinois.
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Pakistan warns US against hot pursuit on its soil
By ASIF SHAHZAD - Associated Press
ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan's foreign minister on Saturday warned the United States against sending ground troops to her country to fight an Afghan militant group that America alleges is used as a proxy by Pakistan's top intelligence agency for attacks in neighboring Afghanistan.
The warning came as a top U.S. military commander was in Pakistan for talks with the army chief at a time of intense strain between the two countries. The U.S. Embassy said Gen. James Mattis, head of U.S. Central Command, arrived in Pakistan late Friday, and that he will meet the army chief, Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.
Ties between Islamabad and Washington are in crisis after American officials stepped up accusations that Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence was aiding insurgents in neighboring Afghanistan, including those who took part in an attack on the U.S. Embassy last week in Kabul.
Pakistan's Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar said in an interview Saturday that there are red lines and rules of engagement with America, which should not be broken.
"It opens all kinds of doors and all kinds of options," she told Pakistan's private Aaj News TV from New York. The comment was in response to a question about the possibility of U.S. troops coming to Pakistan.
Khar, however, insisted that Pakistan's policy was to seek a more intensive engagement with the U.S. and that she would like to discourage any blame game.
"If many of your goals are not achieved, you do not make someone a scapegoat," she said, addressing the U.S.
The U.S. allegations have seen a strong reaction from Pakistan.
Kayani, the Pakistani army chief, said on Friday that the charges were baseless and part of a public "blame game" detrimental to peace in Afghanistan. Other Islamabad officials urged Washington to present evidence for such a serious allegation. Khar warned the United States is risking losing an ally in the war on terror.
The row began when Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Thursday accused the ISI agency of supporting Haqqani insurgents in planning and executing last week's 22-hour assault on the U.S. Embassy and a truck bombing that wounded 77 American soldiers days earlier.
Kayani said the allegations were "very unfortunate and not based on facts."
The claims were the most serious yet by an American official against nuclear-armed Pakistan, which Washington has given billions in civilian and military aid over the last 10 years to try to secure its cooperation inside Afghanistan and against al-Qaida.
The Haqqani insurgent network is widely believed to be based in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal area along the Afghan border. The group has historical ties to Pakistani intelligence, dating back to the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
The relationship between the two countries has never been smooth, but it took one of its hardest hits when U.S. commandos slipped into Pakistan on May 2 without informing the Pakistanis of their mission and killed al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden in a garrison town not far from Islamabad.
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US abandons pretence over Pakistan’s proxies
Financial Times By Matthew Green September 23 2011
Islamabad - Frustrated with its failure to persuade Pakistan to crack down on its Afghan proxies, the US has resorted to a public showdown that may do more to anger the country’s generals than convince them to abandon long-serving allies.
Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, took US criticism of Pakistan into new territory on Thursday when he accused its Inter-Services Intelligence agency of backing attacks on US targets in Afghanistan.
He described the Haqqani network of Afghan insurgents as a “veritable arm” of the ISI and said the spy agency had helped it to stage a rocket attack on the US embassy in Kabul and a truck bomb that wounded dozens of US soldiers this month.
Adm Mullen’s language was the bluntest used by a US official since Islamabad aligned itself with Washington after the 9/11 terror attacks and marked a direct challenge to Pakistan’s army, the country’s most powerful institution.
US officials have long suspected Pakistan’s military of playing a double-game in Afghanistan by accepting billions of dollars of aid to fight Pakistani militants while covertly supporting Afghan Taliban factions intent on seizing power in Kabul.
With US troops facing the prospect of a fighting withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2014, Washington has decided to abandon years of pretence by making public allegations of ISI complicity in attacks that western diplomats have long been making in private.
Hina Rabbani Khar, Pakistan’s foreign minister, has rejected the allegations and warned that the US risks losing Pakistan as an ally.
The ISI has a long history of supporting the Haqqani network, which emerged in eastern Afghanistan in the 1970s and later become a key player in a US-funded jihad against Soviet invaders and in later rounds of internal strife.
The Haqqani network’s leadership has pledged allegiance to the main Taliban movement led by Mullah Mohammed Omar and have forged close ties to al-Qaeda.
Pakistan’s military has long backed the network as a tool to exert influence in Afghanistan in its competition with arch-rival India. By backing attacks on the Afghan capital, Pakistan sends a message to the US that its interests must be protected in any negotiations over Afghanistan’s future, experts say.
“The Haqqani network is becoming an even more important asset for Pakistan,” said Shaun Gregory, director of the Pakistan Security Research Unit at Bradford University. “It is emerging as an increasingly powerful player in the region.”
Pakistan’s army has even less incentive to abandon the Haqqanis at a time when the assassination of Afghanistan’s former president, Burhanuddin Rabbani, has renewed fears the country could slide towards a new round of civil war.
Thousands of mourners from Afghanistan’s ethnic Tajik minority called for revenge at his funeral in Kabul on Friday, underscoring growing polarisation between northern communities and the Pashtun south and east, where the Taliban is strongest.
Some analysts argue that a growing insurgency within Pakistan itself has prompted some within the military to question whether sponsoring militant proxies is a sustainable policy. But there has been no sign that Pakistan is prepared to launch an operation against the Haqqani network’s bases in the border enclave of North Waziristan.
Pakistani officials say that any offensive in the region could stir up a hornet’s nest of local resistance and trigger a wave of suicide bombings across the country.
Should US pressure on the army to take action fail, the US will have have few palatable options for dealing with the Haqqanis. Any move by the Pentagon to launch unilateral attacks on Haqqani bases would provoke outcry in Pakistan, which felt humiliated by the unannounced US raid that killed Osama bin Laden on May 2.
US strategists must weigh the risk that any incursion by its forces might trigger a public backlash that could further destabilise the nuclear-armed state and jeopardise remaining counter-terrorism co-operation.
The Obama administration has sharply escalated a campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas but they have been more effective at targeting the remaining leadership of al-Qaeda than hitting Haqqani commanders, who enjoy considerable respect in many of the Pashtun villages straddling the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
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Protests break out at Afghanistan peace negotiator's funeral
Supporters of assassinated Afghan politician Burhanuddin Rabbani aim their anger at President Hamid Karzai when they are barred from his burial.
Los Angeles Times By Laura King September 23, 2011
Kabul, Afghanistan - Angry protests against Afghan President Hamid Karzai erupted Friday at the burial of his government's chief peace negotiator, who was killed this week by a suicide bomber posing as a Taliban envoy.
The daylong funeral observances for Burhanuddin Rabbani, a former president, brought Afghanistan's capital to a near-standstill, with some of the heaviest security in recent memory.
Police and soldiers in armored vehicles patrolled the streets, checkpoints dotted major boulevards and traffic circles, and a large part of central Kabul was blocked to all but foot traffic. Helicopters buzzed overhead.
Rabbani was the head of the High Peace Council, set up by the government a year ago to try to open negotiations with militants of the Taliban movement.
He was killed Tuesday in his home in an affluent Kabul neighborhood by an assailant who claimed to be carrying a peace message from the Taliban leadership, but instead had a bomb concealed in his turban.
Karzai and other senior Afghan officials have described the assassination plot as an elaborate ruse, months in the making. But some of Rabbani's prominent supporters turned their anger against Karzai, who had urged the 70-year-old politician to meet with the man who turned out to be his assassin.
Mourners also shouted slogans denouncing Pakistan, which is seen as fomenting insurgent violence, and the United States, which is also trying to open channels to the Taliban.
The ugly public quarrel that broke out Friday has its roots in Afghanistan's fractured ethnic politics. Like many of his supporters, Rabbani was an ethnic Tajik; Karzai is a member of the sprawling Pashtun ethnic group, from which the Taliban movement is largely drawn.
Rabbani was a leader of the Northern Alliance, the militia that helped drive the Taliban from power in 2001; many of his supporters remain deeply mistrustful of the Taliban and oppose peace negotiations.
The funeral observances began quietly with a solemn prayer ceremony at the heavily guarded presidential palace, where Karzai presided, describing Rabbani as a martyr to the cause of peace. Diplomats and dignitaries paid their respects before the flag-draped coffin.
But things took a chaotic turn when the coffin was moved to a sunbaked hillside overlooking the city for burial. Police and soldiers, apparently trying to maintain order, at first blocked entry for some of Rabbani's supporters, including two prominent politicians who are Karzai's bitter rivals and critics.
One was Amrullah Saleh, who was fired by Karzai as chief of Afghanistan's main intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security. Saleh managed to push his way into the walled compound surrounding the burial site.
Amid the melee, guards fired shots into the air to keep back some of Rabbani's supporters, but eventually allowed the crowd to surge in.
"A terrorist was allowed to enter and kill our leader, and we are not allowed to attend his burial!" Saleh called out, according to a pool report filed by the Reuters news agency. Most journalists were barred from the burial.
As guards tried to quiet him, Saleh told them furiously: "If I ask them [Rabbani's supporters], your government will be destroyed by noon."
More heated rhetoric came from Abdullah Abdullah, Karzai's onetime foreign minister who was his chief rival in 2009's fraud-tainted presidential election. Organizers turned off the microphone when he tried to address the riled-up crowd.
"We buried our leader, but won't be silenced," he said, raising his voice to be heard. "Karzai has to answer to the people and explain who is the killer."
The leadership of the Taliban, which has claimed responsibility for many other political assassinations, disavowed knowledge of Rabbani's killing, saying it was investigating. Police have not yet concluded which insurgent faction might be responsible.
Outside the gates of the burial compound, some Rabbani backers threw stones at guards, and chants of "Death to Karzai!" broke out. Rabbani's son Salahuddin appealed for calm, but also called on the government to investigate the circumstances of the killing.
Karzai was not at the burial; neither were most members of his government.
More unrest was likely Saturday, when a prayer service is scheduled at a central Kabul mosque. Saleh, the fired intelligence chief, issued a thinly veiled appeal for a widened campaign of antigovernment protests.
"The government is not taking responsibility for the shedding of our people's blood. The government doesn't have the right to talk with enemies anymore," he said. "Nothing will come of so much talking. Just wait for a call. Very soon we will come to the streets."
laura.king@latimes.com
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Reconsidering reconciliation in Afghanistan
Foreign Policy By Candace Rondeaux Wednesday, September 21, 2011
The last time I met with Burhanuddin Rabbani, he had just taken up his post as head of Afghanistan's High Peace Council. He was looking unusually fit and energized and was in a jocular mood, his dark eyes laughing as he regaled his visitors with witty appraisals of Afghanistan's nascent peace process. President Hamid Karzai had taken his time in announcing the names of the High Peace Council members, officially announcing them in October 2010, and less than a month later Rabbani was already complaining that the Karzai administration had been dragging its feet on establishing an office for the council.
Holding court in the garishly ornate salon of his mansion in downtown Kabul, Rabbani bitterly joked about the then-recent revelations that the Afghan government and its Western backers had been duped into talking to a Taliban impostor. As details emerged of the Afghan government's efforts to begin brokering a deal with a man they believed to be Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, a close adviser of Taliban leader Mullah Omar, it became clear that the Afghan peace process had a long way to go, and that the Taliban and its allies in the Pakistani military were prepared to go to great lengths to derail the peace process.
Mansour -- it turned out -- was not Mansour at all, but variously was believed to be a shopkeeper from Quetta, a Taliban spy, an agent of Pakistan'sintelligence services, or all of the above. The unseemly tale of subterfuge and betrayal was, Rabbani said at the time, a sign of the disarray in the Afghan government and the desperation in Washington to cut a deal that would quickly end America's longest war. The ruse, the former Afghan president declared, was a stain on the peace process.
Rabbani was in rare form then, back in the limelight, relishing being at the center of Afghan politics again -- the place where he always felt the most comfortable. Confident of his position and ever critical of those he called his allies, there was a sense of hope in Rabbani's tone that somehow the four years he spent as president, presiding over the destruction of the Afghan capital in the 1990's, would be erased as he spent his twilight years recasting himself as peacemaker. In many ways, Rabbani's quest to burnish his troubled legacy was emblematic of the entire peace process itself, which has emerged as little more than a theatrical exercise in appeasing the vanities of powerful men.
One of a series this year of assassinations of high-powered Afghan politicians, Rabbani's death at the hands of a suicide bomber in the heart of Kabul should send a strong signal to the Afghan government and its backers in Washington and London that cutting deals with the Taliban is not and never will be the solution for Afghanistan. For many, the death of Rabbani, one of Afghanistan's most towering Tajik leaders, brings tragic punctuation to the pervasive sense of anxiety among non-Pashtun political factions and Afghan civil society actors that the international community is willing to jettison commitments made in the wake of the 2001 Bonn conference to support a model of multi-ethnic inclusive governance in favor of a Pakistani sanctioned quick and dirty deal with the predominantly Pashtun Taliban. The international community has done little to assuage these fears, only occasionally and often reluctantly ceding space to civil society in the reconciliation and transition process. Though a sustainable political settlement will without doubt entail prolonged engagement with a broad range of Afghans -- from civil society activists, to political party leaders, women and youth groups, religious and legal scholars as well as members of the armed opposition -- neither Washington nor Kabul has indicated any genuine interest in expanding the national dialogue on reconciliation since Karzai convened the Consultative Peace Jirga in Kabul in June 2010. Instead of expanding the national conversation about reconciliation, Karzai has narrowed the avenues of public participation by rewarding the mercurial, glorifying the venal, and making a mockery of the peace process by doling out dollars and divvying up patronage positions like a card dealer at a Las Vegas casino.
As a result, conditions on the ground in the wake of the U.S. military surge authorized by President Obama preclude the near term possibility of negotiating a sustainable political settlement in Afghanistan. With Karzai's government in freefall, the insurgency gaining ground across the country, and ethnic divisions deepening, all signs point away from settlement and toward are invigoration of the conflict as NATO and the U.S. enter the final phase of the planned withdrawal of military forces from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. Although there is substantial support among Afghans for the cessation of violent conflict in the country, the elements necessary for a sustainable peace are far from being in place or agreed upon. While much has been made of attempts to broker a deal with the Taliban in the lead up to the Bonn II Conference on Afghanistan in December 2011 even Western diplomats involved in the negotiation efforts agree that contacts with Afghan insurgents have so far been insubstantial, amounting to little more than "talks about talks." Afghan government attempts to cut deals with factional leaders within the insurgency have been haphazard and while Pakistani military support for the insurgency remains strong there are few signs that the insurgents are anywhere near prepared to enter into negotiations.
There is also little evidence that the U.S. and its allies have succeeded in breaking al-Qaeda's sway over the most radical elements of jihadist networks in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the wake of Osama bin Laden's death in May 2011, there have been no signs that the Taliban is inclined to make a public break with al-Qaeda. Instead, there are stronger indications that Taliban and other Afghan insurgent leaders across the border in Pakistan view their perceived association with al-Qaeda as a strategic trump card critical to strengthening their position at the negotiating table. The Afghan insurgency's backers in Pakistan's military have concurrently managed to preserve their control over their Islamist Afghan proxies in spite of reported frictions among Taliban leaders over the movement's longstanding dependence on the Pakistani militaryfor guidance and support. For Afghan jihadist Sirajuddin Haqqani and his network, in particular, the maintenance of their links with the Pakistanimilitary and al-Qaeda, the network's strongest external source of support for nearly two decades, remains a strategic imperative.
The insurgency's continued reliance on the Pakistani military and surviving elements of al-Qaeda, therefore, raise serious questions about the political import, and, indeed, relevance of the handful of recently reconciled Taliban involved in efforts to broker a deal with the Karzai government. By all accounts -- including their own -- this small cadre of reconciled Taliban is not as yet empowered to negotiate on behalf of the Taliban's leadership council in Quetta, Pakistan. What's more, it is becoming increasingly obvious that no matter how splintered Mullah Omar's Quetta Shura may have become in recent years, it is its very fragmentation that precludes the possibility of the Taliban making a definitive break with the Pakistani military and its other allies.
The attack on the U.S. Embassy last week and Rabbani's assassination on Tuesday comes on the heels of news that the U.S. and its international partners have backed an Afghan plan to open a political office for the Taliban in the Gulf state of Qatar. It is also notable that within days of these events, the embassy of Saudia Arabia, a state which until recently was viewed as a potentially heavyweight broker in the negotiation process, has decided to pull up stakes and evacuate its staff from Kabul. The Saudi pullout may only be temporary, but it is an important harbinger of things to come as regional states around Afghanistan begin shifting their positions in the run up to the transition. The international community has a long way to go before it will convince states such as Iran, India, Russia and China that the U.S. prescription for peace in South and Central Asia is the cure for what ails the region.
If there is one lesson to be learned, it is that it is time for Washington and Kabul drop their illusions that unconditional appeasement of Taliban demands is the answer to Afghanistan's problems. At the very least, the events of the last few months should put all concerned on notice: it's time to rethink reconciliation and reintegration in Afghanistan. Until the Pakistani military withdraws its support for the Taliban and Haqqani network's safe havens across the border, and until Karzai reconciles himself to putting his government back in order, political settlement will remain out of reach.
If the U.S. and NATO want to ensure the stability of the Afghan republic, more must be done to guard against the return of the Islamic emirate. A switch in orientation will necessitate considerably more high-profile Afghan and international investment in unsexy things like electoral and constitutional reform. Instead of spinning its wheels on cutting deals, the U.S. and its allies need to throw their backs into a whole of government approach that engages Afghans on all levels -- not just a handful of powerful men. No amount of dealmaking will erase 30 years of entrenched conflict. Ensuring that the Afghan public is fully engaged in the peace process from start to finish is the only thing that will prevent the next civil war.
Candace Rondeaux is based in Kabul and is the senior analyst in Afghanistan for the International Crisis Group.
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Suicide blast kills 2, wounds 2 in Afghan town
KABUL, Sept. 24 (Xinhua) -- A suicide bomber in attempt to target headquarters of Khushi district in Logar province 60 km south of Afghan capital Kabul blew himself up, leaving two people including himself dead and injuring two policemen on Saturday, a local television channel reported.
"A terrorist driving an explosive-laden car and designed to target the headquarters of Khushi district was identified by police and detonated himself at 01:30: p.m. local time today killing himself and wounding two policemen," Tolo aired in its news bulletin.
A woman accompanying the suicide bomber in the car was also killed in the blast, it added.
Meantime, gun battle between security forces and irresponsible armed men outside Pul-e-Khumri the capital of northern Baghlan province also left two people dead and injured two others Saturday morning, a local official Abdul Qadim said.
Taliban outfit fighting Afghan and NATO-led troops stationed in Afghanistan has intensified activities since launching spring offensive in May this year.
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27 insurgents killed in Afghanistan: gov't
KABUL, Sept. 24 (Xinhua) -- Afghan and NATO-led forces during operations have eliminated 27 insurgents and detained 14 in different parts of the country over the past 24 hours, Afghan Interior Ministry said in a statement on Saturday.
"Afghan National Police (ANP), backed by army and Coalition forces, launched nine joint operations in surrounding areas of Kabul, Parwan, Helmand, Wardak, Ghazni, Uruzgan and Khost province over the past 24 hours," said the statement.
As a result of these operations, a total of 27 armed insurgents have been killed and 14 detained by joint forces, it said.
Earlier Saturday, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in a press release confirmed a joint Afghan and ISAF security forces killed six insurgents, including a Taliban local leader, in Chahar Bolak district of country's northern Balkh province on Friday.
"The leader planned attacks on aircraft in the region, as well as, acquired weapons for use by insurgent fighters in the western parts of Balkh Province," according to ISAF press release issued here Saturday.
In another development, two insurgents were killed and another was injured when their bomb exploded prematurely in southern Uruzgan province on Friday night.
"Three insurgent were planting a roadside bomb to attack security forces in Mirabad area of Uruzgan's provincial capital Tirin Kot but their explosive went off prematurely killing two insurgent on the spot," a police spokesman in the province, Farid Haeel told Xinhua, adding the injured militant was detained by police.
Afghan and ISAF officials often use the word "insurgents" for referring to Taliban insurgents.
The insurgent group, who stepped up their attacks on Afghan and about 140, 000 ISAF troops stationed in the country since a spring rebel offensive was launched in May this year in the country, has yet to make comments.
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The Endgame in Afghanistan: How Do We End the Proxy Wars?
TIME.com By Aryn Baker Friday, September 23, 2011
When top U.S. military officer Adm. Mike Mullen described the Haqqani Network as a "a veritable arm of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence [spy] agency," to the U.S. Senate on Thursday you could almost hear the ‘I told you so' chorus echoing all the way from Afghanistan. Mullen accused the ISI of fighting a proxy war in Afghanistan, and said that the Pakistani equivalent of the CIA had directly contributed to a series of attacks on U.S. and other targets over the past few years.
Just a few weeks ago, Hanif Atmar, the former Afghan Minister of Interior, told me in an interview that if I were really seeking a solution to Afghanistan's problems, I would do well by looking over the border at Pakistan. “I think this is absolutely well understood that the Afghan terrorists with support from ISI and al Qaeda are purposefully and deliberately targeting Afghan politicians, government sites and foreign forces.” What he didn't understand was why the U.S. wasn't doing anything about it. Where are the diplomatic sanctions, he demanded. Why not shut off the aid spigot? What about drones and raids? “If Osama bin Laden could have been targeted in his safe haven, why are these other terrorist groups that are killing innocent Afghans and foreign troops and Afghan troops not targeted in that same safe haven?” he asked.
American lawmakers, it seems, are just now starting to pose the same questions. Not long after Mullen's testimony, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein requested that the State Department list the Haqqani network as a Foreign Terrorism Organization. "There is no question that the Haqqani network meets the standards" for joining the list, she said in a statement. "It conducts attacks against US targets and personnel in Afghanistan, and poses a continuing threat to American, Afghan, and allied personnel and interests."
Doing so, of course, risks categorizing Pakistan a state sponsor of terror, with all the concomitant repercussions. And while that may satisfy many fed up with Pakistan's double game, it would do very little to solve the problem at hand. No matter how many drones or sanctions we use against Pakistan, they will do very little to change that country's views about Afghanistan: that a situation there friendly to Pakistani interests is the only thing saving Pakistan from annihilation by arch enemy India.
Whether India actually has an interest in further destabilizing its semi-failed, nuclear-armed, terror-wracked neighbor is another issue. What matters is that Pakistanis, and more importantly their military leadership, believe that India seeks an end to Pakistan. To their mind, the only solution is a friendly, and pliant, government in Kabul. Until Pakistan and India sort out their differences (not least the contested territory of Kashmir, over which the two countries have fought three wars), Afghanistan will continue to be the place where Pakistan plots its regional dominance.
To be sure, this is not a new role for Afghanistan. In the 1980's it was the center of the United State's proxy war against the Soviet Union. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan saw gain in influencing the fight, and pitched in. But when the Soviets withdrew and the Americans lost interest, Afghanistan's other neighbors, including India and Iran, vied for regional dominance via militia proxies in a devastating civil war that destroyed the country and saw the rise of the Pakistan-backed Taliban. With the withdrawal of international forces in 2014 looming, a return to civil war is not just a possibility, but a potential catastrophe. “This is a bigger, bolder, better and more expensive game this time around,” cautions Candace Rondeaux, senior Afghanistan analyst for the International Crisis Group. “There is more money involved, there are more weapons involved, and much more at stake.” Not least the reputation of the United States, who led the international coalition into Afghanistan in the first place.
With the recent assassination of Afghan peace envoy to the Taliban, Burhanuddin Rabbani, it has become clear that reconciliation is not a strategy that will lead to a stable Afghanistan anytime soon. Pakistan will attempt to influence negotiations, but so will Russia and India. The Afghan military, while getting stronger, can't deliver security, and certainly not when groups in Iran (or the Iranian government itself) provide weapons and explosives to insurgent groups, while the Taliban leadership, the Haqqani network and other anti-Afghan government groups take refuge in Pakistan. India, for its part, tends to focus on soft power investments, but its visible presence in Afghanistan does little to assuage Pakistani concerns. Neither Iran, China nor Russia want to see a long term U.S. presence in their back yard; they too will attempt to wield influence.
It doesn't matter how many troops we surge in Afghanistan, how many we train, and how much money we throw at the place. We are still going to fail unless we rope in the neighbors, says Sherard Cowper-Coles, Britain's former Ambassador to Afghanistan and author of Cables From Kabul, a damning account of the West's missteps in Afghanistan. “Frankly, the problems of Afghanistan won't be solved until all the regional powers are actively engaged in a search for a solution.” What is needed, he told me over the phone, is “robust American diplomacy,” something he describes as currently “missing in action. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is not doing the necessary to bring the regional actors—Pakistan, India, Russia, the 'Stans, China, Turkey, even Iran— into a standing collective dialogue.” A regional settlement is not expensive in terms of resources, but it requires a single-minded focus on solving one of the world's most toxic international disputes, one that is nearly as old as the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Only in the case of Pakistan and India, both are demonstrated nuclear powers. “There is still time,” says Cowper-Coles, “but there is still the open question of whether America has the will to do right by Afghanistan. If America doesn't do this, if U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton doesn't drive the effort to broker a political solution, that will mean the sacrifice of all our soldiers' lives, and of Afghan lives, will have been largely in vain.”
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Pakistan Scorns U.S. Scolding on Terrorism
New York Times By JANE PERLEZ September 23, 2011
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - The public assault by the Obama administration on the Pakistani intelligence agency as a facilitator of terrorist attacks in Afghanistan has been met with scorn in Pakistan, a signal that the country has little intention of changing its ways, even perhaps at the price of the crumpled alliance.
In injured tones similar to those used after the Navy Seals raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May, Pakistani officials insisted on Friday that theirs was a sovereign state that could not be pushed by America’s most senior military officials, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Leon E. Panetta, the secretary of defense.
The two Americans told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday that Pakistan’s spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, worked hand-in-glove with the Haqqani network, a potent militant outfit sheltering in the Pakistani tribal areas, to subvert American war aims.
Admiral Mullen accused the spy agency of supporting Haqqani militants who attacked the American Embassy in Kabul last week, and he called the Haqqanis a “veritable arm” of the ISI. Mr. Panetta threatened “operational steps” against Pakistan, shorthand for possible American raids against the Haqqani bases in North Waziristan.
The connection between the spy agency and the militants has been at the center of American complaints about Pakistan since the start of the war in Afghanistan, but never before has the United States chosen to expose its grievances in such unvarnished language in the most public of forums.
In his public reply, the chief of the Pakistani Army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, said Mr. Mullen’s accusations were “not based on facts,” and suggested that they were unfair given “a rather constructive” recent meeting. The ISI did not support the Haqqanis, General Kayani said.
Similarly, the country’s defense minister, Ahmad Mukhtar, said Pakistan was a sovereign nation “which cannot be threatened.”
The foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, said it was “unacceptable” for one ally, the United States, to “humiliate” another, Pakistan. “If they are choosing to do so, it will be at their own cost,” Ms. Khar said.
Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States who is close to the military, underscored that point. “Relations are headed towards a breakdown if the U.S. continues its coercive approach of threats and public accusations,” Ms. Lodhi said. “What is its plan B if there is an open rupture with Pakistan?”
The anti-American feeling in Pakistan, and within the army, surged after the raid that killed Bin Laden, which was kept secret from Pakistan’s leadership. It remains intense, making the idea of bowing to American demands to take on the Haqqanis almost unthinkable, Pakistani politicians, businessmen and analysts said.
They said General Kayani, who was under great pressure from his troops after the humiliation of the Bin Laden raid, had recovered some ground and recouped some prestige. He has no intention of giving in to the Americans now because he is betting that they still need Pakistan as the supply route for the Afghanistan war, they said.
But the larger reason is a divergence of strategic interests with the United States. The Haqqani network is seen as an important anti-India tool for the Pakistani military as it assesses the future of an Afghanistan without the Americans, a situation Pakistan sees as not far off.
General Kayani has said he fears that as the Americans exit, India will be allowed to have influence in Afghanistan, squeezing Pakistan on both its eastern and western borders, Pakistani analysts say.
Thus, the Haqqani fighters who hold sway over Paktika, Paktia and Khost Provinces in Afghanistan, and who are also strong in the capital, Kabul, and in the provinces around it, present a valuable hedge against the perceived India threat, which American officials say is overblown.
The precise relationship between the Pakistani military and spy agency on the one hand and the Haqqani network on the other remains murky, American officials say.
In talks with the Americans, the leader of the ISI, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, has said he has “contact” with the Haqqanis, a senior American official said. “But he denies he has command and control.” The official said it appeared that the Haqqanis had developed into such skilled fighters over several decades that they had the Pakistani Army cowed.
According to American officials and Pakistani analysts, it appeared that the Pakistani Army had struck a bargain with the Haqqanis: The Haqqanis would be free to fight in Afghanistan, in part looking after Pakistan’s interests, and in return, the Haqqanis would not attack Pakistan.
If the Pakistani army attacked Haqqani fighters in their bases in North Waziristan, the blowback in the form of terrorist attacks in Pakistani cities and towns could be overwhelming, Pakistani military analysts say.
In a startling image of the apparent symbiosis between the Pakistani military — which controls the ISI — and the Haqqani fighters, both forces have bases in Miram Shah, the main town in North Waziristan.
Five brigades of the Pakistani Army, about 15,000 soldiers, and the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force of about 10,000 men, have never touched the Haqqanis, American officials familiar with the situation say. Visitors to Miram Shah have said the army facilities are within sight of the Haqqani compounds.
Estimates of the Haqqani fighting strength in North Waziristan vary from 10,000 to 15,000. Technically, Sirajuddin Haqqani, who runs the group, is a member of the Afghan Taliban leadership headed by Mullah Muhammad Omar and based in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan Province in southwest Pakistan.
The Pakistani Army struggled to defeat the Pakistani Taliban in battles in the Swat Valley and South Waziristan in 2009 and 2010, but the Taliban are still present in both places, a senior American military official said. “So why would they take on the Haqqanis, who are world class fighters?” the official asked.
As much as the Americans criticize the Pakistanis for not taking on the Haqqanis, the Pakistanis scoff at the inability of the Americans to deal with the Haqqanis on the war front in Afghanistan.
In a sarcastic column in the English-language newspaper The News on Thursday, Farrukh Saleem wrote, “If over the past decade the lone superpower has failed to tame 10,000 to 15,000 tribesmen, then the American military-intelligence complex has really failed and should be heading home.”
Pakistani military officers have contended that it is up to the American troops in Afghanistan to prevent the Haqqanis from launching terrorist attacks in Kabul and elsewhere.
In order to get to Kabul, the Haqqani fighters pass through provinces with large American bases, they say. Mr. Haqqani is believed to spend much of his time in Afghanistan, organizing his fighters.
In an interview with Reuters this week, Mr. Haqqani said he was working solely in Afghanistan. It is the same argument that Pakistani officials have been making this week as a way to rebut the American accusations that the Haqqanis live in Pakistan at all.
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Partnership, Not Pressure, Will Win Pakistan’s Help: Vali Nasr
Bloomberg By Vali Nasr Sep 23, 2011
Now that the U.S. has openly accused Pakistan of helping plan and conduct the attack earlier this month on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, the Obama administration’s exit strategy from Afghanistan is looking increasingly cloudy.
An American departure depends on Pakistan’s cooperation in keeping things quiet. Yet its spy agency, the ISI, helped plan and conduct the embassy assault with the Islamist Haqqani network, according to Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. The U.S. government sees the Haqqani group, which is based in Pakistan, as an al-Qaeda affiliate. Pakistan denies these claims, but it has been unwilling to move against the group’s safe haven within Pakistan’s borders. The U.S. has threatened to take unilateral action if Pakistan doesn’t crack down.
Can the U.S. and Pakistan ever get on the same page?
Since the U.S. killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan last spring, U.S.-Pakistan relations have been in free fall. The U.S. has put pressure on Pakistan to do more to fight terrorism. U.S. officials ended their “strategic dialogue” with Pakistan, suspended $800 million in military aid and, for the first time, made public their private views that Pakistan is duplicitous on counterterrorism matters. Recently, the administration openly implicated Pakistan’s military leaders in the murder of a Pakistani journalist, and now, Mullen has said the ISI and Pakistani army use the Haqqani network as “proxies.”
But pressure tactics haven’t worked. Pakistani officials counter U.S. threats of unilateral action with talk of closing supply routes to Afghanistan and ending all counterterrorism cooperation. In private, they say they have written off U.S. assistance as too small and inconsistent to influence their decision-making. Given the economic climate, they say, Congress would have trimmed the aid anyway.
Pakistan’s leaders also believe they can make friends elsewhere. For instance, when the U.S. rolled back energy assistance, which had been a big part of the bilateral relationship from 2009 to 2011, Pakistan restarted talks with Iran about building a gas pipeline between the two countries. This initiative undermined U.S. efforts to isolate Iran in the region. What’s more, such a pipeline would compete with the U.S.-supported TAPI project, which would bring natural gas from Turkmenistan to India and Pakistan through Afghanistan. The U.S. has been promoting the idea of Afghanistan as a transit corridor connecting resources in Central Asia to markets in South Asia and the rest of the world, creating a New Silk Road that would foster stability in Afghanistan.
Pakistan has been generally supportive of the New Silk Road but sees Iranian gas as a quicker and easier alternative to the Turkmenistan option. And this isn’t just about filling Pakistan’s energy needs. President Asif Ali Zardari has lauded the pipeline to Iran as a new paradigm for the region, a homemade alternative to the U.S.-backed New Silk Road. In seeking rapprochement with Iran, Pakistan is sending a clear message of defiance to Washington.
If Pakistan is willing to forgo American aid, what can the U.S. do to win Pakistan’s cooperation on stabilizing Afghanistan and fighting terrorists? The answer is simple: It needs to talk to Pakistan about Afghanistan’s future.
Afghanistan has been at the center of Pakistan’s strategic outlook for the past three decades. Officials in Islamabad worry that a future Afghanistan, at least as America envisions it, will make common cause with India to squeeze Pakistan and even snatch away its restless Pashtun region on the border with Afghanistan. Pakistan continues to look to the Taliban to protect its interests in Afghanistan. Pakistan won’t break with these and associated extremists unless it believes that an independent Afghanistan, with a strong military, won’t pose a threat.
The U.S. has done little to assuage such fears. Rather, it has decided to shape Afghanistan on its own. It is building a strong military and promoting reconciliation between the government of President Hamid Karzai and the Taliban. Afghanistan’s neighbors aren’t a part of this process but are expected to support its outcome. U.S. officials aim to accelerate the course of events with a regional conference in Turkey in November followed by an international conference in Germany in December.
Pakistan isn’t happy sitting on the margins; it wants a major role. The government in Islamabad would like to bypass the international conferences and deal with the U.S. directly in setting the terms of reconciliation talks, controlling the agenda, and keeping a firm hold on the Taliban as they negotiate for turf and power.
The U.S. isn’t ready to give Pakistan this role, especially with the current state of relations. And Afghan officials reject the idea that Pakistan should have a say on the future of their country. They would actually like to secure a U.S. promise to keep Pakistan out of Afghanistan indefinitely. But that would require a continuing, large U.S. troop presence, and the U.S. already has decided to leave.
Somewhere in this, there is a middle ground. The U.S. should reach out to Pakistan and attentively discuss with its leaders their interests and objectives in Afghanistan. Such meetings should precede any further U.S. steps, including talking with the Taliban, setting the stage for the upcoming conferences and signing off on any agreements.
This does not mean giving in to Pakistan’s demands, but rather treating Pakistan, rightfully, as a party with a special interest in Afghanistan’s future. The U.S. should make engagement with Pakistan on these issues contingent on tangible progress in Pakistan’s counterterrorism efforts. That would give Pakistan an incentive to rein in extremism on both sides of the border, which is what the U.S. needs, if it is to leave Afghanistan on schedule.
(Vali Nasr is a Bloomberg View columnist and a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. The opinions expressed are his own.)
To contact the writer of this article: Vali Nasr at vali.nasr@tufts.edu
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Australia is wasting resources in Afghanistan: experts
By Vienna Ma
CANBERRA, Sept. 24 (Xinhua) -- Australia's military campaign in Afghanistan is a serious policy failure with no serious prospect of achieving, defense experts said in an interview with Xinhua recently, adding that the on-going spending on the war will constitute a drain on resource.
The comment came following the assassination of former Afghan president and Afghan peace negotiator, Burhanuddin Rabbani. The killing was the latest high-profile attack by insurgents, who are currently engaged in back-channel peace talks with the U.S. via Pakistani intermediaries.
An Australian foreign and defense policy expert at University of Newcastle, Associate Professor Wayne Reynolds, said the recent assassinations and the rising death toll among coalition soldiers indicated the insurgency is gathering pace and sophistication in Afghanistan.
He said it is possible that there is a much broader and uncoordinated insurgency then applying the Taliban label would suggest, and he expected the coalition force will continue to struggle with insurgents, who are motivated not only by opposition to North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO's) presence, but a plethora of local issues that have been long neglected in the strife-torn nation.
As of the prospects for peace in the country, Professor Reynolds casted a shadow over it, saying that it is considerable diminished by the uncertainty surrounding the profile of the Taliban leadership.
"It is also clear that there is considerable uncertainty about the negotiating framework for peace," he told Xinhua in an interview. "While the elimination by the U.S. and NATO of Taliban leaders suggests a hierarchy it does not seem to extend to intelligence about the chain of command with respect to negotiators."
Meanwhile, former senior Defense Department official and government advisor, Professor Hugh White, said the latest assassination showed that chances of Australian Defense Force completing its objectives in Afghanistan are "very low".
"I don't think we are likely to succeed in preventing the Taliban taking a prominent position. Even if they don't completely overtake Afghan politics, they are going to regain a prominent position there after we leave," he said. "I don't think we are going to succeed in ensuring that Afghanistan doesn't become a kind of destabilizing factor in the wide south Asian strategic balance."
With the barely noticeable process has been done since the coalition force entered Afghanistan in 2001, Professor Reynolds said the occupying force is not only wasting human and financial resources, but also create ongoing co-lateral damage in Afghanistan and increasingly in Pakistan. "The events in Afghanistan suggest that on-going spending on ' boots on the ground' will constitute a drain on resources, and come at the expense of developing other defense options such as aircraft, submarines and industrial infrastructure," he said.
Australia currently has 1,500 troops in Afghanistan, mainly based in Oruzgan Province. So far, 29 Australian soldiers have died and 194 others have been wounded in Afghanistan since 2001.
Since Australia scheduled to hand security arrangements back to Afghanistan from 2014, Professor White said based on recent casualty rates, as many as 40 more Australians could lose their lives in the war before it ends.
"If when we leave in 2014 Afghanistan looks just as it looks today, which I think is the most likely outcome, then it is hard to see that any lives we lose between now and then will not have been lost in vain," he said.
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German shot dead in Afghanistan: local officials
By Usman Sharifi (AFP) – September 24, 2011
KABUL — A German tourist was shot dead by armed motorcyclists while travelling in central Afghanistan Saturday, local officials said.
The man was killed alongside an Afghan companion in the usually stable central Afghan province of Ghor.
The incident came in the same month that two German nationals were found dead after apparently going climbing in mountains north of the Afghan capital Kabul.
The deputy police chief of Ghor, Abdul Rashid, told AFP that the tourist made his fatal journey to a forested area despite being told that safety there could not be guaranteed.
"We said we cannot guarantee their security but later we learned they had gone to to Dawlatyar district in an SUV vehicle and that armed men had opened fire on their vehicle," he said.
"The German tourist and one local villager have been killed and two other Afghans who were apparently the guides have been injured."
He added that the body of the German national was being brought to the capital Kabul.
Provincial governor Abdullah Haiwad said the party was attacked by two armed motorcyclists.
The German embassy in Kabul was not immediately reachable for comment.
Ghor provincial spokesman Abdul Hai Khatibi also confirmed the incident but did not know the nationality of the victim.
"One foreigner has been killed and two Afghan companions were injured when they were attacked by armed men in Dawlatyar district today at around 3:00pm (1030 GMT)," he said.
"We have reports that their vehicle was attacked by armed men. The body of the foreigner has been brought to the the provincial capital Chaghcharan. We are trying to identify it."
Afghanistan's Taliban-led insurgency has been raging for ten years since a US-led invasion in 2001, making most of the country highly dangerous for Western tourists.
Germany forms the third-largest contingent of foreign troops in war-torn Afghanistan, with some 5,400 soldiers in the north under NATO command. There are around 140,000 foreign forces in Afghanistan in total.
Earlier this month, the bodies of two Germans were found after they went missing near the Salang Pass in August.
They had set out to go climbing in the famous Hindu Kush range around 100 kilometres (60 miles) north of Kabul.
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said an examination of the bodies had led officials to believe "with a likelihood bordering on certitude" that the two were the missing Germans.
German media identified the pair as Siegbert S., 69, and Willi E., 59, and said they were members of an aid group who had been kidnapped to be robbed.
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Military dogs and handlers patrol in Afghanistan
By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA - Associated Press
FORWARD OPERATING BASE JACKSON, Afghanistan (AP) — After the suicide bombing, the U.S. Marine dog handler lay on a stretcher, his bloodied legs laced with shrapnel. They brought in his wounded dog, too. Blood dripped from the haunches of the Belgian Malinois.
Seven Afghans died in the insurgent attack on Sept. 8 near a Marine battalion headquarters in southern Afghanistan. Sgt. Kenneth Fischer and his dog, Drak, were flown by helicopter to a bigger base for emergency treatment, then out of the country for surgery. Both will head to Texas for rehabilitation, and eventually, in line with military custom, Fischer will adopt Drak and take him home.
"I have literally spent more time with Drak than I have my own daughter," Fischer, 27, said by telephone earlier this week from his hospital bed at a military medical center in Bethesda, Maryland. The Marine had worked with 4-year-old Drak for two years and spent a total of nine months in Afghanistan. His daughter, Cheyenne, is 19 months old.
Much is made of the bond among men at arms, but the union between man and dog in a combat zone seems just as tight. Handlers and canines that sniff for explosives or narcotics patrol together, day after day, linked by a leash and an innate understanding of each other. Sometimes, they sleep side by side in military cots. They face the same dangers together.
A unit of handlers and dogs operates out of Camp Leatherneck, the main Marine base in southern Afghanistan, home to insurgent strongholds. The teams fan out in Helmand province and beyond, working with Marines and other branches of the U.S. military, as well as Afghan forces and, at times, British troops.
Eight of the 30 handlers have been wounded this year, but Drak was the only dog to be wounded, said Staff Sgt. Morris Earnest, supervisor of the unit, which is part of the III Marine Headquarters Group. Half went home because of the severity of their injuries. Three of those lost limbs to homemade bombs, but their dogs emerged "without a scratch."
Tucked inside the Leatherneck compound, a memorial pays tribute to Marine Cpl. Max William Donahue, a dog handler killed last year, and dogs that have died in attacks or from heat exhaustion and other causes in past years. A simple white cross, erect in a bed of pebbles, lists their names on wooden plaques hanging from the crossbar: Frida, Grief, Murdock, Torry, Chico, Dixie, Patrick, Marko.
"From a few of the finest. To the finest of the few," the memorial reads.
On Aug. 6, 30 American troops and eight Afghans died in a helicopter crash in eastern Afghanistan, and a U.S. military dog on board was also killed.
Dogs serve a small but valued role for the U.S.-led coalition that seeks to quell Taliban groups and transfer security responsibilities to Afghan forces in time for the withdrawal of foreign combat troops by the end of 2014.
Ideally, the dogs, which include labradors and German and Dutch Shepherds, give an edge in unearthing boobytraps laden with explosives or detecting drugs in a region where the Taliban reaps profits from poppy harvests used in opium production. A handler and his dog usually follow behind a sweeper with a metal detector at the front of a single-file patrol.
An Associated Press team at Forward Operating Base Jackson, headquarters for the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, witnessed the early treatment of casualties after the Sept. 8 suicide bombing in the district center of Sangin. While Fischer and other wounded were cared for, a trio of dog handlers tended to Drak, muzzling and hoisting him onto a stretcher before rushing him to a helicopter.
"He should be OK," Fischer said 10 days later by telephone, his voice raspy after having tubes inserted down his throat during treatment. "At first, there was some talk about him losing one of his legs, but not so much anymore. Knowing Drak, he should be fine."
Drak, trained to find narcotics, is being treated at Dog Center Europe, a U.S. military facility in Germany. He will be transferred for more care at Lackland Air Force Base, a training site for military dogs in San Antonio, Texas.
Fischer plans to head there, too. His wife has family there, and he wants to be with Drak, whose name is a variation of Drac, or "devil" in Romanian.
"When he meets people, he can be calm and relaxed," the Marine said. "When we go outside, he's excited and rambunctious and likes to play, and I'm the same way."
What Drak doesn't like is shooting. During gunfire training, he lay down beside Fischer, calm and meek, until it was over. He did the same during a Taliban mortar attack.
"He is a very obedient dog," Fischer said. "He will only listen to me. Somebody else will be around and give him commands and he'll just look at them like they're stupid."
Fischer wants to resume his Marine Corps career. But, he said, Drak can spend his days lying around at Fischer's home at his duty station in Twentynine Palms, California, or playing frisbee, one of the dog's favorite activities. He acknowledged it will be "some time" before they get there because of their injuries.
Sgt. Mark Behl, a dog handler who helped Drak the day he was injured, said it helps to fit a calm handler with a "high drive" dog, or an "excited person with a bored dog."
Placid and amiable, Behl said his dog, a German Shepherd named Fuli, is "a handful."
Dog handling under the stress of danger is a subtle, pinpoint profession. Behl said he knows Fuli so well after two and a half years together that he can tell whether he is sniffing idly, perhaps on the trail of another animal's scent, or has detected something serious, such as the ingredients of crudely made explosives.
"There's a lot more to the job than just holding the leash," said Behl of Cottage Grove, Wisconsin. "I know to keep him moving or to let him work."
At the same time, he must know when to pull Fuli away from a threat, aware of the hidden bombs that have killed or maimed many troops in Afghanistan.
Fuli has a vexing habit during patrols in cornfields of running into adjacent rows of corn and getting his leash tangled around the stalks. But he plays ball with Marines back on base, boosting their morale.
"At the end of the day, the dog is going to come up and lick me in the face," said Behl, who grew up around dogs. "It's a little taste of home, just having an animal."
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