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Afghanistan Marks Independence Day With Low-Key Event
August 18, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has marked the 93rd anniversary of the country's independence in a ceremony in Kabul.
NATO, Taliban in war of words over Afghan deaths
By DEB RIECHMANN | Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A suicide bombing at a wedding, a deadly airstrike on a village, grenades in a mosque — hundreds of Afghan civilians are dying violently this summer, while the Taliban and the NATO coalition wage verbal warfare.
Ammonium nitrate fertilizer is being smuggled into Afghanistan for IEDs
By Greg Jaffe, Saturday, August 18, 10:11 PM The Washington Post
Seizures in Afghanistan of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, the main explosive used in Taliban bombs, more than doubled in the first seven months of 2012 compared to the same period last year, said U.S. officials.
Afghan bazaar bomb kills Eid shoppers
AFP
A bomb exploded Saturday in a bazaar in western Afghanistan crowded with people shopping to celebrate the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, killing four civilians, an official said.
Afghan NATO air strike 'kills militants'
AFP
A NATO air strike on Saturday killed at least two dozen militants in eastern Afghanistan, the military alliance's force in the country said.
US drone kills 5 militants in northern Pakistan
By MUNIR AHMED | Associated Press
ISLAMABAD (AP) — A missile launched from a U.S. drone struck a suspected militant hideout in a tribal region in northern Pakistan where allies of a powerful warlord were gathered Saturday, killing five of his supporters, Pakistani officials said.
Roadside bomb kills NATO soldier in Afghanistan
Associated Press – Fri, Aug 17, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The international military coalition in Afghanistan says one of its service members was killed by a roadside bomb in the country's south.
Iranian Currency Traders Find a Haven in Afghanistan
By MATTHEW ROSENBERG and ANNIE LOWREY The New York Times August 17, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan — With American and European sanctions spurring a currency crisis in Iran, officials say a growing number of Iranians are packing trucks with devalued rials and heading to the freewheeling currency market next door in American-occupied Afghanistan, to trade for dollars.
To tap its resources Afghanistan must provide security
DW 17/08/2012
Away from its political disputes and war trauma, in corners of the country not visited by combat reporters and diplomats, lie Afghanistan’s vast lakes, mountain ranges, floral valleys – and natural energy reserves.
Deadly insider attack that left 3 U.S. Marines dead was work of an Afghan teenager
Washington Post By Kevin Sieff Saturday, August 18, 2012
KABUL - The teenage assailant who killed three Marines last week on a U.S. military base in southern Afghanistan had easy access to the weapons arsenal of the Afghan police. He was in near-constant contact with U.S. troops, often when they were without their guns and body armor.
U.S. plans to beef up rural police forces in Afghanistan
There is concern in the Pentagon and the Afghan government about the village self-defense units becoming predatory criminal gangs or defecting to the Taliban.
Los Angeles Times By David S. Cloud August 17, 2012
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration plans to double the size of a rural police force in Afghanistan and arm it with heavier weapons to fight insurgents as U.S. troops withdraw, despite Pentagon and Afghan government concern about the village self-defense units becoming predatory criminal gangs or defecting to the Taliban.
End game
Western withdrawal need not mean civil war in Afghanistan. But America must talk to the Taleban
The Spectator By Ahmed Rashid 18 August 2012
Britain has been at war in Afghanistan for over a decade. Many Britons now take it for granted that its country’s intervention in Afghanistan has failed and when Nato troops pull out in 2014 they will leave behind a volatile and unsettled state that could easily plunge into a civil war — much worse than what western forces inherited back in 2001.
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Afghanistan Marks Independence Day With Low-Key Event
August 18, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has marked the 93rd anniversary of the country's independence in a ceremony in Kabul.
In a low-key event attended by government officials and the honor guard, Karzai placed a wreath at the foot of the monument of freedom in the Defense Ministry compound.
The anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rawalpindi in 1919, which gave Afghanistan complete independence from British rule, went largely unobserved on the streets of the capital.
Although Britain controlled Afghanistan's foreign policy for 40 years following the end of the second Anglo-Afghan War, Afghanistan was never part of the British Empire, and many Afghans consider the anniversary insignificant.
Several Kabul residents, however, told Reuters they were disappointed that the historic day was no longer being marked by many Afghans.
In other news, Britain confirmed that a British soldier has been killed in Afghanistan.
In a statement, the British Ministry of Defense said the soldier died from enemy fire in the Nahr-e Saraj district of restive Helmand Province on August 17.
No further details were given about the soldier's identity.
The statement said the latest casualty brings the number of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan to 425, with 385 coming as a result of enemy action.
Britain has around 9,500 troops in Afghanistan, making it the second-largest contributor to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force after the United States.
Britain soldiers are based in Helmand, where they are battling Taliban insurgents and helping to training Afghan security forces.
Based on reporting by Reuters, AP, AFP, and Pajhwok
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NATO, Taliban in war of words over Afghan deaths
By DEB RIECHMANN | Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A suicide bombing at a wedding, a deadly airstrike on a village, grenades in a mosque — hundreds of Afghan civilians are dying violently this summer, while the Taliban and the NATO coalition wage verbal warfare.
A U.N. report says 1,145 civilians were killed and 1,954 others injured during the first half of the year, 80 percent of them by militants.
But like other aspects of this decade-long war, facts are often obscured by perception and propaganda.
That has left both sides locked in a battle of words, crafted to win the Afghan public's support.
The foreign forces and Taliban fighters have been issuing dueling statements ever since the conflict began more than a decade ago. Civilian casualties are the latest focus of the information war.
In a message ahead of Eid al-Fitr, the feast that marks the end of Ramadan this weekend, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar instructed his fighters once again to avoid killing or wounding Afghan civilians.
"Employ tactics that do not cause harm to the life and property of the common countrymen," the one-eyed chieftain of the insurgency said in an eight-page message released to news organizations.
It came days after at least 50 people were killed in bombings and gun battles that erupted on either end of the country in the deadliest day of violence for civilians this year. The Taliban has not yet claimed responsibility for carrying out the attacks Tuesday in Kunduz and Nimroz provinces, but the coalition wasted no time in hanging the blame on Omar's shoulders.
"Omar once again writes that his thugs should 'pay close attention to the protection of life, property and honor ... employ tactics that do not cause harm to life and property of the common countrymen,'" U.S. Gen. John Allen, the commander of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, said Friday in his written response to Omar's message.
"Yet, as we saw in Nimroz and Kunduz provinces just days ago, Omar sent his assassins to slaughter dozens of innocent Afghan men, women and children."
"Either Omar is lying, or his henchmen are not listening to him."
The U.N. figures represented a 15 percent decrease in overall deaths and injuries from the previous year, but U.N. officials cautioned that civilian casualties were spiking as summer fighting continues.
Those attributed to foreign and Afghan forces declined as both groups strengthened policies to protect civilians, the U.N. said — 165 civilians killed in the first half of the year, down 35 percent from 255 in 2011. The majority — 127 — came from airstrikes, though that was also a reduction from the previous year.
Beyond statistics, however, the conflict is as much a "war of perceptions" as it is a fight on the battlefield, said Thomas Ruttig, who co-directs the Afghanistan Analysts Network in Kabul.
"The Taliban are attacking what they consider legitimate targets," such as the Afghan police and army, foreign troops as well as Afghan government officials and their supporters, he said. "When they are attacking what they say are legitimate targets, they often do not care about bystanders."
Insurgents aren't bothered by civilian casualties, even during Ramadan, said Khalid Pashtun, a member of parliament from Kandahar province, the spiritual birthplace of the insurgency.
Many insurgents actually consider Ramadan appropriate because they believe any foe they kill will go to hell while a civilian fatality will go to heaven, he said. "I've heard them say many times that the civilians who get killed will go to heaven — that this is good," he said.
The Taliban say that international soldiers' mere presence in Afghan cities and towns puts citizens at risk. The insurgents denounce coalition aerial attacks that have inadvertently killed civilians. And they condemn international forces for razing villages in the south — areas the coalition claims were impossible to otherwise clear because they were so booby-trapped with bombs.
The Taliban exploited a rapid-fire succession of coalition setbacks earlier this year to further their information war:
—In January, a video purportedly showing American Marines laughing and urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters surfaced on the Web.
—In February, Muslim holy books were burned at a U.S. base, sparking deadly riots across the nation.
—In March, a U.S. soldier allegedly went on a shooting rampage in two villages in Kandahar province, killing nine children, four men and three women and burning some of their bodies.
—In June, Allen flew to Logar province to personally apologize for the deaths of 18 women, children and village elders killed in an airstrike during a pre-dawn raid to capture a Taliban operative.
"Your troops mercilessly martyr women and children in our country, destroy villages and houses, desecrate our religious sanctities, vilify our national honors and culture, set fire to our houses and green orchards or bulldoze them until they become leveled with the ground," Omar's statement said.
Stepping up its war of words with the Taliban, the coalition has issued a dozen or more statements in recent weeks accusing the Taliban of civilian carnage.
After a suicide bomber blew himself up last month at a wedding in Samangan province in northern Afghanistan, killing 23 people including an Afghan lawmaker who was the father of the bride, Allen said: "Once again the Taliban have murdered Afghans in cold blood with complete disregard for innocent life or to the sanctity of a wedding. Their depravity clearly knows no bounds."
In June, after Taliban gunmen stormed a lakeside hotel near Kabul, leaving 18 dead, Allen said: "There is no doubt that innocent Afghan civilians were the intended targets of this unspeakably brutal attack," Allen said.
Earlier this month, a bomb exploded in a mosque in eastern Nangarhar, injuring 21 people including the mullah who was addressing the worshippers. The explosion, which shattered windows, doors and the roof of the mosque, occurred near where the mullah was standing and most of the other people injured were elders in the front rows.
Allen condemned what he said was a "senseless act of terror against Afghans who were simply trying to practice their faith" during Ramadan.
Mohammad Nahim Lalai Hamidzai, another legislator from Kandahar, said the Taliban consists of several factions, some of which care more about civilian casualties than others, he said. The Haqqani network, which is affiliated with al-Qaida, is aligned with the Taliban, yet often operate independently.
"The ordinary Taliban don't want to kill civilians — they are fighting an emotional battle against the foreigners," he said. "When civilians get killed everybody blames the Taliban, but we have a network of insurgents and nobody knows for sure who is doing which killings."
Arturo Munoz, an Afghan expert at the RAND Corporation, said the key issue is whether Afghans accept and are swayed by the coalition's condemnations of civilian deaths caused by militant attacks.
"It does seem that the Afghan people are reacting negatively to the terrorist tactics used by the Taliban and the Haqqani network, which undeniably kill and maim far more civilians than U.S. or coalition operations," Munoz said.
But he said the coalition's attempt to highlight civilian casualties caused by militants has been hampered by incidents like the Quran burnings, which sparked more public outrage across Afghanistan than the shooting rampage in Kandahar province.
"Attacks on people can be seen as a normal part of war, but an attack on Islam is not normal and is not excusable," Munoz said, adding that the U.S. was right to apologize and taking steps to prevent future desecration of Muslim holy texts. "Nonetheless, the legitimacy of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan was damaged."
___
Associated Press Writer Amir Shah in Kabul contributed to this report.
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Ammonium nitrate fertilizer is being smuggled into Afghanistan for IEDs
By Greg Jaffe, Saturday, August 18, 10:11 PM The Washington Post
Seizures in Afghanistan of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, the main explosive used in Taliban bombs, more than doubled in the first seven months of 2012 compared to the same period last year, said U.S. officials.
Despite the jump in seizures, senior U.S. officials said the number of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, manufactured with the chemical compound has increased and is on a pace to surpass the record levels of 2011.
“We are sweeping ammonium nitrate fertilizer off the battlefield at historic rates,“ said a senior U.S. official who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence. “But the IEDs are going up at historic rates too, and it is directly related. It is a supply issue.”
The homemade bombs, which are most often planted along roads and footpaths, are one of the leading killers of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan. The ammonium nitrate used as the explosive component is manufactured at two plants across the border in Pakistan, and officials said the manufacturer has resisted efforts to control the flow into Afghanistan.
Figures provided to The Washington Post show that U.S. and Afghan troops have seized about 480 tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer this year, enough explosive material to manufacture 30,000 to 50,000 IEDs.
During the same period U.S. and Afghan troops have either triggered or discovered 16,600 of the bombs, a slight increase over 2011. In June alone, U.S. and Afghan forces encountered 1,900 IEDs, a record amount in a single month for the 11-year war.
“Unless we do something about the ammonium nitrate from Pakistan we are going to continue to face these numbers and threats,” said the senior U.S. official.
Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. (D-Pa.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has conducted several hearings and investigations into the smuggling of ammonium nitrate from Pakistan into Afghanistan. He has pushed for a tougher stance against Pakistan for failing to curtail the trade and is troubled by the lack of progress.
“One year ago this month, I met in Islamabad with senior officials who committed to comprehensively regulate the component materials of IEDs, including calcium ammonium nitrate,” Casey told The Post. “Since then, there has been minimal progress. The administration will soon need to certify that Pakistan is addressing the IED threat in order to release millions in security assistance and, as of now, I cannot see how Pakistan will reach this threshold.”
The large number of IEDs uncovered this spring and summer, the traditional fighting season in Afghanistan, demonstrates that the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan has remained resilient even as U.S. forces have increased in recent years and the territory controlled by insurgent forces has been reduced.
U.S. troop levels are on pace to shrink to about 68,000 by the end of September from a peak of about 100,000 in 2011. Yet the massive increase in explosive material flowing in to Afghanistan could make it difficult for Afghan troops to hold territory seized from the enemy in recent years once the U.S. forces have left.
Unlike their U.S. counterparts, the Afghan forces lack sophisticated technology to find and clear buried bombs. As Afghan forces have taken on a more prominent role in the fighting this year, IED attacks on Afghan troops have increased 76 percent compared with the same period in 2011, said U.S. officials.
Although U.S. casualties from the bomb blasts are down — a sign that U.S. and Afghan troops are getting better at finding the buried bombs — U.S. fatalities in Afghanistan have held steady in 2012.
Almost all of the ammonium nitrate used in the Taliban’s bombs comes from two big fertilizer plants in Pakistan, both owned by the Fatima Group, based in Lahore. The production and sale of ammonium nitrate is legal in Pakistan, but it is banned in Afghanistan because of the IEDs.
Officials from the Fatima Group did not respond to a request for comment.
The vast majority of the fertilizer produced by the Fatima plants is used by small farmers in Pakistan who depend on it for their survival, said U.S. officials.
But Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan and Pakistan convert the fertilizer into explosive material that is 1.4 times more powerful than TNT. The conversion process is fairly simple, requiring only water and a heat source. After processing, the ammonium nitrate looks like a white, powdery washing detergent and is very difficult for the largely illiterate Afghan border guard force to spot as it is being smuggled into the country.
Earlier this year, senior U.S. military officials met with Fatima Group executives to try to persuade them to add U.S.-supplied pink or yellow dyes to their fertilizer to make it easier to spot at border crossings. But Fatima Group officials rejected the American entreaties, according to U.S. officials.
“They said we are not going to do it because it would single us out . . . as being the source of the material,” said the senior U.S. official, who met with Fatima executives and recounted the conversation.
U.S. officials have photographs of tens of thousands of pounds of the Fatima Group’s fertilizer that has been smuggled into Afghanistan in trucks and then confiscated by U.S. and Afghan troops. The company’s two multimillion dollar plants in Pakistan’s Punjab Province are the only facilities that authorized by the Pakistani government to manufacture the fertilizer.
After allowing U.S. officials to tour one of the plants in 2011, Fatima Group executives have cut off contact, saying all future communications with the company must be conducted through Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, according to U.S. officials involved in the talks.
“There is an ISI link in this,” said the senior U.S. official, referring to Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency. “They put the clamps on us.”
Although Fatima Group is a multinational company, U.S. officials have limited tools to put pressure on the business to help control smuggling of ammonium nitrate. The U.S. Commerce Department can place foreign companies on the Entity List, which prohibits U.S. firms from doing business with the companies.
Fatima Group currently works with Bank of New York Mellon and Bank of America to facilitate trading of the company’s shares in the over-the-counter market, according to Fatima Group press releases posted on the company’s Web site.
To place a company on the Entity List, U.S. officials must be able to prove that it is knowingly selling its product to insurgent groups or terrorists. U.S. officials acknowledged that they have not been able to meet that threshold with Fatima Group.
“You have to have a witting link,” said the senior U.S. official. “That is what is frustrating on this.”
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Afghan bazaar bomb kills Eid shoppers
AFP
A bomb exploded Saturday in a bazaar in western Afghanistan crowded with people shopping to celebrate the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, killing four civilians, an official said.
A dozen other people were wounded by the bomb which was placed under a bridge in Shindand district of Herat province, provincial spokesman Mohiuddin Noori told AFP.
It came after a bicycle bomb Wednesday wounded at least 14 people at a busy market in Herat city, the capital of the province.
"This morning a bomb placed under a bridge in a bazaar exploded and killed four civilians and wounded 12 including three police", the spokesman told AFP, adding an investigation was under way.
Abdul Rahouf Ahmadi, a spokesman for security forces in western Afghanistan, confirmed the casualties and blamed "enemies of Afghanistan", a term used by officials to refer to Taliban insurgents fighting foreign forces in the country.
A recent United Nations report found the number of Afghan civilian casualties had fallen by 15 percent in the first half of 2012. However, the country has recently been witnessing an increase in attacks on civilians.
On Tuesday, a series of suicide and bomb attacks killed up to 50 people across the war-torn country.
The bloodshed came as the nation prepared to celebrate the end Ramadan, with many of the victims shopping in bazaars for Eid celebrations.
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Afghan NATO air strike 'kills militants'
AFP
A NATO air strike on Saturday killed at least two dozen militants in eastern Afghanistan, the military alliance's force in the country said.
The air strike, carried out with the approval of Afghan forces, came after the allies "observed a large group of insurgents in a remote area and engaged them," a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force told AFP.
"There are no civilian casualties," he added. "Afghan and foreign forces are currently conducting a follow-up assessment."
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mudjahid, speaking to AFP from an undisclosed location, confirmed the attack, saying 13 of the group's fighters were killed.
The militants had gathered to publicly execute a man accused of killing another man from a rival family a day before in Chapa Dara district of Kunar province, the district police chief Najibullah Gujar told AFP.
"Between 40 and 60 Taliban militants were killed in the air strike in Chapa Dara," he said.
"People had arrested the killer and the Taliban wanted to execute him in public."
But Mohammad Daud Zarba, deputy police chief of Kunar, told AFP the militants wanted to attack and take over the district. He said around 30 militants were killed in the attack.
Dost Mohammad, a witness in the area, told AFP that the burnt bodies of the Taliban were still on the ground.
"Out of around 80 Taliban who had come to settle the dispute only around 15 could escape the bombing," he said.
In some parts of the war-torn country where the government has no control, the Taliban operate a parallel government, with shadow governors and their own Sharia justice system.
Public executions of alleged murderers and adulterers were common when the Taliban regime was in power from 1996 until 2001, when they were ousted by a US-led invasion following the September 11 attacks.
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US drone kills 5 militants in northern Pakistan
By MUNIR AHMED | Associated Press
ISLAMABAD (AP) — A missile launched from a U.S. drone struck a suspected militant hideout in a tribal region in northern Pakistan where allies of a powerful warlord were gathered Saturday, killing five of his supporters, Pakistani officials said.
The strike in North Waziristan against allies of Hafiz Gul Bahadur, a militant commander whose forces frequently target U.S. and other NATO troops in neighboring Afghanistan, comes amid speculation over whether Pakistan will launch an operation against militants in the tribal region.
The U.S. has pushed Pakistan repeatedly to take such a step and earlier this week U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told The Associated Press that Pakistan was preparing an operation targeting the Pakistani Taliban in North Waziristan.
Pakistan has been reluctant to undertake an offensive there, saying its military is already overtaxed by fighting in other tribal areas and parts of Pakistan. But many in the U.S. believe Pakistan does not want to upset the many militant groups there such as the Haqqani network that could be useful allies in Afghanistan after foreign forces leave.
On Thursday, the top U.S. commander in the region, Gen. James Mattis, met with Pakistani army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.
During the meeting the Pakistani general repeated his government's stance that it would undertake an operation in North Waziristan only if it coincides with Pakistan's interests and not in response to outside pressure, according to a military press release.
Pakistan's foreign ministry condemned the latest drone attack.
"Pakistan has consistently maintained that these attacks are a violation of its sovereignty and territorial integrity, and are in contravention of international law," the ministry said in a statement.
Drone attacks are very unpopular in Pakistan, where they are seen as a violation of the country's sovereignty and responsible for the deaths of innocent civilians. The U.S. maintains the targeted strikes are directed against militants and necessary to combat groups like al-Qaida.
Some Uzbek foreign fighters were among the dead in Saturday's strike, according to two Pakistan intelligence officials. Three people were also wounded, they said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media.
Meanwhile, five security officials died during a suicide bombing on a checkpoint in southern Pakistan.
Spokesman Murtaza Baig said the attacker detonated his explosives early on Saturday after he was stopped at the checkpoint in a Quetta suburb. The killed troops were members of Pakistan's paramilitary Frontier Corps.
Baluchistan province and its capital, Quetta, have been the scene of an insurgency by Baluch nationalists who are demanding greater rights and share from the income generated from gas and minerals extracted from the province. Various Baluch groups are blamed for attacks on the province's security forces and are suspected of targeting other ethnic groups in the region.
Islamist Taliban militants and the extremist group Lashker-e-Jhangvi are also active in the province.
___
Associated Press Writer Abdul Sattar in Quetta contributed to this report.
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Roadside bomb kills NATO soldier in Afghanistan
Associated Press – Fri, Aug 17, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The international military coalition in Afghanistan says one of its service members was killed by a roadside bomb in the country's south.
The death brought the number of international troops killed on Thursday to eight.
Seven American service members died earlier in the day in a Black Hawk helicopter crash in southern Afghanistan. The Taliban claimed to have shot down the helicopter but U.S. officials have cast doubt on that and said an investigation is ongoing.
The U.S.-led NATO coalition did not release the nationality of the service member killed in the roadside blast..
Taliban insurgents have been waging a summer campaign against coalition forces and Afghan army and police being trained to take over full security responsibility by 2014.
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Iranian Currency Traders Find a Haven in Afghanistan
By MATTHEW ROSENBERG and ANNIE LOWREY The New York Times August 17, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan — With American and European sanctions spurring a currency crisis in Iran, officials say a growing number of Iranians are packing trucks with devalued rials and heading to the freewheeling currency market next door in American-occupied Afghanistan, to trade for dollars.
The rial has lost more than half its value against the dollar, and cross-border bank transfers and currency exchanges have become difficult, as sanctions have slashed Iran’s vital oil revenue and cut the country off from international financial markets. Iranian businesses and individuals are desperate to avoid further losses, by converting their money and moving it out for safekeeping. At the same time, the government is trying to find alternate ways to bring in hard currency.
Enter Afghanistan, where dollars function as a second national currency after years of Western spending and where financial oversight is so lax that billions of dollars in cash leave the country every year. Though Afghan and Western officials say they cannot put a precise figure on the trade with Iran, they see it as a potential challenge to the sanctions, and one that the United States, as Afghanistan’s main benefactor, helped create.
The Iranians are “in essence using our own money, and they’re getting around what we’re trying to enforce,” one American official said.
It is a new iteration of an enduring problem in Afghanistan, where Western officials are already struggling to quell a storm of corruption that has undercut the war effort. In the years since the invasion, the country has become a smuggler’s dream, with a booming opium economy and pervasive government graft that is widely believed to be a factor in funneling Western aid money to the Taliban.
On its own, the rush of Iranian money to Afghanistan is unlikely to be enough to undercut the sanctions, which are the cornerstone of Western efforts to coerce Iran into abandoning its nuclear program. But it is clear that American officials are worried. In one indication, President Obama last month quietly strengthened the sanctions by giving the Treasury Department the capacity to punish any person who buys dollars or precious metals, like gold, on behalf of the Iranian government.
“We are taking steps to make it more difficult for the government of Iran to satisfy its heightened demand for dollars — and making it clear to anyone who provides dollars to the government that they face sanctions,” said David S. Cohen, the Treasury Department under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.
Afghan money traders said they were told this month by American officials to not conduct business with Arian Bank, an Afghan bank owned by a pair of Iranian banks. The Treasury Department has maintained sanctions against the Afghan and Iranian banks in the past few years, and the traders said they had been recently told that the Afghan bank was being used by the Iranian government to move cash in and out of Afghanistan.
Western and Afghan officials, as well as traders in Afghan money markets, said that a number of Iranians had started seeking to buy dollars and euros with their rials as American and European sanctions tightened over the past year.
The purchases are part of efforts by wealthy and middle-class Iranians to protect their savings and business profits by moving them offshore. But with legitimate transfers out of Iran virtually impossible because of the sanctions, Iranians are instead converting their rials in Afghanistan, and then moving the money to banks in the Persian Gulf and beyond.
“The middle class is in a panic about what to do right now,” said Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, an economist at Virginia Tech and an expert on Iran’s economy.
More troublingly, in the eyes of Western officials, the Iranian government is seeking to bolster its reserves of dollars, euros and precious metals to stabilize its exchange rates and ensure that it can pay for imports. Iran had about $110 billion in foreign currency and precious metal reserves in 2011, and those are believed to be dwindling now.
Afghan traders have proved more than willing to trade dollars for rials, usable as a currency in many parts of western Afghanistan, at advantageous exchange rates.
Hajji Najeeb Ullah Akhtary, the president of Afghanistan’s Money Exchange Union, an association of traditional money transfer and exchange businesses that are known as hawalas, said he and his members had seen a steady increase in Iranians bringing cash into Afghanistan over the past year. That comes on top of routine transfers made by Afghans living and working in Iran, including more than one million impoverished refugees, and the regular supply of rials that circulates in Afghanistan.
The cash “comes across in trucks,” he said, with transfers arranged by Afghan middlemen who take a 5 to 7 percent commission.
Iranians were converting rials into dollars in Kabul, the western border city of Herat and in the southern cities of Kandahar and Ghazni, Mr. Akhtary said. The transactions were largely conducted through hawalas, which allow people to transfer large sums of money for small fees to relatives or business associates in distant locales within minutes. The dealers in various places cover one another to make the system work, and settle up after the fact.
The markets are often ramshackle affairs that give little hint of the vast sums being moved. Kabul’s hawala market, for instance, is little more than a few dingy lanes hidden away on the banks of the Kabul River, a trickle of fetid water that winds along trash-strewed banks. But it does huge business. Outside its storefronts, men sit on the pavement behind rickety tables piled high with afghanis, Pakistani rupees, American dollars and Iranian rials, among other currencies.
One hawala dealer, Hajji Ahmed Shah Hakimi, said two routes were primarily used to bring cash in from Iran: one directly across the border with Iran and another through Pakistan.
Both he and Mr. Akhtary insisted that they were not involved in smuggling cash for Iranians or anyone else, but that other hawala traders were.
Mr. Hakimi said the sanctions on Iran were seen in Afghanistan as an American issue, and that is why some Afghans had no problem smuggling money for Iranians. Some Afghan officials echoed that view, saying the Iranian money flow was not a top concern, though the broader problem of bulk cash smuggling was.
The flow of cash in and out of Afghanistan goes largely unmonitored and unimpeded, a “country-sized” money-laundering operation, said a European forensic auditor who has tracked financial crime in Afghanistan and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
In 2011, an estimated $4.6 billion, a sum equivalent to roughly a third of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product, was stuffed into suitcases, shrink-wrapped onto pallets or packed into boxes and flown out of Kabul’s airport on commercial airline flights, most of them headed for Dubai, United Arab Emirates, according to the central bank.
Though new rules and better enforcement have begun to cut into the cash flying out of Kabul, it is anyone’s guess how much moved out of Afghanistan overland on trucks or on twice-weekly flights to Dubai from Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, said an Afghan official who tracks suspicious financial transactions and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
“Kandahar?” he said. “We have no idea what is going there.”
Matthew Rosenberg reported from Kabul, and Annie Lowrey from Washington.
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To tap its resources Afghanistan must provide security
DW 17/08/2012
Away from its political disputes and war trauma, in corners of the country not visited by combat reporters and diplomats, lie Afghanistan’s vast lakes, mountain ranges, floral valleys – and natural energy reserves.
Politicians and experts say the potential to harvest hydropower and gas – and its location at the crossroads of Central Asia, ideal for a trade hub – could be the ticket to making the country self-sufficient and re-building its post-war economy.
Some estimates put its mineral and energy potential in the trillions of dollars.
"Afghanistan's relative needs and expectations are so modest that even a few hundred thousand barrels per year would be an accomplishment and more than the country needs," says Michael O'Hanlon, a specialist in national security at the Brookings Institution in Washington and a member of General David Petraeus's External Advisory Board at the Central Intelligence Agency.
Afghanistan is currently dependent on pricey foreign energy imports.
The bulk is brought in from Uzbekistan and to an extent from Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Iran.
From importer to exporter
Mahmoud Saikal thinks it's possible for Afghanistan's energy industry to become self-reliant and eventually begin exporting to the same countries on which it currently relies.
The country's former deputy foreign minister and Ambassador to Australia, he is the champion of its fledgling energy industry.
At home in Kabul this spring, he took a visitor through a presentation he was planning on giving the next week in Dushanbe, which he hoped would be one of his country's biggest energy trading partners.
But raw potential isn't everything.
Afghanistan's tumultuous recent history and dearth of foreign investment means it has a mountain to climb as it works to attract investors from India, China, and other investment-savvy nations.
"It has the potential to produce between 25 and 30 megawatts of electricity per year if it could exploit its full potential," Saikal said. "The bulk of that will come from water. It [also] appears Afghanistan has the potential to produce oil and gas."
Violence scares off investors
Still, there's skepticism, namely from the foreign investors who would be looking to set up production plants and pipelines on the country's rugged terrain.
Investment markets are based on prevailing wisdom, "and right now," O'Hanlon says, "Afghanistan's security future is not seen as promising. People are really worried about the potential to fall back into warfare. There's enough violence going on now that it's bad enough to limit a lot of foreign investment."
A spate of attacks by extremist fighters – including one in Kabul in April, in which a hotel was taken over and shots fired on the US military compound – have done little to quell fears.
"Afghanistan is still at war and not that many parts are immune to potential dangers of the war," he adds. "Investors could be scared off by having their pipelines and transit routes attacked."
Despite heavy foreign defense investment, conditions "are still worse than they were five years ago," notes Hanlon:
"Energy investments have to have [foresight], and most people are not bullish about Afghanistan post-2015" – once the US withdraws its forces from the country.
Last year, the China National Petroleum Company became the first major investor, signing a 25-year deal with Afghanistan's Watan Oil and Gas that will, according to the UK's Daily Telegraph newspaper, give it access to approximately 160 million barrels of oil from fields in Northern Afghanistan.
Murky deals
(Shining light on the hurdles foreign businessmen could encounter, Watan won the contract despite being under the stewardship of infamous Karzai cousins Rashid and Rateb Popal, recently accused of paying off Taliban leaders with American money.)
The deal has also created conflict with local tribes in the north, where the bulk of exploration is taking place.
"The internal capacity and capability of Afghanistan must be good enough to manage the mining and energy production of Afghanistan," Saikal says.
"But in the past few years we are seeing a dramatic weakening of the rule of law and governance. Karzai has been promoting traditionalism and tribalism, which could help him continue his rule but doesn't help Afghanistan manage its resources."
International models
Other traditionally unstable countries – namely Iraq, Angola and Nigeria – have flourishing energy markets.
Similarly war-torn Iraq has managed to get its energy production back to pre-war levels, nine years later. But Iraq is located close to the oil-rich Arabian Gulf trade mecca.
Angola's boom began largely after peace had returned following the 2002 end of its 27-year civil war.
And Nigeria, though violent and politically unstable, has a long-established oil-drilling infrastructure and decades of foreign energy investment.
Creating that same infrastructure in Afghanistan will be expensive.
At the end of the day, "to think this is a worthwhile investment, you need 10 years' stability predicted," O'Hanlon says. "And who will predict that in Afghanistan?"
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Deadly insider attack that left 3 U.S. Marines dead was work of an Afghan teenager
Washington Post By Kevin Sieff Saturday, August 18, 2012
KABUL - The teenage assailant who killed three Marines last week on a U.S. military base in southern Afghanistan had easy access to the weapons arsenal of the Afghan police. He was in near-constant contact with U.S. troops, often when they were without their guns and body armor.
But although Aynoddin, 15, lived among American and Afghan security forces, he was not a soldier or a police officer. He had never been vetted. According to U.S. and Afghan officials, his role on base was hardly formal: He was the unpaid, underage personal assistant of the district police chief.
Officials would later learn that the quiet, willowy boy was also working for the insurgency.
As U.S. troops depart from Afghanistan, American military strategy increasingly hinges on small teams of advisers who live and work with Afghan soldiers and police officers. But those teams — like the one that Aynoddin attacked last week — put themselves at the mercy of often-shoddy Afghan security standards, which permit individuals to live on shared bases without proper scrutiny.
There have been 28 so-called “insider attacks” this year, resulting in the deaths of 39 coalition troops — a full 13 percent of those killed in Afghanistan in 2012. Among the dead are 23 Americans. The attacks continued Friday, when an Afghan Local Police officer shot and killed two U.S. troops during a training exercise in the western province of Farah.
NATO officials have long claimed that the majority of such attacks are the products of personal disputes. But last week’s shooting was believed to have come from a different, more troubling source: a young Taliban convert who exploited his access to carry out what insurgent leader Mohammad Omar boasted Thursday is a deliberate plan to drive a wedge between foreign and Afghan forces.
Aynoddin should never have been on the base in the first place, because Afghan and U.S. security standards would not have allowed it. But those standards are often violated — especially by the country’s nascent police force.
“We have to have better leadership out of our Afghan leaders. There are some things they need to step up to the plate and do now better than they’ve done,” said Marine Maj. Gen. Charles M. Gurganus, the top U.S. commander in southwestern Afghanistan. “They need to be looking in the eyes of their subordinate commanders and holding them accountable for these people who are in and out of police stations.”
Aynoddin, who, like many Afghans, uses only one name, was in high school when he started work for Garmsir’s police chief, Sarwar Jan, in the southern province of Helmand. He spent his days cooking for Jan and cleaning up after him. Both Afghans and Americans knew him as the boss’s “tea boy.”
At 8:30 p.m. on Aug. 10,, three weeks after he arrived at a joint U.S.-Afghan base called Delhi, the boy stole a Kalashnikov rifle that was lying in an unlocked barracks, according to police officers on the base. He walked to a gym where four unarmed Marines were exercising and held down the trigger until no bullets were left. When he was finished, three Marines were dead and one was badly injured.
Then Aynoddin walked out of the gym, rifle still in hand, and bragged of his accomplishment: “I just did jihad,” he said to nearby police officers, according to several men who were on the scene. “Don’t you want to do jihad, too? If not, I will kill you.” The officers approached him slowly and then tore the gun from his hands.
“The look in his face was angry, like if he had more bullets he would have killed us as well,” said Janan, one of the Garmsir officers.
When U.S. officials discovered that an unvetted 15-year-old had been allowed access to the base — and the weapons strewn around it — they were furious.
“These were jihad-motivated executions,” said a Western official in Afghanistan with knowledge of the incident. To suggest otherwise would be “profoundly distasteful and insulting to the Marines who died.”
Jan, the police chief, said Aynoddin was “given” to him as a personal assistant by a local elder and Afghan Local Police commander. Jan assumed the boy was a police officer, he said, even though he wasn’t wearing a uniform.
Police officers in Garmsir say Aynoddin skulked around the base, keeping to himself. Afghan and NATO officials now speculate that the boy was waiting for the right opportunity to attack foreign troops. He chose a moment when the Marines were unarmed and the Afghan police officers were gathered to break their daily Ramadan fast. A classified investigation into the incident is ongoing, but some officials with knowledge of the attack spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity.
The Marines who Aynoddin killed were part of a U.S. advisory team attached to the Afghan Uniformed Police, a branch of the national police. In Garmsir, a district once on the front lines of NATO’s surge to vanquish the Taliban from southern Afghanistan, such advisory teams now play a crucial role in the swift U.S. drawdown. The Marines in Garmsir dropped from a battalion to a company this spring, consolidating their footprint from over 60 bases to three.
With far fewer troops, the Marines shifted from a combat role to a mission devoted largely to training their Afghan counterparts — a preview of how U.S. involvement in Afghanistan will evolve over the next two years. In Garmsir, that change in mission meant getting closer to Afghan soldiers and police, trusting that physical proximity would strengthen the relationship rather than damage it.
There were 32 men on the Marines’ police training team in Garmsir. Not only did they work every day at the district police headquarters, they lived there as well, on a part of the Delhi base separated from the U.S. operations center by a small checkpoint. The Marines knew there were risks involved in that living arrangement, but they said it was crucial to building trust.
“The Afghan police and the Marines had a good relationship,” said one Marine on the team, who arrived at the grisly scene shortly after the attack. “A few of the Afghan police even broke into tears afterwards when they realized what had happened.”
Still, there had been rifts. Several Marines said they made it clear to Jan that it was not acceptable to bring underage boys onto the base. But they watched as the police chief disobeyed that rule, they said.
For years, Marines and other U.S. officials said, they had heard local residents complain about Jan’s poorly kept secret — that he invited boys to bases often shared with U.S. troops and engaged in sexual misconduct. Officials say it was the primary reason he was dismissed from a previous posting in Now Zad, another district in Helmand. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because publicly accusing the police chief could make it difficult to work in southern Afghanistan.
Jan denies that he has done anything improper. “I’m not fond of young boys,” he said after being released from Afghan custody this week. He was later detained again by Afghan intelligence agents.
In southern Afghanistan, it is not uncommon for men to sexually exploit boys. The practice, called bacha bazi, has been on the rise since the Taliban regime collapsed.
Since the Garmsir incident, top U.S. commanders in Afghanistan and defense officials in Washington have held several meetings to discuss what might be done to prevent insider attacks from occurring, according to senior defense officials. Commanders have agreed to add a counterintelligence specialist at the battalion level to help detect Taliban infiltrators. They are also considering ways to improve the Afghan vetting process.
But in the meantime, the problem continues. In addition to the two killings in western Afghanistan on Friday, an Afghan soldier wounded three NATO troops in a separate incident in southern Afghanistan.
Those attacks came a day after Omar, the Taliban leader, issued a statement lauding insurgents who “have cleverly infiltrated in the ranks of the enemy.” The infiltrators, Omar said, “are able to enter bases, offices and intelligence centers of the enemy. Then, they easily carry out decisive and coordinated attacks.”
Javed Hamdard in Kabul and Greg Jaffe in Washington contributed to this report.
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U.S. plans to beef up rural police forces in Afghanistan
There is concern in the Pentagon and the Afghan government about the village self-defense units becoming predatory criminal gangs or defecting to the Taliban.
Los Angeles Times By David S. Cloud August 17, 2012
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration plans to double the size of a rural police force in Afghanistan and arm it with heavier weapons to fight insurgents as U.S. troops withdraw, despite Pentagon and Afghan government concern about the village self-defense units becoming predatory criminal gangs or defecting to the Taliban.
The danger was highlighted Friday when a new member of the Afghan Local Police shot and killed two U.S. special operations troops and wounded a third moments after they gave him his service weapon during a ceremony for new recruits in the western province of Farah.
The attacker, who had joined the force just five days earlier, was about to take part in his first weapons-training session on a firing range. Instead, he opened fire on the American troops and fellow police. He was killed by return fire.
It was the latest in an intensifying spate of lethal "insider" attacks on NATO troops by Afghan soldiers, police and other government forces, causing growing alarm at the Pentagon. Afghan security forces have killed 24 Americans and 15 other Western soldiers so far this year. Nine have died in the last 11 days.
A 122-page report by the Defense Department's inspector general reveals glaring problems within the rural police system, which was set up with U.S. backing two years ago and has become a pivotal part of the American strategy to safeguard territorial gains and maintain political stability as Western nations withdraw most combat forces by the end of 2014.
U.S. Marine Gen. John Allen, the commander of the NATO military force in Afghanistan, has ordered the 16,000-strong rural police force to be increased to 30,000 officers over the next two years, and then possibly expanded further.
In addition to equipping the police officers with AK-47 assault rifles, the Pentagon this year began supplying them with Russian heavy machine guns after local commanders complained that they were outgunned by Taliban insurgents.
The report, issued last month, credits the police with "significant and unexpected success" in expelling insurgent fighters from some remote villages and districts.
But many Afghan officials worry that the widely dispersed units will evolve into marauding criminal gangs or free-wheeling militias loyal to local warlords after departing U.S. forces stop paying their salaries, according to the inspector general's report.
"Why would I arm the villagers when they may use those weapons against the [government] in the future?" provincial governors and district chiefs in eastern Afghanistan asked U.S. special forces officers, according to the report.
For that reason, officials at the Afghan Ministry of Defense are opposing U.S. plans to double the size of the village guard force and increase its firepower, the report notes.
Local elders are supposed to guarantee the loyalty of police in the villages where they are recruited. But adding thousands more recruits over the next two years increases the risk that insurgents will infiltrate the force and that village units could become private armies for local leaders, the report warns.
Regular Afghan police in each province are supposed to oversee the local units. But there is "very little trust" between the two forces because provincial police are afraid that the village guards "would use their weapons against them," a senior U.S. logistics officer told investigators.
The Afghan Ministry of Interior is supposed to supply and pay the village police officers. But the system is weak, the report says, in part because the units are scattered in remote areas and because of concern about "arming future hostile ethnic militias."
Many of the village police officers are from predominantly Pashtun areas. The Taliban is heavily Pashtun.
Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, who now heads the CIA, proposed creating the Afghan Local Police in 2010 when he commanded the war in Afghanistan. President Hamid Karzai initially resisted, concerned that some Afghan officials would try to use the units as private militias.
Petraeus eventually won Karzai's support by promising that the Ministry of Interior, which the central government controls, would oversee and pay the force. He also said the program would be temporary, with the village units incorporated into the regular police or disbanded.
With the insurgency still raging, his successor, Gen. Allen, has abandoned those plans.
Allen plans to keep the local police force intact after 2014 and use it as a "strategic hold force" to help keep insurgents from returning to areas in the east and south that U.S. troops have managed to clear, the report says.
Allen has ordered the U.S. special operations command to look at expanding the local police to more than the current authorized level of 30,000, though the final size hasn't been decided.
"The long-term plan is to keep them around," said Col. Tom Collins, a spokesman for Allen. "All these things come down to funding, however."
It is cheaper and quicker to train and equip local defense units than regular army and police.
With international funding drying up, Afghan security forces are expected to shrink in size in coming years from 352,000 to 280,000 or less, creating more need for local police, U.S. officers said.
The latest "insider" attacks haven't bolstered confidence in the police, however. In addition to Friday's attack, local police have taken part in at least three recent fatal shootings.
Last week, an Afghan officer helping train local police gunned down three special operations Marines in Helmand province. In another incident, a member of a local police unit gunned down a U.S. Armysergeant at a checkpoint in Paktika province, near the Pakistan border.
In late March, a policeman in Paktika province killed nine fellow officers. He first slipped drugs into their tea, then slaughtered them after they passed out.
U.S. officials say the attackers have various motivations. Some have personal grievances, others undergo "self-radicalization" after seeing anti-Western propaganda describing Americans and allies as infidels. Still others are Taliban sympathizers who infiltrate the Afghan security forces.
Allen said this year that more than half of the attacks involved Taliban supporters. In a statement this week, Mullah Mohammed Omar, the secretive Taliban leader believed to be living in Pakistan, praised insurgents for secretly joining the Afghan army and police to "easily carry out decisive and coordinated attacks, inflicting heavy losses on the enemy both in life and equipment." Other insurgents desert to the Taliban, he said, "carrying their heavy and light weapons and ammunition, after leaving the ranks of the enemy."
david.cloud@latimes.com
Times staff writer Laura King in Kabul, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.
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End game
Western withdrawal need not mean civil war in Afghanistan. But America must talk to the Taleban
The Spectator By Ahmed Rashid 18 August 2012
Britain has been at war in Afghanistan for over a decade. Many Britons now take it for granted that its country’s intervention in Afghanistan has failed and when Nato troops pull out in 2014 they will leave behind a volatile and unsettled state that could easily plunge into a civil war — much worse than what western forces inherited back in 2001.
No doubt the chance of Afghanistan fracturing in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent government, a well armed and motivated Taleban opposition in the south and ethnic warlordism in the north is high. Rapacious neighbours, especially Pakistan and Iran, may regenerate their proxy wars for influence, as they did in the 1990s. Al-Qa’eda is still active in many parts of the world.
Taleban attacks against Nato forces over the summer months have increased by 11 per cent compared to the same period last year. There are more than 100 Taleban attacks each month, and in July 46 US and Nato troops were killed. There has been no respite in the fasting month of Ramadan, when there is usually a fighting lull. Contrary to western leaders’ claims, the tide of war is not receding.
Even more dangerous and disheartening is the Taleban re-emergence in Helmand and Kandahar, the southern provinces and Taleban heartland that were supposed to have been swept clean by US and British offensives over the years and where countless British soldiers have been killed. The USled counter-insurgency war to win hearts and minds is being trumped by the Taleban’s tactic of divide and rule by terror.
The enormous sums spent on development over a decade have still not created a self-sustaining economy, which could provide jobs for an Afghan youth bulge — 70 per cent of the population is under 25. What has emerged instead is a corrupt, wasteful, inefficient aid-delivery system which only reinforces the Afghan dependency on foreign handouts.
Nato is determined to leave by 2014 and is obsessed with the so-called transition — the handing over of military duties to the fledgling, under-trained and still illiterate Afghan security forces which are already heavily penetrated by the Taleban.
Yet a meltdown into civil war is still avoidable if Nato pursues the right strategies in the next 18 months.
The key to a future peace is not the military transition — the Afghan army on its own could never sustain the present level of fighting against the Taleban — but a political transition.
The Taleban are just as fearful of a civil war as other Afghans are because they know that, unlike in the 1990s, they could not win it. Government forces would retreat into a Fortress Kabul strategy — fortifying major cities and roads while leaving the countryside in the hands of the Taleban. The northern warlords are re-arming and would halt any Taleban push north of Kabul far better than they did in the 1990s.
After seven rounds of secret US-Taleban negotiations brokered by Qatar and Germany, the Taleban suspended further talks last January. The on-off dialogue was stalled and tied in knots not so much by Taleban intransigence but by the infighting and bureaucratic turf wars between the US Departments of State, Defence and the CIA, while Nato allies have been virtually ignored.
In the past few months the Taleban has strongly signalled that they want a resumption of talks. Yet with the American elections around the corner, the Obama administration will take no mediatory step that opens it to criticism from the Republicans. This is an unfortunate obstacle, since most experts recognise that ‘Phase One’ of any dialogue must involve the establishment of sufficient trust between the US and the Taleban so that violence can be reduced, leading to an eventual ceasefire. So far the US military appears least willing to offer concessions.
The complex negotiations that will be needed for Phase Two – agreement on constitutional problems, a federal or centrally run country, the acceptance of democracy as the form of government, the role of Islam and women and continuing progress in areas such as health care and education — will involve careful preparation by the Afghan government and the West.
Moreover it is unclear how presidential elections will take place in 2014, a time when western forces will be leaving, and what guarantees President Hamid Karzai can give to ensure they are not a repeat of the farcical and heavily disputed elections of 2009.
Yet there are few signs that either the Afghan government or the US and its allies are preparing position papers for such political discussions.
Likewise, despite the US antipathy towards Pakistan and Iran, a dialogue leading to a non-interference agreement between all of Afghanistan’s neighbours will be essential to keep the regional peace. Half-hearted diplomatic efforts have been stymied by the West’s preoccupation with Iran’s nuclear weapons programme and Pakistan’s intransigence when it comes to ending the sanctuaries it gives to the Taleban and the lethal network run by Jalaluddin Haqqani.
What Afghans fear most is not a Taleban takeover, which is unlikely, but a total lack of preparation or strategy towards planning for difficult but not intractable political problems. A breakdown in discussing a political strategy among Afghans could easily lead to civil war.
Multiple political and diplomatic exercises have to be carried out simultaneously by the Afghans and Nato to ensure that they are prepared for all eventualities, including a comprehensive peace dialogue with the Taleban and Pakistan and Iran.
What is clear is that the Americans cannot do this on their own, but so far they have refused help from Nato or the United Nations and even declined help from other countries who have their own secret dialogues going on with elements of the Taleban such as Britain, Norway, Germany and Japan. The intransigence and infighting demonstrated by the Obama administration has been catastrophic in terms of wasted time and wasted opportunities. This cannot be allowed to continue after the November elections — no matter who wins the White House.
But Nato and Britain too have failed to be more publicly critical of what the US is not doing and the monopoly it exerts over the post-2014 ‘endgame’. There has been virtual silence from European governments as the US has continued to blunder.
Nato must insist that European powers, who have better records of dealing with the Taleban and Karzai, need to be involved in the peace process and the formulation of a political strategy. It is time Britain spoke out about what needs to be done.
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