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Taliban talks: Another Karzai tiff with the US?
Afghan President Hamid Karzai says he will personally attend a meeting with Taliban figures in Saudi Arabia, working around Western efforts to coordinate the peace process.
By Tom A. Peter, Correspondent / January 30, 2012 The Christian Science Monitor
Kabul, Afghanistan - The Afghan government has announced plans for President Hamid Karzai to meet with members of the Taliban in Saudi Arabia. Many are heralding the announcement as a potential breakthrough because the Taliban has thus far refused to recognize Mr. Karzai’s government.
Afghanistan, Taliban to Talk in Saudi Arabia
Wall Street Journal By MARIA ABI-HABIB JANUARY 30, 2012
KABUL - Afghan officials say they plan to meet Taliban representatives in Saudi Arabia in the near future in an attempt to put the government of President Hamid Karzai in a lead role in peace negotiations.
King Karzai
By Jed Ober Monday, January 30, 2012 Foreign Policy
In his recent address inaugurating the 16th session of Afghanistan's National Assembly, President Hamid Karzai rejected claims from some in the international community that constitutional change is necessary in Afghanistan and accused foreigners of treating Afghanistan like a "political lab.
Senators Urge Mobilisation of Afghan Forces Before 2014
TOLOnews.com Sunday, 29 January 2012
Some of the Afghan senators on Sunday warned that the transition to Afghan lead will not be successful if Afghan forces are not well mobilised.
Analysis: Where Afghan humanitarianism ends and development begins
DAMQOL, 30 January 2012 (IRIN) - Afghanistan suffers from cyclical natural disasters - floods and drought - which affect people annually and require expensive emergency responses, but their impacts could well be avoided, or at least mitigated, if proper water management systems or dams were built, for example.
Taliban Refuse Ceasefire Before Prisoners are Released
TOLOnews.com By Sonil Haidari Monday, 30 January 2012
The Taliban have refused US demands for a ceasefire before the release of Taliban prisoners from Guantanamo.
Al-Qaida facilitator captured in eastern Afghan province: ISAF
KABUL, Jan. 30 (Xinhua) -- An al-Qaida facilitator was captured Monday during a joint military operation in eastern Afghan province of Paktia, NATO-led ISAF forces said.
Afghanistan War Allies Risk Fracture Over Timetable for Troop Withdrawals
Bloomberg By Viola Gienger Jan 30, 2012
Undersecretary of Defense Michele Flournoy, who is stepping down from the No. 3 Pentagon post this week, urged that allies fighting in Afghanistan coordinate their withdrawal of troops and commit the money needed to fill the gaps they leave behind.
Joe Biden Advised Against the Osama Bin Laden Raid
By Mary Bruce | ABC News
Vice President Joe Biden confessed this weekend that he advised President Obama not to launch the mission that ultimately killed Osama bin Laden last spring.
Afghan police kill 4 militants, capture 24 others
KABUL, Jan. 30 (Xinhua) -- Afghan police backed by national army and the NATO-led troops have killed four anti-governemnt militants and arrested 24 others over the past 24 hours, Interior Ministry said in a press release on Monday.
NATO sticks to transition roadmap in Afghanistan: Rasmussen
BRUSSELS, Jan. 30 (Xinhua) -- NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Monday the military alliance was sticking to the transition plan in Afghanistan mapped out in 2010, despite French proposals to speed up NATO's handover of security to Afghan forces.
Afghan Man Suspected Of Killing Wife After Daughter Born<br> January 30, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Police in Afghanistan say they are searching for an Afghan man desirous of a son who apparently killed his wife after she gave birth to a third daughter.
Bin Laden Raid: Will CIA's Secret Doctor Face Treason Trial?
By HABIBULLAH KHAN and LEE FERRAN | ABC News
Pakistan is re-examining the fate of the Pakistani doctor who allegedly helped the CIA gather information on the hideout of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden through a fake vaccination program after a top U.S. official publicly confirmed his secret spy operation.
Canada Jails Afghan Immigrants For 'Honor Killings' Of Wife, Daughters
January 30, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
A husband and wife originally from Afghanistan have been found guilty in Canada of murdering their three teenage daughters and the father's first wife in a case that the judge described as stemming from a "twisted concept of honor."
Taliban, US Negotiators Meet in Qatar
VOA News January 30, 2012
Taliban officials say Afghan Taliban negotiators are meeting with U.S. officials in Qatar for a series of discussions aimed at building trust between the two sides ahead of the upcoming peace talks.
Suicide Bomber Kills Militant Commander in Pakistan
VOA News January 30, 2012
Police say a suicide bomber has killed a militant commander in northwest Pakistan.
India still welcome to join IPI pipeline project: Pakistani official
NEW DELHI, Jan. 30 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan still wants India to join the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline project despite apprehensions in Indian official circles over U.S. pressure, local daily The Tribune said on Monday.
The Follow-Up: Silicon Afghanistan: Kabul Innovation Labs Launches
Forbes
Last week I wrote about a Silicon Valley-type of technology “hackathon” in Afghanistan’s capital Kabul. It was the Kabul Innovation Lab that was organized by Internews with the input of INSY Group. I caught up with Rachel Maher from Internews Kabul who gave me some post-event highlights and thoughts.
Jonathan Idema, Con Man and Afghan Bounty Hunter, Dies at 55
New York Times By DOUGLAS MARTIN January 29, 2012
Jonathan K. Idema, a convicted con man who gained notoriety in post-invasion Afghanistan as a swaggering hunter of terrorists, then ignominy when he was imprisoned for taking Afghans hostage and torturing them, died Jan. 21 at his home in Bacalar, Mexico. He was 55.
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Taliban talks: Another Karzai tiff with the US?
Afghan President Hamid Karzai says he will personally attend a meeting with Taliban figures in Saudi Arabia, working around Western efforts to coordinate the peace process.
By Tom A. Peter, Correspondent / January 30, 2012 The Christian Science Monitor
Kabul, Afghanistan - The Afghan government has announced plans for President Hamid Karzai to meet with members of the Taliban in Saudi Arabia. Many are heralding the announcement as a potential breakthrough because the Taliban has thus far refused to recognize Mr. Karzai’s government.
However, news of the meeting in Saudi Arabia comes weeks after the Taliban agreed to open an office in Qatar and has raised some concern that Karzai could create the appearance of a disjointed negotiation effort that could undermine peace efforts and threaten relations between the Afghans and the West.
“The Afghan side is worried about not having a complete role, and the Afghan government is suspicious of Qatar,” says Farouk Merani, an independent political analyst. “I think the Afghan government is trying to secure its own interests.”
There was already tension between Western and Afghan officials when news broke last month that NATO was negotiating with the Taliban to create a political office in Qatar and had not consulted Karzai’s government. In response, Karzai pulled the Afghan ambassador from Doha in December.
US and NATO officials made efforts to address Afghan concerns about exclusion from the peace process and planning for the Qatar office continued. Still, such discord may confuse future talks with lingering questions of whether Afghan and Western officials are working together.
“Karzai is trying to give an impression that he is in contact with the Taliban, the Americans are trying to give the same impression, but the real Taliban who are fighting under Mullah Omar, they are very clever, they don’t trust the Pakistani establishment, they don’t trust Karzai, and they don’t trust the Americans,” says Hamid Mir, a Pakistani journalist and independent analyst. “Yes, they are ready to negotiate with the United States, but they want to negotiate directly, not through Pakistan and not through Karzai.”
Among the Taliban, the main focus of talks will likely be trying to broker a deal for the withdrawal of all foreign military bases from Afghanistan. Forging a coalition government with Karzai is less likely to be a draw for the Taliban, thus there is little need for the president at talks, adds Mr. Mir.
Among Afghans involved in the peace process, many say it is dangerous to read too deeply into Karzai’s forthcoming trip to Saudi Arabia to speak with the Taliban.
“These are the talks, and they are under one name. If they are in Qatar or Saudi Arabia they're still negotiations. I believe the people who might meet Karzai in Saudi Arabia are the same people who are sitting in Qatar. They are the political people who are responsible for talking to anyone,” says Haji Musa Hotec, a member of the Afghan High Peace Council who served as deputy minister of planning during the Taliban’s rule. “There were concerns when the talks were going on secretly between America and the Taliban. But after the Americans gave us our share and asked us to work with them, our concerns have gone."
Adding yet another layer of complication, there are questions about whether the Taliban’s political representatives being sent to Qatar truly represent the interests of the group’s leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar. Specifically, there is some distance between the Taliban's leadership in Pakistan and the front-line commanders, especially after US forces decimated the ranks of mid-level commanders who moved between the two groups.
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Afghanistan, Taliban to Talk in Saudi Arabia
Wall Street Journal By MARIA ABI-HABIB JANUARY 30, 2012
KABUL - Afghan officials say they plan to meet Taliban representatives in Saudi Arabia in the near future in an attempt to put the government of President Hamid Karzai in a lead role in peace negotiations.
So far, the Taliban have only publicly acknowledged their willingness to talk with the U.S. in discussions that could end the 11-year war in Afghanistan. The Taliban weren't immediately available for comment Sunday. News of the Saudi meeting was first reported by the British Broadcasting Corp.
The main purpose of the coming talks is to put Mr. Karzai's government in the lead "by any avenues necessary," an Afghan official said. Saudi Arabia remains "an important player" in negotiations and "has facilitated talks in the past and now," he said.
The Afghan government has long complained that the U.S. and the tiny Gulf state of Qatar have negotiated with the Taliban while leaving Mr. Karzai in the dark, which America denies. In protest, Afghanistan recalled its ambassador to Qatar in December and said the ambassador wouldn't return until the Gulf state sends a delegation to Kabul to apologize and promise to put the Afghans in the lead role in discussions.
The Taliban earlier this month agreed to open a representative office in Doha, Qatar's capital. U.S. officials have agreed to kick start negotiations by saying they will release five top level Taliban insurgents from detention in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and transfer them to Qatari custody. But Marc Grossman, the top U.S. official in charge of talks, said in Kabul last week that a detainee release would ideally receive the consent of Congress first. Congress will likely thwart such a deal.
Afghan officials say that Saudi Arabia has brokered the coming meeting by facilitating contacts with the Taliban. The insurgent group hasn't yet decided who they will send to the meeting, Afghan officials say, and a date for the talks hasn't yet been agreed upon.
U.S. officials in Kabul declined to comment on the prospect of Saudi talks.
The Taliban have refused to publicly accept sitting down with Mr. Karzai's government, claiming that it is a U.S. stooge. But U.S. officials say they have refused to pursue further meetings with the Taliban until the insurgent group agrees to meet with Afghan officials.
Afghanistan's relations with Qatar reached an all-time low this month over the peace negotiations. By reaching out to Saudi Arabia, a bitter rival of Qatar, Mr. Karzai is displaying his frustration with how he perceives the Afghan government has been treated.
The U.S. and Afghanistan have pursued peace negotiations with the Taliban for roughly two years with little progress. Afghanistan's chief peace negotiator, Burhanuddin Rabbani, was assassinated in September. The killing led to a low point in Afghan-Pakistan relations. Many Afghan officials blamed Pakistan's intelligence agency for the assassination. Pakistan denies the claims.
Afghanistan's government says Pakistan is helping to facilitate the peace talks by granting Taliban officials seeking refuge in Pakistan's lawless areas safe passage to the meetings. Pakistan's foreign minister is scheduled to visit Kabul this week, the first high-level meeting between the countries in months.
This weekend Mr. Karzai also signed a long-term partnership agreement with the U.K. to outline a future path for aid, trade and cultural ties between the two countries. The Afghan president signed similar agreements with France and Italy last week.
Write to Maria Abi-Habib at maria.habib@dowjones.com
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King Karzai
By Jed Ober Monday, January 30, 2012 Foreign Policy
In his recent address inaugurating the 16th session of Afghanistan's National Assembly, President Hamid Karzai rejected claims from some in the international community that constitutional change is necessary in Afghanistan and accused foreigners of treating Afghanistan like a "political lab." "Let me expressly and resolutely stress that we will never allow the perilous dream of trying another political experiment to turn into reality," asserted President Karzai. Mr. Karzai's position is unsurprising, considering the astonishing amount of authority the current constitution bestows on him. Paradoxically, this authority was originally granted to him partially with the support of the international community. Unless concerted steps are taken to raise awareness of the need for reform, Afghanistan's democratic development will continue to be stymied by the constitutionally-condoned actions of its modern-day monarch.
Not only does the constitution grant President Karzai extensive power, but he's consistently shown that he's not afraid to use it when things don't go his way. His recent decision to dismiss commissioners of Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) for considering publishing a report critical of its own government represents exhibit A. Among the dismissed were Nader Nadery, a now former commissioner and chairperson of the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan, and Fahim Hakim, the former deputy chair of the commission and a former electoral complaints commissioner. Both are rare individuals in that they are respected civil society leaders with the trust of both the international community and their colleagues within Afghan civil society. Their dismissal was regrettable and the country is worse off as a result.
President Karzai's willingness to dismiss human rights whistle blowers is troubling in itself, but what's more problematic is the power granted to him to do so by the legal framework that was supposedly designed to support and protect Afghanistan's democracy. The framework that should provide the roots for Afghanistan's democracy to grow is instead fraught with so many deficiencies that it more frequently fails to protect citizen's democratic freedoms and human rights. The startling authority the laws grant President Karzai to unilaterally appoint the country's leadership prevents any meaningful check on executive authority from emerging and is perhaps the greatest challenge to Afghan democracy.
An examination of just some of these laws elucidates the situation. Article 7 of the Law on the Structure, Duties and Mandates of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission grants the president the right to appoint the commission's leadership independently, without the requirement for consultation with other Afghan officials or confirmation from other institutions. The leadership of the country's Independent Election Commission (IEC) is determined by virtually the same mechanism: the president decides who he wants responsible for the administration of the country's electoral processes and appoints those individuals, unilaterally. What makes the process for IEC appointments even more inconsistent with democratic principles is the fact that the law granting the president this authority was not passed through a legislative process, but rather through his own presidential decree (Presidential Decree No. 23). In addition, the Electoral Law grants the president sole authority to appoint all five commissioners of the Electoral Complaints Commission. Unsurprisingly, Afghanistan's current Electoral Law was passed by presidential decree.
The president's authority over appointments extends beyond these supposedly independent agencies, even to the country's other branches of government. Article 84 of the constitution grants the president authority to appoint one third of the upper house of the National Assembly, while the Provincial and District Councils are also each responsible for appointing one third of the body's members. But as District Councils have yet to be elected, the president has graciously assumed the responsibility to name its portion of representatives to the upper house. Thus, the president currently appoints two thirds of the upper house of parliament, the Meshrano Jirga (the house of the elders).
His authority over appointments is not restrained to the central government in Kabul. He is also responsible for the appointment of all provincial and district governors, an authority he claims through Article 64(13) of the constitution, which states that he is responsible for appointing "high ranking officials." He exercises this appointment authority through, you guessed it, presidential decree. Even Afghanistan's judiciary, which is surely meant to be independent, is subject to President Karzai's unilateral appointments, as the same constitutional provision (Article 64 (13)) grants him authority to appoint and dismiss all judges.
Just as problematic as the extensive authority the president wields to appoint the country's leadership is his willingness to legislate so frequently by presidential decree, an authority vested to him by Article 76 of the constitution. Rarely does he consult the National Assembly prior to issuing decrees and even more rarely does he submit his proposals to the scrutiny of the actual legislative process.
This is just a small snapshot of how flawed the democratic legal framework of Afghanistan is. Unfortunately, most in the international community have provided only token resistance to the president's abuse of executive authority and have too infrequently spoken out against the systematic flaws in Afghanistan's democracy. We should not expect a leader granted so much power under law not to use it. What we should expect, however, is a more genuine desire and serious effort to address the flaws in the legal framework of Afghanistan's democracy.
The process that led to the adoption of the current constitution reveals how so much power became vested in the executive. Initially, the draft constitution was to be prepared by a constitutional commission informed by a public consultation process. The commission prepared a draft that sought to ensure a system of checks and balances including the creation of a prime minister, who would share authority with the president, and an autonomous constitutional court. Prior to a December, 2003 constitutional Loya Jirga, the commission presented its draft to President Karzai whose team made several changes to the document to concentrate additional power in the executive branch. These changes included eliminating the post of prime minister and the constitutional court, and expanding the president's appointment and decree powers. The result was a constitution that ensured vast executive authority and failed to provide a framework for representative democratic governance and the protection of human rights. At the time, it was speculated that international actors supported President Karzai's amendments in hopes that a strong executive could prevent any potential short-term instability.
Despite President Karzai's stated reluctance, reform is the only way to strengthen Afghanistan's democracy and provide for the defense of the human rights Afghans desire. Unfortunately, the issue of democratic reform is too often used as a bargaining chip for those issues the international community perceives as more critical to an expeditious transition to Afghan ownership over Afghan affairs. This flawed approach has resulted in a calamity of errors that Afghans will continue to pay for long after our departure from Afghanistan. The examples are abundant: the selection of the Single Non-transferable Voting system that ensures inadequate representation and stifles the development of political parties; the passing through presidential decree in 2010 of the country's current electoral law; and the apathy of the international community to Karzai's special electoral court during the most recent and controversial post-election process.
In its current form, Afghanistan's democracy is not sufficient to sustain peace. To prevent Afghanistan from collapsing upon such a weak foundation, concern for democratic strengthening must stand on equal footing with Taliban reconciliation and the development of capable and sustainable Afghan security forces. While the latter two issues are critically important for Afghans to reasonably assume more authority over their own affairs, the deficiencies in the legal foundations that determine the strength of the country's democracy and the nature of its system of governance can no longer be ignored. In order for reform to be possible, awareness must be raised among Afghanistan's citizens of the need for a more balanced political system. As one would expect, the issue resonates amongst current parliamentarians, many of whom were targeted by President Karzai and his special electoral court just months ago. With support from their constituents and genuine diplomatic interest, democratic reform is possible.
Democracy cannot succeed in any country where so much power rests in the hands of one individual. For democracy to succeed in Afghanistan, the legal framework must be reformed so that it no longer serves as a hindrance to the strengthening and protection of democratic institutions, but actually promotes democratic consolidation. If we in the international community are serious about a truly sustainable Afghan democracy, democratic reform must be elevated as a top diplomatic priority in both Kabul and Washington. It's time we acknowledge that Hamid Karzai is not Afghanistan's George Washington. If Afghans are to realize their dream of a truly democratic Afghanistan, it will not be with the good graces of their modern day monarch, but despite him.
Jed Ober is Director of Programs at Democracy International. The views expressed here are his own.
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Senators Urge Mobilisation of Afghan Forces Before 2014
TOLOnews.com Sunday, 29 January 2012
Some of the Afghan senators on Sunday warned that the transition to Afghan lead will not be successful if Afghan forces are not well mobilised.
The concern comes amid reports of security deterioration in some of the areas that have been handed over to Afghans forces.
"The transition should have started after making sure that our security forces are well-equipped," senator Dawood Hasas said.
Senators emphasised that the international community should implement its commitments to Afghanistan as fast as it started implementing the security transition.
"The international community should stick to its commitments and implement what it has promised to Afghanistan, as fast as it started implementing the security hand-over to Afghan forces," senator Kafil Noor Mohammad Noori said.
Senators said the international community had promised to speed up the training process to increase the capacities of Afghan forces parallel to the implementation of the transition process, but that the promise has not been materialised.
Afghan forces are expected to take over all security responsibilities from foreign forces by the end of 2014.
In the second phase of security transition Afghan forces are to take over security responsibility of 18 provinces.
Afghan forces have newly taken over responsibility of eastern Jalalabad city and four of its districts as well as Qarghayi district of the neighbouring Laghman province.
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Analysis: Where Afghan humanitarianism ends and development begins
DAMQOL, 30 January 2012 (IRIN) - Afghanistan suffers from cyclical natural disasters - floods and drought - which affect people annually and require expensive emergency responses, but their impacts could well be avoided, or at least mitigated, if proper water management systems or dams were built, for example.
Some farmers could switch from rain-fed wheat crops, which require a lot of water, to other crops, like grapes or almonds. But these kinds of transitions require long-term multi-year plans, inherently at odds with emergency responses, based on annual appeals for funding.
“Responding to eight droughts in 11 years makes no sense,” Michael Keating, the UN humanitarian coordinator in Afghanistan, said recently. “There is something going wrong.”
“It is not a complete mystery how some of these problems can be addressed,” Keating told IRIN. “They shouldn’t be addressed by basic emergency humanitarian action.”
And yet, for much of the past decade, humanitarians have been drawn into things like infrastructure and early recovery programmes.
“A lot of humanitarian assistance has been partly diverted from its objective,” said Laurent Saillard, head of the European Commission’s humanitarian aid arm (ECHO) in Afghanistan. “Instead of being used for what it’s supposed to be used for - life-saving emergency interventions - it is trying to address chronic poverty, and of course, at the end of the day, not achieving sustainable results.”
Over the past 10 years, a cumulative US$3.2 billion has been spent in Afghanistan on programmes outlined in the international community’s annual appeals for humanitarian funding - the Consolidated Appeals Process (CAP). The CAP is estimated to account for only half of all humanitarian funding.
“[There is] frustration from the population which receives the assistance [because it] is not exactly what they need... frustration from the implementing agencies, [who] realize that they have been present for 10 years, repeating all sorts of interventions, and yet they have not addressed the problem… and frustration from the donors, [who] feel that the money is being wasted, in a way,” Saillard told IRIN.
This year’s drought - affecting 2.8 million people - brought the problem to new heights: “That is a scale that is simply not sustainable,” said Aidan O’Leary, the head of OCHA in Afghanistan.
“At the end of the day, humanitarian actors can only ever bring emergency relief," he added. "We cannot bring solutions. [People] want houses, roads, livelihoods. Humanitarian actors can’t deliver that. They’re never going to be able to deliver that."
New approach
This year’s CAP, launched in Kabul on 28 January, aims to “go back to basics” by focusing on more strictly humanitarian needs. “If you make the field too broad, you can’t get anything done,” O’Leary told IRIN.
The international humanitarian community has requested one quarter less than last year, even though humanitarian needs are increasing. It has asked for $437 million to help 8.8 million Afghans, including help for civilians affected by armed conflict, initial assistance for refugees and internally displaced people returning to their areas of origin, and life-saving actions for those affected by natural disasters.
This excludes projects for the “chronically vulnerable populations” - a task deemed better left to development actors.
How we got here
Much of the problem, aid workers say, lies in the fact that the billions of dollars in development aid invested in the country over the last decade have not been spent cohesively or based on needs, but rather driven by short-term political and military aims.
Around $57 billion dollars of development assistance have been spent in Afghanistan since 2001, and yet 10 million people are still living on the edge, Keating said.
“That does raise the question: Have the investments been equitable? Is the money being used in a way that helps these communities reduce their vulnerability and doesn’t expose them to repeated humanitarian crisis?”
Falling through the cracks
Nor has the government provided the answer, aid workers say. Saillard argues the humanitarian community is partly to blame in allowing the government to defer its responsibilities, often under the guise of lack of capacity. “The fact that there is this presence keeps the right actors sometimes outside the game,” he noted.
But the minister of rural rehabilitation and development, Jarullah Mansoori, argues that with its budget of $500 million per year, his ministry has made great strides in building communities’ resilience to shocks and in managing the impacts of disasters.
It has created a central coordinating body, the Afghanistan National Disaster Management Authority; has dug irrigation canals; encouraged rural enterprise development; and improved access to health and education in rural areas. The ministry’s flagship National Solidarity Programme has been credited with reaching the local level with cash-for-work or cash-for-assets programmes.
“If you compare the damage of disasters eight years ago to... now, you will see a lot of differences,” the minister told IRIN. “But still, since this country went through more than three decades of very damaging and destructive war and crisis, it needs a lot of effort in every aspect.”
Other aid workers say mitigation projects, like flood protection walls, have fallen through the cracks. They are not a central part of the Afghanistan National Development Strategy, which the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan is mandated to support; nor are they technically part of OCHA’s mandate. The UN Development Programme (UNDP), which might traditionally take on such projects, has been focused on improving governance and reducing poverty, and is scaling back its direct presence across the country in order to increasingly work through the government.
"Disaster risk reduction is almost non-existent," said one development worker. "I've noticed that gap. There's very little proactive work done here. It's all reactive."
Dialogue
Another part of the problem has been a lack of understanding of what exactly “humanitarian” means and where the line is drawn. “It’s quite blurred,” as one field worker put it. “Is any one activity development or humanitarian?”
The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has been dealing with this question for years, as refugees returning from Iran and Pakistan - given an initial humanitarian assistance - struggle to integrate in the longer term.
“Where does humanitarian assistance stop and where does development aid begin?” Suzanne Murray Jones, a senior adviser at UNHCR, has been asking herself. “How do we bridge the gap?”
Part of the answer, she said, is a greater dialogue between humanitarian and development partners to encourage development investments in the same areas where people are returning en masse.
“We know nothing about development of livelihoods or about large-scale agriculture. It’s not our expertise. It’s for the FAOs or ILOs to go to these sites and say this is what’s needed,” she said, in reference to the Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Labour Organization. “It’s getting the synergy together to work together.”
To that end, humanitarian actors now participate in monthly meetings of the heads of developmental agencies to try to flag issues of concern, and O’Leary is increasingly advocating development.
“We have to be more vocal,” he said. “I have no interest in having humanitarians indefinitely here in Afghanistan. We have to be looking for our exit strategy. That involves a peace process and development actors developing the key issues. Is it going to take decades? Yes. But it has to be on the agenda now.”
Gaps
In the meantime, as humanitarians try to return to their more traditional role, they find themselves in a tricky position. Keating recalls an informal settlement he visited in Kabul where people were living with “nothing”.
“You can’t respond on a humanitarian basis endlessly, and yet there is no development activity that we could perceive to address their needs," he said. "They’re falling between two stools. I suspect that is true of a very large number of people in rural areas as well.”
Aid workers acknowledge that pulling back could lead to holes in coverage. But for Saillard, it might be a necessary evil. “Sometimes you have to create gaps for the right actors to wake up and take their responsibilities seriously,” he said.
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Taliban Refuse Ceasefire Before Prisoners are Released
TOLOnews.com By Sonil Haidari Monday, 30 January 2012
The Taliban have refused US demands for a ceasefire before the release of Taliban prisoners from Guantanamo.
Reports said that the US had pledged to transfer important Taliban figures from Guantanamo Bay to Qatar but now they are insisting on a ceasefire first.
The development comes as the BBC reports the Afghan government is planning to hold talks with the Taliban in Saudi Arabia.
The meeting in Saudi Arabia will be held in the coming weeks in advance of the establishment of a Taliban office in Qatar.
A senior Afghan government official told the BBC that talks will be convened in the region in addition to the establishment of a Taliban office in Qatar.
The Taliban previously refused to recognize President Karzai's government, calling it a stooge government.
For its part, the Afghan government had opposed a Taliban office in Qatar but later agreed to it.
A delegation of Taliban officials has arrived in Qatar to start negotiations with the United States, The Daily Telegraph reported.
The delegation is comprised of Mullah Omar's former secretary, Mullah Tayeb Agha; the Taliban's former Deputy Foreign Minister Shir Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai; the former Taliban Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Shahabuddin Delawar; and the Taliban's third secretary in Abu Dhabi.
A key official at the High Peace Council, Masood Stanekzai, told TOLOnews in an exclusive interview on Saturday that talks are continuing about the conditions needed to open the Taliban office in Qatar.
Mr Stanekzai stressed that peace talks can only be successful with the leadership of Afghans.
He said that the US special envoy to Afghanistan, Marc Grossman, during his recent visit to Kabul, reassured the Peace Council that the United States will support Afghans however it can during the peace talks.
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Al-Qaida facilitator captured in eastern Afghan province: ISAF
KABUL, Jan. 30 (Xinhua) -- An al-Qaida facilitator was captured Monday during a joint military operation in eastern Afghan province of Paktia, NATO-led ISAF forces said.
"An Afghan and coalition security force captured an al-Qaida facilitator during an operation in Gardez district, Paktia province, today," the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a press release.
Without disclosing the name of the captured facilitator, the press release said that "the facilitator coordinated insurgent activity throughout the area and provided reports to senior al- Qaida leaders in Pakistan."
No civilians were harmed during the operation, it added.
According to the press release, the joint forces also detained a Taliban local leader during a separate security operation in Nerkh district of eastern Wardak province on Monday.
The leader supplied bomb-making materials, weapons and ammunition for use by insurgent fighters conducting attacks in provincial capital Maidan Shahr and Nerkh district. The security force confiscated multiple bomb-making materials during the operation, it said.
Taliban insurgents have not to make comments yet.
Afghan forces and ISAF troops have intensified cleanup operations throughout the post-Taliban country recently.
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Afghanistan War Allies Risk Fracture Over Timetable for Troop Withdrawals
Bloomberg By Viola Gienger Jan 30, 2012
Undersecretary of Defense Michele Flournoy, who is stepping down from the No. 3 Pentagon post this week, urged that allies fighting in Afghanistan coordinate their withdrawal of troops and commit the money needed to fill the gaps they leave behind.
Flournoy stressed the need for an orderly transition days before French President Nicolas Sarkozy last week accelerated the pace of his country’s withdrawal.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Chicago summit in May should lead to a detailed plan for troop levels leading to the anticipated handover of security control to the Afghans by the end of 2014, Flournoy told reporters at the Pentagon on Jan. 23 as she prepared to leave office this week.
“Some countries may be wanting to put their own plans on the table at that point,” Flournoy said. “What we’re emphasizing is the importance of us all coordinating.”
Sarkozy preempted such planning with his Jan. 27 announcement after a Paris meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, saying France will withdraw its combat troops by the end of 2013, a year ahead of schedule. The French president shortened the timetable after Afghan soldiers killed five French troops in two incidents in the past month.
President Barack Obama and other leaders in the 50-nation Afghan war coalition are under pressure to speed a withdrawal because of their own budget crises and waning public support at home. Obama last year announced he’d cut the 97,000 U.S. troops by more than a third before this September, and other nations are reducing their forces. Seeking Commitments
“In Chicago, the U.S. wants countries to make some sort of long-term commitment” financially to the Afghan national security forces, said Caroline Wadhams, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress policy group in Washington. Officials have estimated the Afghan government may need $4 billion to $6 billion a year at first to supplement its own funding for the Afghan army and police.
The timing and scale of the U.S. exit haven’t been decided beyond the reduction of 33,000 American troops by September, Flournoy said.
Taliban militants may be split over whether to wait for the U.S. and its foreign partners to leave or to proceed with negotiations to end the conflict, Flournoy said.
A political settlement takes on added urgency amid lingering concerns that the Afghan security forces may not be strong enough to counter the insurgency once the U.S. and other foreign troops leave, Wadhams said. Highest-Level Female
Flournoy, 51, leaves her post as undersecretary of defense for policy on Feb. 3. Obama has nominated her deputy, James Miller, to replace her.
As the highest-ranking female civilian to hold office at the Pentagon, Flournoy had been considered a prospect to become the first female U.S. Defense Secretary. Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta last year picked another undersecretary, Ashton Carter, to move into the deputy secretary slot.
Flournoy announced in December that she would leave the department to spend more time with her family. She is married to Department of Veterans Affairs Deputy Secretary W. Scott Gould. They have three children.
She said she needed to re-balance her life with more attention to her family and planned to support Obama’s re- election this year, the Associated Press reported at the time.
Flournoy left her stamp on major policy reviews in the past three years, said John Hamre, president and chief executive officer of the Center for Strategic and International Studies policy group in Washington. ‘Secretary Some Day’
“Michele could well become secretary some day,” said Hamre, a former deputy defense secretary. “It will help her to broaden her base of activity on defense matters to include personnel policy issues and acquisition issues.”
On Iran, Flournoy rated as “very low” the risk that the U.S. would miscalculate in a way that would prompt an unintended conflict.
“What worries me is the irresponsible rhetoric and activities that we see on the Iranian side, whether it’s terrorism, support for proxies,” she said.
“We’ve urged them to be more restrained in their activities,” she said, without elaborating how the messages were conveyed.
Flournoy also has led talks with China in the past three years aimed at elevating military relations to the level of regular, substantive talks held on economic and diplomatic issues. She said defense talks with Chinese leaders have broadened and, in the last round in December, even included discussions about the fallout from the Arab Spring revolutions in the Middle East. Strategic Intentions
“The key areas where we need to make progress is greater understanding of one another’s strategic intentions,” she said. “I spend a lot of time trying to explain that our objective is not to contain China.”
The U.S. is seeking to encourage China to integrate into the international community and commit to resolving disputes without the use of force, she said.
“We need to see a lot more transparency” from China, she said. “We see aspects of their military modernization that don’t make sense to us unless you assume they are seeking to deny others freedom of access, freedom of navigation and the ability to protect international interests.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Viola Gienger in Washington at vgienger@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Walcott at jwalcott9@bloomberg.net
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Joe Biden Advised Against the Osama Bin Laden Raid
By Mary Bruce | ABC News
Vice President Joe Biden confessed this weekend that he advised President Obama not to launch the mission that ultimately killed Osama bin Laden last spring.
During remarks at a Democratic congressional retreat this weekend, Biden explained that when it came time to make the final decision, he had some lingering uncertainties about whether the 9/11 mastermind was in the suspected compound in Pakistan.
When the president asked his top advisers for their final opinion on the mission, all of them were hesitant, except for the former CIA director, now Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Biden said.
"Every single person in that room hedged their bet except Leon Panetta. Leon said go. Everyone else said, 49, 51," Biden said, as he offered the unsolicited details of the decision-making process.
"He got to me. He said, 'Joe, what do you think?' And I said, 'You know, I didn't know we had so many economists around the table.' I said, 'We owe the man a direct answer. Mr. President, my suggestion is, don't go. We have to do two more things to see if he's there,'" Biden recalled.
While the vice president did not explain what those two more things were, the next morning the president gave National Security Adviser Tom Donilon the "go" to launch the SEAL raid of the compound.
"He knew what was at stake, not just the lives of those brave warriors, but literally the presidency," Biden said.
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Afghan police kill 4 militants, capture 24 others
KABUL, Jan. 30 (Xinhua) -- Afghan police backed by national army and the NATO-led troops have killed four anti-governemnt militants and arrested 24 others over the past 24 hours, Interior Ministry said in a press release on Monday.
"During series of operations across the country, the national police in coordination with army and the international forces have killed four rebels and captured 24 others," the press release said.
A number of arms and ammunitions have also been seized by security forces, it added.
However, it did not say if there were any casualties on the security forces.
Taliban militants fighting Afghan and NATO-led troops have not to make comment yet.
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NATO sticks to transition roadmap in Afghanistan: Rasmussen
BRUSSELS, Jan. 30 (Xinhua) -- NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Monday the military alliance was sticking to the transition plan in Afghanistan mapped out in 2010, despite French proposals to speed up NATO's handover of security to Afghan forces.
"We stick to the roadmap that was outlined at the NATO summit in Libson in November 2010. According to which, we will gradually handover lead responsibility to the Afghans. A process that has been started and hopefully will be completed by the end of 2014," Rasmussen told reporters at NATO headquarters.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Friday French troops would withdraw from Afghanistan at the end of 2013 and Paris would urge NATO allies to speed up its timetable for handing all combat operations to Afghan forces in 2013, a year earlier than the alliance plans. France will present its proposal at the upcoming meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels on Feb. 2-3.
Rasmussen declined to comment on Sarkozy's decision, but said the role of NATO forces would gradually change from the middle of 2013.
"The fact is that by mid-2013 we will start the final transition of provinces and districts to lead Afghan responsibility. So from that time on, the whole Afghanistan will have Afghan security forces in the lead of security. From that time on, We can gradually change the role of our forces from combat to support," he said.
"The pace and the scope of that transformation of our forces will of course very much depend on the security situation on the ground ... All that will take place within the roadmap we outlined in Lisbon in 2010," he stressed.
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Afghan Man Suspected Of Killing Wife After Daughter Born
January 30, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Police in Afghanistan say they are searching for an Afghan man desirous of a son who apparently killed his wife after she gave birth to a third daughter.
Police in the northern Konduz Province said the victim, 28, known by the one name of Storai, was strangled by her husband -- a local militia member -- and his mother on January 28.
Police said they have arrested the victim's mother-in-law, but her husband is still at large, possibly being sheltered by armed militia members.
Experts say violence against women is commonplace in Afghanistan.
Compiled from agency reports
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Bin Laden Raid: Will CIA's Secret Doctor Face Treason Trial?
By HABIBULLAH KHAN and LEE FERRAN | ABC News
Pakistan is re-examining the fate of the Pakistani doctor who allegedly helped the CIA gather information on the hideout of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden through a fake vaccination program after a top U.S. official publicly confirmed his secret spy operation.
Officials with the commission investigating the May 2 Navy SEAL raid that took the life of America's most wanted terrorist in Abbottabad, Pakistan, told Pakistan's The News they've ordered Dr. Shakeel Afridi to face trial for treason and said he will not be turned over to the U.S. Pakistan's prime minister, Yousaf Gilani, also said Sunday Afridi would be tried.
Another senior Pakistani official, however, said that the commission does not give the final say on Afridi's fate and that the Pakistani government has yet to decide whether to try him.
Pakistani officials have called for a treason trial previously, but the commission's new order comes just days after U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta publicly confirmed Afridi's key role in the Bin Laden mission.
In a Friday preview of an interview with CBS' "60 Minutes," Panetta said he was "very concerned" for Afridi.
"This was an individual who in fact helped provide intelligence that was very helpful with regards to this operation," said Panetta who was head of the CIA at the time of the operation. "He was not in any way treasonous towards Pakistan, he was not doing anything that would in any way undermine Pakistan... Pakistan and the United States have a common cause against terrorism."
"For them to take this kind of action against someone who was helping to go after terrorism I just think is a real mistake on their part," he added.
The New York Times first reported Afridi's alleged role in the CIA's intelligence gathering gambit in July. Afridi allegedly set up a fake polio vaccination program, going door-to-door in Abbottabad in hopes of collecting DNA samples from bin Laden family members. After he was arrested outside his home just weeks after the deadly raid, local media reported Afridi admitted to his role, but said he was unable to get access to bin Laden's compound or his children.
In his "60 Minutes" interview, Panetta also said he "personally felt" that the Pakistani government must have known something about the Abbottabad compound, perhaps that a high value target could be there.
"I don't have any hard evidence, so I can't say it for a fact. There's nothing that proves the case. But as I said, my personal view is that somebody somewhere probably had that knowledge," he said.
By all official accounts, no Pakistani officials told the U.S. government bin Laden could be in the compound, but Panetta was the only one to recommend with certainty that the raid should take place, according to a new account of high-level decision making provided by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden.
"[Obama] said, 'I have to make this decision -- what is your opinion?' He started with the National Security advisor, the Secretary of State and he ended with me," Biden said at a recent gathering of Democrat leaders in Maryland. "Every single person in that roomed hedged their bet, except Leon Panetta. He said, 'Go.'"
For his part, Biden said he advised the President not to launch the operation.
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Canada Jails Afghan Immigrants For 'Honor Killings' Of Wife, Daughters
January 30, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
A husband and wife originally from Afghanistan have been found guilty in Canada of murdering their three teenage daughters and the father's first wife in a case that the judge described as stemming from a "twisted concept of honor."
Mohammad Shafia, his wife Tooba, and their eldest son, Hamed, were sentenced on January 29 to 25 years in prison without parole in a case that transfixed Canada.
Prosecutors argued that Shafia felt ashamed of the rebellious behavior of his three teenaged daughters -- Zainab, Sahar, and Geeti -- and arranged for them to die in a staged car accident in June 2009.
The father, wife, and son were also convicted of the killing of Rona Amir Mohammad, Shafia's first wife in a polygmous family, for purportedly being too lenient toward the girls.
The court heard testimony suggesting that the father had repeatedly clashed with his daughters on many issues, including dating, clothes, and use of the Internet.
Canadian newspapers have published police transcripts in which Sharia called his daughters "whores" and said "nothing is more dear to me than my honor."
The daughters ranged in age from 13 to 19 years, and their bodies were found along with that of Shafia's childless first wife in the family car in a canal in Ontario, Canada, after a trip to Niagara Falls. The prosecution alleged that the victims were drowned elsewhere before their bodies were placed in the car and it was pushed into the canal.
“It is difficult to conceive of a more heinous, more despicable, more honorless crime,” Judge Robert Maranger said. He said the defendants' actions have "absolutely no place in any civilized society."
Lead investigator Chris Scott, speaking to reporters in Kingston in Ontario, Canada, urged the public to remember the victims in the case.
"You know what? I don't want to give [the killers] any more voice than they've already had," Scott said. "To me, and this will be my last comment I'm going to make today, it's Rona, Zainab, Sahar, Geeti -- that's who we should be thinking about, that's who we should be talking about, not these other people."
Compiled from agency reports
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Taliban, US Negotiators Meet in Qatar
VOA News January 30, 2012
Taliban officials say Afghan Taliban negotiators are meeting with U.S. officials in Qatar for a series of discussions aimed at building trust between the two sides ahead of the upcoming peace talks.
Maulavi Qalamuddin, who once led the group's religious police, said Sunday the delegation includes several former officials, as well as a former secretary to the Taliban's leader, Mullah Omar.
Qalamuddin said the talks include the possible release of Taliban prisoners from the U.S. military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He said the delegation traveled to Qatar from Pakistan - a possible sign that Islamabad might support the peace process.
Meanwhile, Afghan officials said Sunday they will soon open a second front of negotiations with the Taliban, meeting in Saudi Arabia in an attempt to bring an end to the decade-long Afghan war.
Pakistani officials have declined to comment on the country's role in contacts between the Taliban and the United States. But a Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit has reiterated that Islamabad will continue to make contributions toward achieving peace and stability in Afghanistan.
Also on Sunday, Pakistan said Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar will travel to Afghanistan Wednesday to discuss the war on terror and political reconciliation efforts. Khar is expected to meet with her Pakistani counterpart, Zalmai Rassoul, and make a "courtesy call" on President Hamid Karzai.
U.S. officials have yet to comment on the latest developments.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP.
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Suicide Bomber Kills Militant Commander in Pakistan
VOA News January 30, 2012
Police say a suicide bomber has killed a militant commander in northwest Pakistan.
Monday's attack on the outskirts of the city of Peshawar killed Haji Akhunzada, his son-in-law and at least one other person.
Akhunzada was a senior leader in the Ansar ul-Islam militant group, which operates in the Khyber tribal agency near the Afghan border.
Pakistani officials blamed A rival militant group, Lashkar-e-Islam, for the suicide bombing. Both groups have a history of killing each other's fighters.
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India still welcome to join IPI pipeline project: Pakistani official
NEW DELHI, Jan. 30 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan still wants India to join the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline project despite apprehensions in Indian official circles over U.S. pressure, local daily The Tribune said on Monday.
Pakistan's petroleum and natural resources minister Asim Hussein told the newspaper during a recent visit to India that if India desires, it is still welcome to join the project.
Hussein was in India to discuss the transit fee and other issues connected with the U.S.-backed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan- Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline.
He said Iran and Pakistan are going ahead with the project despite difficulties.
Due to U.S. pressure, India has virtually called off negotiations with Iran over the IPI project and started to focus on the TAPI project, according to the newspaper.
However, India has refused to endorse U.S.-led western sanctions against Iran.
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The Follow-Up: Silicon Afghanistan: Kabul Innovation Labs Launches
Forbes
Last week I wrote about a Silicon Valley-type of technology “hackathon” in Afghanistan’s capital Kabul. It was the Kabul Innovation Lab that was organized by Internews with the input of INSY Group. I caught up with Rachel Maher from Internews Kabul who gave me some post-event highlights and thoughts.
“The Innovation Lab idea was an experiment in Afghanistan to bring people together,” around innovation and technology “for social benefit,” Maher says. Because most Afghans, as Maher notes, “don’t have access to the Internet or technology,” with the exception of mobile phones, the Lab was focused on “breaking down the concept” of innovation in order to fit the Afghan context and make it less “intimidating.”
The Innovation Lab was organized with this in mind. “Young IT professionals and teamed up with national and international experts to devise solutions to problems or case studies that we (Internews) researched and assigned to the teams,” Maher says. Together they “set about creating a mobile based solution” to a number of different issue areas such as health and education, to name two. Some of the solutions were actual coding. Others were hashing out communications strategies.
The Kabul Innovation Labs website has a list of all the projects and results. One team created a solution to help the Afghan health ministry to track polio outbreaks. Another worked on developing a mobile app to track, collect and respond to the needs of refugees and internally displaced peoples. A third looked at getting Afghan farmers, most of who are illiterate, information on weather, the market, crop diseases and farmland locations, both through voice and SMS.
They are projects that will be presented to the World Bank, who through the Ministry of Communication and IT, has committed several millions in innovation grants in Afghanistan.
“There is a lot of money spent in Afghanistan that doesn’t produce real and lasting benefits because the indigenous environment is overlooked or neglected,” Maher says. She says that Internews is “committed to empowering Afghanistsan beyond 2014? by focusing on technology solutions and their sustainability.
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Jonathan Idema, Con Man and Afghan Bounty Hunter, Dies at 55
New York Times By DOUGLAS MARTIN January 29, 2012
Jonathan K. Idema, a convicted con man who gained notoriety in post-invasion Afghanistan as a swaggering hunter of terrorists, then ignominy when he was imprisoned for taking Afghans hostage and torturing them, died Jan. 21 at his home in Bacalar, Mexico. He was 55.
Penny Alesi, a former girlfriend, said the cause was AIDS. A State Department spokesman confirmed the death.
Mr. Idema was a fast-talking, sunglasses-wearing, AK-47-toting fortune hunter and a flamboyant figure in Kabul, the capital, in the early 2000s. He flaunted his experience as a member of the Army’s Special Forces, or Green Berets. and let on that he was in cahoots with American and Afghan intelligence officials as he pursued the big rewards offered for leaders of Al Qaeda. He cultivated the news media, often with tall tales.
He provided broadcasters with videotape of supposed terrorist training camps; was interviewed as a covert operative by National Public Radio and Fox News; and insinuated himself into a book by the author Robin Moore, “The Hunt for Bin Laden.” Few knew he had served three years in federal prison in the 1990s on 58 counts of fraud. That information came out in 2004 when he was tried in Afghanistan for imprisoning and torturing eight men in a private jail that he and his civilian colleagues ran in the hope of getting information about terrorists and bounty money. (They wore uniforms with the American flag on the sleeves and called themselves Task Force Saber 7.) The case was widely compared to the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq.
His defense was that he had been working for the American and Afghan governments. Both denied it, although at the trial American military officials acknowledged taking his calls and once interrogating a suspect he had captured before releasing him.
“Perhaps if he did something successful, the government would pay attention to him,” a Western diplomat said to The New York Times.
Sentenced to 10 years in prison, Mr. Idema was pardoned by President Hamid Karzai after 3. He said he did not know Mr. Karzai’s reasons, nor why he had been given an apartment-style cell in prison with satellite television, Persian carpets and specially prepared meals.
Jonathan Keith Idema’s eventful life began May 30, 1956, in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and ended in Mexico in a town on the Yucatan Peninsula, where he called himself Black Jack, ran a charter boat, was said to hold orgies and flew a pirate flag over his house.
He sued people constantly. One was Steven Spielberg. Mr. Idema contended that he was the basis of the George Clooney character, a Special Forces operative, in the 1997 movie “The Peacemaker,” produced by Mr. Spielberg’s company, DreamWorks. The claim was dismissed, and Mr. Idema was ordered to pay $267,079 in legal fees.
His father said Mr. Idema had been an Eagle Scout. He himself said the direction of his life was set when he saw the 1968 John Wayne movie “The Green Berets,” loosely based on a book by Mr. Moore. Mr. Idema joined the Green Berets after enlisting in the Army at 18. The Vietnam War was ending, and he saw no combat, though he later claimed he did.
He was honorably discharged but not allowed to re-enlist, according to testimony in a 1994 trial. An Army evaluation made public at the trial had described him as “unmotivated, unprofessional, immature.”
During the 1980s he did security work in Haiti and Thailand. He said he sometimes took his dog, Sarge, who parachuted out of airplanes with him and sniffed for bombs.
Back at home, he was arrested as many as 36 times in the 1980s and 1990s on various charges, including possession of stolen property and assault with a firearm. He was never convicted.
In 1991 he went to Lithuania to train local police officers. There, he contended, he discovered a black market in backpack-size nuclear weapons, though many weapons experts consider the existence of such weapons unlikely. He nevertheless contributed to a “60 Minutes” segment on the issue. When the F.B.I. asked him to reveal his Lithuanian sources, he refused. His refusal, he later claimed, prompted a federal prosecution against him for business fraud.
That business was making products for paintball combat games. He was convicted of purchasing materials using faked credit references.
Mr. Idema went to Afghanistan in November 2001 to make a documentary for National Geographic on humanitarian efforts there, but he soon abandoned the project and turned to bounty hunting and fighting. He began calling himself Jack and telling journalists he was an adviser to the Northern Alliance, the Afghan group then trying to oust the ruling Taliban. He became a regular on conservative talk radio in the United States.
In 2002, he provided what he said were Qaeda training videos to “60 Minutes II,” which broadcast them. Rolling Stone magazine quoted Dan Rather as saying that Mr. Idema was “an adventurer with a conscience.”
He had a temper. He once fired a shot within six inches of the head of a reporter for The Dallas Morning News. He threatened to punch the broadcast journalist Geraldo Rivera.
Mr. Idema made big, unprovable boasts. One was that he had discovered handwritten Qaeda plans to assassinate President Bill Clinton at a Malaysian summit meeting in 1998. Mr. Clinton did not attend, but Vice President Al Gore did. No attack was attempted.
Interested in his exploits, Mr. Moore, who had Parkinson’s disease, enlisted Mr. Idema to help write the 2003 book “Task Force Dagger: The Hunt for Bin Laden.” Mr. Idema ended up writing and rewriting chapters, mostly to glorify the “Jack” character — himself. Mr. Moore later disavowed the changes.
After his release from the Afghan prison, Mr. Idema did not return to the United States. Ms. Alesi, his former girlfriend, said he feared being prosecuted there for any number of things. Instead he went to Dubai and then England before moving to Mexico.
Ms. Alesi had met him on the Internet, she said, and saw him on and off from 2007 to 2010. She also maintained that he had infected her and others with AIDS when he knew he had the disease. He claimed to have had nine wives, she said, but only one of them may have been legal. He left no immediate survivors.
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