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Karzai Gives a Lukewarm Welcome to Taliban Talks
By MATTHEW ROSENBERG and GRAHAM BOWLEY The New York Times January 4, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan — President Hamid Karzai said on Wednesday that he welcomed the Taliban’s announcement that they planned to openly pursue negotiations with the United States by setting up an office in Qatar.
Taliban to Open Qatar Office in Step to Formal Talks
New York Times By MATTHEW ROSENBERG January 3, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - Giving a first major public sign that they may be ready for formal talks with the American-led coalition in Afghanistan, the Taliban announced Tuesday that they had struck a deal to open a political office in Qatar that could allow for direct negotiations over the endgame in the Afghan war.
Senior Afghan Lawmaker Slams US Secret Meetings with Taliban
January 4, 2012 Fars News Agency
TEHRAN (FNA)- First Vice-Speaker of the Afghan Senate Mohammad Alam Izadyar criticized the secret talks between the US and the Taliban, and stated that the so-called Afghan Peace Talks lack "transparency".
From the caves of Tora Bora to an office in Qatar: is the Taliban going mainstream?
The Independent By Jerome Taylor Wednesday 04 January 2012
The Afghan Taliban announced yesterday that it had reached a landmark deal to open a political office in Qatar in what could be its first concrete step to sue for peace after a decade of insurgency warfare.
Hezb-e-Islami Welcomes Afghan Peace Efforts
TOLOnews.com Wednesday, 04 January 2012
The Hezb-e-Islami party has said it supports the Afghan peace efforts and wants to be part of the process, a spokesman for Afghan President said on Tuesday.
Mass Grave Found In Afghan Army Compound
January 4, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Afghan officials say they have found a mass grave containing at least 10 human skulls in northern Afghanistan.
Number Of UN Staff Killed In Line Of Duty Doubled In 2011
January 4, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
UNITED NATIONS -- United Nations staff members were the primary target in several terror attacks during 2011, with more than twice as many personnel killed than in the previous year.
Three explosions kill 11 in southern Afghanistan
By Ismail Sameem | Reuters – Tue, Jan 3, 2012
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Three separate explosions killed 11 people and wounded dozens of others in Afghanistan's southern Kandahar province on Tuesday, officials said, the latest in a series of attacks in the volatile region.
Afghanistan’s Future Relies on Education Reforms
January 3, 2012, 1:12 pm By Guest Writer The Chronicle of Higher Education Wednesday, January 4, 2012
The following is a guest post by Sharif Fayez, Afghanistan’s minister of higher education from 2002-2004 and the founder of the American University of Afghanistan.
In December 2001, Afghan leaders gathered in Bonn, Germany, to set the framework for establishing the post-Taliban Afghanistan. On December 5, a decade later, a second meeting was held in Bonn to ensure the gains made in the last 10 years will be maintained. While the focus was on strengthening security and governance–a daunting
The Rise and Fall of Al-Qaeda: Debunking the Terrorism Narrative
The Huffington Post By Fawaz Gerges Professor of International Relations, London School of Economics 03/01/2012
The popular uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Bahrain have not only shaken the foundation of the authoritarian order in the Middle East, but they have also hammered a deadly nail in the coffin of a terrorism narrative which has painted Al-Qaeda as the West's greatest threat. At least, they should have.
US army's new Afghan nightmare – how to ship $30bn of kit
Flying home colossal MRAPs that save Nato troops from Taliban IEDs is part of $30bn logistical nightmare
Guardian.co.uk By Jon Boone Tuesday 3 January 2012
Kabul - The US army has begun the massive task of withdrawing $30bn (£19bn) worth of military equipment from Afghanistan three years before most Nato troops leave, with logisticians warning of complications from the lack of decent roads and the nightmarish geography of a landlocked country surrounded by states that are either fickle American allies or outright enemies.
Afghanistan Steps Up Efforts to Recover Bank’s Losses
By GRAHAM BOWLEY The New York Times January 3, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - The Afghan Central Bank said Tuesday that the government was stepping up efforts to recoup public money lost more than a year ago in the collapse of Kabul Bank, the nation’s largest private financial institution.
Exclusive Excerpt: The Operators
McChrystal, Petraeus and the inside story of America's war in Afghanistan
Rolling Stone By Michael Hastings January 3, 2012
In April 2010, Rolling Stone contributing editor Michael Hastings spent a month with Gen. Stanley McChrystal in Europe and Afghanistan, reporting on a profile of the supreme commander of all NATO forces in what had become America’s longest-running war. To Hastings’ astonishment, McChrystal and staff had plenty to say about the White House
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Karzai Gives a Lukewarm Welcome to Taliban Talks
By MATTHEW ROSENBERG and GRAHAM BOWLEY The New York Times January 4, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan — President Hamid Karzai said on Wednesday that he welcomed the Taliban’s announcement that they planned to openly pursue negotiations with the United States by setting up an office in Qatar.
But the fact that it took Mr. Karzai almost a full day to respond to the Taliban’s announcement — the most unequivocal signal to date that the insurgents are ready to talk — left lingering doubts about his willingness to play a secondary role in a reconciliation effort that is being propelled, at least for now, by the United States and its allies. Both Washington and Kabul have stressed that negotiations should be led by Afghans.
Adding to the concerns was Mr. Karzai’s use of language portraying “foreigners and their agents” as responsible for driving the violence in Afghanistan. This sentiment has become habitual for the Karzai government, and it plays well domestically, but it is often seen by Mr. Karzai’s foreign backers as petulant and unhelpful at a time when the American-led coalition and the Afghan government should be presenting a united front.
“Afghanistan agrees with the negotiations between the United States and the Taliban that would result in opening an office for the Taliban in Qatar, rescuing Afghanistan from war and conspiracies that are killing our innocent people,” read Mr. Karzai’s statement. “Negotiations are the only way to reach peace and get out of the war and trouble imposed on our people.”
The Taliban’s announcement on Tuesday, after years of denials, that they were ready to press forward with talks offered the prospect of reviving the reconciliation process, and Mr. Karzai’s response on Wednesday gave it more impetus. He had largely shut the process down in September after a man who claimed to be a negotiator representing the Taliban detonated a bomb in his turban, killing Burhanuddin Rabbani, the chief of the Afghan government’s High Peace Council. It remains unclear how much ground the Taliban would be willing to give in the talks, or whether the group simply plans to temporize until NATO ends its combat operations in 2014.
The Taliban made clear on Tuesday that they were interested in talking to the United States and its allies, not to the Afghan government, which the insurgents pointedly did not mention in their announcement.
That reflects the reality of the situation more closely than the statements from Washington and Kabul about Afghan-led talks. The only substantial talks that took place in the year before Mr. Rabbani’s assassination were between American and German officials on the one hand and a former secretary to Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s reclusive leader, on the other. Those talks led directly to the deal for a Taliban office in Qatar.
An American official also met over the summer with a representative of the Haqqani network, a Taliban ally that is believed to have been behind the most audacious attacks in Kabul over the past few years. The Haqqanis are also seen as the insurgent faction most closely aligned with Al Qaeda and Pakistan’s spy service, the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence.
The Afghan government played no role in any of those talks, although Mr. Karzai and his top advisers were continually briefed on them, Afghan and American officials have said. When reports surfaced last month that Qatar was willing to be the site for the Taliban office, the Karzai government at first rejected the idea and recalled its ambassador from Qatar. Only under American pressure did the Afghan government grudgingly agree last week to Qatar as the site for the office.
How much progress the talks can make without a vigorous Afghan role is uncertain. American and European officials say they do not think a truly comprehensive peace settlement can be reached unless the Afghan government takes the lead. The aim at the moment is to build up enough momentum to hand the talks over to the Afghans.
The Afghans say they share that goal. “We want the talks to be Afghan-led and Afghan-owned, which is not yet the case,” Aimal Faizi, a spokesman for Mr. Karzai, said on Wednesday by telephone.
“The talks will not be successful, or will not have a positive outcome, if Afghanistan is not leading,” Mr. Faizi said. He complained about other countries’ wielding influence in the talks. He did not say which countries, but he appeared to be referring to Pakistan, which has long sought to dominate events in Afghanistan, in large part to counter the influence of India, its rival.
Afghan officials have voiced concern that Pakistan, where much of the Taliban leadership resides, will use the insurgents as a stalking-horse to strike a deal with Washington, and in the process secure its place in postwar Afghanistan.
American officials see the Qatar office as a way of reducing Pakistan’s influence over the talks. But that strategy appears to have limits: the bulk of the Taliban leadership and their families still rely on safe haven in Pakistan, where they are believed to live and work under the close watch of Inter-Services Intelligence. Pakistan has in the past arrested insurgent leaders who sought to open talks without its blessing.
A former American official said on Wednesday that it appeared that Pakistan had accepted the idea of the Qatar office and was willing to let talks move forward, despite the recent deterioration in relations between the United States and Pakistan. “We’d be foolish to think this was being done independently, that Pakistan wasn’t playing any role in this,” said the former official, who is being briefed by current officials and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
In Kabul on Wednesday, many Afghans were skeptical about the talks. Juma Khan, 35, who sells corn in the shadow of an old mosque on the banks of the Kabul River, said he found it hard to trust the Taliban. “I don’t think they are serious,” he said.
Sharifullah Sahak contributed reporting.
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Taliban to Open Qatar Office in Step to Formal Talks
New York Times By MATTHEW ROSENBERG January 3, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - Giving a first major public sign that they may be ready for formal talks with the American-led coalition in Afghanistan, the Taliban announced Tuesday that they had struck a deal to open a political office in Qatar that could allow for direct negotiations over the endgame in the Afghan war.
The step was a reversal of the Taliban’s longstanding public denials that they were involved in, or even willing to consider, talks related to their insurgency, and it had the potential to revive a reconciliation effort that stalled in September, with the assassination of the head of Afghanistan’s High Peace Council.
It was unclear, however, whether the Taliban were interested in working toward a comprehensive peace settlement or mainly in ensuring that NATO ends its operations in Afghanistan as scheduled in 2014, which would remove a major obstacle to the Taliban’s return to power in all or part of the country.
In a statement, Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban, said that along with a preliminary deal to set up the office in Qatar, the group was asking that Taliban detainees held at the American prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, be released. Mr. Mujahid did not say when the Qatar office would be opened, or give specifics about the prisoners the Taliban wanted freed.
“We are at the moment, besides our powerful presence inside the country, ready to establish a political office outside the country to come to an understanding with other nations,” the statement said.
American officials have said in recent months that the opening of a Taliban mission would be the single biggest step forward for peace efforts that have been plagued by false starts. The most embarrassing came in November 2010, when it emerged that an impostor had fooled Western officials into thinking he represented the Taliban and then had disappeared with hundreds of thousands of dollars used to woo him.
The official killed in September, Burhanuddin Rabbani, had been greeting a supposed Taliban negotiator when the man detonated a bomb in his turban.
The opening of an office in Qatar is meant to give Afghan and Western peace negotiators an “address” where they can openly contact legitimate Taliban intermediaries. That would open the way for confidence-building measures that Washington hopes to press forward in the coming months. Chief among them, American officials said, is the possibility of transferring a number of “high-risk” detainees — including some with ties to Al Qaeda — to Afghan custody from Guantánamo Bay. The prisoners would then presumably be freed later.
American officials said they would consider transferring only those prisoners the Afghan authorities requested. Among the names being discussed are Muhammad Fazl, the former Taliban deputy defense minister; two former provincial governors, Khairullah Khairkhwa of Herat and Noorullah Nori of Balkh; Abdul Haq Wasiq, a former top Taliban intelligence official; and one of the Taliban’s top financiers, Muhammad Nabi. Mr. Fazl is accused of having commanded forces that killed thousands of Shiite Muslims, who are a minority in Afghanistan, while the Taliban ruled the country.
The American officials said that another idea under consideration was the establishment of cease-fire zones within Afghanistan, although that prospect was more uncertain and distant. The officials asked not to be identified because of the delicacy of the talks.
Some analysts are skeptical of the prospect for meaningful peace negotiations with the Taliban. The Taliban are viewed as unlikely to cede significant ground at a time when NATO has begun to withdraw troops and intends to end combat operations here in less than three years. Another uncertainty is the role of Pakistan, which provides safe haven to Taliban leaders and has undermined past efforts at reconciliation talks that it sees as jeopardizing its interests.
But American officials have said for years that the war in Afghanistan would ultimately require a political solution. The “surge” of additional troops at the end of 2009 has largely been aimed at getting the Taliban to the negotiating table.
On Tuesday, the White House affirmed the necessity of a negotiated solution. Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for the White House’s National Security Council, said in an e-mail that such “Afghan-led peace initiatives” were central to the American strategy of “denying Al Qaeda a safe haven, reversing the Taliban’s momentum, and strengthening the capacity of Afghanistan’s security forces and government.”
Western officials stressed that a peace process was closer to the beginning than the end.
“Publicly, I don’t think we could have asked for a stronger endorsement of the peace process from the other side,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul, who asked not to be identified, in keeping with diplomatic protocol. “But this isn’t even close to having a done deal. That’s going to take years, if it even happens.”
There was no immediate comment from President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, who has been cool to the idea of NATO’s conducting its own talks with the Taliban, fearing a deal that would undermine his control. When word that Qatar had agreed to host a Taliban office first surfaced in December, the Karzai government rejected the notion and recalled its ambassador from the Persian Gulf state.
Afghan officials complained at the time that they had not been formally notified by the Qataris, and that they preferred that any such mission be in Saudi Arabia or Turkey. But a week ago, Mr. Karzai grudgingly agreed to Qatar as the site. Still, Mr. Karzai is likely to remain insistent that any talks be limited to reducing tensions rather than achieving a comprehensive solution to the war.
Even so, Afghanistan’s High Peace Council, appointed by Mr. Karzai, welcomed the Taliban move. Arsala Rahmani, a top negotiator on the council, called it “a gesture of good faith,” Reuters reported.
Three suicide bombings on Tuesday in the southern city of Kandahar provided a bloody reminder of the violence that continues to plague Afghanistan. Thirteen people, including a child and four police officers, were killed, Faisal Ahmad, a spokesman for the government of Kandahar Province, told The Associated Press.
Since the debacle with the impostor, the United States and its allies have focused on establishing a trustworthy channel for pursuing a peace deal with the Taliban. The push began early last year when American and German negotiators managed to make contact with a man they believed to be a legitimate representative of Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s reclusive leader.
The Western diplomat said Tuesday that the Taliban announcement was a product of 10 months of on-again, off-again talks with the man, Tayeb Agha, a former secretary to Mullah Omar. The talks were shrouded in secrecy in large part to protect Mr. Agha and other Taliban intermediaries.
The biggest concern was that Pakistan, where most of the Taliban’s leadership is believed to reside, would obstruct any talks in which it did not play a direct role.
Afghan and American officials have long feared that Pakistan aimed to use the peace process, which it says it supports, as a way to solidify a dominant position in Afghanistan. The Qatar office is seen as a way of lessening Pakistani influence over the talks.
Sharifullah Sahak contributed reporting from Kabul, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.
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Senior Afghan Lawmaker Slams US Secret Meetings with Taliban
January 4, 2012 Fars News Agency
TEHRAN (FNA)- First Vice-Speaker of the Afghan Senate Mohammad Alam Izadyar criticized the secret talks between the US and the Taliban, and stated that the so-called Afghan Peace Talks lack "transparency".
"Details of the Afghan peace talks should not be hidden from the people of the country," Izadyar told Afghanistan TV on Wednesday.
He underlined the significant role of Pakistan in the establishment of peace in Afghanistan, and asked for Islamabad's honest cooperation in the peace talks.
Izadyar, however, welcomed the efforts being made for the establishment of peace in his war-torn country.
Taliban announced on Tuesday that they had struck a deal to open a political office in Qatar that could allow for direct negotiations.
In a statement, Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban, said that along with a preliminary deal to set up the office in Qatar, the group was asking that Taliban detainees held at the American prison in Guant?namo Bay, Cuba, be released.
Mujahid did not say when the Qatar office would be opened, or give specifics about the prisoners the Taliban wanted freed.
Meantime, Hezb-e-Islami Afghanistan under the leadership of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, sent a delegation to Kabul in a move to hold peace talks.
Afghan High Peace Council welcomed the move by Hezb-e-Islami Afghanistan for sending the delegation to take part in peace talks with the Afghanistan government.
Some analysts are skeptical of the prospects for meaningful peace negotiations with the Taliban.
The developments came as Pakistani media revealed last week that the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has removed the name of Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar from the list of "most wanted terrorists."
The report came following Washington's secret meetings with the Taliban after one decade of war. US officials have held several meetings with representatives of the Afghan Taliban leader, headed by Tayyib Agha, in Germany and Qatar over the past months.
During the meetings, the US and Taliban negotiators reached a deal to transfer five Taliban militants, who are under custody in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, to Qatar. The removal of Mullah Omar's name from the terror list comes after the prisoner deal.
The founder of the Taliban, Mullah Omar, has been in hiding since the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan.
Washington removed Mullah Omar's name despite its continued allegations that the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden were behind the September, 11 attacks in the US. Mullah Omar was Bin Laden's staunchest ally and most intimate friend.
The United States invaded Afghanistan 10 years ago under the pretext of eradicating the Taliban, but its failure has forced Washington to turn to negotiation with militants.
The US government has planned new round of talks with the Taliban in early 2012.
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From the caves of Tora Bora to an office in Qatar: is the Taliban going mainstream?
The Independent By Jerome Taylor Wednesday 04 January 2012
The Afghan Taliban announced yesterday that it had reached a landmark deal to open a political office in Qatar in what could be its first concrete step to sue for peace after a decade of insurgency warfare.
A Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, released a statement stating that a “preliminary deal” had been reached for “negotiations with the international community”. The statement added that it would depend on key commanders being released from US military custody at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
The idea of opening up an office has long been sought by American officials who are desperate to find a political exit strategy for Afghanistan after 10 years of bitter warfare. Secret talks between the Americans, intermediaries and the Taliban have been held for months, but with limited success. Until now, Taliban commanders had been reluctant to ever admit publicly that they might be willing to sit down to peace talks.
Opening up a legitimate political office would allow Taliban commanders to negotiate with America and international diplomats without fear of assassination or arrest. Western officials have also been keen to promote Qatar as a suitable venue because it would take the talks outside the influence of the ISI – Pakistan’s powerful spy agency which has long been suspected of harbouring and nurturing the Taliban’s insurgency.
According to a report in The Hindu newspaper, the influential Qatar-based Egyptian cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi has played a key role in the talks aimed at setting up an office.
Western officials believe prisoner exchanges and ceasefire zones will be an essential part of building up confidence between the two sides. However Washington is determined that the Taliban must abandon any ideological or practical allegiance to Al-Qa’ida.
In return the Taliban will likely seek a significant political role within the southern Pashtun regions of Afghanistan where its insurgency blossomed, as well as the release of its leaders.
Key Taliban officials currently held in Guantanamo include Muhammad Fazl, the Taliban’s former deputy defence minister, Muhammad Nabi, a key financier, and two former provincial governors Khairullah Khairkhwa of Herat and Noorullah Nori of Balkh. The Taliban, meanwhile, is still holding Bowe Bergdahl, a 25-year-old U.S. Army sergeant from Hailey, Idaho, who was taken prisoner in June 2009.
Attempts to negotiate with the Taliban have repeatedly hit stumbling blocks. In 2010 British and American intelligence officials were duped by a market stall holder from Quetta who made them believe he was a senior Taliban commander. He then disappeared after pocketing large sums of cash. Former Afghan president Burhannuddin Rabani, who was tasked with negotiating with the Taliban, was killed by a suicide bomber last year whilst Afghan president Hamid Karzai ordered his ambassador to Qatar to be withdrawn late last year when it emerged attempted talks with the Taliban had been taking place. He has since relented under US pressure and signed up to the plan.
It is not yet clear whether hardline Taliban commanders, including its spiritual chief Mullah Omar, would countenance any negotiations with Nato or the Afghan government in Kabul.
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Hezb-e-Islami Welcomes Afghan Peace Efforts
TOLOnews.com Wednesday, 04 January 2012
The Hezb-e-Islami party has said it supports the Afghan peace efforts and wants to be part of the process, a spokesman for Afghan President said on Tuesday.
Emal Faizi, a spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai, said on Tuesday that Hezb-e-Islami party had welcomed the peace efforts, adding that a delegation of the party had arrived to Kabul to meet with the President.
The delegation was invited through the High Peace Council, Mr Fazi said.
Mr Faizi said that the Afghan government not only welcomes the Taliban to join the peace process, but also calls on all other anti-government armed groups to support the process.
"The Hezb-e-Islami delegation has arrived to discuss about peace talks, they have said they will support peace efforts and want to be part of the process," Emal Faizi said.
Head of the Hezb-e-Islami delegation, Ghairat Bahir, told TOLOnews on the phone that the delegation was invited by the Afghan government, met with the Afghan President and expressed support to the peace process.
"We have been invited by the Afghan government and our talks are not related to the talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban," Mr Bahir said.
Ghairat Bahir and Qutbuddin Helal who are among the high ranking Hezb-e-Islami members in the delegation are expected to hold talks with other government officials as well as Afghan political leaders.
Hezb-e-Islami supports the peace talks at a time that the Taliban have also shown willingness to hold talks with the Afghan government and the United States.
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Mass Grave Found In Afghan Army Compound
January 4, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Afghan officials say they have found a mass grave containing at least 10 human skulls in northern Afghanistan.
The human remains were found on January 4 by construction workers digging to build a car park in an army compound in the Deh Dadi district of Balkh province.
Mohammad Nahim, a spokesman for the Afghan army in the north, said that "10 to 15 skeletons" were unearthed, after which construction work at the site was halted.
Nahim added that the army was allowing forensic and human rights groups to investigate the grave, which was once the site of a major battle during the country's civil war in the 1990s.
compiled from agency reports
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Number Of UN Staff Killed In Line Of Duty Doubled In 2011
January 4, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
UNITED NATIONS -- United Nations staff members were the primary target in several terror attacks during 2011, with more than twice as many personnel killed than in the previous year.
In a statement, the UN Staff Union said a total of 35 UN workers were killed last year, including 25 civilians, nine peacekeepers, and a military advisor.
Four security guards who worked for the UN were also killed.
In 2010, 15 UN workers lost their lives in the line of duty.
Staff Union President Barbara Tavora-Jainchill accused the UN of "not doing enough to protect its personnel," saying, "One life lost is one life too many."
Two of the three worst attacks of the year took place in Afghanistan.
On April 1, three staff members were killed in Mazar-e-Sharif when the regional UN compound was attacked. Four internationally contracted security guards were also killed.
On October 31, three Afghan employees of the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees were killed when suicide bombers and gunmen attacked a compound in Kandahar.
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Three explosions kill 11 in southern Afghanistan
By Ismail Sameem | Reuters – Tue, Jan 3, 2012
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Three separate explosions killed 11 people and wounded dozens of others in Afghanistan's southern Kandahar province on Tuesday, officials said, the latest in a series of attacks in the volatile region.
In the first attack, four children and a policeman were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up near a police checkpoint in Kandahar city, said Zalmay Ayoubi, a spokesman for the Kandahar governor.
"The bomber was on a motorbike and detonated his explosives before reaching his target," he told Reuters.
He said the bomber's target was the police checkpoint, but his bomb went off prematurely. Sixteen others, including six children and three policemen, were wounded.
Later on Tuesday two separate explosions killed six and wounded 19 in the same city, Ayoubi added.
"There was an explosion, and as soon as police and locals rushed to help the victims, another explosion happened, which killed two civilians and four police officers," he said.
The wounded included seven police officers. Both blasts took place in Chawk Madad, a market area in the city at 1500 GMT.
Ayoubi said the first explosion was a relatively small one. The last blast came from a three-wheel motorcycle and police are still investigating how it was activated.
So far nobody has claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Kandahar province is the Taliban's birthplace and a focus of recent efforts by a surge of U.S. troops to turn the tide against the insurgency in the decade-long war.
A suicide bomber killed the mayor of Kandahar in July last year, only two weeks after President Hamid Karzai's powerbroker half-brother was killed inside his house in that same city.
Despite the presence of tens of thousands of foreign troops in Afghanistan, U.N. and other aid agencies say violence is at its worst level since the Taliban government was toppled by U.S.-led coalition troops a decade ago.
Last year was one of the deadliest for Afghan civilians, with thousands lives lost in insurgency-related incidents and operations involving foreign and Afghan troops in Afghanistan.
(Writing by Agnieszka Flak and Mirwais Harooni; Editing by Matthew Jones)
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Afghanistan’s Future Relies on Education Reforms
January 3, 2012, 1:12 pm By Guest Writer The Chronicle of Higher Education Wednesday, January 4, 2012
The following is a guest post by Sharif Fayez, Afghanistan’s minister of higher education from 2002-2004 and the founder of the American University of Afghanistan.
In December 2001, Afghan leaders gathered in Bonn, Germany, to set the framework for establishing the post-Taliban Afghanistan. On December 5, a decade later, a second meeting was held in Bonn to ensure the gains made in the last 10 years will be maintained. While the focus was on strengthening security and governance–a daunting task at a time of great uncertainty in my country–as well as maintaining international support, I urge donor nations not to overlook an equally important element of building a stable, democratic Afghanistan: education.
Afghanistan’s development simply cannot be assured without offering its next generation of leaders greater access to education: young Afghans must study the skills necessary to continue rebuilding their country. Despite 10 years of foreign involvement, less than two-thirds of students have access to k-12 schooling. The students who do reach university are forced into ineffective, overcrowded public institutions or for-profit diploma mills. The youth are eager to learn–and Afghanistan can take two steps to help them succeed.
The first step is a reform in how education is administered. Education must be freed from the grip of powerful personalities whose top priority is demonstrating their loyalty to the ruling elite. With prestigious public university jobs often handed out as political patronage to those who want the title and not the work, students are left with incoherent academic policies and outdated curricula.
Closely linked to this is rearranging who benefits from universities’ achievements and innovations. The German and Russian trained faculty members of Kabul Polytechnic, for example, are some of the best engineers in central Asia. Yet any financial benefits from their innovations are sent to the central government, discouraging further research.
The same goes for Kabul University’s School of Agriculture: despite pioneering new farming methods in a country where 80 percent of the economy is based around agriculture, the university and its faculty receive no financial rewards. Indeed, some professors at these two flagship schools–who hold Ph.D.’s–work as assistants and drivers for foreign NGOs in the evenings to make ends meet.
The second area of focus after reform is money. With all of the attention on the military side of rebuilding Afghanistan, financial support for education has been passed over. Last year, just $30-million was allocated for the 21 public institutions that comprise higher education in Afghanistan and are tasked with educating 100,000 students. By contrast, the University of California at Berkeley alone has a budget of $1.8-billion a year to educate 30,000 students. The Afghan Constitution guarantees a free “balanced and universal education” for all citizens, meaning that these limited funds went mainly to covering student housing and food – not meeting the dire need for modern academic programs.
Perhaps predictably, the private sector has leapt in to the fill the void. More than 50 for profit institutes now operate in Kabul alone. While a handful have good intentions, the vast majority teach unregulated curricula. Some Pakistani-backed colleges teach radical agendas that actively promote violence against the Karzai government. Many others are simply cashing in on students, selling them diplomas without making them work. Almost none of these institutes are on a mission to produce graduates dedicated to rebuilding and contributing to their country, and most break down along tribal lines, enhancing rather than diminishing sectarian identities.
Without an emphasis on education, the enhanced governance and security that the Bonn Conference and international donors seeks will remain elusive. Educated Afghans who can critically assess issues are central to setting the laws and establishing the institutions that will propel Afghanistan forward.
More than 900 NATO service members and 1,600 Americans and have died alongside tens of thousands of Afghan soldiers and civilians in the interest of bringing democracy to Afghanistan. Without an educational system capable of producing competent leaders, these sacrifices will be for naught. Democracy needs education, and the world needs a democratic Afghanistan.
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The Rise and Fall of Al-Qaeda: Debunking the Terrorism Narrative
The Huffington Post By Fawaz Gerges Professor of International Relations, London School of Economics 03/01/2012
The popular uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Bahrain have not only shaken the foundation of the authoritarian order in the Middle East, but they have also hammered a deadly nail in the coffin of a terrorism narrative which has painted Al-Qaeda as the West's greatest threat. At least, they should have.
Yet despite Osama bin Laden's killing in May, the dwindling of his group to the palest shadow of its former self and the protest of millions across the Arab world for whom the group never represented, Al-Qaeda holds a grasp on the Western imagination. Few Americans and Westerners realize the degree to which their fear of terrorism is misplaced, making closure over to the costly War on Terror difficult, if not impossible. Shrouded in myth and inflated by a self-sustaining industry of so-called terrorism "experts" and a well-funded national security industrial complex whose numbers swelled to nearly one million, the power of Al-Qaeda can only be eradicated when the fantasies around the group are laid to rest.
Myth 1: Al-Qaeda has been operational for more than two decades Contrary to the conventional terrorism narrative, Al-Qaeda has not been a functional organization with the goal of targeting the West for the past 20 years. By the time the American forces expelled bin Laden and his associates from their base in Afghanistan at the end of 2001, Al-Qaeda, as we know it today, was only five years old.
At the end of the Afghan war in 1989, none of the leading figures -- Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, Ayman al-Zawahiri, nor bin Laden -- called for targeting the United States or the West. Even after the catalyst for change in bin Laden's thinking -- the American military intervention in the Gulf in 1990 and its permanent stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia -- the group did not translate this hostility into concrete action. Rather, it was during bin Laden's time in Sudan in the mid-1990s where he combined business practices with ideological indoctrination.
Myth 2: Al-Qaeda has lots of boots on the ground At its height of its power in the late 1990s, Al-Qaeda had between 1,000 and 3,000 members. Transnational jihadism of the Al-Qaeda variety has, in fact, never had a large constituency, nor a solid base of popular support: Al-Qaeda has never been a viable social movement, but truly a fringe group without mass appeal among Muslim opinion. Contrary to received wisdom, September 11 did not turn out to be Al-Qaeda's baptism by fire, a force multiplier, a game changer. There was no river of young recruits to rise up and join the fight against the head of kufr (impiety) -- the U.S. -- as had happened with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the late 1970s. Western intelligence officials believe that there are fewer than 200 surviving members of Al-Qaeda, based mainly in Pakistan and Afghanistan and mostly unskilled composed of cooks, drivers, bodyguards and food soldiers.
Myth Three: Al Qaeda has the same philosophy as other militant Islamist organizations While distinctions are rarely made between domestic jihadis and transnational Al-Qaeda types, or between Al-Qaeda and politically based Islamists, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas or Hizbullah, Al-Qaeda, with deep historical roots in Muslim societies, is an ideological orphan within the military Islamist family, an ambitious venture founded and led by a small vanguard. Grouping all these organizations together glosses over a history of ideological struggles within militant Islamist groups and even among Al Qaeda's inner sanctum of leaders over the concept of transnational jihad. From its origins in the late 1950s until the mid-1990s, a period of almost forty years, the militant Islamist movement known as "jihadism" was inward-looking, obsessed with replacing "renegade" secular Muslim rulers with Qur'anic-based states or states governed by the sharia (Islamic law). In the 1990s bin Laden and Zawahiri twisted these ideolo
gies to suit their purposes of fighting the 'far enemy' -- the U.S. and its close Western allies -- which they believed would attract enough followers to build an army and momentum enough for their nearer battles.
Myth Four: While Al-Qaeda Central has suffered a defeat with the loss of bin Laden, local 'branches' of Al-Qaeda in Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia and Indonesia will continue to try to attack the U.S. and the West
The material links and connections between local branches and Al-Qaeda Central are tenuous at best: far from being an institutionally coherent social movement, Al-Qaeda is a loose collection of small groups and factions that tend to be guided by charismatic individuals and are more local than transnational in outlook. Most victims are therefore Muslim civilians. Further, these branches tend to be as much a liability for the long term strategic interests of Al-Qaeda Central as they are assets. Abu Musab Zarqawi, the emir of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, proved to be Al-Qaeda Central's worst enemy. He refused to take orders from bin Laden or Zawahiri and, in fact, acted against their wishes, according to his own desires. Like Zarqawi, local groups or franchises -- like Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) or Al-Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb -- which the terrorism narrative often paints as being closely aligned and commanded by Al-Qaeda Central in fact have proven repeatedly that they run by their own local and contextua
lized agendas, not those set among the inner sanctum of Al-Qaeda Central.
Myth Five: The War on Terror has made Americans safer and has decreased the likelihood of attacks on the country
There is a clear causal link between incidences of homegrown terrorism in the West and the post-9/11 wars fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, and more recently in Pakistan and Yemen. Far from weeding out individual terrorists drone by drone to put an end to Al-Qaeda and its violence, the American offensive since 9/11 has fed into the Al-Qaeda narrative which paints the West as a Judeo-Christian crusader and, ironically, inspired a new generation of homegrown radicals. Despite their apparent tactical success, U.S. counterterrorism measures like drone attacks further fuel anti-American sentiments and calls for vengeance. Yet neither the U.S. national security apparatus nor terrorism experts acknowledge a link between the new phenomenon of bottom-up extremism and the U.S. War on Terror, particularly in Afghanistan-Pakistan.
Further, despite the phenomenal expansion of the intelligence machine as part of the War on Terror, this machine has failed to detect the few serious attacks and plots against the U.S. homeland, such as the Fort Hood, Texas, shooting that left thirteen dead, the so-called underwear bomber plot, or the 2009 Christmas Day bomb attempt, which was thwarted not by one of the almost one million individuals with top-secret clearances employed to find lone terrorists but by an alert airline passenger who saw smoke coming from a seatmate. In the Times Square bombing, an alert vendor called the police after he saw smoke coming out of a parked SUV. Even when the U.S. pays more than $5 billion for 1 million employees with security clearances to hunt members of Al-Qaeda, absolutely security cannot exist. The security of the West is organically linked to that of the rest of the world. And U.S. leaders must think twice before pursuing counterterrorism measures which alienate Muslim public opinion and breed homegrown terrori
sts. *** The war with Al-Qaeda is over. Western leaders must level with their citizens: Al-Qaeda poses only a security irritant, not a serious threat. Terrorism cannot be eradicated with drone attacks or even massive military interventions, all of which are, in any case, costly. Rather than battling against a mythic foe, the U.S. and Western powers should expedite the withdrawal of soldiers from Muslim territories where their presence is a painful reminder of the European colonial legacy of domination and subjugation.
Further, the U.S. and others offer assistance in rebuilding Yemen and Pakistan's institutions and empowering them to address those serious localized threats, yet resist the temptation of turning the struggle into a war between Al-Qaeda and the West. Taking up the anti-Western mantle is the only option for the survival of localized Al-Qaeda groups, and it behooves the United States and its allies not to give them a chance.
Tyranny, dismal social conditions, authoritarian political systems, and the absence of hope provide the fuel that powers radical, absolutist ideologies in the Muslim world. It is not enough to focus on the violent ideology of Al-Qaeda without devoting sufficient attention to the social conditions that give rise to it. If the Arab awakenings of the past year manage to fill the gap of legitimate political authority, they will annihilate the last dregs of Al-Qaeda and like-minded local branches. Only then will Al-Qaeda, like Osama bin Laden, not only die, but, finally, be allowed to die.
Fawaz A. Gerges is a Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics. His most recent book is The Rise and Fall of Al-Qaeda (Oxford University Press, 2011). I want to thank my research assistant, Ms. Dania Akkad, for editing the article.
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US army's new Afghan nightmare – how to ship $30bn of kit
Flying home colossal MRAPs that save Nato troops from Taliban IEDs is part of $30bn logistical nightmare
Guardian.co.uk By Jon Boone Tuesday 3 January 2012
Kabul - The US army has begun the massive task of withdrawing $30bn (£19bn) worth of military equipment from Afghanistan three years before most Nato troops leave, with logisticians warning of complications from the lack of decent roads and the nightmarish geography of a landlocked country surrounded by states that are either fickle American allies or outright enemies.
Planners say the complex and costly exercise must start now because of the quantity of equipment involved. Some of the tens of thousands of vehicles sent to the country have already started their journey back to American bases in the US and Germany.
"We have had 10 years of bringing things in, with none of it leaving," said a senior official based in Kabul with the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), the US-led Nato operation in Afghanistan.
Nato's supplies are already being hampered by Pakistan's decision in November to ban coalition convoys from crossing into Afghanistan after US warplanes mistakenly attacked a border post, killing scores of Pakistani soldiers.
Attempting to extract all equipment by air would be prohibitively expensive, although the costs can be reduced by flying kit to friendly ports in the region. Another option is to move through the north of Afghanistan.
Russia and its allies in the central Asian republics have been happy to help the Americans get into Afghanistan in the last decade to suppress Islamic militants they regard as a common threat. But the countries have not yet agreed to help the Americans leave and US diplomats are engaged in intensive negotiations to strike a deal.
The Isaf official said some of the central Asian states needed reassuring that a wave of drugs and other illicit goods would not accompany the removal of military kit, something they recall from the drawdown of Soviet troops before February 1989 when the last Russian troops quit the country.
It is all in stark contrast to the winding down of the US war in Iraq, a country blessed with a motorway network and a port in neighbouring Kuwait that was happy to be used as a US staging post.
The US estimates it has "tens of thousands" of vehicles in Afghanistan, and at least twice as many sea containers holding anything from weapons systems to communications gear.
This includes the scores of surveillance blimps that in recent years have become a common sight, flying with state of the art cameras high above military outposts. With them will go the specialised lorries that heave giant pressurised helium canisters for each balloon.
The greatest challenge will be the fleet of towering Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles (MRAPs), that were designed and built from scratch as the number of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan by homemade insurgent bombs soared.
They are taller than many of the single-storey dwellings in rural Afghanistan and prone to rolling over. Weighing in at more than 10 tonnes the colossal vehicles can collapse bridges and crude rural tracks.
But their armour and V-shaped hulls designed to deflect bomb blasts mean soldiers are far more likely to clamber out alive if hit by a bomb than the classic four-man Humvee. Only a handful of the bulky MRAPs can squeeze aboard the military's biggest cargo jets. But planners are determined to get them back.
To get the MRAPs built, the former US defence secretary, Robert Gates, had to fight bureaucratic battles with Pentagon officials who did not want to compromise other prized programmes by buying vehicles for use in guerrilla warfare that cost about $500,000 each.
"We aren't very good at predicting future wars," the official said. "[But] I'm sure we will use them for something and even if we don't these are the next generation of vehicles that we would have to buy anyway."
If all goes to plan, vast quantities of kit, will eventually make its way home.
With the US government set to cut military spending, the top brass is anxious to keep hold of equipment – such as the MRAPs that had not even been imagined when the US went to war in Afghanistan in late 2001 – that is far better than troops have back home.
"Everything that we have over here in almost every instance is the absolute top of the line," the Isaf official said. "It is not replicated back in the States or just about anywhere."
Reversing the military build-up in Afghanistan will also involve ripping down bases across the country, many established in the last couple of years during the two troop surges ordered by Barack Obama.
The US does not want to leave an archipelago of ghost bases scattered across the country.
Those that cannot be occupied by Afghan forces are at risk of being taken over by insurgents and must therefore be "turned back into prairie land", the official said.
"We will have to knock down the fortifications and clean up any environmental problems, and we are prepared to do that."
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Afghanistan Steps Up Efforts to Recover Bank’s Losses
By GRAHAM BOWLEY The New York Times January 3, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - The Afghan Central Bank said Tuesday that the government was stepping up efforts to recoup public money lost more than a year ago in the collapse of Kabul Bank, the nation’s largest private financial institution.
The development may hearten the Afghan government’s international backers, like the United States, by showing that the government is trying in good faith to recover money from those accused of bilking Kabul Bank of some $900 million.
A delegation of the government’s Financial Disputes Resolution Commission is visiting Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, where many favored borrowers bought real estate with cheap loans from the bank. The delegation is to hire a representative company there to oversee the sale of assets repossessed from borrowers, the central bank said.
In addition, Pamir Airways, an airline that received millions of dollars in loans from Kabul Bank, which foundered in the fall of 2010, would be reorganized and sold off, the central bank said.
The central bank said its governor, Noorullah Delawari, reported on the efforts to recoup the lost money in a visit to the United States last month, when he met with officials from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, as well as Daniel Feldman, the State Department’s deputy special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The State Department confirmed that the meeting with Mr. Feldman had taken place, but it offered no details and declined to comment on whether the Afghan government’s attempts to recoup money from politically connected figures in the country were sufficient.
In October, the monetary fund said it was renewing its credit program with Afghanistan, bringing some much-needed relief and stability to the nation’s shaky financial system. It had suspended the program in 2010, in large part because of the fraud at Kabul Bank and a general lack of oversight of the banking system. Under the deal to renew the program, the government must show to the monetary fund’s satisfaction that it is working hard to recover the losses.
Said Ishaq Allawi, an adviser to Mr. Delawari, confirmed that the delegation had visited Dubai, but he gave no details about the assets to be sold there or how much the government expected to recoup. Nor was it clear how much could be realized from selling Pamir’s small fleet of aging airplanes.
Though some of the money lost in the bank’s collapse has been recovered, the government will still probably have to cover hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. The bank’s receivers and the Finance Ministry have said that sales of seized assets might recoup nearly half the total.
Kabul Bank offered loans to its shareholders, allowing them to borrow much more than Afghanistan’s banking laws allowed and charging very low rates. It made risky loans on property in Dubai that turned sour when the market there collapsed, and it lent a brother of the Afghan president $6 million for a town house there.
The bank’s chairman at the time, Sherkhan Farnood, used bank money to buy property in his wife’s name and in his own, offered shares in the bank to politically connected figures, and approved large loans to relatives and friends of bank executives with little or no assurance of repayment.
In its investigations into the collapse, the central bank found that Kabul Bank’s management maintained two sets of books — a false set in Kabul and a genuine set in Dubai, at the Shaheen Currency Exchange, which was run by Mr. Farnood. Beyond the central bank’s announcement, it was not clear what progress the Afghan government was making in settling the problems relating to Kabul Bank.
Mr. Farnood and the bank’s former chief executive, Khalilullah Frozi, were detained and placed under investigation by the attorney general’s office, but they have not been tried.
After the government stepped in to guarantee Kabul Bank’s debts, the bank was overhauled; it has been divided into a “good” bank, with the deposits, performing loans and other viable assets of Kabul Bank, and a “bad bank” that holds the hundreds of millions of dollars in bad loans.
Matthew Rosenberg contributed reporting.
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Exclusive Excerpt: The Operators
McChrystal, Petraeus and the inside story of America's war in Afghanistan
Rolling Stone By Michael Hastings January 3, 2012
In April 2010, Rolling Stone contributing editor Michael Hastings spent a month with Gen. Stanley McChrystal in Europe and Afghanistan, reporting on a profile of the supreme commander of all NATO forces in what had become America’s longest-running war. To Hastings’ astonishment, McChrystal and staff had plenty to say about the White House and its handling of the war – none of it complimentary, much of it contemptuous, and almost all of it on the record. Hastings reported their unvarnished comments in "The Runaway General," an explosive and award-winning Rolling Stone article that unleashed a global media storm and led President Obama to order McChrystal back to Washington, where he fired the general on the spot.
Now, in a new book, The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America's War in Afghanistan, Hastings recounts the behind-the-scenes tale of the McChyrstal affair, set against the larger backdrop of America’s doomed war. Frank Rich calls the book “an impressive feat of journalism by a Washington outsider who seemed to know more about what was going on in Washington than most insiders did.”
In this exclusive excerpt, Hastings, two days into his European embed with McChrystal, gets a brief taste of the kind of reckless candor that will ultimately do the general in. He also reveals, for the first time, which of McChrystal’s aides made the notorious "Bite Me" comment about Vice President Joe Biden.
Chapter 9. "Bite Me" April 16, 2010, Paris
The next morning, Duncan [Boothby, McChrystal's top civilian press advisor] invited me to sit in on a briefing as McChrystal prepared for a speech he was scheduled to give at the École Militaire, a French military academy. I was trying to get as much reporting done as possible. I planned to leave France on Sunday to head back to Washington, where I had a number of other interviews already scheduled.
In the hotel suite, I picked a spot across from McChrystal to lean against the wall, doing what is called fly-on-the-wall reporting. It is a technique originally pioneered and made popular by Theodore White, an American journalists who wrote the 1960 best seller, The Making of the President. In the book, White had traveled and re-created scenes from President John F. Kennedy's 1960 campaign – it put the reader, as it were, inside the room, like a fly on the wall. A bug.
Usually when reporting on powerful public figures, the press advisor and I would have had a conversation that established what journalists call "ground rules," placing restrictions on what can and cannot be reported. But, as I'd already seen, McChrystal and his team followed their own freewheeling playbook. When I arrived in Paris, Duncan repeatedly dismissed the idea of ground rules, telling me it wasn’t the way the team did things. McChrystal would also tell me he wasn’t "going to tell me how to write my story." In fact, McChrystal and his staff requested to go off the record only twice during my entire time with them – requests that I honored when it came time to write my story and that I continue to honor to this day. This was great for me, an incredible opportunity for a journalist, as it gave me the freedom to report what I saw and heard.
The staff gathered in room 314. The wives were out seeing the sights – they were supposed to go check out the palace at Versailles.
"There will be no simultaneous translation of the speech," Duncan said.
"Take care of talking in Coalition English," a French general, also in the room, mentioned, referring to the acronym-laden military-speak.
Casey Welch [a McChrystal staffer] handed McChrystal a set of index cards with his speech typed on them.
"Let’s bring it up to 32 font. I’ll need my glasses for this."
Casey started to print out a new set of speech cards on the portable laser printer.
"We’ve made many mistakes in the past eight years," McChrystal said, trying out an opening line.
He went through the talking points: From 1919 to 1929, the Afghan king tried to modernize the country and failed after his wife was photographed in Europe in a sleeveless dress. The more conservative elements of Afghan society pushed back. ("Do we know if that photo was taken in Paris? Would be good to add that detail if so.") The life expectancy of an Afghan is forty-four years. The country has been at war for thirty years. Most Afghans don’t even remember a time before war. Even well-intentioned efforts have met with resistance in Afghanistan. The Soviets "did a lot of things right," McChrystal said, but they also killed a million Afghans and lost. The traditional tribal order had been destroyed. Afghanistan, he said, is so confusing "that even Afghans don’t understand it."
McChrystal flipped through the remaining cards.
"Okay. New COIN effort, minimize civilian casualties. Then I’ll talk about how it’s going," he said. "We’re at, what, twenty to twenty-five minutes? Is that too long?"
"We don’t want to cut the history,” said Jake, his longtime friend and top civilian advisor. "That lays the groundwork for the complexity argument." The complexity argument was a way for McChrystal to explain that the clusterfuck called Afghanistan defied satisfying analysis. Framing the argument by its unfathomable complexity offered McChrystal protection from those in the audience who wanted to judge whether his plan was failing or succeeding. It was a way to talk about Afghanistan like it was the Bermuda Triangle of geopolitics, an inexplicable spot on Earth where countries simply vanished.
"Casey, cut all of it until 'This is what makes this hard.’ I’ll start there."
Casey, working on the Toughbook, put the changes into the speech. He started to print out new cards with the correct-size font.
McChrystal didn’t want to screw up the talk. Six months earlier, during a speech in London, he’d made public comments that were critical of Vice President Joe Biden. Biden hadn’t wanted to put more ground troops into the country, preferring to draw down to a much smaller number of U.S. forces who would focus exclusively on a counterterrorism mission. In shorthand, the strategy was called CT Plus, an alternative to the general’s counter-insurgency plan. McChrystal had called the strategy Biden was promoting "shortsighted" and had said that it would lead to "Chaosistan." The comments earned him his first public smackdown from the White House. It was also the first reported instance of the mutual distrust between McChrystal and the White House that would persist throughout the next year.
To prepare for the question-and-answer session, McChrystal’s staff started to throw out the possible questions he might be asked.
"I never know what’s going to pop out until I’m up there, that’s the problem," McChrystal said, flipping through the printouts.
"Neither do we, chief," said Jake [McFerren, a retired Army colonel and longtime McChrystal friend and confidant].
"The French might ask if you’re here for more troops, and how the French are doing," said Duncan.
"Hey, that’s too easy. I was just down in Kandahar and I saw the colonel from Task Force Lafayette – didn’t expect to see him there. I was like, 'Hello, Pierre,'" McChrystal said, grinning.
"If you’re asked about women’s rights," Duncan said.
"Women don’t have rights," McChrystal answered. The joke fell flat.
"It’s true, though," said Jake. "We shouldn’t be in there pushing our culture. It’s just going to anger the fundamentally conservative culture, like we say –”
McChrystal interrupted before Jake could go on.
"What was the Biden question we got yesterday?" McChrystal asked.
He couldn’t resist opening up the room for a few jokes at the vice president’s expense.
"Are you asking about Vice President Biden?" McChrystal said with a laugh. "Who’s that?"
"Biden?" Jake said. "Did you say: Bite Me??"
Everyone started laughing. Jake finished off the back-and-forth with another jab at the vice president.
"Are you talking about the guy who swears on television?" Jake said.
After the meeting, I waited outside the hotel for Duncan. I noticed an Arab guy, around five-feet-five, walking by in shorts and sneakers. I continued to smoke my cigarette. Duncan and I walked to the Métro to catch a train to the École Militaire. At the top of the Métro steps, I saw the same Arab guy again.
"Hey, man, do people really spy on you guys?"
"Yes, they try," Duncan said.
"I think I just saw a guy I’d seen earlier walking by the hotel."
"He’s not doing a very good job then, is he?"
Duncan and I arrived at the military academy, a regally styled, sand-colored complex built by Louis XV. I took a seat at the back of the auditorium. The audience was made up of French academics, military students, and active-duty military officers. I settled in to listen to the speech McChrystal had just rehearsed.
"Afghanistan is hard," he began.
###
Two days later, Hastings finds himself stranded in Paris with McChrystal and his staff, courtesy of a volcanic eruption in Iceland that grounded more than 100,000 flights. Temporarily unable to return to the U.S., Hastings accepts an offer to join McChrystal and his team in Berlin, the next stop on their European tour. Over dinner the night before they leave, the general talks candidly about Gen. David Petraeus, Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, and how he had consciously manipulated the media as the Pentagon’s spokesman during the Iraq War. "I couldn't quite believe how the story was playing out," Hastings writes. "I was getting the perfect material for a profile, beyond my expectations."
Chapter 15. Petraeus Can't Do Afghanistan, and We Aren't Going to Get Bin Laden April 18, 2010, Paris
Ocean 11 wasn’t allowed to leave France. Neither was Ocean 12.
Those were the call signs for the planes the Air Force supplied McChrys¬tal. Ocean 11—named after the George Clooney heist movie with a star-studded cast about a high-speed team of supercool thieves who pull off the biggest caper in Las Vegas history—was a Learjet. Ocean 12 was the plane for the staff.
McChrystal’s plan to fly to Berlin on Monday was in jeopardy.
Dave worked the contingencies. Helicopters? It would be a twelve-hour ride. They’d have to stop and refuel multiple times. It sounded bru¬tal. Did they want to put their wives on a twelve-hour Blackhawk ride? Nope, bad idea. Commercial flights? Not moving yet. Train? That would take too long and they wouldn’t have communication capabilities.
Check back again with Ocean 11: Come on, Air Force, have some balls, take off.
McChrystal wasn’t the only one stranded. The German defense minister was trapped in Uzbekistan. The German chancellor was stuck in Italy. McChrystal might have to cancel the entire trip to Berlin.
I was stuck, too. Even if McChrystal could get Ocean 11 to take off, I wouldn’t be able to get on the military flight. I could spend another night in Paris, but then I’d risk getting left behind if they finally got clear¬ance. I decided to gamble: Take a train to Berlin to get ahead of them.
I was at the Gare de l’Est at five thirty a.m. There was travel chaos across the continent. Riotous lines of stranded tourists at the Air France office stretched down the block. Rental car agencies ran out of stock. Taxi drivers were price-gouging, charging thousands of euros for cross-country trips. Trains were somewhat fucked as well, their websites overloaded as everyone scrambled to snag the few remaining tickets.
With no way to book a ticket online, I waited for three hours at the station. The only ticket available was an overnight train in coach. I bought it, checked out of my shitty hotel, then went back to the Westminster.
I spent the day hanging out in the Westminster lobby, doing inter¬views with other members of the staff. At around three p.m., McChrystal came downstairs. He took a seat across from me at The Duke’s Bar. He checked his BlackBerry. "Oh, not another e-mail from Holbrooke,” he said.
“Did you read it?” Charlie asked.
“I don’t even want to open it,” McChrystal said.
“Make sure you don’t get any of that on your leg,” Charlie said, pretend¬ing to wipe his pants as if the mail had popped open and splattered him.
I jotted down notes—Holbrooke, the legendary statesman. Another civilian they couldn’t stand.
The team was going out to grab an early dinner at a Mexican restau¬rant, about a ten-minute walk from the hotel. They asked me if I wanted to go with them. I said okay. I could only stay for an hour or so. My train was leaving that evening. The entire crew fell out of the hotel, and we started to walk.
We went down the street and stopped in front of the Paris Opera House.
“Hey, we should get a picture of this,” McChrystal said.
“I’ll take it,” I said.
McChrystal, Flynn, Dave, Duncan, the other officers and staff posed with their wives. I took a few steps back, clicked lightly on the button to focus it, then snapped a photo of them. Just another group of tourists in Paris.
We started walking again, and Duncan told me that it would be a good time for another interview with McChrystal and Mike Flynn.
“Once we’re back in Kabul there won’t be much time,” he said.
We sat outside at the Mexican restaurant. The waiter pushed two plas¬tic tables together, and the half-dozen members of Team McChrystal and their wives grabbed seats. I sat between McChrystal and Mike Flynn. Jake sat next to McChrystal, at the end of the first table.
I started to interview McChrystal. The rest of the table started talk¬ing about an incident on Saturday night: a naked man in a window at a restaurant.
“There was a guy with no clothes on, and everyone was looking up at him,” said General Flynn’s wife, Lori.
“He was really naked, leaning against the window,” Jake said, shaking his head.
The waiter came over to take our order.
“Start with Jake,” Lori said.
“Beer,” Jake said. “Grande.”
“Grande beer,” Annie said, laughing.
“You can’t have two until you have one,” Jake said.
Annie and Jackie ordered sauvignon blanc.
“I’ll take a large beer,” said Mike Flynn.
“That’s Mike’s French,” McChrystal said. “Large beer.”
"My favorite French teacher growing up said there are only three things you need to know in any language: Where’s the bathroom, thank you, and can I have a beer,” I said.
“Yeah, can’t survive without that,” McChrystal said, then looked at his wife. “Did you bring my jacket?”
“You don’t need a jacket,” Annie answered.
“Paris in the springtime,” McChrystal said.
The waiter came back to the table.
“Neun Bier,” Jake said, in German.
“He’s coming back to Kabul with us,” said Charlie Flynn, pointing to the waiter, imagining putting a dude who’ll serve beer on demand on the staff.
“Only if he gets this round right,” said Mike Flynn.
“He’s only got to get one right,” said Major General Bill Mayville, meaning McChrystal’s drink. “He’s got my vote.”
We started talking about the volcano.
“What happens if you have hotel reservations, and all that?” McChrys¬tal said.
“If it’s a natural disaster, and you don’t have travel insurance—”
“Vous êtes screwed,” said Jake. “That’s French.”
A few minutes later, McChrystal and I started talking again. Jake interrupted.
“Sorry about threatening to kill you,” Jake said.
It was the first time anyone in the group had acknowledged the blow¬out on Friday night.
“Yeah, geez, the guy is just trying to do his job,” McChrystal said.
“No worries. Like I said, it happens all the time, but yeah, you’re probably the highest rank to do so,” I said. I laughed, and they didn’t.
I wanted to ask McChrystal about the other incidents that his staff had told me about over the past few days. We started with his career and time at the Council on Foreign Relations and moved on to Karzai and the past year of the war.
I asked him about the memos Ambassador Karl Eikenberry had written, criticizing his strategy. They had been leaked to The New York Times, and published in full on its website. The ambassador had offered a brutal critique of McChrystal’s plan, dismissing President Hamid Kar¬zai as “not an adequate strategic partner” and casting doubt on whether the counterinsurgency plan would be “sufficient” to deal with Al-Qaeda. “We will become more deeply engaged here with no way to extricate ourselves,” Eikenberry warned, “short of allowing the country to descend again into lawlessness and chaos.”
“I like Karl, I’ve known him for years, but they’d never said anything like that to us before,” McChrystal said, adding that he felt “betrayed” by the leak. “Here’s one that covers his flank for the history books. Now if we fail, they can say, ‘I told you so.’ ” McChrystal speculated that it wasn’t even Eikenberry who wrote the memo, but two members of his staff.
I asked him about Petraeus. He said his relationship with Petraeus was “complex.” He’d replaced Dave three times in five years in jobs. “You know, I’ve been one step behind him.”
Petraeus had uncharacteristically kept a low profile over the past year. He didn’t seem to want to get publicly attached to the war in Afghani¬stan. He’d had his triumph in Iraq, and military officials speculated that he knew there was no way the Afghanistan war was going to turn out well. That it was a loser, and he was happy enough to let McChrystal be left holding the bag.
“He couldn’t command this,” McChrystal said. “Plus, he’s one and ‘oh.’ This one is very questionable.”
Petraeus had been “wonderfully supportive,” though, despite the competition between the two. Within military circles, there was a long-standing debate over who should get more credit for what was considered the success in Iraq—McChrystal running JSOC in the shadows, or Pe¬traeus for instituting the overall counterinsurgency strategy. After Obama took office, the White House had told Petraeus to stay out of the spot-light—they were worried about the general’s presidential ambitions and they were afraid he would overshadow the young president, McChrystal explained.
The White House told McChrystal, "'We don’t want a man on horse¬back.' I said I don’t even have a horse. They are very worried about Pe¬traeus. They certainly don’t have to be worried about me," McChrystal said. "But Petraeus, if he wanted to run, he’s had a lot of offers. He says he doesn’t want to, and I believe him."
“I think he seems like a smart enough guy that in 2012, as a journal¬ist, as someone who covered the campaign—” I started to say.
“Do you think he could win?” McChrystal asked me.
“Not in 2012,” I said. “I think in 2016 it would be a no-brainer. But I’ve seen it happen to these guys who get built up, built up, built up . . . If he steps into it in 2012, the narrative is ‘Oh, he shouldn’t have done that. Is that a dishonorable thing to do for an honorable general?’ And that is the narrative. That’s the first cover of Time.”
The narrative, I thought: General Betray-Us, a slur he’d been tagged with years earlier.
I brought up a recent profile of Petraeus in another magazine.
“I thought that, well—excuse my language—that it was a blow job,” I said.
“But the data backs it up,” McChrystal said.
“It’s hard to get at the truth,” I said.
“Hardcore,” Jake interjected. “You guys talking about porn?”
“Hell, I want to be part of that conversation,” McChrystal said.
We started talking about larger issues within the media, which I felt he was in a unique position to discuss. McChrystal was a spokesperson at the Pentagon during the invasion of Iraq in March of 2003, his first na¬tional exposure to the public.
“We co-opted the media on that one,” he said. “You could see it com¬ing. There were a lot of us who didn’t think Iraq was a good idea.”
Co-opted the media. I almost laughed. Even the military’s former Pen¬tagon spokesperson realized—at the time, no less—how massively they were manipulating the press. The ex–White House spokesperson, Scott McClellan, had said the same thing: The press had been “complicit en¬ablers” before the Iraq invasion, failing in their “watchdog role, focusing less on truth and accuracy and more on whether the campaign [to sell the war] was succeeding.”
I rattled off a few names of other journalists. I named the writer who’d just done the profile on him for The Atlantic, Robert Kaplan.
“Totally co-opted by the military,” he said.
I mentioned the journalist Tom Ricks, who’d written two bestselling accounts of the Iraq War.
“Screw Ricks,” McChrystal said. Ricks, he said, was the “kind of guy who’d stick a knife in your back.”
Duncan had also told me Ricks wasn’t to be trusted. One officer who was quoted in Ricks’s 2006 book, Fiasco, had told Ricks not to use his name, and had asked him to clear all the background quotes he would use from him. Ricks used the officer’s name and didn’t clear the quotes, hurting the officer’s career. (A charge Ricks strongly denies, calling the allegations “junk.”) Another officer had inexplicably gone from a hero in Ricks’s first Iraq book to a failure in his second, The Gamble—all from observations that Ricks had garnered from the same reporting trip.
Woodward?
“I’d never talk to Woodward,” McChrystal said. “He came over here with Jones—what was that, last summer? He seems to just be out for the next story.”
“Woodward,” Jake said with disgust. “Whose leg is Woodward hump¬ing now? Jones? So Jones can say he won the war?”
I wondered: Shit, if they didn’t like journalists Kaplan, Ricks, and Woodward, they probably weren’t going to be big fans of my work, either.
I apologized for taking up McChrystal’s time while he was in Paris. I turned to speak with Mike Flynn.
I asked him about a report he had authored in January. The report, which he published on a think tank’s website rather than go through the normal chain of command, had declared that your military intelligence was “clueless” about Afghanistan.
“If I would have written that report and been living in Washington, I probably would have been fired,” he said. “But I could do it because I was in Kabul.”
Living up to his scatterbrained reputation, Flynn accidentally left his e-mail address on the report. He received, he said, “thousands of e-mails” commenting on it.
“But that’s good, you know. You just want people out there hammer¬ing away, whether it’s good or bad, you just want to shock the system. It’s the same with you in the media—for your stories, you don’t care if people are hating it or loving it; it’s the shock to the system, it’s about getting people to fucking hammer away on it,” he said.
“Whatever the reporting is, think the opposite,” he segued, on advice he gives to intelligence gatherers. “Counterintuitive.”
“It’s interesting, the parallels between the professions,” I said. “Nor¬man Mailer said ‘journalists are like spies.’ We have it even easier in some ways, though, because there’s no bureaucracy—I mean, I want to go somewhere, I ask one person, he says okay, and then I’m on my own. My job is to share that collected information to the public, while the spy’s job is obviously different. I don’t need to get all the permission spies need to get to do shit.”
“I try to let my people out there,” Flynn said.
I asked him a question that had always perplexed me. As the highest-ranking intelligence officer in the Afghanistan and Pakistan theater, Flynn had access to the most sensitive and detailed intelligence reports; I didn’t want to miss an opportunity to get his take.
“Why haven’t we gotten Bin Laden?” I asked.
“I don’t think we’re going to get Bin Laden,” he told me. “I think we’ll get a call one day from the Paks: Bin Laden’s dead, we captured al-Zawahiri. But we need closure on that issue.” We’re not going to get Bin Laden? Of everything I had heard so far, this stunned me the most. One of the top intelligence officers in the mili¬tary telling me that we’re not going to get Bin Laden? Bin Laden was our whole raison d’être in Afghanistan. He brought us there, he’s what kept us there, and if it’s true that we’re not going to get him . . . What the fuck?
I didn’t want to miss my train. The conversation drifted back to public images and profiles. “Everyone has a dark side,” Flynn said, seemingly referring to McChrystal.
“Mike, don’t tell him that,” said Flynn’s wife, Lori, sitting across the table.
“Like Tiger Woods,” I said. “His whole image was built up and torn down overnight.”
“Exactly, like Tiger Woods.”
I put my notebook and tape recorder away. I finished my Diet Coke and said good-bye.
“See you guys in Berlin,” I said.
“See you there, Mike.”
I went back to the hotel, picked up my checked luggage, and headed to the train station.
Excerpted by permission from The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America's War in Afghanistan by Michael Hastings. Blue Rider Press (a member of Penguin USA). All rights reserved
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