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Afghanistan's poor face difficult decisions amid winter cold
Seasonal hardship is nothing new for Afghans, but a combination of factors is making this winter harder to bear as the number of displaced soars in Kabul.
By Laura King, Los Angeles Times January 9, 2012 Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan
In the gray light of each cold dawn, the parents of 10-month-old Shoaib hold their own breath as they listen for the rasp of his, waiting to see whether their coughing, feverish little boy has survived another night.
Afghan soldier kills NATO colleague: security sources
AFP via Yahoo! News - Jan 08 10:08am
An Afghan soldier shot dead a NATO colleague and was himself killed when a dispute ended in a shoot-out on Sunday, an Afghan security source and the NATO force said.
Afghan Government: Cease-Fire Before Taliban Talks
By RAHIM FAIEZ Associated Press January 9, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - Taliban insurgents must agree to a cease-fire before formal peace negotiations can begin in Qatar, a spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Monday
3 Afghan civilians killed, 1 wounded in suicide bombing
KHOST, Afghanistan, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- Three civilians were killed and another sustained injuries as a suicide bomber blew himself up in Khost city, the capital of Khost province 150 km southeast of capital city Kabul Sunday evening, police said.
8 insurgents killed, 13 arrested in Afghanistan
KABUL, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- Eight armed insurgents were killed and 13 arrested in a series of military operations in different parts of Afghanistan over the past 24 hours, the country's Interior Ministry said on Monday.
Karzai’s Ultimatum Complicates U.S. Exit Strategy
New York Times By MATTHEW ROSENBERG January 8, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - President Hamid Karzai’s denunciation last week of abuses at the main American prison in Afghanistan — and his abrupt demand that Americans cede control of the site within a month — surprised many here. The prison, at Bagram Air Base, is one of the few in the country where Afghan and Western rights advocates say that conditions are relatively humane.
Guantanamo imprisonment stokes Afghan hatred of US
By Mamoon Durrani | AFP
Ten years ago US troops took Haji Shahzada from his rural Afghan home in the early hours of the morning and sent him on a bizarre journey to prison in Cuba.
2 more Taliban weapons facilitators captured: ISAF
KABUL, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- Two more Afghan Taliban weapons facilitators were captured during an operation in country's eastern province of Nangarhar, the NATO-led forces said on Monday.
INTERVIEW-Electricity only reaches one in three Afghans
Reuters By Agnieszka Flak Jan 9, 2012
KABUL - Only one in three Afghans has access to electricity despite years of spending to improve supply, and the country is still far too dependent on imported power, the head of the country's state owned power utility told Reuters.
Iran begins military drills in East
BEIJING, Jan. 9 (Xinhuanet) -- A senior Iranian military commander says the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps has begun military drills in the eastern part of the country. The first phase started Saturday in the vicinity of Khaf city in Khorasan province, and the main phase of the maneuvers will start Monday.
Pakistan Recovers Soldiers’ Bodies in Taliban Exchange
VOA News January 9, 2012
Pakistani authorities have recovered the bodies of 10 soldiers in an exchange with the Taliban, following a clash with the militant group two weeks ago in the country's northwest.
China slams refocusing of US defense strategy on Asia, says it poses no threat
By Associated Press
BEIJING — China on Monday slammed the United States’ new Asian-focused defense strategy, saying its accusations of a lack of openness in Beijing’s military policy were “groundless and untrustworthy.”
Iran sentences US man to death for working for CIA, adds tension to spat over nuclear program
By Associated Press, Updated: Monday, January 9, 7:49 PM
TEHRAN, Iran — An Iranian court has convicted an American man of working for the CIA and sentenced him to death, state radio reported Monday, in a case adding to the accelerating tension between the United States and Iran.
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Afghanistan's poor face difficult decisions amid winter cold
Seasonal hardship is nothing new for Afghans, but a combination of factors is making this winter harder to bear as the number of displaced soars in Kabul.
By Laura King, Los Angeles Times January 9, 2012 Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan
In the gray light of each cold dawn, the parents of 10-month-old Shoaib hold their own breath as they listen for the rasp of his, waiting to see whether their coughing, feverish little boy has survived another night.
Winter's chill has settled over the Afghan capital, and with it, privation is sharpening, especially among the city's poor. Nighttime temperatures regularly fall into the teens, or even lower. The season's first snow is on the ground, the open sewage ditches are crusted over with ice, and in shantytowns such as the one where Shoaib's family lives, survival turns on a series of cruelly simple calculations.
"If I buy food, I can't afford to buy firewood. And if I buy firewood, I can't buy food," said Shoaib's father, Faida Mohammed, a 40-year-old laborer who lives with his family of 12 in a two-room lean-to alongside one of Kabul's busier traffic circles. "If we eat lunch, we won't have dinner. If we eat dinner, there's nothing for breakfast in the morning. All the time, you have to choose."
Seasonal hardship is nothing new for Afghans, but a combination of factors is making this winter harder than usual to bear. The number of refugees from other parts of the country, known as internally displaced people, has ballooned to an estimated half a million. Many end up in the capital after fleeing fighting elsewhere, and make their homes in slum encampments that authorities euphemistically call "settlements."
Parwan Du, where Shoaib's family lives, began as a few tents on an open lot, some using crumbling mud-brick walls as supports for flimsy shelters made of plastic sheeting and plywood. Now it is home to about 230 people, some of whom have been there for years.
With the city's population thought to have tripled to about 4 million during this decade of war, the few services on offer are stretched thin. Electricity falters; potholed streets grow more impassable as newly fallen snow turns to icy slush and then to clinging mud before the cycle begins again. Prices of staples such as cooking oil have lately jumped, driven up in part by a Pakistani border blockade, imposed after U.S. airstrikes accidentally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in November.
As people forage for fuel, the city's few trees are stealthily denuded of low-hanging boughs. On a recent day, few looked twice at a ragged man dragging a scavenged branch three times his height along a heavily trafficked thoroughfare, its dead leaves swirling under the wheels of passing cars. Smoke from wood and coal fires used by most households for heating veils the capital in an acrid brown haze.
In a city where much of public life takes place outdoors, the cold gives many passersby a hunched, pinched look, especially as the early dusk falls. Customers linger in corner bakeries, seeking the ovens' warmth. Outdoor vendors and beggars gather around smoky trash fires in metal barrels. Feral dogs forage for scraps, thrusting their snouts through a dusting of snow.
Afghanistan's Meteorological Authority says this winter has not produced historical lows, but is forecast to be colder than the preceding few. During Taliban times, the agency's records for most of the last century were destroyed, because the fundamentalist Islamic group regarded meteorology as a form of sorcery.
With the falling temperatures, winter aid has become more crucial. Late last month, the United Nations refugee agency handed out blankets, plastic sheeting, warm clothes and fuel to about 300 families in Deh Sabz, an impoverished district of Kabul. But the demand far outstrips the supply, aid workers say.
"The ones we are helping are the most desperate we can find," said Mohammad Nader Farhad, a spokesman for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. "There are many, many others who are also suffering."
Despite billions of dollars in international assistance over the last decade, urban poverty is becoming more entrenched across Afghanistan, aid workers say. The U.N. World Food Program, which normally expends most of its efforts in the countryside, recently launched a food voucher system in Kabul, giving nearly 19,000 poor families about $25 a month for basic supplies.
Rural families, with close extended clan ties and the ability to engage in subsistence farming, sometimes fare better than their cousins in the city.
"At home, in our village, we would all help each other if we were hungry or cold," said Faida Mohammed, the father in Parwan Du. "But here, if I go to my relatives or close friends to ask for a little firewood, they are very quiet, and then they say, 'Brother, I have nothing to give you.'"
The unending quest to keep warm sometimes yields deadly results. Officials from Kabul's overstretched fire department say 95% of the emergency calls involve house fires, often the result of faulty wiring or blankets hung as insulation too close to an open flame.
In many poor homes, the only source of heat is a brazier-type stove called a sandali, often used with a quilt strung on a wooden frame that traps its meager warmth, but also potentially deadly charcoal fumes. Even in more affluent households, the concrete-slab construction that is a legacy of the Soviet era carries a deep, persistent chill, and central heating is a rarity.
Col. Yar Mohammed, the deputy Kabul fire chief, said leaky canisters of natural gas, used for heating and cooking, pose a particular hazard. In one home, he recalled, a recent gas explosion that killed several family members was so powerful that panicky neighbors called police to report that the house next door had been hit by a rocket.
"With all the people who die in the war, it is terrible to see more die in preventable accidents like this," he said.
But most wintertime deaths involve a quieter slipping away. In Parwan Du, where sickness stalks nearly every flimsy shelter, Shoaib's parents were filled with dread when a neighbor's baby died in the night a week earlier. The children run about barefoot, sometimes napping in the weak winter sunlight if the previous night's cold made it too hard to sleep. The only food in the house was a plastic bag filled with stale bread, begged from a nearby restaurant.
"We hope that the government will help us someday," said the family's matriarch, Faida Mohammed's 60-year-old widowed mother, Zeliha. "But these days, we think our only help will come from God."
laura.king@latimes.com
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Afghan soldier kills NATO colleague: security sources
AFP via Yahoo! News - Jan 08 10:08am
An Afghan soldier shot dead a NATO colleague and was himself killed when a dispute ended in a shoot-out on Sunday, an Afghan security source and the NATO force said.
"At an ISAF base near the governor's office at Zabul (in the south), six ISAF soldiers and three ANA (Afghan National Army) soldiers had a dispute which ended in an exchange of fire," a source of NATO's Afghan security force told AFP.
"An ANA soldier killed a soldier from ISAF. He himself was killed when ISAF opened fire on him," the source added. Others soldiers were wounded in the shoot-out.
An ISAF statement said: "An International Security Assistance Force service member was killed today in southern Afghanistan, apparently by a member of the Afghan National Army."
This is the latest in a string of deadly clashes between ISAF and Afghan soldiers.
On December 24, an Afghan soldier was killed in a gunfight with US troops in southwest Farah province after he opened fire during an argument, Afghan army and police officials said.
Five days later, a man dressed in Afghan army fatigues shot dead two members of France's Foreign Legion serving with ISAF.
On this occasion, the Taliban claimed responsibility, saying the soldier had joined the army in order to carry out his attack in Kapisa province, in the volatile east of the country.
NATO-led ISAF soldiers are in the process of handing over security to local forces before the scheduled withdrawal of all international combat troops by the end of 2014.
Coalition troops often carry out joint operations with Afghan army and police against the Taliban-led insurgency.
For the first time in eight years, the number of Western soldiers killed in Afghanistan dropped in 2011.
It still remains high at 566 killed, but is down from the 2010 toll of 711.
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Afghan Government: Cease-Fire Before Taliban Talks
By RAHIM FAIEZ Associated Press January 9, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - Taliban insurgents must agree to a cease-fire before formal peace negotiations can begin in Qatar, a spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Monday
Presidential spokesman Emal Faizi insisted that the government will never give up territory to the insurgents.
Faizi laid out the government's terms days after the Taliban's announcement it would open a political office in Doha, Qatar, a key precursor to peace talks and the insurgents' first public move toward a political settlement to the 10-year-long war.
"When the talks start, there should be a cease-fire and the violence against the Afghan people must stop," Faizi said Monday on Tolo television news.
He dismissed as "baseless" speculation in Afghan media that the government might hand over predominantly Pashtun southern provinces to the Taliban in exchange for an end to the fighting.
"The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan will never accept such suggestion from any side," he said
Faizi also said it is too soon to send a delegation to Qatar to discuss future talks.
Afghan High Peace Council member Mohammad Ismail Qasimyar said earlier Monday that the panel has asked the government to send a delegation to Doha "as soon as possible," but Faizi said the government has no immediate plans for such a trip.
The U.S. has been seeking to start negotiations as international troops begin to leave the country, according to plans to withdraw most foreign security forces by the end of 2014. Washington says any negotiations must be Afghan-led.
Debate over peace talks came as violence continued.
An American soldier was killed when man in an Afghan army uniform opened fire at a base in the south of the country, an Afghan military spokesman said Monday. Another American soldier was wounded in the Sunday attack. Earlier reports did not identify the nationality of the soldiers.
Spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi said the gunman was also killed in the shootout. "Right now, an investigation is going on to determine whether he really was a soldier or someone using an army uniform. And if he was a soldier, what caused the shooting," Azimi said.
Similar attacks have raised fears of increased Taliban infiltration of the Afghan police and army as NATO speeds up the training of the security forces. In some cases the attackers were Afghan soldiers who turned on NATO troops. Others involved insurgents dressed in Afghan uniforms.
The shooting brought to 11 the number of NATO soldiers killed this month.
NATO is encouraging the rapidly expanding Afghan security forces to take more responsibility ahead of the coalition's 2014 pullout target date. NATO's training mission hopes have about 350,000 Afghan troops and police trained and ready by then.
Also Monday, Taliban fighters ambushed a convoy carrying supplies for NATO in western Afghanistan, killing two private security guards and wounding three. Seven of the attacking insurgents were also killed, said deputy police chief Mohammad Ghaws Milyar.
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3 Afghan civilians killed, 1 wounded in suicide bombing
KHOST, Afghanistan, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- Three civilians were killed and another sustained injuries as a suicide bomber blew himself up in Khost city, the capital of Khost province 150 km southeast of capital city Kabul Sunday evening, police said.
"A man strapped explosive device in his body blew himself up next to a police checkpoint in Khost city last evening killing three civilians including two children," senior police officer in Khost city Sardar Mohammad Zazai told Xinhua.
Another civilian was injured in the blast, he said, adding the suicide bomber was also killed in the explosion.
There were no casualties on police, he added.
He blamed Taliban insurgents for the blast; but the outfit has yet to make comment.
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8 insurgents killed, 13 arrested in Afghanistan
KABUL, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- Eight armed insurgents were killed and 13 arrested in a series of military operations in different parts of Afghanistan over the past 24 hours, the country's Interior Ministry said on Monday.
"Afghan National Police (ANP), Afghan National Army, NDS or Afghan intelligence agency and NATO-led Coalition Forces launched 15 joint operations in Nangarhar, Laghman, Kandahar, Helmand, Wardak, Logar, Ghazni, Paktia and Herat provinces over the last 24 hours," the ministry said in a press release on Monday morning.
"As a result of these operations, eight armed insurgents were killed, one wounded and 13 others arrested by the ANP," it said.
The ANP also discovered and confiscated 11 AK-47 guns, one PKM machine gun, five pistols, 20 anti-vehicle mines, five radio handsets, 11 hand grenades, 180 kg of explosives, 100 kg of chemicals, 12 heavy bullets, 25 kg of opium, 450 kg of hashish, one motorbike and one vehicle used by insurgents, the release added.
Afghan forces and NATO-led coalition troops have intensified cleanup operations throughout the post-Taliban country recently as over 300 insurgents have been killed and over 570 detained since beginning December 2011.
Afghan officials often use the word "insurgents" to refer to Taliban. However, the insurgent group, who launched in May 2011 an offensive against Afghan and NATO forces, has not to make comments yet.
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Karzai’s Ultimatum Complicates U.S. Exit Strategy
New York Times By MATTHEW ROSENBERG January 8, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - President Hamid Karzai’s denunciation last week of abuses at the main American prison in Afghanistan — and his abrupt demand that Americans cede control of the site within a month — surprised many here. The prison, at Bagram Air Base, is one of the few in the country where Afghan and Western rights advocates say that conditions are relatively humane.
American officials, caught off guard by the president’s order, scrambled to figure out the source of the allegations. Now they have at least part of an answer: the Afghan commission that documented the abuses appears to have focused mainly on the side of the prison run by Afghan authorities, not the American-run part, according to interviews with American and Afghan officials.
Mr. Karzai was, in essence, demanding that the Americans cede control of a prison to Afghan authorities to stop abuses being committed by Afghan authorities.
But the American snickering subsided quickly as it became apparent that the Afghans were not backing off their demand, the officials said, and instead appeared intent on turning it into a test of their national sovereignty.
“We have the right to rule on our own soil,” said Gul Rahman Qazi, the chief of the Afghan commission that investigated the prison, at a weekend news conference in which his panel listed accusations of abuses.
The matter is exposing the deep vein of mutual mistrust and suspicion that runs beneath the American and Afghan talk of partnership, and officials characterize the prison dispute as a critical complication for the United States’ intent to withdraw from the Afghan war on its own terms.
The prison plays a key role in the war effort, housing almost all the detainees that forces from the American-led coalition deem “high value,” including Taliban operatives. Transferring the prison to Afghan control is a central issue in the on-again, off-again negotiations between Washington and Kabul over the shape of the relationship between the two countries after NATO ends combat operations in 2014.
“It doesn’t make it easy to keep talking when you’re getting ultimatums,” said an American official who did not want to be identified for fear of straining already delicate relations. “This isn’t a side issue or something that we can just let go and see what happens.”
It is the latest — and one of the most serious — case of how increasingly frequent and unilateral outbursts by Mr. Karzai and his allies indicate growing resentment of the Americans, even as he is trying to negotiate some sort of American military support past the 2014 deadline.
Afghan and Western officials close to the matter describe Mr. Karzai as increasingly suspicious about being cut out and worked around by the Americans, and anti-Western advisers have been gaining in influence in his circle, for the moment at least, the officials said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to harm relations with the president and one another.
That has become apparent in the past two months, as the positive talk heard at an international conference on Afghanistan’s future in Bonn, Germany, has given way to a markedly more hostile tone. Mr. Karzai is again demanding an immediate end to the night commando raids that the United States consider vital to getting at insurgent field commanders. Another presidential commission late last month publicly condemned NATO forces for killing civilians without mentioning that the Taliban killed far more innocents, according to United Nations assessments of Afghan casualties.
Mr. Karzai came close last month to disrupting the latest American move to jump-start talks with the Taliban when he abruptly rejected a plan for the Persian Gulf state of Qatar to host an insurgent negotiating office. He has since acquiesced, but his aides say the overtures to the Taliban are another example of the Americans’ trying to sidestep Mr. Karzai’s administration. Statements from the presidential palace about the talks have pointedly made reference to foreigners as the source of Afghanistan’s troubles.
Then, on Thursday came the sudden demand for control over the American prison, known as the Parwan Detention Facility. The Americans were given no warning the order was going to be issued. Asked about the timing, Aimal Faizi, a spokesman for Mr. Karzai, said: “It was decided, and then we issued it. I don’t think it is not clear.”
American officials planned to meet with the Afghans to discuss the matter on Saturday after a scheduled news conference, waiting to see whether Afghan officials changed their tone. They did not. Mr. Qazi, the chief of the Afghan commission, told reporters that Afghan officials considered transfer of the prison a critical matter of national sovereignty.
The commissioners said prisoners had complained of torture, humiliating strip searches, being held in freezing cells and a lack of due process. The commission’s legal adviser, Ahmad Hanif Hanifi, stood and recited a list of suspected abuses during the news conference. But when pressed for details, especially about under whose watch the abuses might have happened, the Afghan officials began backing away.
Mr. Qazi acknowledged that “we do not have a lot of information on the details” of what had taken place in the American side of the prison, which the commission visited briefly only on Dec. 27. During an earlier visit, in May, the commission was not given access to the American side of the prison, a statement American officials did not dispute.
Despite the lack of details, Mr. Qazi said, “what has happened there will become clear” in time.
Afterward, the commission’s deputy chief, Abdul Qader Adalatkhah, said in a brief interview that most of the abuses documented so far were from the Afghan side of the prison. No matter, he said, there are “problems in the international side,” as well. He would not elaborate.
Despite the tenor of the news conference, a Western official said the meeting later Saturday between Afghan and American officials about the prison had been “productive.” The official would not provide details.
Built as part of the Obama administration’s revamping of American detention facilities and policies, the $60 million prison abuts Bagram Air Base, one of the main coalition bases in the country. It replaced an older prison that was housed in a Soviet-era machinery hangar inside Bagram and was the site of well-documented abuse cases.
Conditions at the new prison are markedly better, according to independent Afghan and Western assessments, although arbitrary detentions and a lack of due process remain serious problems.
It is unclear how the Afghan officials will proceed in pressing their authority to take control of the prison. Whether they have the capacity is another question. The Americans have been slowly training Afghan guards and administrators, but the efforts are said to be behind schedule.
Mr. Faizi, the presidential spokesman, brushed aside concerns about Afghan readiness. He said the government was only sticking to an agreed upon plan to hand over the prison by the end of 2011.
Yet, even that is in dispute. American officials said there was never a hard deadline. An internal Afghan government document about the prison in 2010, obtained by The New York Times, appears to back up their point. “The transition will be based on demonstration of capacity rather than a specific time table,” the document reads. It is signed by a number of government officials, including the minister of defense, Abdul Rahim Wardak.
American officials said they believed the prison’s fate would ultimately be decided in the talks on the so-called strategic partnership document, which is intended to spell out the relationship between Afghanistan and the United States after 2014. The next round of talks has not yet been scheduled.
Jawad Sukhanyar contributed reporting.
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Guantanamo imprisonment stokes Afghan hatred of US
By Mamoon Durrani | AFP
Ten years ago US troops took Haji Shahzada from his rural Afghan home in the early hours of the morning and sent him on a bizarre journey to prison in Cuba.
Ten years later, back home on his small farm, he hates the American people with a passion and says he would take his revenge if he had the chance.
Akhtar Mohammad was also dragged from his home by American troops who invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, and also dispatched to the notorious US military prison at Guantanamo Bay on the Caribbean island.
He too is bitter, but in a reflection of the complex relationship between the two countries, the car salesman does not want US troops to leave Afghanistan yet, fearing a bloody power struggle between competing warlords.
Both men were accused of being militant members of the hardline Taliban Islamist movement which was ousted from power by a US-led coalition in the wake of the 9/11 Al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington.
Both say they were innocent. And their captors failed to prove otherwise, releasing them after years in jail and thus making them martyrs to a system widely reviled by rights groups around the world.
"I was given a letter that I was innocent. What should I do with this letter now after I spent four years in jail?" asked Shahzada, aged about 50, his thin face framed by a large, greying beard.
"They entered my home, they handcuffed me in my home, my women were there, my children were sleeping there," he told AFP at his house outside the southern city of Kandahar.
"If I have a chance to come to power, I will take my revenge and punish the Americans. They are not good people, they won't be our friend. They should leave our country now."
The injustice of imprisonment without trial and reports of harsh treatment in the cages at Guantanamo -- which received its first prisoners from the global war on terror on January 11, 2002 -- fuelled anti-American sentiment, says Afghan writer and analyst Waheed Mujhda.
"Guantanamo has been a big contributing factor to growing violence and militancy in Afghanistan and Pakistan against the US," he told AFP.
"There were a lot of people who were not Taliban but were imprisoned in Guantanamo. I personally know people who have joined the Taliban after their release from Guantanamo."
Shahzada said he was accused by his captors of being Mullah Khairullah, a senior Taliban leader in the area, adding: "There were five or six other people taken as Mullah Khairullah."
The father of eight tells of being humiliated by being stripped naked and having to use the toilet alongside others -- taboo and offensive in the Afghan code of moral conduct.
"I'm amazed that my heart didn't stop from shame, how could I become such a weak Pashtun doing this... I don't know," Shahzada said.
The Pashtuns, who mainly live in Afghanistan's south, are fiercely proud of their conservative culture and the men of their independence and manhood.
Shahzada, like fellow former prisoner Akhtar Mohammad, says he was not a member of the Taliban, who were targeted by the US for hosting Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden at the time of the 9/11 attacks.
"When the Taliban were overthrown from power, the Americans attacked my house," Mohammad told AFP from his car dealership in Marawara district of eastern Kunar province.
They claimed he had worked with Taliban leader Mullah Omar and knew Bin Laden, jailing him first in the US military prison at Bagram Air Base outside Kabul for four months and then in Guantanamo Bay for nearly four years.
"It was totally unjust," said Mohammad, a tall, bearded 45-year-old. "I haven't seen Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden, only heard their names."
Mohammad said he wanted compensation from the US for his imprisonment, but did not want to see US troops leave Afghanistan just yet.
"If the Americans pull out their troops from Afghanistan first, civil strife and internal fighting will start back in the country. The American troops should leave Afghanistan when the situation is right in the future."
About 130,000 US-led troops remain in the country, now fighting a Taliban-led insurgency across Afghanistan. The coalition combat troops are set to leave the country by the end of 2014, handing control to Afghan forces.
At least 20 Afghan citizens are believed to be among the 171 remaining prisoners in Guantanamo Bay and both the Afghan government and the Taliban want them freed.
But the Taliban have reportedly asked for the inmates to be sent to Qatar, where the movement plans to set up a political office seen as a precursor to possible peace talks with the US, while the government wants them sent to Kabul.
The issue of Afghan prisoners held by US forces took a fresh twist last week when President Hamid Karzai abruptly announced that he wanted all inmates at Bagram prison outside Kabul -- known as "Afghanistan's Guantanamo" -- transferred to Afghan control within a month.
The move came amid signs that Karzai is concerned at being sidelined in talks between the Taliban and the US. He insists that any negotiations should be led by his government.
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2 more Taliban weapons facilitators captured: ISAF
KABUL, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- Two more Afghan Taliban weapons facilitators were captured during an operation in country's eastern province of Nangarhar, the NATO-led forces said on Monday.
"A combined Afghan and coalition security force captured two Taliban facilitators during an operation in Khugyani district, Nangarhar province, today," said the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in a press release.
The facilitators distributed weapons and supplies to insurgent fighters and coordinated attacks throughout Khugyani district, it said, adding that the security force confiscated multiple weapons during the operation.
The ISAF on Sunday confirmed capturing a Taliban senior weapons facilitator in the province with Jalalabad as its capital, 120 km east of capital city of Kabul.
The ISAF press release issued here on Sunday said that the senior captured Taliban facilitator, namely Mashahud, was detained on Jan. 1 and that he has been linked to a command wire bomb attack on Dec. 21, 2011, which left five ISAF service members dead in eastern province of Ghazni.
Currently over 130,000 ISAF troops, with majority of them Americans, have been serving in Afghanistan.
Taliban has yet to make comments.
Afghan forces and ISAF troops have intensified cleanup operations throughout the post-Taliban country recently as over 300 insurgents have been killed and over 570 detained since beginning December 2011.
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INTERVIEW-Electricity only reaches one in three Afghans
Reuters By Agnieszka Flak Jan 9, 2012
KABUL - Only one in three Afghans has access to electricity despite years of spending to improve supply, and the country is still far too dependent on imported power, the head of the country's state owned power utility told Reuters.
Abdul Razique Samadi, the chief executive officer at Da Afghanistan Breshna Sherkat (DABS), said the situation in the capital, Kabul, is far better than the rest of the country, with around 70 percent of households connected.
"Instead of having electricity for two hours, we have power for 24 hours and it is quite reliable," he told Reuters.
About half of India's 1.2 billion people have no access to power and less than a third of sub-Saharan Africa is electrified.
Connecting Afghans to power is key to boosting an economy weakened by decades of war and improving living standards in a country with a poor record on health and education.
Demand in Kabul has trippled over the past five years and is rising each year. Samadi estimates Afghanistan will need around 3,000 megawatts (MW) to meet the country's needs by 2020, compared with current supply of around 600 MW.
But demand is still so modest that his total forecast for 2020 is just 5 percent of what is consumed by the United Kingdom now -- even though Afghanistan's population is already nearly half the size of Britain's.
IMPORT SUPPORT
Power cuts are still a regular feature of life, especially at peak times, with more Afghans wanting to watch TV, use electric radiators or cook on electric stoves.
To meet its shortfall, the country has to rely on expensive, noisy and polluting diesel generators.
Access has improved since a new power line from Uzbekistan began transmitting electricity to Kabul in 2009. Land-locked Afghanistan also sources power from its other neighbours Iran, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan.
More than half of total supply comes from imports and that is unlikely to change in the near term, Samadi said.
Afghanistan's power stations -- mainly hydro plants -- have potential to produce around 500 MW, but actually churn out less than half because of water shortages and maintenance problems.
"For now we are quite vulnerable. We are dependent and here we have a problem," Samadi said.
Imports are also limited by an inadequate transmission network, and even though several projects are planned to strengthen power links, they will take years to complete.
OVERDUE BILLS
Despite millions of dollars of aid poured into the sector over the past 10 years, many big projects that could light up all of Afghanistan still remain on the drawing board, have faced cost overruns or have been delayed due to security concerns.
Afghanistan has the potential to produce up to 23,000 MW from its vast hydro, solar, wind, gas and thermal resources, but much of that remains unexploited due to ongoing conflict.
There is currently around $200 million in donor funds flowing into the sector each year, but Samadi aims to make DABS more independent to negotiate the expected decline in foreign aid as most combat troops pull out by the end of 2014.
The firm, which had turnover of $200 million in 2011, also urgently needs to strengthen its billing system, as it is currently owed around $40 million, mainly by the government.
Samadi downplayed criticism that corruption has hampered revenue collection and the completion of projects.
"Maybe 20 or 30 percent (of the allegations are justified) . Still, the government, the donors are doing well," he said.
"This is a very difficult country to work in. Even if it is only a 50 percent success, it's still a success," he said. (Reporting by Agnieszka Flak; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)
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Iran begins military drills in East
BEIJING, Jan. 9 (Xinhuanet) -- A senior Iranian military commander says the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps has begun military drills in the eastern part of the country. The first phase started Saturday in the vicinity of Khaf city in Khorasan province, and the main phase of the maneuvers will start Monday.
Confronted with ever intensified political isolation, economic blockade and military threats, Iran continues showing its military muscle.
Iranian media report the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps has begun military drills codenamed "Martyrs of Unity" in the east of the country, bordering Afghanistan. They say the aim is to safeguard border security, enhance the battle capacity of the IRGC, and exercise military tactics, weapons, and innovative technologies.
And the navy is ready to hold joint military drills with other Middle Eastern countries. That’s according to navy commander, Admiral Habi-boll-ah Say-yari, who described an earlier 10-day exercise as a response to the threats of Western sanctions.
Just days after the 10-day exercise, Iran announced plans for a large-scale military maneuvre in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz in February. An admiral from the Revolutionary Guards says the control over the Strait of Hormuz will be the normalcy of Iran.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was formed by the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini in the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. It now consists of naval, air, and ground components, and totals roughly 125-thousand fighters. The corps’ primary role is internal security, but experts say the force can assist Iran’s regular army, which has about 350,000 soldiers, with external defenses. The Guards also controls Iran’s Basij Resistance Force, an all-volunteer paramilitary wing.
(Source: CNTV.cn)
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Pakistan Recovers Soldiers’ Bodies in Taliban Exchange
VOA News January 9, 2012
Pakistani authorities have recovered the bodies of 10 soldiers in an exchange with the Taliban, following a clash with the militant group two weeks ago in the country's northwest.
Officials said Monday the soldiers had been missing since the Taliban attacked an outpost on December 21 in the Orakzai tribal agency. Through negotiations, the two sides exchanged their dead, 10 soldiers for 10 militants.
The exchange comes days after Pakistan held funeral services for 15 paramilitary soldiers abducted and killed by the Taliban in the country's northwest.
A spokesman for the Islamic militant group said it killed the troops who were kidnapped December 22 in the Tank district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, in revenge for continued military operations against the militants near the Afghan border.
Local authorities found the bullet-riddled bodies of 15 members of the paramilitary Frontier Constabulary last week in the tribal region of North Waziristan. They said the remains showed signs of torture.
The Pakistani Taliban, or Tehrik-e-Taliban, is a loosely organized group of insurgents that formed in 2007. Although its members mainly operate in Pakistan's tribal areas, the group is believed to have carried out routine bomb and gun attacks elsewhere in the country.
In recent months, various Pakistani militants and government officials have suggested that Islamabad is holding preliminary peace talks with the Pakistani Taliban and affiliated militant groups. But other officials and militant leaders have rejected the claim, and violence along the border has continued.
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China slams refocusing of US defense strategy on Asia, says it poses no threat
By Associated Press
BEIJING — China on Monday slammed the United States’ new Asian-focused defense strategy, saying its accusations of a lack of openness in Beijing’s military policy were “groundless and untrustworthy.”
The strategy unveiled Thursday shifts the U.S. military focus away from Iraq and Afghanistan and makes a renewed commitment to assert America’s position in the Asia-Pacific region.
The document says the growth of China’s military power must be accompanied by greater clarity in its strategic intentions to avoid causing friction in the region.
In response, China said it was committed to peaceful development and a “defensive” policy.
“China’s strategic intent is clear, open and transparent,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin told reporters at a regular briefing.
“Our national defense modernization serves the objective requirements of national security and development and also plays an active role in maintaining regional peace and stability. It will not pose any threat to any country,” Liu said. “The charges against China in this document are groundless and untrustworthy.”
He added that maintaining peace, stability and prosperity in the region serve the common interests of all Asia-Pacific countries “and we hope the U.S. will play a more constructive role to this end.”
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the U.S. is not anticipating military conflict in Asia, but that it became so bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that it missed chances to improve its strategic position elsewhere.
Panetta said the Asia-Pacific region is growing in importance for the U.S. economy and national security, so the nation needed to maintain “our military’s technological edge and freedom of action.”
The new strategy also identified India as a long-term strategic partner that can serve as a regional economic anchor and provider of security in the Indian Ocean region. It said the U.S. will try to maintain peace on the Korean peninsula by working with allies and others in Asia to defend against North Korean provocations.
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Iran sentences US man to death for working for CIA, adds tension to spat over nuclear program
By Associated Press, Updated: Monday, January 9, 7:49 PM
TEHRAN, Iran — An Iranian court has convicted an American man of working for the CIA and sentenced him to death, state radio reported Monday, in a case adding to the accelerating tension between the United States and Iran.
Iran charges that as a former U.S. Marine, Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, received special training and served at U.S. military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan before heading to Iran for his alleged intelligence mission. The radio report did not say when the verdict was issued.
The 28-year-old former military translator was born in Arizona and graduated from high school in Michigan. His family is of Iranian origin. His father, a professor at a community college in Flint, Michigan, has said his son is not a CIA spy and was visiting his grandmothers in Iran when he was arrested.
Behnaz Hekmati, his mother, said in an email to The Associated Press that she and her husband, Ali, are “shocked and terrified” that their son has been sentenced to death. She said the verdict is “the result of a process that was neither transparent nor fair.”
Under Iranian law, he has 20 days to appeal. Hekmati has a court-appointed lawyer who was identified only by his surname, Samadi, and there was no word about an appeal.
Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejehei, spokesman for Iran’s judiciary said if the verdict is appealed, it would go to Iran’s Supreme Court, the official IRNA news agency reported.
Hekmati’s trial took place as the U.S. announced new, tougher sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program, which Washington believes Tehran is using to develop a possible atomic weapons capability.
Iran, which says it only seeks nuclear reactors for energy and research, has sharply increased its threats and military posturing against stronger pressures, including the U.S. sanctions targeting Iran’s Central Bank in attempts to complicate its ability to sell oil.
The U.S. State Department has demanded Hekmati’s release.
The court convicted him of working with a hostile country, belonging to the CIA and trying to accuse Iran of involvement in terrorism, Monday’s report said.
In its ruling, a branch of Tehran Revolutionary Court described Hekmati as a mohareb, an Islamic term that means a fighter against God, and a mofsed, or one who spreads corruption on earth. Both terms appear frequently in Iranian court rulings.
In a closed court hearing in late December, the prosecution asked for the death penalty for Hekmati.
The U.S. government has called on Iranian authorities to grant Swiss diplomats access to him in prison. The Swiss government represents U.S. interests in Iran because the two countries don’t have diplomatic relations.
Hekmati is a dual U.S.-Iranian national. Iran considers him an Iranian since the country’s law does not recognize dual citizenship.
Similar cases against Americans accused of spying have heightened tensions throughout the years-long standoff over Iran’s nuclear program.
Iran arrested three Americans in July 2009 along the border with Iraq and accused them of espionage, though the Americans said they were just hiking in the scenic and relatively peaceful Kurdish region of northern Iraq.
One of them was released after a year in prison, and the other two were freed in September in deals involving bail payments that were brokered by the Gulf sultanate of Oman, which has good relations with Iran and the U.S.
On Dec. 18, Iran’s state TV broadcast video of Hekmati delivering a purported confession in which he said he was part of a plot to infiltrate Iran’s Intelligence Ministry.
In a statement released the same day, the Intelligence Ministry said its agents identified Hekmati before his arrival in Iran, at Bagram Air Field in neighboring Afghanistan. Bagram is the main base for American and other international forces outside Kabul, the Afghan capital.
It is not clear exactly when he was arrested. News reports have said he was detained in late August or early September.
Hekmati’s father said in a December interview with The Associated Press, that his son was a former Arabic translator in the U.S. Marines who entered Iran about four months earlier to visit his grandmothers.
At the time, he was working in Qatar as a contractor for a company “that served the Marines,” his father said, without providing more specific details.
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