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Picking a winner in Afghanistan
By Michael O’Hanlon, Tuesday, July 10, 3:53 AM The Washington Post
American debates over the war in Afghanistan tend to focus on how fast we can get our troops home and whether we can work with President Hamid Karzai’s government to negotiate a peace deal with the Taliban. But at least as important to whether the country will hold together, and whether a return of the Taliban and al-Qaeda will be prevented
Afghan, NATO forces pressing on Haqqani Network
by Farid Behbud
KABUL, July 10 (Xinhua) -- The Afghan army and the NATO-led coalition troops have been stepping up mounting pressure on the Haqqani network, a Taliban and al-Qaida-linked militant group accused of strings of high-profile attacks in the insurgency-hit country in recent years.
Torture fear in Afghan schoolgirl 'poisoning' cases
By Lawrence Bartlett | AFP
A UN agency has expressed concern that torture may have been used to extract confessions over the alleged serial poisoning of Afghan schoolgirls, which experts say is more likely to be mass hysteria.
28 insurgents killed in Afghanistan in past 24 hours
KABUL, July 10 (Xinhua) -- Afghan security forces and NATO-led coalition troops during 10 cleanup operations have killed 28 Taliban insurgents and detained 31 others within the past 24 hours, the country's Interior Ministry said on Tuesday morning.
Afghans Say Extrajudicial Execution Was Un-Islamic
By Ron Synovitz July 10, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
KABUL -- Under Shari'a law, death by stoning is prescribed in cases of adultery committed by married men and women.
Bombers kill two children in Afghan attack: officials
AFP – Mon, Jul 9, 2012
Afghan suicide bombers killed two children and wounded six others Monday, when their explosive vests detonated prematurely as they went to attack police, an official said.
Afghan exit will cost U.S. billions, Pentagon's No. 2 says
By John Cantlie, Getty Images USA Today
WASHINGTON – Moving the mountain of U.S. military gear out of Afghanistan after more than a decade of war will cost billions of dollars and prove far more difficult than last year's withdrawal from Iraq, the Pentagon's No. 2 official said Tuesday.
Top senators back money slated for Pakistan after reopening of supply lines to Afghanistan
By Associated Press, July 10 via The Washington Post
WASHINGTON — Pakistan should get $1.1 billion in U.S. funds that have been held up for months now that Islamabad has reopened crucial NATO supply lines to Afghanistan, top senators said Tuesday.
Once the conflict's center, Kandahar City calms
The province has seen a 75 percent drop in insurgent attacks and activity compared with the same time last year, according to the Kandahar governor's office in Afghanistan.
Christian Science Monitor By Tom A. Peter, Correspondent July 9, 2012
Kandahar, Afghanistan - Taliban insurgents attacked the police headquarters and several parts of Kandahar City on Monday afternoon in the sort of attack that's grown less frequent in this once turbulent southern city.
Karzai Seeks Full Freedom for Taliban in Guantanamo
TOLOnews.com Monday, 09 July 2012
President Hamid Karzai said that the Afghan government is seeking the full release of the Taliban prisoners in the US military prison Guantanamo Bay, and that they should have the freedom to settle wherever they want.
Karzai Claims Taliban Willing To Talk To Government
By RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan July 09, 2012
Afghan President Hamid Karzai says the Taliban has for the first time expressed interest in talking with his U.S.-backed government.
The Taliban Execution: What Happens When a Nation Fails
A gruesome video depicts the Taliban's take on adultery in today's Afghanistan. But it also tells of the failures of an 11-year project of nation-building
TIME By Aryn Baker | @arynebaker July 9, 2012
Three shots ring out in close succession, and the woman’s shawl-shrouded body slumps to the ground. Whoops, cheers and praise to Allah follow another four shots into her inert form. The latest video footage to come out of Afghanistan purports to show the execution of an allegedly adulterous woman at the hands of the Taliban.
Afghan Premier League Football Kicks Off in 1 Month
TOLOnews.com Monday, 09 July 2012
Afghanistan's first Premier League football competition will begin in one month nationwide, the football officials said today.
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Picking a winner in Afghanistan
By Michael O’Hanlon, Tuesday, July 10, 3:53 AM The Washington Post
American debates over the war in Afghanistan tend to focus on how fast we can get our troops home and whether we can work with President Hamid Karzai’s government to negotiate a peace deal with the Taliban. But at least as important to whether the country will hold together, and whether a return of the Taliban and al-Qaeda will be prevented, is who will replace Karzai when his term ends in 2014. The United States must do everything possible to ensure a reformer wins that election.
The stakes are huge. If a warlord or corrupt politician wins the presidency, aid will be wasted and Afghanistan’s economy — still dependent on billions in annual foreign aid, such as that pledged during Sunday’s donor conference in Tokyo — will regress. Improvements in citizens’ quality of life, such as dramatic increases in life expectancy, school enrollment and cell phone availability, are likely to be squandered. Worse, insurgents will have a rallying cry likely to resonate with millions of disaffected Afghans. Civil war could resume and, with it, control over large parts of the country could be lost to the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
But if the next Afghan president can be an even moderately serious reformer, the most likely outcome will not be pretty but will be better than defeat. Plenty of good leaders are up to the challenge. Possible candidates include Hanif Atmar, a former minister of both education and the interior who recently helped start a multi-ethnic political reform movement; economic wizard Ashraf Ghani; and the former foreign minister and presidential runner-up Abdullah Abdullah. Should such a reformer prevail, the Kabul government will continue its struggle to contain the insurgency in rural locales while absorbing the occasional body blow in populated areas. But it will probably be able to hold onto major cities and transportation routes and keep the nation’s security forces intact. With the right mix of vice presidents and cabinet leaders, and a sound approach to any peace talks with insurgents, it would also be likely to defuse threats of civil war along ethnic lines.
Some may wish to avoid interfering in the elections of a sovereign nation, but Afghan reformers are calling out for help. When I visited Afghanistan in May, several suggested to me that the United States pick a winner so they could rally around him. Also, the international presence in Afghanistan will have enormous influence whether we acknowledge it or not. Supporting the Karzai government is actually a form of political intervention, as it gives the incumbent great resources, such as control of state-run media, to try to choose his successor. Moreover, with U.S. officials making decisions about how much money and how many troops to devote to Afghanistan’s long-term assistance, we have a right to say that the level of our support will be strongly influenced by the choices Afghans make — even if we will not (and should not) try to pick a winner.
It is inconceivable that Congress would sustain as many as 20,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, at an annual cost of perhaps $25 billion after 2014, and add an additional $3 billion to $5 billion a year in direct security and economic support to the next Afghan government if it is corrupt beyond hope. In such an event, while U.S. strategic interests would not lead us to end the effort completely, our commitment would surely be radically scaled back. We should emphasize this as the 2014 campaign takes shape. U.S. diplomats, ideally backed by other foreign missions in Kabul, including such key Muslim states as Turkey, Indonesia and Tanzania (which have impressive track records in fighting corruption and improving governance in recent years), should also be willing to say, publicly if necessary, which candidates would be unacceptable as president.
No formal or binding promise is possible, given the early stage of the Afghan political process and the looming U.S. elections. Still, a coordinated message from congressional leaders in both parties, President Obama and Mitt Romney could go a long way.
Making clear that we will provide much less help to Afghanistan if it chooses poor leaders may seem obvious, but it was clear recently in Kabul that the message has not gotten through. Too many Afghans think that we will desert them unconditionally, as happened before, or, based on an exaggerated sense of their nation’s geostrategic importance, that we will want to stay forever. We need to reestablish our leverage with clear, credible and consistent messaging from U.S. and international voices.
The next Afghan leader has a chance to restore U.S. faith and to help forge the kind of enduring security partnerships that the United States gradually developed with Greece, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, South Korea and Taiwan. Afghans must be persuaded to defeat the crooks and warlords who may seek to replace Karzai. Thirteen years of American effort and treasure — and the Afghan people’s ability to escape what has become a generation of war — depend greatly on achieving a sound election process and outcome in 2014.
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Afghan, NATO forces pressing on Haqqani Network
by Farid Behbud
KABUL, July 10 (Xinhua) -- The Afghan army and the NATO-led coalition troops have been stepping up mounting pressure on the Haqqani network, a Taliban and al-Qaida-linked militant group accused of strings of high-profile attacks in the insurgency-hit country in recent years.
In the latest wave of search and cleanup operations on the group, a joint Afghan and NATO-led forces captured a local Haqqani leader in Terayzai district in the eastern province of Khost Monday morning, the NATO-led coalition or the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) confirmed in a press release.
"The detained Haqqani leader specializes in high-profile attacks and reported directly to senior Haqqani leaders," said the ISAF without disclosing the name of the captured man.
The Haqqani group is the military wing of Taliban fighters headed by Sirajuddin Haqqani, son of Mawlawi Jalaluddin Haqqani, who fought against former Soviet Union forces in the 1980s.
Founded by Mawlawi Jalaluddin Haqqani, the Haqqani network has been operating in capital city Kabul and eastern Afghan provinces along the border with Pakistan's tribal belt.
"At the time of his arrest, he was equipping his insurgent cell with military uniforms for a planned attack on an Afghan government facility," the ISAF said in the news release. The security force also detained several suspected insurgents and seized multiple firearms during the operation.
According to media reports, Jalaluddin, who is in his 80s and troubled by sickness, has been a close aide to Taliban's fugitive leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.
The network has been blamed for a string of attacks, including a recent hostage-taking attack against a hotel in the Qargha Lake, a picnic spot on the western outskirts of Kabul on June 22.
The attack left 18 people including 17 civilians and a policeman dead. Afghan army and police rescued more than 200 people from the hotel and surrounding buildings. All the five attackers were killed.
The Afghan army and ISAF forces have captured over 1,500 Haqqani network militants in different provinces throughout last year, according to ISAF officials.
The militants group was also accused of another coordinated attack against U.S., British and German embassy compounds in Kabul 's diplomatic district as well as a gunfight against the Afghan Parliament building on April 15 this year.
A total of 15 Afghan security forces and four civilians were killed and 74 others injured in the April attacks simultaneously in Kabul, Nangarhar, Paktia and Logar provinces.
Up to 36 militants were killed and one attacker was detained by security forces in one of the most massive attacks so far this year.
Meanwhile, another setback for the militia was losing of eight Haqqani members during a special operation against a militants' hideout in eastern Paktia province late last month.
"In Ahmadabad district, Paktia province, an Afghan and coalition force conducted a security operation in search of a Haqqani leader Saturday (June 30). During the operation, the security force identified an armed group of insurgents at a Haqqani camp. After strike, the security force conducted a follow- on assessment which confirmed numerous insurgents had been killed and no civilians had been harmed," said an ISAF statement on July 1.
Deputy governor of the Paktia province, Abdul Rahman Mangal, told Xinhua that eight Haqqani members including a key commander named Haddam Khan Kochi were killed in the air bomb attack which occurred in a tree-covered area in the province 100 km south of Kabul.
Another big blow for the group was the capture of 16 Haqqani members, including their commander named Mullah Tajmir, in Kabul by Afghan intelligence personnel of the National Directorate for Security (NDS) in the last week of June, a spokesman with the body said on July 2.
"Fortunately we have captured 16 terrorists who planned to carry out a series of terrorist attacks in Kabul and foiled their vicious designs," spokesman Shafiqullah Tahiri told a press conference.
The terrorists were planning to target Kabul international airport, ISAF guest house, the Supreme Court, the national army base in Deh Zabz outside Kabul and some more installations, Tahiri added.
The U.S. government in mid-May this year also slapped sanctions on two individuals linked to Taliban and the Haqqani Network.
"Bakht Gul, a Haqqani Network communications official, is being designated for acting for or on behalf of Badruddin Haqqani, and Abdul Baqi Bari, a Taliban financier, is being designated for providing financial support for, and/or financial services to, the Taliban," the U.S. Department of Treasury said in a statement.
The designation is aimed to "ensure all those who perpetrate ongoing violence and terrorist activities in Afghanistan and Pakistan will continue to be marginalized and cut off from the international financial system," said the statement.
The U.S. Senate is mulling Tuesday to list the Haqqani network as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, according to local media. The United States listed the Taliban as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity in July 2002.
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Torture fear in Afghan schoolgirl 'poisoning' cases
By Lawrence Bartlett | AFP
A UN agency has expressed concern that torture may have been used to extract confessions over the alleged serial poisoning of Afghan schoolgirls, which experts say is more likely to be mass hysteria.
Sweeping arrests were made last month after the government came under pressure to act as hundreds of schoolgirls fell ill and fainted in schools in the northern province of Takhar on an almost daily basis.
The national intelligence agency, the NDS, announced at a news conference on June 6 that 15 suspects -- including two schoolgirls -- had confessed to being involved in poisoning the pupils.
The authorities blame Taliban insurgents notorious for their opposition to schooling for girls, saying the hardline Islamists have poisoned water supplies or somehow gassed the pupils -- winning headlines around the world.
But the human rights unit of the UN mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) has raised concerns that the confessions might be suspect.
"The UN is unaware of any forensic evidence to support the allegations that poison has been used in the affected schools," James Rodehaver, head of UNAMA's human rights unit, told AFP this week.
"UNAMA has made public its concerns about the use of torture in selected NDS facilities throughout the country, including Takhar, as a means to force persons suspected of insurgency activities to confess," he said.
"It is also very concerning that NDS publicised the confessions of the suspects in the Takhar case, including of the two schoolgirls. This violates fair trial rights, including the presumption of innocence, of the accused."
If it is shown that the confessions were forced, it is the duty of the courts to throw the confessions out as evidence, Rodehaver said.
The government denied that the suspects had been tortured.
"This is absolutely wrong, no one was tortured," said interior ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi.
"These people were arrested with evidence and we have their confessions. In the Sari Pul case (last month) it was spray involved, and in Takhar it was mostly pills. We have that evidence."
The World Health Organisation says there is no forensic evidence of poisoning in the cases, which were first noticed in large numbers in 2008.
Mass hysteria, properly known as mass psychogenic illness, is "the most probable cause" of the mysterious ailments, it says.
The symptoms include sudden nausea, dizziness and mass fainting episodes in which the girls are rushed to hospital, only to recover soon afterwards.
The WHO says that out of 1,634 cases in 22 schools over the past four years, no deaths have been reported.
It adds that the outbreaks appear to follow a seasonal pattern, starting in April/May, close to the school examination period, but notes that "the diagnosis of mass hysteria is still contentious".
With no physical cause established, Robert Bartholomew, a sociologist and author, told AFP in May that the poisoning scares had "all the earmarks of mass psychogenic illness, also known as mass hysteria".
Bartholomew said he had collected more than 600 cases of mass hysteria in schools dating back to 1566 in Europe, "and the Afghan episode certainly fits the pattern".
"The tell-tale signs of psychogenic illness in these Afghan outbreaks include the preponderance of schoolgirls; the conspicuous absence of a toxic agent; transient, benign symptoms; rapid onset and recovery; plausible rumours; the presence of a strange odour; and anxiety generated from a wartime backdrop."
He noted there was a history of similar cases in combat zones, listing examples from the Palestinian territories in 1983 to Soviet Georgia in 1989 and Kosovo in 1990.
The Afghan incidents came "within a larger social panic involving the fear of Taliban insurgents", he added.
Afghanistan has been at war for the past 30 years, and according to the director of the government's mental health department, Bashir Ahmad Sarwari, half the population suffers from mental stress caused by the conflict.
The mass hysteria phenomenon is not well understood, however, and many in Afghanistan resist the idea of a psychological cause.
The Taliban have denied responsibility for any poisoning attacks on girls' schools, but their history makes them an easy target for officials searching for someone to blame.
Before the Islamists were toppled in a US-led invasion after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, they were notorious for their brutal suppression of women.
But now, more than three million girls attend school, according to government figures.
The United States leads a NATO force of some 130,000 troops in Afghanistan, but they are due to withdraw by the end of 2014, raising fears among Afghans that recent gains in women's rights may be eroded.
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28 insurgents killed in Afghanistan in past 24 hours
KABUL, July 10 (Xinhua) -- Afghan security forces and NATO-led coalition troops during 10 cleanup operations have killed 28 Taliban insurgents and detained 31 others within the past 24 hours, the country's Interior Ministry said on Tuesday morning.
"Afghan National Police (ANP), army and coalition forces carried out 10 cleanup operations in Kunar, Baghlan, Samangan, Kunduz, Kandahar, Uruzgan, Zabul, Ghazni, Khost and Helmand provinces, killing 28 armed Taliban insurgents and detaining 31 other suspects throughout the past 24 hours," the ministry said in a statement.
The ANP also seized weapons and ammunition including 10 AK-47 guns with 21 magazines, three rocket launchers, two PKM machine guns, five different types of mines, the statement added.
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Afghans Say Extrajudicial Execution Was Un-Islamic
By Ron Synovitz July 10, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
KABUL -- Under Shari'a law, death by stoning is prescribed in cases of adultery committed by married men and women.
But Islamic scholars, ordinary Afghan citizens, and even the Taliban say that the recent trial and execution of 22-year-old Najiba in Parwan Province was not carried out according to the rules of Islamic jurisprudence.
That, they say, makes Najiba's death a case of murder -- another crime that is punishable by death under Shari'a law.
Maulavi Hanafi, an Islamic religious scholar from eastern Afghanistan, told RFE/RL that Najiba was killed as a result of an "extrajudicial court" ruling rather than a legitimate Shari'a court decision.
"The true [Islamic] scholars must prevent these extrajudicial courts," he said. "For example, if a crime is committed, there must be evidence provided. Every verdict requires evidence."
A video of the execution, official comments, and media reports indicate that no evidence was presented against Najiba.
Reports have widely attributed the trial and execution to the Taliban, but a spokesman for the Islamist group denies Taliban involvement.
Zabihullah Mujahid says Najiba was executed "according to the decision of the people of the region" rather than under a proper Shari'a court ruling.
Tribal Traditions
Mujahid said in a statement on July 10 that Afghans in provincial regions "sometimes make such decisions without being members" of groups or proper Islamic courts.
The Taliban spokesman said villagers issued the guilty verdict and execution order "according to their tribal traditions," rather than Shari'a law.
Maulavi Sidiqullah Fedayee, a Munich-based Islamic scholar from Afghanistan, agrees,
"Islam has very clear rules," he said. "These clear rules of Islam cannot be changed. Those who implement Shari'a simply on the basis of accusations do not have an adequate understanding of the rules of Islam."
Provincial officials say Najiba's trial, verdict, and execution lasted no more than an hour. There was no appeals process, and the same people who issued the guilty verdict against Najiba also sentenced her.
According to Fedayee, a legitimate Shari'a execution order requires higher standards of evidence, an appeals process, and sentencing by a higher court than the initial trial court:
"In a case of adultery, there must be four witnesses, and these witnesses must testify that they actually saw the woman and a man together engaged in sexual intercourse," he said. "The judge should take all of this testimony to another judge and put all the evidence on the table. It is the second judge who checks that all of these procedures were done properly.
"The second judge must then take all of the evidence to the higher Shari'a Supreme Court. The accused has the right to appeal against the verdicts issued by the lower courts. It is the Shari'a Supreme Court that makes the decision on the punishment."
'Cruel And Unjust'
Many Afghans say the Afghan government needs to expand its presence in rural provincial areas in order to stop executions on the basis of such extrajudicial court rulings.
"The government must prevent these extrajudicial courts because many people are unjustly killed by these extrajudicial courts in a very cruel way," said Kabul resident Khalil Ahmad. "This is happening everywhere."
Samar Gul, a resident of Paktia Province in southeastern Afghanistan, maintains it is wrong for villagers to take the law into their own hands.
"The extrajudicial courts belong to nobody," he said. "We all have to obey our laws and the law must not discriminate between people who are living in urban areas or rural areas. The law must be applied equally."
Afghan President Hamid Karzai says Najiba's execution was a "heinous crime." The case has also brought international condemnation since video of the execution was released this week.
Written by Ron Synovitz, based on reporting by RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan from Kabul and Prague
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Bombers kill two children in Afghan attack: officials
AFP – Mon, Jul 9, 2012
Afghan suicide bombers killed two children and wounded six others Monday, when their explosive vests detonated prematurely as they went to attack police, an official said.
The three bombers were on a motorcycle when their explosives went off in southern Kandahar city, killing and wounding children playing nearby, provincial spokesman Jawed Faisal told AFP.
Shortly afterwards a group of armed insurgents launched an attack on police headquarters in the volatile capital, the spiritual birthplace of the hardline Islamist Taliban.
"Probably the three bombers who blew up and killed children were going to join the attack," Faisal said.
The children were aged between eight and twelve and were playing at the time of the explosion, he said.
The attack on the police headquarters, some three kilometres away, began with an explosion and continued for around an hour after at least three insurgents took over a nearby school and fired on police, officials said.
Six people, including two policemen, were wounded before all three attackers were killed, provincial police chief General Abdul Raziq told AFP.
"Police handled the situation professionally. All three attackers were killed. Unfortunately six, including two police, were wounded," he said.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attacks in Kandahar on their website.
Also on Monday, a suicide bomber on a bicycle tried to attack a police vehicle in Shibirghan, the capital city of Jawzjan province in northern Afghanistan, provincial police chief Abdul Aziz Ghairat told AFP.
The explosive-laden bicycle detonated before reaching its target and wounded 24 civilians and two police, he said.
The Taliban, whose regime was toppled by a US-led invasion in 2001 after the 9/11 Al-Qaeda attacks on the United States, are fighting to oust the Western-backed government of President Hamid Karzai.
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Afghan exit will cost U.S. billions, Pentagon's No. 2 says
By John Cantlie, Getty Images USA Today
WASHINGTON – Moving the mountain of U.S. military gear out of Afghanistan after more than a decade of war will cost billions of dollars and prove far more difficult than last year's withdrawal from Iraq, the Pentagon's No. 2 official said Tuesday.
Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, the Pentagon's point man for overseeing the draw down in Afghanistan, talked about the challenges in his first extensive interview on pulling out of Afghanistan.
The pace of withdrawal is picking up: About 20,000 U.S. troops and their gear will be coming home by October. There are about 88,000 American forces there now. All U.S. combat forces are to leave by 2014. Meanwhile, the main overland supply route through neighboring Pakistan reopened last week. It had been closed since November after U.S. forces mistakenly killed 24 Pakistani troops on the border.
"It's a very austere logistics environment to transport anything," Carter said. "Combat is still going on. Terrible terrain. Narrow roads. Long way to a seaport. Afghanistan is orders of magnitude more challenging for …(withdrawal) than was Iraq."
In Iraq, the military essentially loaded up trucks, drove south a few hundred miles to Kuwait and shipped them home. This year, the Pentagon asked for $2.9 billion to pay for repairing and replacing equipment removed last year.
Landlocked Afghanistan requires a 1,000-mile drive on rough, dangerous road to the port in Karachi, Pakistan. So far, just a trickle of trucks has moved through the two Pakistani border crossings — five trucks in the north, and nine in the south, Carter said. It will take as long as three months for traffic to flow freely through Pakistan there, he said.
Still, that is the best option. Flying equipment out, or using the long, overland route through nations to the north, has added as much as $100 million a month in transportation costs, he said.
"The challenge of getting in and out of Afghanistan tells us a lot about why Osama bin Laden went there in the first place," said Loren Thompson, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute and a defense industry consultant. "The leaders of al-Qaeda knew it would be very hard to sustain a war effort in such a place."
Some of the challenges in Afghanistan, according to Carter, include:
•Dismantling 400 bases. Every item has to be inventoried, cleaned and shipped out — back home, or to stocks of equipment positioned around the globe. Some can be left to Afghans, though not much, he says, because they have limited ability to maintain gear.
•Returning 100,000 shipping containers, large metal boxes. The military paid more than $610 million in late fees over the past decade to shipping companies for failing to return containers on time, Pentagon records show.
•Bringing home 45,000 miltiary vehicles, including 14,000 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) trucks. The vehicles, per U.S. Department of Agriculture requirements, must be cleaned of dirt chunks larger than a finger to avoid bringing alien species home.
"All that stuff has to come out now along the same slender arteries it came in on," Carter said. "That is a very big difference from the last one of these I did, which was two years ago in Iraq."
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Top senators back money slated for Pakistan after reopening of supply lines to Afghanistan
By Associated Press, July 10 via The Washington Post
WASHINGTON — Pakistan should get $1.1 billion in U.S. funds that have been held up for months now that Islamabad has reopened crucial NATO supply lines to Afghanistan, top senators said Tuesday.
A major obstacle to releasing the money was removed last week when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton apologized to Pakistan for the killing of 24 Pakistani troops last fall and Pakistan, in return, agreed to reopen the overland supply lines to U.S.-led coalition forces. Congress has already approved the money to reimburse Pakistan for counterterrorism operations, but it has been on hold for some six months.
Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., and one of the panel’s top Republicans, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said the money should be released, albeit reluctantly.
“They don’t deserve it. What they’ve done is presumably earned it by the amount of money they’ve laid out in terms of their anti-terrorist activity and protecting our lines,” Levin told a group of reporters.
He said he would vote to approve the release.
The Pentagon intends to submit $1.1 billion in approved requests for reimbursement of money the Pakistan government has spent on counterterrorism operations that were incurred largely along the border.
“If our commanders believe that releasing the funds helps the war effort — yes. I don’t want to second guess these people,” Graham said. “Pakistan on a good day is very hard. It is an unreliable ally. You can’t trust them, you can’t abandon them. The biggest beneficiary is the men and women fighting the war. And I want Pakistan to be stable. And if the money helps them become more stable, good.
“If you cut the money off, what leverage do you have? There may come a day when we do that, but not yet,” he said.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., is pushing for a vote later this month to cut off future funds. That vote is contingent in part on what Pakistan does in the case of Shakil Afridi, the doctor who helped the United States track down Osama bin Laden but was convicted and sentenced to 33 years for high treason. Afridi ran a vaccination program for the CIA to collect DNA and verify bin Laden’s presence at the compound in Abbottabad where U.S. commandos found and killed the al-Qaida leader in May 2011.
His appeal trial is scheduled for July 19.
Moira Bagley, a spokeswoman for Paul, said it was unclear whether the Senate would get a vote on the reimbursement money because the funds have been appropriated.
Lawmakers have shown their frustration with Pakistan on future budget requests. In May, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted to slash millions in foreign aid to Pakistan from the Obama administration request for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.
Members of Congress have questioned Islamabad’s commitment to the fight against terrorism and resentment still lingers on Capitol Hill more than a year after bin Laden was killed deep inside Pakistan.
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Once the conflict's center, Kandahar City calms
The province has seen a 75 percent drop in insurgent attacks and activity compared with the same time last year, according to the Kandahar governor's office in Afghanistan.
Christian Science Monitor By Tom A. Peter, Correspondent July 9, 2012
Kandahar, Afghanistan - Taliban insurgents attacked the police headquarters and several parts of Kandahar City on Monday afternoon in the sort of attack that's grown less frequent in this once turbulent southern city.
Police managed to kill all 14 suicide bombers involved in the attack, but the fighting left three policemen dead and 18 injured. Six civilians were also injured.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, which was part of the group’s regular warm weather offensive, said Qari Yousef Ahmadi, a spokesman for the Taliban. He added that the date of this attack was also meant to come near the one year anniversary of the assassination of President Hamid Karzai’s half-brother, Ahmad Wali, formerly one of the most prominent figures in southern Afghanistan. Ahmad Wali was killed by someone from his inner circle on July 12 of last year.
In the wake of Ahmad Wali's death, many Kandaharis were concerned his absence would create a power vacuum that would increase violence here. So far, however, the security apparatus, namely the new police chief, Abdul Raziq, has stepped in to fill the void. While a controversial figure, many locals have attributed Mr. Raziq's aggressive approach with bringing a measure of calm to Kandahar.
During the past several months, though security incidents remain a part of regular life for residents, most say they have seen a marked improvement in security and now enjoy much greater freedom of movement. Still, residents say that it remains unclear if the security gains will endure beyond the end of the US and NATO combat mission in 2014.
“Compared to last year there is no doubt that the situation is better, but still there are problems. It’s not long-term security. As soon as foreign troops leave, I’m sure there will be insecurity again,” says Ahmad Shah Spar, an independent political analyst in Kandahar. Mr. Spar says that his biggest concern after international forces leave is a civil war.
By the numbers, Kandahar looks much better than it has in the past. According to officials in the office of Kandahar’s governor, so far this year the province has seen a 75 percent drop in insurgent attacks and activity compared with the same time last year.
For the insurgency, an important aspect of attacks like Monday’s remains grabbing headlines and showing that it is still in a position of strength despite its apparent difficulties maintaining the same level of violence it has in the past, say Kandahar officials.
“They are doing these attacks just to show their influence. I think it will not be a challenge to the security,” says Mohammed Omar Satai, head of the Joint Secretariat of the Kandahar Peace Committee. The attacks do have a psychological effect, however, especially when they manage to target something like the police headquarters. Mr. Satai adds, “Whenever they are not able to take care of their own security, how will they protect other people?”
In a further effort to control appearances, the Taliban seem to be making a concerted effort to capitalize on the US decision to end combat operations here, saying that the effectiveness of their insurgency was the motivating factor for international troops.
“The leadership of the Taliban is taking advantage of the announcement that the Americans will withdraw after 2014. They are saying we have to fight now because they are very close to being defeated,” says Haji Agha Lali Dastgiri, a member of the Kandahar Provincial Council.
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Karzai Seeks Full Freedom for Taliban in Guantanamo
TOLOnews.com Monday, 09 July 2012
President Hamid Karzai said that the Afghan government is seeking the full release of the Taliban prisoners in the US military prison Guantanamo Bay, and that they should have the freedom to settle wherever they want.
Karzai made the statement to journalists gathered at a press conference in Tokyo on Sunday, responding to a question as to whether he felt the US should release the prisoners to Qatar - an earlier plan.
"On the issue of the release of the Taliban prisoners from Guantanamo, we are fully in support of that. We actually sent a delegation three months ago to Guantanamo prison where Taliban prisoners were interviewed. We want the release of those Taliban figures and we want them to have the freedom to settle where they want," Karzai said.
Karzai replied to a question about the government's negotiations with the Taliban, saying that Taliban's senior representative Qari Din Mohammad has shown readiness to begin negotiations with the Afghan government.
"Just about two weeks ago, there was a dialogue in Kyoto [Japan] in Dushisha University, all organized by Doshisha University, in which representatives of the Taliban, Hezb-e-Islami and the Afghan peace council discussed the issues of Afghanistan and how to reach a peaceful settlement there, which was a very important step, which was the first time that the Taliban senior representative Qari Din Mohammad, announced that they are willing to talk to the Afghan government," Karzai said, according to a transcript of the briefing supplied by the President's office.
On the matter of corruption, Karzai said that reforms in the area of graft and better governance will not succeed without the support of its international donors.
"There are two hands playing with this in Afghanistan: the way assistance is given to Afghanistan, the way it's disbursed inside Afghanistan, the projects for such assistance, the manner of contracting and contracting mechanism. All of those are the issues that we have to address including, of course, the corruption within the Afghan government and our own system. So to put it in short words on corruption, the two hands must clap, one hand will not deliver." Karzai replied to a Der Spiegel journalist.
Karzai also spoke of the important role of Pakistan in any Afghan peace negotiations, highlighting their role in bringing Pakistani Taliban representatives to the negotiation table.
"Pakistan's contribution to the peace process in Afghanistan can have many layers, it can have many elements. The most important element would be for Pakistan to arrange where it can dialogue between the Afghan government and the Taliban representatives who are in Pakistan, who are stationed in Pakistan and plus all other avenues of diplomatic and political arrangements that the two countries can make in this regard," he said.
Karzai gave the briefing at the Tokyo conference on Afghanistan which saw international donors pledge to the war-torn nation $16bn in civilian aid over four years.
He thanked the nations for their generosity, beginning with Japan which pledged $ 3bn for the next three years.
Other pledges include the US which said it would seek to continue matching its assistance of the past ten years - about $ 2bn annually. Sweden will give $1.2bn until till 2025 or $100 million annually. Germany pledged 450m Euro, Australia $500m for two years, India $500m for some years to come, Asian Development Bank $ 1.2 bn for the next five years, and a host of other countries, including Bangladesh, Pakistan, Qatar, and the European Union.
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Karzai Claims Taliban Willing To Talk To Government
By RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan July 09, 2012
Afghan President Hamid Karzai says the Taliban has for the first time expressed interest in talking with his U.S.-backed government.
Speaking to journalists in Tokyo on July 9, Karzai said representatives of the Afghan Peace Council met representatives of the Taliban and another opposition group, Hizb-e Islami, two weeks ago at a gathering organized by Doshisha University in the Japanese city of Kyoto.
Karzai said a Taliban senior representative, Qari Din Mohammad, announced the militants are willing to talk to the Afghan government. Karzai said the meeting discussed "how to reach a peaceful settlement."
A purported Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, confirmed the participation of a Taliban representative in the Kyoto gathering but said the group has made no promises.
The insurgents have previously rejected direct talks with Kabul and have insisted on talking to the United States instead.
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The Taliban Execution: What Happens When a Nation Fails
A gruesome video depicts the Taliban's take on adultery in today's Afghanistan. But it also tells of the failures of an 11-year project of nation-building
TIME By Aryn Baker | @arynebaker July 9, 2012
Three shots ring out in close succession, and the woman’s shawl-shrouded body slumps to the ground. Whoops, cheers and praise to Allah follow another four shots into her inert form. The latest video footage to come out of Afghanistan purports to show the execution of an allegedly adulterous woman at the hands of the Taliban. The video, filmed last month on a mobile phone and obtained by Reuters, is shocking. But even more atrocious is the fact that such incidents are on the rise in Afghanistan, from Taliban executions to gruesome punishments like cutting off noses and ears, whippings and the forced amputations of hands for accusations of theft. The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission notes that cases of extreme violence against women are on the rise — some are Taliban-inflicted, but many are simply eruptions of ancient forms of tribal justice unchecked by Afghan society and the government. The Taliban, after all, based their extreme edicts not just on a fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic law but also on tribal traditions that predate Islam. This latest video, as many have pointed out, supposedly presages the fate of Afghanistan’s women when foreign troops pull out over the next 2½ years. But the fact that such punishments continue to be meted out even with some 100,000 foreign troops still on the ground in Afghanistan is an indication that when it comes to women’s rights at least, the 11-year experiment in nation building has come to very little. And that has less to do with the commitment to women than with the weak support for education across the board.
Sure, more than 3 million Afghan girls are in school today, more than ever before in the history of Afghanistan, up from nearly zero in 2000. But few of those girls go on to secondary school, and those who do are usually in the urban areas. Rural Afghanistan, as evinced by the video, has changed little. That execution took place in Shinwari district, about an hour’s drive from the paved roads and glass-fronted office blocks of Kabul, but centuries away in terms of development.
Of course, the video’s release couldn’t have been more timely: it came out the same day as a major donors’ meeting in Tokyo, where more than 70 nations pledged $16 billion in Afghan development aid over the next four years. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton vowed to stand by Afghanistan’s women in her statement, telling conferencegoers, “The United States believes strongly that no nation can achieve peace, stability and economic growth if half the population is not empowered.” The way forward, she said, “must include fighting corruption, improving governance, strengthening the rule of law [and] increasing access to economic opportunity for all Afghans, especially for women.” She added that U.S. President Barack Obama would be asking Congress to keep American civilian assistance to Afghanistan near current levels well into 2017. That may be a difficult sell in a country grown weary of its outsize financial commitment to Afghanistan over the past decade, especially when it seems to have achieved so little.
But of the estimated $545 billion the U.S. has spent in Afghanistan, very little has gone to the kind of programs that would make an enduring difference in women’s lives, like high school and university education. Economic-empowerment schemes for women, from handicrafts-training to agricultural programs, may look good to taxpayers back home, but they aren’t sustainable, and the projects dry up as soon as the money does. According to Agence France-Presse, the U.S. says it has contributed some $316 million to teacher-training programs and that out of the 175,000 teachers in Afghanistan, about a third of them are women. Frankly, that’s not enough teachers, nor female teachers, for 12.6 million children under the age of 14. The U.N. Girls’ Education Initiative estimates that only 18% of women ages 15-24 can read, compared with 50% for men in the same age group. Clinton can speak all she wants about a commitment to women’s rights, but it won’t mean much until Afghan women can speak for themselves. And they won’t be able to do that without education.
An ongoing international commitment to rule of law, economic development and security will be necessary to stabilize Afghanistan once foreign forces leave. But none of that will have much long-term impact if education is not made a priority. So if any good is to come from the latest horror to emerge from Afghanistan, let it not take the form of a futile rage over the barbaric acts of ignorant men, but rather a renewed commitment to educating men, and women, about their basic human rights.
Baker is TIME‘s Middle East bureau chief, based in Beirut. Find her on Twitter at @arynebaker. You can also continue the discussion on TIME‘s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIMEWorld.
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Afghan Premier League Football Kicks Off in 1 Month
TOLOnews.com Monday, 09 July 2012
Afghanistan's first Premier League football competition will begin in one month nationwide, the football officials said today.
Hailed by the officials as a new chapter for Afghanistan, the competition is expected to increase football fans throughout the country and help towards stronger bonds of unity.
"Afghan football is entering a new chapter, and will increase the quality of football players in the country," Head of Afghanistan's Football Federation Keramuddin Karim said Monday at a press conference in Kabul.
"I am sure it will help in strengthening the national unity between Afghan youth," he added.
The competition, named ‘Green Ground', will see football clubs across the country travel and compete against each other.
It is being sponsored by Roshan Telecommunications Company and will be broadcast on Afghanistan's networks Tolo TV and Lemar TV - owned by the same company as TOLOnews.
"Football is a game which unites people from different nations, we want unite Afghanistan through this league," head of Tolo TV Massoud Sanjar said.
The competition will also help screen for players in forming a stronger national team, they said.
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