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Afghan Officials Denounce Western Group’s Report on Country’s Future
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN October 10, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - The Afghan government and some politicians and local news outlets denounced Western research organizations and news media, blasting them as spies and political agents in the wake of a report that suggested it was possible the Afghan government would collapse after 2014.
Imran Khan Calls Fighting In Afghanistan 'Jihad'
By RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal October 11, 2012
PESHAWAR -- Imran Khan, a senior Pakistani politician, has declared the fighting in neighboring Afghanistan a "Jihad," or Islamic holy war "against foreign occupation."
Two civilians killed in eastern Afghan rocket attack
MAIDAN SHAR, Afghanistan, Oct. 11 (Xinhua) -- Two civilians were killed and two were wounded in a Taliban rocket attack in eastern Wardak province overnight, the police said Thursday.
31 militants killed in operations in Afghan Kandahar province
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Oct. 11 (Xinhua) -- Afghan police, backed by the army, have killed 31 Taliban militants during operations within one-week period, the provincial police chief said Thursday.
U.S. Winds Down Afghanistan Aid Program
Military Pulls Out Development Teams That Had Been Central to War Strategy
Wall Street Journal By NATHAN HODGE October 10, 2012
JALALABAD, Afghanistan - The U.S. military is ending a massive nation-building experiment in Afghanistan, shutting down teams that have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into roads, schools and administrative buildings in the country's hinterlands.
106 graduates join Afghan Border Police in Kunduz
KUNDUZ, Afghanistan, Oct. 11 (Xinhua) -- Up to 106 newly- graduated policemen joined the Afghan Border Police (ABP) in the country's northern province of Kunduz on Thursday.
From Afghan street kid to film star in Buzkashi Boys
By Jessica Donati
KABUL (Reuters) - Twelve-year-old Fawad Mohammadi made a living on the streets of downtown Kabul selling maps to passing expats to help support his family.
How Petraeus's Afghan "Surge" Failed
OpEdNews.com By Gareth Porter October 10, 2012
Although the surge of "insider attacks" on U.S.-NATO forces has dominated coverage of the war in Afghanistan in 2012, an even more important story has been quietly unfolding: the U.S. loss of the pivotal war of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to the Taliban.
Panetta: Afghan Campaign 'Succeeding' Despite Attacks
Al Pessin VOA News October 10, 2012
BRUSSELS — U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says after more than 11 years the war in Afghanistan is “succeeding,” and will not be derailed by the recent series of insider attacks or any other tactic the enemy might use.
UN agencies call for protecting Afghan girls from child marriage
KABUL, Oct. 11 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations agencies in Afghanistan on Thursday called for protecting Afghan girls against child marriage, noting the child marriage remains rampant in the insurgency-hit country.
7 Royal Marines arrested over 'suspicion of murder' during service in Afghanistan
By ANI
London, Oct. 12 (ANI): Seven Royal Marines from the British Royal Navy (RN) have been arrested on suspicion of murder, the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) have confirmed.
Afghan Football League Heads to First Semi-Final
TOLOnews.com By Rezwan Natiq, Mir Sayed Wednesday, 10 October 2012
The semi-finals for Afghanistan's first football league begin tomorrow after the third week of matches saw the west zone's team Toofan Harirod continue to dominate.
Afghan, Pakistani Trade Officials to Meet on Transit Issues
TOLOnews.com By Haseeb Maudoodi Wednesday, 10 October 2012
High-ranking Afghan and Pakistani government officials and traders will meet in the next ten days to discuss transit issues between the two countries amid concerns that the lack of coordination is hurting the economy.
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Afghan Officials Denounce Western Group’s Report on Country’s Future
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN October 10, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - The Afghan government and some politicians and local news outlets denounced Western research organizations and news media, blasting them as spies and political agents in the wake of a report that suggested it was possible the Afghan government would collapse after 2014.
Setting off the firestorm was a paper released Monday by the International Crisis Group titled “Afghanistan: the Long, Hard Road to the 2014 Transition.” In it, the group, which is based in Brussels and Washington, detailed obstacles to holding the next presidential election in a way that would satisfy a majority of the people; the report outlined several chains of events that could lead to disarray and civil war.
Under a photograph of the group’s senior analyst in Afghanistan, Candace Rondeaux, the headlines in the newspaper Weesa screamed: “The head of the International Crisis Group in Kabul is doing espionage here.”
The paper is supported by expatriate Afghans, and its editor, Mohammad Zubair Shafiqi, describes himself as independent.
In the upper house of Parliament, lawmakers on Tuesday denounced the group. “The I.C.G. report is shameless interference in the internal affairs of Afghanistan, and they want to start a psychological war against our people,” said Senator Gulalai Akbari from Badakhshan Province in the country’s north.
Some lawmakers demanded an apology from the organization; another said that “the hands working behind the scenes to devastate and destroy Afghanistan must be cut off,” according to a rough transcript of the session by the United Nations.
While the group’s report was bleak in tone, it was hardly different from other reports that have been released over the years that trace the enormous difficulties that the Afghan government needs to overcome for the country to hold together. A report released in September by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, titled “Waiting for the Taliban in Afghanistan,” predicted at least as desolate a future, including the return of Taliban control in large swaths of the country and the likelihood they soon would be able to muster substantial forces and wrest control of some district centers from the government.
Many diplomats and Westerners were scratching their heads on Wednesday, trying to figure out why the International Crisis Group’s report had set off such outrage right now. “We’re trying to play it very low-key here,” said one Western diplomat, who said his government had considered putting out a statement that disagreed with the report’s conclusion but then decided it was best to deal with it privately.
Others saw it as potentially menacing. “It will be important to see if this kind of vitriol is only targeted against Western media and Westerners, or will it be targeted against any government critics or opposition,” said a diplomat in Kabul. “Is this part of a wider problem of trying to control criticism in the run-up to the elections?”
Comments by cabinet ministers that were endorsed by President Hamid Karzai and reported by Afghan news agencies made clear that the most proximate concern for the government and especially Mr. Karzai is the negotiation of a bilateral security agreement with the United States for after 2014. The Afghan government appears to believe that there is a plot by the United States to weaken Afghanistan’s standing in order to gain leverage in the negotiations.
“The U.S., by using the press, is waging a psychological war to attain the security agreement, and the published report and views of the International Crisis Group is part of this effort, and it is fully against existing realities in the country,” said a report on the cabinet comments by the semiofficial government news service Bakhtar.
The cabinet believes that Western news and research organizations “are aiming at creating concern and distrust among the people of Afghanistan,” the Bakhtar report said.
A former spokesman for Mr. Karzai, Waheed Omar, said that many ministers believe that “the Western media is a tool of their governments’ foreign policy and that the I.C.G. is not independent and that they are depicting Afghanistan’s situation as grim so as to put the Afghan government in a position where it has to accept a security agreement that is more in America’s interest than in the interest of Afghanistan.”
The tone echoed Mr. Karzai’s news conference last week, in which he made similar accusations.
These reports in part are seen by Mr. Karzai as an affront, and that narrative has been taken up by many others in the government, Afghan and Western analysts said. It is also an expression of frustration with the West’s frequent criticism of the Afghan government.
Martine Van Bijlert, one of the directors of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, a research organization based in Kabul, said: “The reports basically say, ‘You are presiding over a country that cannot take care of itself.’ And beyond that, there is the feeling from some Afghans that, ‘We are just fed up with being told we cannot take care of ourselves and we are not accepting that anymore.’ ”
Some Afghan analysts said they thought the government was overreacting rather than taking concrete steps to try to avert the worst predictions.
“I don’t think that this or any other report which follows it will have any negative impact on the self-confidence of the people of Afghanistan,” said Jawid Kohistani, a political analyst in Kabul.
“The Afghan people already knew about the things which are described in the I.C.G. report,” he said. “Unless the Afghan government brings the necessary reforms and gets a national and international agreement on peace talks, the transfer of power and elections, Afghanistan will descend into chaos.”
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Imran Khan Calls Fighting In Afghanistan 'Jihad'
By RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal October 11, 2012
PESHAWAR -- Imran Khan, a senior Pakistani politician, has declared the fighting in neighboring Afghanistan a "Jihad," or Islamic holy war "against foreign occupation."
Khan made his comments while speaking to journalists in Peshawar late on October 10.
Khan is the head of Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaaf party (Movement for Justice).
A former cricket star, Khan led a rally last weekend to condemn U.S. drone strikes in the tribal areas.
Khan's movement has become prominent after senior leaders of other political parties and top members of the former military regime joined him over the past couple of years.
The Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaaf party has attracted large crowds and favorable ratings in some major Pakistani cities.
With reporting by tribune.com.pk
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Two civilians killed in eastern Afghan rocket attack
MAIDAN SHAR, Afghanistan, Oct. 11 (Xinhua) -- Two civilians were killed and two were wounded in a Taliban rocket attack in eastern Wardak province overnight, the police said Thursday.
"Two adult men were killed and two others wounded when a rocket fired by Taliban insurgents hit a construction company in provincial capital Maidan Shar last night," provincial police chief, Qaum Bakizai, told Xinhua.
The injured were shifted to a hospital in the city, 35 km west of Afghan capital Kabul, he said.
A total of 1,145 Afghan civilians were killed and 1,954 injured in conflicts in the first six months of 2012 in insurgency-hit country, according to a UN report released in Kabul on Aug. 8.
It attributed 80 percent of the civilian deaths to the attacks of Taliban insurgents and other armed groups and 10 percent of the deaths were attributed to Afghan and NATO-led forces.
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31 militants killed in operations in Afghan Kandahar province
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Oct. 11 (Xinhua) -- Afghan police, backed by the army, have killed 31 Taliban militants during operations within one-week period, the provincial police chief said Thursday.
"Up to 31 anti-government militants have been killed and six have been injured during operations launched in Kandahar city and other districts over the past seven days," police chief, Gen. Abdul Raziq, told a press briefing here.
He said that six other Taliban militants were detained by the police forces during the above raids.
The police in collaboration with the army have recently rolled out a special operational plan to maintain security in the Kandahar province, some 450 km south of Afghan capital Kabul.
The police also found and seized weapons and ammunition besides defusing dozens of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) over the same period of time, he noted.
Afghan Taliban has launched massive IED attacks against Afghan national security forces and about 100,000 NATO-led troops stationed in the country in recent years. Up to six Afghan policemen were killed when an IED they were defusing went off in neighbouring Helmand province on Wednesday.
The insurgent group, which has been waging an insurgency of more than one decade, has yet to confirm the deaths of their militants.
Kandahar, the birthplace of Taliban, has frequently seen violent incidents despite continued military operations there.
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U.S. Winds Down Afghanistan Aid Program
Military Pulls Out Development Teams That Had Been Central to War Strategy
Wall Street Journal By NATHAN HODGE October 10, 2012
JALALABAD, Afghanistan - The U.S. military is ending a massive nation-building experiment in Afghanistan, shutting down teams that have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into roads, schools and administrative buildings in the country's hinterlands.
The shutdown, part of the withdrawal of U.S. and coalition forces over the next year, will mark the end of a hearts-and-minds campaign that has been central to the military's strategy.
As part of an effort to improve the reach and reputation of Afghanistan's central government, the U.S. and its allies set up over two dozen Provincial Reconstruction Teams around the country to dispense development aid and advise local officials. At least five of these have closed in recent months, and most of the remainder will shut down over the next year.
The U.S. agreed to end the program in a partnership agreement reached in May with the Afghan government, which sees the program as undercutting the effectiveness of local institutions.
The shift is effectively turning off the money flow to Afghanistan's provinces. Many U.S. and Western officials say they are doubtful that provincial administrations are ready to fill in the void. "No one has a clue how much is being spent in province A or B" by provincial governments, said a senior Western official. "It's a serious national-security threat to the country."
Each of the reconstruction teams usually includes some 100 troops, is led by a military officer, and draws on civilian aid expertise, often with representatives from the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Department of Agriculture.
With most U.S. forces slated to leave in 2014, commanders at the remaining PRTs are preparing the drawdown. "We're pretty much in the business of finishing these projects," said Air Force Lt. Col. Grant Hargrove, who commands the PRT overseeing Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan.
In 2010, at the height of the U.S. troops surge, the Nangarhar PRT spent around $24 million on projects in the province through the Commander's Emergency Response Program, a fund given to military commanders to invest in reconstruction projects. The work included $5.5 million for street repair in the provincial capital of Jalalabad, $300,000 for the pediatric wing of a hospital and several high schools that cost around $200,000 each. Civilian agencies also channeled money through the PRT.
That CERP money has all but dried up as part of a planned phaseout. The Nangarhar PRT now oversees around half a dozen projects with a total budget of $750,000. Col. Hargrove said the team still has "bulk CERP" available, but the small-scale funds—capped at $5,000 per project—can only pay for a well or a modest irrigation project.
The U.S. has already closed at least four PRTs in eastern Afghanistan, closing teams most recently in Laghman and Kapisa provinces near Kabul. In parallel, the U.S. is winding down the work of smaller district support teams, which provide similar aid to the equivalent of municipal and county governments.
The June closure has "badly affected" the local economy, said Sarhadi Zwak, a spokesman for the governor of Laghman. "There are no more projects," he said. "When the PRT was here they would implement several projects and create job opportunities for the people."
The closing of PRTs will put pressure on provincial governments and local offices of central ministries, said Farid Mamundzay, deputy minister for policy at Afghanistan's Independent Directorate of Local Governance, a central government agency overseeing local administrations. "Whenever I visit the provinces, I hear from provincial governments that when the PRTs leave, they'll leave behind a big gap," he said. "We're working from Kabul to fill thisbut it needs to be done quickly."
The creation of the PRTs, with uniformed troops taking on the work of aid workers, was controversial. n the program's early years, iInternational aid groups criticized the military for invading their territory.
At a conference in Germany last year, Afghan President Hamid Karzai railed against the PRTs and district teams, calling them "parallel structures" that have "undermined the development of institutions in terms of strength and credibility."
Afghan negotiators demanded the a clause calling for the shutdown of PRTs in the strategic partnership agreement with the U.S., which was signed in May. The deal opens the door to a long-term U.S. military presence, but with a significantly smaller footprint than the 68,000 currently in the country. Talks on that long-term presence are set to begin in the coming days.
Afghan National Security Adviser Rangin Dadfar Spanta, who was involved in negotiations over the strategic partnership pact, said the exit of the PRTs would have an upside, because citizens would have to turn to the government for services instead of the PRTs, shoring up local administrations' authority.
As a result, he added, Afghans would "take the government of Afghanistan much more seriously."
The PRTs served as centers of gravity in the provinces, with the directors of local ministries turning to the military instead of the central government for project funds.
In Nangarhar, monthly meetings at the provincial governor's office until recently were a forum for the directors to pitch their proposals.
"All these local line ministries used to come to the PRT for everything," said Army Lt. Col. Lawrence Shea, who works on economic development issues for the team.
After the withdrawal of most U.S. and international troops in 2014, U.S. civilian agencies talk of maintaining a presence in many parts of Afghanistan to continue development work and provide advice and assistance to the provincial government.
U.S. officials describe Nangarhar, on the Highway 7 corridor that is the prime trade conduit between Afghanistan and Pakistan, as a promising location. But security restrictions and attacks on coalition forces have already severely impeded their work.
"If you look at the PRT for that capacity-building, we're almost like a consulting company," said Col. Shea. "And to be a consultant, you've got to be with your client, and that's probably one of the more difficult things to do. Some good work's taking place, but we've moved the ball a lot slower." —Habib Khan Totakhil and Maria Abi-Habib contributed to this article.
Write to Nathan Hodge at nathan.hodge@wsj.com
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106 graduates join Afghan Border Police in Kunduz
KUNDUZ, Afghanistan, Oct. 11 (Xinhua) -- Up to 106 newly- graduated policemen joined the Afghan Border Police (ABP) in the country's northern province of Kunduz on Thursday.
"A total of 106 policemen were commissioned to the ABP on Thursday morning after completion of nine-month training period in a police training center in provincial capital Kunduz city," Zabardast Safi, commander of the training center, told reporters in a ceremony.
The police officers will be deployed to northern Kunduz bordering Tajikistan, he added.
In an unrelated development, Afghan forces supported by the NATO-led coalition troops detained an Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan financial facilitator in Kunduz, on Wednesday, the coalition confirmed in a statement earlier Thursday.
"The arrested leader is suspected of being heavily involved in purchasing and trafficking weapons for use in attacks on Afghan and coalition forces in Kunduz province," it said.
The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan is a Taliban-linked group of militants active in northern Afghan provinces.
The security force also detained multiple suspected insurgents in the operation.
The Taliban-led insurgency has been rampant since the militant group launched annual spring offensive on May 3 against Afghan government and about 100,000 NATO-led troops.
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From Afghan street kid to film star in Buzkashi Boys
By Jessica Donati
KABUL (Reuters) - Twelve-year-old Fawad Mohammadi made a living on the streets of downtown Kabul selling maps to passing expats to help support his family.
Along with many impoverished children who chased customers while they shopped for rugs and souvenirs, he worked to support his family because his father had died years before.
But he never imagined this would lead him to well-connected film maker Sam French, who would turn him into a movie star.
Mohammadi's jade-green eyes and charcoal-smeared face have now peered out from cinema screens from Los Angeles to London, starring in a short film, "Buzkashi Boys," that has been nominated for awards around the world.
"I had seen many movies, especially Afghan movies, and when I watched them I dreamed of becoming an actor. Then I met Sam French and that's how I came to act in the film," Mohammadi said at a recent screening of the film in Kabul, his gaze even more piercing in real life than on screen.
The movie is about two children growing up in Kabul who dream of becoming Buzkashi riders, horsemen who compete in the Afghan national sport similar to polo, which uses a dead goat instead of a ball.
One of the boys is a street kid like Mohammadi, the other the son of a blacksmith forced to spend long hours in his father's dark workshop sharpening axe heads.
"What I wanted to show in the film is that even these kids have hopes for the future, have dreams, which in itself is not seen in the West. What you see in the West is a whole bunch of suicide bombers and Taliban, you don't see human beings," said director French.
He said one of the challenges was getting the children to get along in real life because they came from very different backgrounds.
While Mohammadi was picked up from the streets, his co-star was already an actor, who had appeared in movies from the age of two and was the son of an Afghan film maker.
"I was very wary of casting a street kid in the film because they are not actors, but I found this kid Fawad through a friend of mine," said French, smoke wisping from a cigarette in a quiet corner of the garden, where the audience was gathered for drinks after the film screening.
In another twist, French also decided to reverse the roles of the children for the film, casting the young actor as the street kid, and Mohammadi as the son taking up his father's trade as a blacksmith.
"I kept coming back to him (Mohammadi) because his heart is the biggest heart of any man I ever met, he's the nicest guy and he was my character, he was the kid."
Now aged 14, Mohammadi is able to go to school, supported by a number of expats, and is getting straight As. He is looking forward to becoming fluent in English.
"I know English from Chicken Street (a street popular among foreigners in Kabul for its souvenir shops and where sold his maps) and I know how to speak it, but not how to speak well or write. I am learning it at school," Mohammadi said with a wide grin.
"Buzkashi Boys" is the first film to be produced by the Afghan Film Project, a non-profit group that aims to train film makers in Afghanistan, costing just over $200,000.
"The idea from the beginning was to provide training experience for young Afghan film makers... By end of the production our trainees were operating the camera and calling the shots on set," said French.
(Reporting by Jessica Donati)
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How Petraeus's Afghan "Surge" Failed
OpEdNews.com By Gareth Porter October 10, 2012
Although the surge of "insider attacks" on U.S.-NATO forces has dominated coverage of the war in Afghanistan in 2012, an even more important story has been quietly unfolding: the U.S. loss of the pivotal war of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to the Taliban.
Some news outlets have published stories this year suggesting that the U.S. military was making "progress" against the Taliban IED war, but those stories failed to provide the broader context for seasonal trends or had a narrow focus on U.S. fatalities. The bigger reality is that the U.S. troop surge could not reverse the very steep increase in IED attacks and attendant casualties that the Taliban began in 2009 and which continued through 2011. Over the 2009-11 period, the U.S. military suffered a total of 14,627 casualties, according to the Pentagon's Defense Casualty Analysis System and iCasualties, a non-governmental organization tracking Iraq and Afghanistan war casualties from published sources.
Of that total, 8,680, or 59 percent, were from IED explosions, based on data provided by the Pentagon's Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO). And the proportion of all U.S. casualties caused by IEDs continued to increase from 56 percent in 2009 to 63 percent in 2011.
U.S. Pentagon and military leaders sought to gain control over the Taliban's IED campaign with two contradictory approaches, both of which failed because they did not reflect the social and political realities in Afghanistan.
JIEDDO spent more than $18 billion on high-tech solutions aimed at detecting IEDs before they went off, including robots, and blimps with spy cameras. But as the technology helped the U.S.-NATO command discover more IEDs, the Taliban simply produced and planted even larger numbers of bombs to continue to increase the pressure of the IED war.
The counterinsurgency strategy devised by Gen. David Petraeus and implemented by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, on the other hand, held that the IED networks could be destroyed once the people turned away from the Taliban. They pushed thousands of U.S. troops out of their armored vehicles into patrols on foot in order to establish relationships with the local population.
The main effect of the strategy, however, was a major jump in the number of "catastrophic" injuries to U.S. troops from IEDs.
In his Aug. 30, 2009 "initial assessment," McChrystal said the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) "cannot succeed if it is unwilling to share risk at least equally with the people." In an interview with USA Today in July 2009, he argued that "the best way to defeat IEDs will be to defeat the Taliban's hold on the people." Once the people's trust had been gained, he suggested, they would inform ISAF of the location of IEDs.
McChrystal argued that the Taliban were using "the psychological effects of IEDs and the coalition force's preoccupation with force protection" to get the U.S.-NATO command to reinforce a "garrison posture and mentality."
McChrystal ordered much more emphasis on more dismounted patrols by U.S. forces in fall 2009. The Taliban responded by increasing the number of IEDs targeting dismounted patrols from 71 in September 2009 to 228 by January 2010, according to data compiled by JIEDDO.
That meant that the population had more knowledge of the location of IEDs, which should have resulted in a major increase in IEDs turned in by the population, according to the Petraeus counterinsurgency theory. But the data on IEDs shows that the opposite happened. In the first eight months of 2009, the average rate of turn-ins had been three percent, but from September 2009 to June 2010, the rate averaged 2.7 percent.
After Petraeus replaced McChrystal as ISAF commander in June 2010, he issued a directive calling for more dismounted patrols, especially in Helmand and Kandahar, where U.S. troops were trying to hold territory that the Taliban had controlled in previous years. In the next five months, the turn-in rate fell to less than one percent.
Meanwhile, the number of IED attacks on foot patrols causing casualties increased from 21 in October 2009 to an average of 40 in the March-December 2010 period, according to JIEDDO records. U.S. troops wounded by IEDs spiked to an average of 316 per month during that period, 2.5 times more than the average for the previous 10-month period.
The Taliban success in targeting troops on foot was the main reason U.S. casualties from IEDs increased from 1,211 wounded and 159 dead in 2009 to 3,366 wounded and 259 dead in 2010.
The damage from IEDs was far more serious, however, than even those figures suggest, because the injuries to dismounted patrols included far more "traumatic amputation" of limbs -- arms and legs blown off by bombs -- and other more severe wounds than had been seen in attacks on armored vehicles.
A June 2011 Army task force report described a new type of battle injury -- "Dismount Complex Blast Injury" -- defined as a combination of "traumatic amputation of at least one leg, a minimum of severe injury to another extremity, and pelvic, abdominal, or urogenital wounding." The report confirmed that the number of triple limb amputations in 2010 alone had been twice the total in the previous eight years of war.
A study of 194 amputations in 2010 and the first three months of 2011 showed that most were suffered by Marine Corps troops, who were concentrated in Helmand province, and that 88 percent were the result of IED attacks on dismounted patrols, according to the report. In January 2011, the director of JIEDDO, Gen. John L. Oates, acknowledged that U.S. troops in Helmand and Kandahar had seen "an alarming increase in the number of troops losing one or two legs to IEDs."
Much larger numbers of U.S. troops have suffered moderate to severe traumatic brain injuries from IED blasts -- mostly against armored vehicles. Statistics on the total number of limb amputations and traumatic brain injuries in Afghanistan were excised from the task force report.
In 2011, U.S. fatalities from IEDs fell to 204 from 259 in 2010, and overall fatalities fell from 499 to 418. But the number of IED injuries actually increased by 10 percent from 3,339 to 3,530, and the overall total of wounded in action was almost the same as in 2010, according to data from iCasualties. The total for wounded in the first eight months of 2012 are 10 percent less than the same period in 2011, whereas the number of dead is 29 percent below the previous year's pace.
The reduction in wounded appears to reflect in part the transfer of thousands of U.S. troops from Kandahar and Helmand provinces, where a large proportion of the casualties have occurred, to eastern Afghanistan. The number of IED attacks on dismounted patrols in the mid-July 2011 to mid-July 2012 period was 25 percent less than the number in the same period a year earlier, according to JIEDDO.
The Pentagon was well aware by early 2011 that it wasn't going to be able to accomplish what it had planned before and during the troop surge. In a telling comment to the Washington Post in January 2011, JIEDDO head Gen. Oates insisted that the idea that "we're losing the IED fight in Afghanistan" was "not accurate," because, "The whole idea isn't to destroy the network. That's maybe impossible."
The aim, he explained, was now to "disrupt them" -- a move of the goalposts that avoided having to admit defeat in the IED war. And in an implicit admission that Petraeus's push for even more dismounted patrols is no longer treated with reverence in the ISAF command, the August 2010 directive has been taken down from its website.
This article first appeared at Inter Press Service.
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Panetta: Afghan Campaign 'Succeeding' Despite Attacks
Al Pessin VOA News October 10, 2012
BRUSSELS — U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says after more than 11 years the war in Afghanistan is “succeeding,” and will not be derailed by the recent series of insider attacks or any other tactic the enemy might use.
At a NATO defense ministers' meeting in Brussels on Wednesday, Panetta and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen denied that allies are being defeated on the battlefield or losing resolve. It has been a difficult period for NATO and its partners in Afghanistan, with reports of a resurgent Taliban and a series of deadly attacks in which Afghan security forces turned on their NATO colleagues.
Rasmussen said NATO's strategy is working, and the alliance timeline is on track for full Afghan security control next year and the withdrawal of most foreign combat forces by the end of the following year. He said troops will begin leaving in the coming months, but as part of the plan, not in a “rush to the exits.”
Panetta served notice on the Taliban that it will not be able to derail the NATO plan.
“As I said to my fellow ministers, we have come too far, we have fought too many battles, we have spilled too much blood not to finish the job that we are all about," he said. "Whatever tactics the enemy throws at us — IEDs [improvised explosive devices], insider attacks, car bombs — we will not allow those tactics to divide us from our Afghan partners, and we will not allow those tactics to divert us from the mission that we are dedicated to.”
Panetta said the allied effort is “succeeding” and “has turned an important corner,” but is still at a “critical point.” He also said the allies and the Afghan government must stick together.
“What tests the coalition is not so much the problem of insider attacks, but rather how effectively we respond to those attacks," said Panetta. "Partnering even closer will frustrate the enemy's designs to capitalize on this problem.”
The defense secretary called again on his NATO colleagues to fill the shortfall in trainers for Afghan forces. Despite years of such calls, Panetta said the alliance is still 58 teams short of what it needs. The training and mentoring of Afghan forces is a key element in the NATO effort to leave a stable country behind when it withdraws most of its forces.
NATO defense ministers also ordered a military planning effort to determine how many coalition troops to leave behind and for what purpose. They expect the plan to be finalized next year.
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UN agencies call for protecting Afghan girls from child marriage
KABUL, Oct. 11 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations agencies in Afghanistan on Thursday called for protecting Afghan girls against child marriage, noting the child marriage remains rampant in the insurgency-hit country.
"In Afghanistan child marriage is a harsh reality for too many young women. More than 46 percent of Afghan women are married before age 18, according to the Afghanistan Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 2010/2011, and more than 15 percent before age 15," they said in a joint press release.
On Dec. 19, 2011, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution to declare Oct. 11 as the International Day of the Girl Child, to recognize girls' rights and the unique challenges girls face around the world.
This year marks the first anniversary of the day with the theme of "my life, my right, end child marriage."
"The requirement for the free and informed consent of both parties to a marriage is recognized in international legal instruments to which Afghanistan is a party as well as under its national laws in cognizance with the principles of Islam. The Elimination of Violence Against Women Law (EVAW) criminate the practice of Child Marriage recognizing that a child under the legal age of marriage is not capable of giving her valid consent to enter into marriage," the top UN envoy in Afghanistan, Jan Kubis, said in the release.
In response to widespread concerns about the violence against women, the Afghan government enacted the EVAW law in August 2009. However, Afghan laws set 16 as the minimum age of marriage for a girl and 18 for a boys.
"Child marriage is a health issue as well as a human rights violation .. Girls aged 10-14 are five times more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth than women aged 20-24. Despite a lot of progress during the past ten years, Afghanistan's maternal mortality rate is still 327 deaths per 100,000 live births .. and child marriage is one of the main barriers to improving the health of women and children in Afghanistan," Laurent Zessler, UNFPA Afghanistan Representative, said.
Girls face a huge risk when they get married at young age. Violence is one of the negative consequences of child marriage which affects both the physical and psychosocial health of young girls and robs them of their childhood and future opportunities. Getting married in an appropriate reduces girls' risk for physical, sexual, psychological, and economic abuse. Besides, marriage below the age of 16 is a violation of the Afghanistan Civil Law, the UN Women Representative, Ingibjorg Gisladottir, noted in the release.
The EVAW law criminate child marriage, forced marriage, selling and buying women for the purpose or under the pretext of marriage, giving away a woman or girl to settle a dispute, forced self- immolation and 17 other acts of violence against women, including rape and beating. It also specifies punishment for perpetrators.
However, women right activists criticized the government for failing to apply the three-year-old landmark law to most cases of violence against women.
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7 Royal Marines arrested over 'suspicion of murder' during service in Afghanistan
By ANI
London, Oct. 12 (ANI): Seven Royal Marines from the British Royal Navy (RN) have been arrested on suspicion of murder, the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) have confirmed.
The arrests by the Royal Military Police are apparently related to an incident in Afghanistan last year, when 3 Commando Brigade was based in Helmand, Afghanistan.
The MoD said that the incident followed an "engagement with an insurgent" and no civilians were involved.
"The investigation will now be taken forward and dealt with by the service justice system. These arrests demonstrate the Department and the Armed Forces' determination to ensure UK personnel act in accordance with their rules of engagement and our standards," the BBC quoted a MoD spokesman, as saying.
"It would be inappropriate to make any further comment while the investigation is under way," he added.
According to the report, some 23 servicemen from the 3 Commando Brigade lost their lives in 2011 during a summer tour of duty that encompassed the height of the fighting season, while many more were injured.
The MoD is now likely to be liaising with 4 Mechanized Brigade, the UK force now in command of Task Force Helmand, to ensure that all necessary force protection measures are taken in case, the report said. (ANI)
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Afghan Football League Heads to First Semi-Final
TOLOnews.com By Rezwan Natiq, Mir Sayed Wednesday, 10 October 2012
The semi-finals for Afghanistan's first football league begin tomorrow after the third week of matches saw the west zone's team Toofan Harirod continue to dominate.
The first semi-final for the Roshan Afghan Premier League (APL) will be played between De Maiwand Atalan and Simorgh Alborz on Thursday October 11, while Toofan Harrirod and Spinghar Bazan will face each other on Friday.
The winners of the semi-finals will play for the championship title in a grand final on Friday October 19.
Last week's four matches aptly demonstrated the future football potential for the Afghan national team amid praise for the league's capacity to unite the embattled country.
Toofan Harrirod has dominated the season, ranking 1st on the APL ladder with 9 points after scoring high and remaining undefeated in all four of their matches.
In their last encounter with Mawjhai Amu last Friday, Harrirod scored four goals while their opponents failed to score any.
On Thursday, Group A teams Da Abasin Sape and Shaheen Asmayee came head to head for their final encounter. With both teams already knocked out of the semi-final, expectations for an exciting match were low.
But Asmayee entertained, finally defeating an opposing team after having been beaten themselves in its three previous matches, winning by three goals to nil.
Last week's Wednesday match was played between semi-final contenders from the north zone Simorgh Alborz and the central zone Oqaban Hindukosh.
Alborz ultimately prevailed over the Hindukosh in a tense match with a 2:1 score.
Last week's Tuesday match between two semi-finalists, the south west's De Maiwand Atalan and the east zone's Spinghar Bazan, was a low-scoring nail-biter with both teams fighting hard but only managing to score one goal each.
Toofan Harrirod and Simorgh Alburz are the top ranking teams from Group B with 9 and 6 points respectively while De Maiwand Atalan and De Spinghar Bazan have 7 points each from Group A.
The APL has already proven very popular both around the country with an Afghanistan High Peace Council (HPC) official hailing it as an opportunity to bring peace and stability as people have a new focus and can unite with something non-political.
"Sport and the arts are effective in bringing peace to the country, and as a peace ambassador, so I see this program as effective in bringing all nations together," HPC Foreign Relations Advisor Esmayel Qasimyar said Tuesday.
Afghan Football Federation officials said the league will be held next year as well.
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Afghan, Pakistani Trade Officials to Meet on Transit Issues
TOLOnews.com By Haseeb Maudoodi Wednesday, 10 October 2012
High-ranking Afghan and Pakistani government officials and traders will meet in the next ten days to discuss transit issues between the two countries amid concerns that the lack of coordination is hurting the economy.
Afghanistan's top government ministers in business, including the Commerce Minister Anwar-ul-Haq Ahadi and Finance Minister Hazrat Omar Zakhilwal, will meet at the conference on the issue to be held in Pakistan, the Ministry of Commerce and Industries spokesman Wahidullah Ghazikhil said Wednesday.
The conference of APTICA [Afghanistan Pakistan Transit Issue Contract Agreement] is also expected to draw the Afghan Foreign and Interior Ministers, as well as traders and officials from the Afghan Chamber of Commerce and Industries (ACCI).
The exact date of the conference could not be disclosed for security reasons, according to the spokesman.
Despite signing the APTTA [Afghanistan, Pakistan Trade and Transport Agreement] in October 2010, the transit problems between two countries have not eased. Instead, the failure to implement the agreement has seen ongoing problems to become major issues and obstacles for the Afghan and Pakistan business owners.
Afghans have reportedly had major issues exporting fresh fruit and other trade products to India and beyond through Waga port in Pakistan's Karachi city. Traders say Pakistani officials have often stopped the Afghan trade trucks for several days or weeks, causing the goods to spoil.
"There are serious obstacles ahead of us. They [Pakistan] do not say that there are issues, but they have created the mechanisms in such a way which creates problems for Afghan traders," ACCI deputy chair Khanjan Alokozay told TOLOnews Wednesday.
"For example," Alokozay went on, "a kilo of grapes costs only 80 cents to $1 in Pakistan but if we take this to India through Waga port will be $5 there which a bigger benefit for Afghan traders."
Ghazikhil said that the problems faced by the Afghan traders will be discussed at the upcoming APTICA conference.
"The Waga port is the border between Pakistan and India, we cannot go pass that, we are only allowed to go to Lahore. We will express our concerns and problems at the APTICA conference," Ghazikhil said.
Afghan traders, meanwhile, are also facing trade problems with the neighbor to the west Iran which has dropped some 15 percent as Iran's currency struggles and Western sanctions hit.
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