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Taliban deny their bombs cause most Afghan deaths
Associated Press – Sun, Oct 21, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The Taliban dismissed on Sunday a UN report that roadside bombs are causing most civilian casualties in Afghanistan as "Western propaganda."
Inaugural Premier League brings hope to young Afghans
Reuters By Miriam Arghandiwal Sat Oct 20, 2012
KABUL - The feeling of optimism in the air was almost palpable as the inaugural Afghan Premier League reached its climax in Kabul on Friday just a stone's throw from where the Taliban carried out public executions.
Iran Arrests Suicide Bomber at Borders with Afghanistan
Fars News Agency October 21, 2012
TEHRAN (FNA)- Iranian border guards have arrested a suicide bomber who intended to infiltrate the country's borders with Afghanistan, a security official revealed on Sunday.
Award-Winning Film Breathes New Life Into Afghan Cinema
October 21, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty By Frud Bezhan
The new Afghan film "Buzkashi Boys," has earned international critical acclaim for its poignant portrayal of two impoverished boys in Kabul struggling to realize their dreams.
As Afghan Forces Kill, Trust Is Also a Casualty
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN October 20, 2012
SISAY OUTPOST, Afghanistan - There is an Afghan version of this story and a very different American one, but the moral is the same: insider killings of Western troops and civilians by Afghan forces, which have taken 51 coalition lives this year, have broken trust between the two military forces and laid bare the anger and fear each harbors toward the other.
Afghan security force’s rapid expansion comes at a cost as readiness lags
Washington Post By Rajiv Chandrasekaran Sunday, October 21, 2012
Top Pentagon leaders, White House advisers and members of Congress from both parties have long regarded the rapid expansion of Afghanistan’s army and police as a crucial element of the U.S. exit strategy. For years, they reasoned that generating a force of 352,000 soldiers and policemen would enable the Afghan government to keep fighting Taliban insurgents after U.S. and NATO troops end their combat mission.
Romney walks cautious line on foreign policy, Afghanistan
Romney criticizes Obama's foreign policy but offers few specifics on his ideas about Afghanistan and the use of U.S. troops.
Los Angeles Times By Maeve Reston October 20, 2012
DELRAY BEACH, Fla. - In the 16 months that he has been running for president, the thrust of Mitt Romney's policy toward Afghanistan has been this: He would hew to President Obama's timeline to withdraw U.S. troops by the end of 2014, but he would part ways with the president by giving greater deference to the judgment of military commanders.
Rahimi to Face Dominican Republic Boxer in Kabul Bout
TOLOnews.com By Mir Sayed Saturday, 20 October 2012
Afghan boxer Hamid Rahimi arrived in Afghanistan on Saturday ahead of his "Fight 4 Peace" match in Kabul with Dominican Republic rival Rafael Bejaran.
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Taliban deny their bombs cause most Afghan deaths
Associated Press – Sun, Oct 21, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The Taliban dismissed on Sunday a UN report that roadside bombs are causing most civilian casualties in Afghanistan as "Western propaganda."
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed that the insurgents only use the weapons to target foreign troops and the Afghan security forces.
"By spreading such propaganda they are trying to prevent us from planting bombs which cause the deaths of invaders in our country," he said in an emailed statement.
On Saturday, the UN mission in Afghanistan urged the insurgents to end the use of roadside bombs, also known as improvised explosive devices or IEDs, saying they were by far the biggest killer of civilians in the conflict. The organization used the term in reference both to bombs detonated by remote control and land mines that go off when a vehicle goes over them.
The call came a day after 19 civilians died and 15 were injured when their bus struck a mine in northern Balkh province on Friday. The UN said that blast was caused by an IED planted on a busy public road and set off by a pressure plate. It said the bomb was "consistent with documented patterns and tactics of choice by the Taliban."
Insurgent-placed homemade bombs continue to be the deadliest weapon for civilians, according to the world body. IEDs killed 340 civilians and injured a further 599 over the past nine months, an increase of almost 30 per cent compared to the same period last year, the UN said.
The Taliban spokesman denied that any insurgents were operating in the area of Balkh province where Friday's blast occurred.
He also said the Taliban use only remote-controlled roadside bombs which — unlike the devices automatically activated by pressure-plates — allow a bomber to choose the time of the blast and specifically target coalition troops and their Afghan allies.
About half of the casualties suffered by coalition forces in recent years have been caused by roadside bombs and mines.
Also Saturday, a service member with the NATO military coalition was killed by a bomb in the south, the alliance said in a statement. The coalition did not provide the service member's nationality or any other details about the incident. The NATO force usually waits for national authorities to give such information.
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Inaugural Premier League brings hope to young Afghans
Reuters By Miriam Arghandiwal Sat Oct 20, 2012
KABUL - The feeling of optimism in the air was almost palpable as the inaugural Afghan Premier League reached its climax in Kabul on Friday just a stone's throw from where the Taliban carried out public executions.
Waving Afghan flags or wrapping them around their shoulders, around 4,000 fans crammed into a newly built stadium for the culmination of the ambitious three-week championship sponsored by local telecommunications operator Roshan.
"Football is helping these boys by providing a platform for youths to have something to turn to besides drug addiction or joining the insurgency," Afghan Football Federation (AFF) advisor Ali Askar Lali told Reuters.
Eleven years into the NATO-led war against Taliban insurgents, violence is intensifying across Afghanistan, where even some of the most peaceful areas are falling prey to militants.
As the finalists from the eight-team tournament took to the field, fear of the widespread violence engulfing the country was, understandably, still on many minds.
"We were worried throughout the whole tournament that something would happen, but... I don't think anyone could get away with trying to ruin this," Lali shouted above the din of screaming crowds.
The event culminated with Toofan Harirod, representing the western region, beating northwestern region's Simorgh Alborz 2-1 in a final held near the notorious Ghazi stadium, where the Taliban held public executions during their 1996-2001 reign.
All of Afghanistan's 34 provinces were represented in a tournament broadcast live on television and radio stations belonging to Moby Group, run by Austalian-educated Kabul tycoon Saad Mohseni.
PLAYING FOR PRIDE
As the late-2014 deadline looms for foreign troops to leave the country and all security responsibilities are handed over to Afghan forces, concerns are mounting that ethnic clashes and civil war could erupt.
After the dispirited Soviet exit in 1989 after a decade fighting mujahideen, the Afghan communist government collapsed, leading to infighting between warlords and a vicious civil war that reduced much of Kabul to rubble and paved the way for the Taliban's rise to power in 1996.
"I've played football all my life but never dreamed this would happen," Simorgh Alborz midfielder Kawoon Malikzada said. "Now I am playing for pride, not just for sport".
Afghan athletes are firm believers in the benefits sport can provide a country torn apart by decades of war, though they bemoan the lack of government support, including poorly maintained training facilities and little financial incentive.
Afghan Taekwondo Olympian Rohullah Nikpai, who brought home bronze medals in Beijing and London and has become a national hero, rushed to the field to congratulate the winning team, handing them a golden soccer shoe trophy.
In perhaps a more significant development earlier in the evening, two Kabul-based women's teams made up of national squad members played in front of the largest ever crowd for a women's match on Afghan soil.
In the past, Afghanistan's ultra-conservative society has forced the team to play mostly abroad to avoid threats that plague female athletes.
"The Taliban can't stop Afghans from progressing. Those girls are proof of this," AFF President and provincial governor of central Panshijr, Keramuddin Karim, told Reuters.
Sitting in the packed, women-only section of the stadium after completing her match, 19-year-old Hadisa Wali beamed with pride: "It's surreal to be able to play at home like this."
(Writing by Amie Ferris-Rotman; Editing by John O'Brien)
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Iran Arrests Suicide Bomber at Borders with Afghanistan
Fars News Agency October 21, 2012
TEHRAN (FNA)- Iranian border guards have arrested a suicide bomber who intended to infiltrate the country's borders with Afghanistan, a security official revealed on Sunday.
"After the Friday suicide operation in Chabahar city (in Southeastern Iran), yesterday, a person intended to cross the border with Afghanistan but was detained by the border guards," Commander of the Iranian Border Guard Units General Hossein Zolfaqari told reporters on Sunday.
"The person wore a military uniform similar to that of the Iranian forces underneath and covered it with local clothes," he said, adding that after investigations it was revealed that he aimed to carry out a suicide attack against the innocent Iranian people.
"Based on investigations and interrogations, he was due to enter the country and receive the bombing devices and explosives through subsequent orders," Zolfaqari said, adding that the terrorist is an affiliate of the Jundollah group - a CIA-backed terrorist organization with a long record in staging terrorist operations in Iran.
He underlined that the detained terrorist was carrying a foreign passport.
In relevant remarks on Saturday, Zolfaqari also said that more than 5 terrorist attacks were thwarted in different parts of Iran during the last 8 months.
"Outlaws try to carry out terrorist acts in Iran ahead of special events, but over 5 terrorist operations have been discovered and thwarted since (the Iranian month of) Esfand (February 19 to March 19)," he said.
His remarks came after a suicide bomb attack in the Southeastern province of Sistan and Balouchestan killed three people, including the bomber, on Friday.
Zolfaqari blamed foreign-based terrorist groups for the Friday blast, but meantime said that the number of the operations carried out by such terrorist cells has decreased due to border guard and security forces' increased intelligence operations along the country's borders.
He said investigations are still underway about the source and the way explosive materials had been smuggled into the country for the Friday blast.
Friday reports said that the bomber tried to enter Imam Hossein (PBUH) mosque in Chabahar city, but was identified by Basij (volunteer) forces before he could enter the mosque. The bomber then began to escape the scene and detonated the explosive device 400 meters away. Two young Basij forces were martyred in the incident. Morteza Asoudeh, was martyred on the scene of the explosion and another one, Hamed Bazi, died of his wounds in hospital.
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Award-Winning Film Breathes New Life Into Afghan Cinema
October 21, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty By Frud Bezhan
The new Afghan film "Buzkashi Boys," has earned international critical acclaim for its poignant portrayal of two impoverished boys in Kabul struggling to realize their dreams.
While earning accolades abroad, the film has also made waves in Afghanistan, where it has invigorated the small local film scene as it recovers from decades of conflict.
Afghan cinema had to endure particular hardship under the Taliban regime, when films were outlawed and movie theaters were burned down.
“Buzkashi Boys” is one of the first major films to be set and shot entirely in Kabul.
It is also the first to be produced by the Afghan Film Project, a non-profit production company that aims to rebuild the fledgling Afghan film scene by mentoring and training local filmmakers on major film productions.
During the production of “Buzkashi Boys,” a dozen aspiring Afghan filmmakers, some with technical skills, the majority with only a passion for filmmaking, were tutored through the production and post-production process, with many getting their first opportunity to write, produce, and direct a major film.
'About, By, And For Afghans'
Sam French, an American documentary maker who directed the film and founded the Afghan Film Project, says “Buzkashi Boys” is a testament to the success of those Afghan filmmakers.
He hopes the endeavor will provide Afghan filmmakers with the know-how to produce their own films and spur the growth of the local film sector.
“When I came here I realized there wasn’t really a functioning film industry," he says. "I thought there was a need to build capacity in the industry. We wanted to find a way for [Afghans] to actually work on a production. We worked side by side to make a film that was about Afghans, by Afghans, and for Afghans.”
French was without a job and had barely an understanding of the country when he moved to Kabul in 2008.
He says he expected to be hunkered down in a bunker but soon realized the city was full of inspiring, untold stories.
French maintains that it was a desire to tell these unreported stories that inspired him to start writing the script for "Buzkashi Boys" in 2009.
"When I came [to Afghanistan] I expected a country full of bombs and bullets," he says. "But what I found was a country full of stories and people who welcomed me with open arms. So, I opened a production company to try and tell stories that the media doesn’t tell; [to tell stories] that are beyond the war.”
The result was “Buzkashi Boys,” a 30-minute film shot over 16 days in Kabul in the winter of 2011.
According to French, the majority of the funding for the film came from a $200,000 grant given to his production company by the U.S. State Department.
“Buzkashi Boys” is a coming-of-age story about two poor Afghan boys, one an orphaned urchin and the other the defiant son of a blacksmith.
Both boys, who are best friends, fight to realize their common dream of escaping crippling poverty and the streets of Kabul to play buzkashi, the national sport of Afghanistan.
Buzkashi is a brutal version of equestrian polo played with the carcass of a dead goat rather than a ball.
Audiences from around the world have heaped praise on French's heartrending film, which has been shown in cinemas and international film festivals throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia.
It recently won the best drama award at the LA Shorts Fest, which makes the film eligible to be nominated for an Academy Award.
Shooting Beset By Problems
"Buzkashi Boys" is the result of two years of constant setbacks and grueling delays. Filming in Kabul, a heavily-militarized city, posed many challenges, which threatened to derail the film on numerous occasions.
"We had to get permission from the Afghan government, from the local police, and the military to film," says French. "Finding the crew also took a long time. We were also battling weather the whole time. It would snow one day and then the next day it would be bright and sunny so continuity was a big issue. Logistically, it was also a challenge."
Since the ousting of the Taliban in 2001, the Afghan film industry has experienced a quiet resurgence.
In the past decade, the success of Afghan films such as "Osama" and "Kandahar" have fuelled huge interest in filmmaking.
But films of such caliber have been in short supply. Even before the arrival of war in Afghanistan some three decades ago, the film scene was small, with only a few movies being made each year.
Most of the films Afghans watched were from Bollywood or the Soviet Union.
In French's opinion, imported foreign films have had an important influence on the current movie scene, where many local filmmakers produce copycat versions of popular action films from India and Pakistan.
According to the American filmmaker, who is writing the script for a new political thriller set in Kabul, a "homegrown-generated" Afghan film sector has yet to become firmly established, but the ingredients for it to succeed are there provided that proper resources are allocated to the industry.
“[Afghan] culture is steeped in poetry and stories," he says. "There is [a] hunger to tell stories. But the problem is the lack of capacity, the lack of skills, [the] lack of resources, and the lack of equipment. [The Afghan film industry] is still a very nascent industry; it’s still fledgling. The filmmakers here need support.”
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As Afghan Forces Kill, Trust Is Also a Casualty
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN October 20, 2012
SISAY OUTPOST, Afghanistan - There is an Afghan version of this story and a very different American one, but the moral is the same: insider killings of Western troops and civilians by Afghan forces, which have taken 51 coalition lives this year, have broken trust between the two military forces and laid bare the anger and fear each harbors toward the other.
The details of an insider shooting that happened Sept. 29 near this small Afghan Army outpost in eastern Afghanistan underscore the escalating distrust that surrounds interactions between American and Afghan troops. The attack devolved into a rare melee that led American soldiers to shoot at some Afghan soldiers who insisted they were not involved in any insider killing. After 35 minutes of gunfire and grenade explosions, two Americans and, ultimately, four Afghans died; three Americans and two Afghans were wounded; and the coalition had experienced one of the most corrosive insider attacks of the war.
“Something like this is fairly traumatic, and we want to stop it from affecting future operations,” said one senior official with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, commonly referred to as ISAF. “But there’s also the recognition that talk can’t fix everything.”
Afghan soldiers caught up in the fighting say that the relationship between the two forces now seems more starkly distant.
“We cannot be their friends, because they do not speak our language,” said Redi Gul, 28, a soldier whose back was burned raw as he tried to escape from his outpost after it was set ablaze by American gunfire and grenades.
His observation seems as much a metaphor for the chasm between the two as a simple statement of fact.
The fighting unfolded near the outpost, known as Sisay, along a bad stretch of highway near the mouth of the Tangi Valley in eastern Afghanistan’s rugged Wardak Province. The Taliban are never far away here: roadside bombs pit the asphalt every mile or so, and insurgent attacks occur almost daily against army and police convoys and traveling fuel tankers. The bad feelings started here well before the bullets began flying, according to the surviving Afghan soldiers from this outpost and the nearby battalion headquarters. Both sides acknowledge that the strains of an effort by American troops to minimize contact with their Afghan counterparts during the recent epidemic of insider attacks became a factor on the afternoon of Sept. 29.
The seven-man Afghan force had been stationed here awhile, maintaining a security checkpoint on the highway less than 100 yards from the outpost. But on the day of the attack, an American unit drove up unannounced and began taking biometric readings of drivers passing the checkpoint. The impression, the Afghans say, was that they were not trusted enough to do the job or even receive a bit of notice that the Americans would be working with them — an upsetting breach of field etiquette, said Capt. Abdul Khaliq, the Afghan commander here.
“We were newly introduced to this company about seven or eight months ago, but we haven’t sat down together at all,” he said. American officials dispute this and say the two units were acquainted.
One Afghan soldier named Yusuf came down to the checkpoint with a cup of tea for the Americans’ interpreter and then returned to the outpost, according to the Afghan account. Moments later, an Afghan soldier who had already been at the checkpoint, a Tajik from Baghlan Province named Din Muhammad, raised his gun and fired, killing Sgt. First Class Daniel T. Metcalfe, 29, and wounding another American near him, according to the American account of the violence.
American soldiers positioned nearby as guards for the force, known as “guardian angels,” responded, shooting and killing Din Muhammad. They and American soldiers in nearby vehicles then saw a man in an Afghan Army uniform behind the Afghan outpost up the hill. The man began firing, they said, killing an American civilian with the force and wounding two other soldiers.
The Americans soldiers believed that they had wounded that gunman, but that fire was also coming from the Afghan outpost itself, said an ISAF official who described parts of an as-yet-unreleased report on the attack to a reporter for The New York Times.
With five team members down, including their platoon sergeant, the Americans were taking no chances, the ISAF official said.
“They thought, ‘Oh, this is a setup, we’ve been ambushed,’ ” the official said. “You’re going to do whatever you can to neutralize that threat — shooting from the turret, rifle fire, grenades, you’re going to pour as much lead in as possible to save your life.”
For Mr. Gul, who said that he and his Afghan comrades were inside the outpost drinking tea, the first evidence that something was wrong was when a hail of fire struck the base. They were scrambling for their rifles when a grenade set the outpost on fire.
“The post caught fire, we panicked, and we were looking for a way out. The flames blocked our way,” he said. “We didn’t know who was shooting at us and from how many directions, and because of the fire we couldn’t see and fire back.”
He said he managed to claw his way out the back of the outpost, burned but able to function, and crouched by a sand-filled barrier.
He saw Yusuf running past him out of the outpost, but lost sight of him. It was only then that it dawned on him that it was the Americans who were gunning them down. “We did not fire a single shot,” Mr. Gul said. “We didn’t know who to shoot at. A second grenade hit the outpost and blew up. There was some ammo that caught fire and started exploding.”
The Americans saw Yusuf running and shot him, unsure whether he was trying to escape or attack. Then there was more confusion: both the Afghan and American soldiers say that fire began coming from a mountain ridgeline behind the outpost.
The Afghan soldiers said they were caught in a cross-fire, after Taliban fighters seemingly had decided to join the fray. Later, Afghan soldiers said they found bullets from a PK machine gun, a weapon used locally only by the Taliban, embedded in the barriers around the outpost.
After some minutes, the Americans were no longer completely sure whom they were shooting at either, believing that fire was coming from the Afghan outpost and then from the ridgeline. “It became very confused after the initial shooting,” the ISAF official said. Still, the Americans sustained no further casualties after the initial shots that day.
In addition to Din Muhammad, Yusuf would later be counted among the dead, shot by the Americans as he ran. Two more Afghans were killed at the outpost as well, one of their bodies charred by the fire, said Mr. Gul and the company commander, Captain Khaliq.
“Potentially innocent people were killed, the smoke and dust,” made it hard for the Americans soldiers to be sure of Yusuf’s intent as he ran, the ISAF official said. “Who knew why he was running? Maybe someone took him as having hostile intent. Either he was running for self-preservation or shooting at the Americans defensively or participating in the attack.”
In the aftermath, the Afghan officer, Captain Khaliq, is still looking for answers.
“I’ve been in the army eight years, and why didn’t this kind of incident happen in the last eight years?” he said. “The other American teams who came here were very good, they visited with us every three or four days, they solved our problems.” He added that if the American unit, a platoon of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team, had coordinated with him ahead of time, perhaps he could have headed off any hard feelings — perhaps even the shooting itself.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, ISAF officials acknowledged the captain’s concerns and confirmed that the checkpoint mission had not been coordinated ahead of time. From the American point of view, the surprise visit was to keep locals from avoiding the checkpoint — and also a tacit acknowledgment that after months of intensified insider attacks, also called green-on-blue violence, things are different in the field.
“These green-on-blue have really driven a wedge,” one official said.
At least in this stretch of Wardak, the Afghan soldiers no longer seem able to imagine trust for their American counterparts. Even if the Americans were to apologize for the shooting, which is unlikely, the Afghans say they would never be able to persuade the families of the dead to believe the condolences. “Well, tens of such attacks have happened on innocent Afghans, and they came and apologized, but what will a single apology do?” Captain Khaliq said of the Americans. “What can we tell the families of those who were killed?”
For his part, Mr. Gul felt profoundly betrayed.
“We used to normally go out with Americans soldiers on patrols, operations and missions with no problem. But we don’t know what went wrong this time, what thing made them go crazy and fire at us,” he said. He acknowledged that the Americans later said that Din Muhammad had fired first, though he and his comrades found even that hard to believe. He added, “God is our witness that we have not even fired a single shot, although we can shoot them — there are more of us than them.”
Sangar Rahimi and an employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan.
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Afghan security force’s rapid expansion comes at a cost as readiness lags
Washington Post By Rajiv Chandrasekaran Sunday, October 21, 2012
Top Pentagon leaders, White House advisers and members of Congress from both parties have long regarded the rapid expansion of Afghanistan’s army and police as a crucial element of the U.S. exit strategy. For years, they reasoned that generating a force of 352,000 soldiers and policemen would enable the Afghan government to keep fighting Taliban insurgents after U.S. and NATO troops end their combat mission.
The U.S. military has nearly met its growth target for the Afghan forces, but they are nowhere near ready to assume control of the country.
No Afghan army battalion is capable of operating without U.S. advisers. Many policemen spend more time shaking down people for bribes than patrolling. Front-line units often do not receive the fuel, food and spare parts they need to function. Intelligence, aviation and medical services remain embryonic. And perhaps most alarming, an increasing number of Afghan soldiers and policemen are turning their weapons on their U.S. and NATO partners.
As a consequence, several U.S. officers and civilian specialists who have worked with those forces have started to question the wisdom of the 352,000 goal. To them, the obsession with size has been at the root of much that has gone wrong with the Afghan security services.
“We’ve built a force that’s simply too big,” said Roger Carstens, a former Special Forces lieutenant colonel who spent two years as a senior counterinsurgency adviser at the NATO headquarters in Kabul. “When you try to generate that many people that fast, you create leaders without the requisite leadership, maturity or acumen to get the job done. You can’t meaningfully vet anyone. You can’t ensure morale and discipline.”
More than a dozen active-duty officers, from majors to generals, who have been involved in training the Afghan army and police over the past two years shared that assessment in recent interviews, upon which this article is based. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity, because of concern that criticizing long-held U.S. strategy could harm their careers.
“We have been obsessed with quantity over quality,” said a Special Forces major who worked alongside Afghan soldiers for a year. “You can only build so many troops to a certain standard. At some point — and we’re long past that — you get to diminishing returns.”
Top military commanders have maintained that such a large force is essential to defeating the Taliban and securing the vast, mountainous country.
In 2009, when the White House approved plans to build a combined Afghan force of more than 300,000, the principal concern in Washington was the cost to sustain it once most U.S. troops depart, not the ability to assemble it. The sustainment cost is now projected at $4.1 billion a year, more than twice the Afghan government’s overall annual revenue. Much of that price tag will have to be borne by the United States, which already has spent almost $50 billion over the past decade to build the force.
U.S. and NATO commanders say the Afghan army and police are progressing well despite an array of challenges that include Taliban intimidation, the lack of an existing officer corps, and rampant illiteracy, which makes it difficult to train soldiers in specialty skills.
“Those forces have taken the lead to very complex combat operations, and they are suffering the vast majority of coalition casualties, a further sign that the Afghans have the willingness to sacrifice and take the fight to the enemy,” Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said this month.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has insisted that Afghan forces can take charge of security across the country before the end of 2014, NATO’s deadline for transferring overall responsibility to the Afghan government. “Afghans are ready to expedite the process of transition if necessary, and willing as well,” Karzai said Thursday.
U.S. officials have also noted that the total Afghan force reached the 352,000 goal several weeks ahead of an Oct. 31 deadline set by the Pentagon.
They have not pointed out that the overall tally includes thousands of greenhorn recruits who have yet to be trained and assigned to combat units — and who have traditionally not been counted by U.S. and NATO headquarters. If the total included only those Afghans who are in the field or in training, according to military officials in Kabul, the army will not reach its end strength of 195,000 until December and the police will not hit their target of 157,000 until February.
Even then, there are no plans to ease up on recruitment. High rates of desertion and low rates of reenlistment mean the army needs to replace about a third of its force each year.
“We’ve turned this into a numbers game,” said a senior U.S. official involved in Afghanistan policy. “When you’re concerned about numbers, you end up with numbers.”
The surge
The development of such a large Afghan force was set in motion by President Obama’s decision to approve a surge of 30,000 U.S. troops in late 2009.
In the early years of the war, the United States and allied nations participating in Afghanistan’s reconstruction agreed to create a 70,000-strong army from scratch. That target grew modestly in 2007 and 2008, but the actual strength lagged far behind because the George W. Bush administration did not commit the necessary funds or personnel.
The police force was in even worse shape. By 2009, there were approximately 95,000 men wearing police uniforms, but at least half of them had not received any training. They were ill-equipped, and many were more focused on collecting bribes than protecting the population.
In mid-2009, as the insurgency was expanding across the country, two U.S. military studies concluded that Afghanistan required a far larger army and police force — to work in partnership with allied troops and to take charge once the foreigners left. Relying upon counterinsurgency doctrine, which calls for a ratio of one counterinsurgent for every 50 residents, one of the studies determined that Afghanistan needed a combined force of 400,000 to address parts of the country with Taliban problems. The studies devoted less attention to the question of whether the United States and its allies were capable of building such a large security force in a country with no existing military structures, widespread illiteracy and a raging insurgency.
When Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal sent Obama an assessment of the situation in Afghanistan in the summer of 2009, the commander wrote that neither the army nor the police “is sufficiently effective.” He endorsed the calls for a combined force of 400,000.
Although McChrystal’s request for a U.S. troop increase generated acrimonious debate within the president’s war cabinet, the plan to expand the Afghan security force was relatively uncontroversial. Members of Congress from both parties — chief among them Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) — supported the growth.
There was little discussion in Washington about the difficulty of assembling the force. The only significant issue was the ongoing cost of sustaining such a large contingent, but military leaders kept emphasizing that building Afghan troops was far cheaper than deploying American ones. In the end, Obama decided to approve an increase to 305,000 by 2011; he subsequently authorized the expansion to 352,000.
To some senior U.S. officers, the decision to expand the force so rapidly seemed like a mistake. “It was irresponsible,” said a general who had been involved in training efforts earlier in the war. “Afghanistan isn’t the sort of place where you can triple your inputs and expect three times the results.”
But the three-star general tapped to lead the massive expansion, William Caldwell IV, was undeterred. He authorized an enormous increase in boot camp facilities. He set up schools to train non-commissioned officers and those assigned to specialized functions, such as communications and intelligence. He sought to build up a cadre of Afghan officers who could train their fellow countrymen. And he stopped the practice of fielding police officers before they underwent basic training.
When he visited a firing range and discovered that most recruits were not just illiterate but innumerate — if the instructor wanted them to load 10 bullets in their rifles, he told them to count by placing one bullet next to each of their fingers — Caldwell expanded boot camp by two weeks to include basic education.
Instead of sending Afghans to fight on their own, sometimes with small teams of U.S. and NATO advisers, McChrystal and Caldwell ordered that Afghan army units be fully partnered with coalition forces. The guiding mantra was “shona ba shona” — in the Dari language, “shoulder to shoulder.”
Quality vs. quantity
The Afghan force expanded and improved — some units have exhibited tremendous bravery and skill — but the overall improvement has not kept pace with the expansion. Many of the new units are raggedy, composed of grunts who often seek to avoid fights with the Taliban. American troops chalk it up to incompetence and laziness, but the Afghans know what they are doing: As the sole breadwinners for their families, many cannot afford to get killed or severely wounded.
But to many U.S. officers involved in the training effort, the biggest problems have been the result of coalition miscalculations.
The U.S. military has imposed unnecessary methods and impractical equipment on the Afghans. American commanders funded large, U.S.-style division headquarters with command centers that feature wall-mounted plasma screens and staff officers schooled in making PowerPoint slides, even though many of those facilities lack reliable electricity. Critics within the U.S. ranks contend that dry-erase boards and paper maps would have been sufficient.
The construction of big bases around the country has encouraged Afghan soldiers to copy a base-centric way of war adopted by some U.S. Army units — they wake up, eat, go for a patrol and then return in time for a hot meal before falling asleep in their beds — instead of staying in the field for weeks on end, which was how Afghans fought the Soviets in the 1980s. “We’ve taught them our worst habits,” said a former Navy SEAL who has served as a counterinsurgency adviser in Afghanistan.
Instead of equipping Afghan soldiers with AK-47 rifles, which Afghans are well versed in firing, the U.S. military gave them M-16s, which are far more complicated to maintain and tend to jam when not cleaned properly. The decision was the result of pressure from former defense minister Abdul Rahim Wardak, who argued to Pentagon officials and members of Congress that American weapons would make his army appear more professional, despite concerns from U.S. commanders in Afghanistan that the soldiers would be unable to care for the guns.
Numerous senior U.S. military officials contend that the army’s development has been hindered by Wardak’s insistence on making his force appear as American as possible — a goal that found ready support from U.S. commanders — and designing it to repel a foreign invasion, not wage a domestic counterinsurgency fight. He urged the Pentagon to give Afghanistan F-16 fighter jets and M1 Abrams battle tanks.
Although those requests were rejected, he succeeded in beating back other U.S. efforts to reshape the security services for counterinsurgency operations, including proposals to make the police larger than the army. He also sought to deploy the army into many remote areas, creating enormous logistics burdens. Because his commanders lack the ability to provide supplies and air support to those forces, U.S. and NATO troops have been forced to fill the gaps and probably will have to keep doing so for years.
Wardak, who was removed by the country’s parliament this summer, told Americans that his approach to weaponry and battlefield tactics was aimed as building a close relationship with the U.S. military. “He figured this would be the best way to get us to keep supporting them for years and years,” said a senior U.S. military official who has had numerous conversations with Wardak.
Training experience
The U.S. and NATO training command in Kabul did not cut corners to reach the 352,000 goal, but several veteran U.S. officers and civilian experts involved in the force development effort contend that the rapid expansion foreclosed approaches used by the military to more successfully build armies in other parts of the world.
The only U.S. troops who have extensive experience training foreign militaries are Army Special Forces soldiers, but the commanders chose not to rely on the elite Green Berets, because there were not enough available units to build such a large Afghan army. Instead, the focus on size drove the Pentagon to assemble a rump squad of National Guard soldiers, reservists and individual active-duty personnel pulled from installations around the United States.
The result, said one officer involved in the effort, was “a hodgepodge of mentor teams composed of guys who had never worked together.”
The need to expand the force rapidly meant jettisoning other long-held tenets of security force development: small group instruction, careful vetting to weed out infiltrators, and restrictions on creating systems and structures that cannot be sustained once foreign advisers leave.
New recruits had their fingerprints and iris scans run through a database of suspected insurgents, but that was largely the extent of the screening. The Defense Ministry and the Afghan intelligence service did not have the manpower to conduct meaningful background checks on so many applicants.
Had there been fewer Afghans to vet, and had there been more allied mentors within the ranks, the chances of spotting potential insurgent infiltrators and other problematic soldiers might have increased, according to the officers and specialists who supported a smaller force. “The best way to spot the bad apples is to be constantly with these guys — eating with them, sleeping with them — but we didn’t do that nearly often enough,” said the Special Forces major who worked with Afghan soldiers.
Advocates of the 352,000 goal argue that slowing training or building a smaller force would have ceded valuable ground to the Taliban. “You have to start with a higher number of less-well-trained troops just to plug the hole in the dike,” said Mark Jacobson, a former top civilian adviser to McChrystal. “By the time you get those better-trained troops, it’s already over.”
But proponents of a smaller force contend it would have been better to have written off remote valleys instead of sending in ill-trained soldiers. “The army is so hollow that some of those units are just going to collapse,” the major said. “The Afghans would have been better off trying to hold on to only the most critical areas with fewer but stronger units.”
That now appears to be the direction U.S. commanders are heading. The White House and Pentagon have decided that the 352,000 will only be a “surge force” that will eventually be reduced to 228,500. The decision has prompted unease among senior U.S. commanders and protests from Levin, McCain and other congressional supporters of a large Afghan army. The Obama administration has billed it as a cost-saving move, but some U.S. officials see another motivation.
“Now we can start concentrating on quality,” said the senior U.S. official involved in Afghanistan policy.
But the planned cutback, which will not begin until 2016, already is fueling a new round of concern because the U.S. and Afghan governments have not started to develop a program to systematically demobilize soldiers and policemen by providing them alternative employment. If not, thousands of men with at least nominal military training will find themselves jobless the very moment the country’s economy will be struggling to cope with a drastic reduction in foreign spending resulting from the departure of most NATO troops.
“Either these guys will find their own way to make money” — through criminal activity or working for a warlord — “or the Taliban will put them on their payroll,” said Douglas Ollivant, a former National Security Council official who worked as the top civilian counterinsurgency adviser in eastern Afghanistan. “The only thing worse than building such a large security force is tearing it down without a plan.”
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Romney walks cautious line on foreign policy, Afghanistan
Romney criticizes Obama's foreign policy but offers few specifics on his ideas about Afghanistan and the use of U.S. troops.
Los Angeles Times By Maeve Reston October 20, 2012
DELRAY BEACH, Fla. - In the 16 months that he has been running for president, the thrust of Mitt Romney's policy toward Afghanistan has been this: He would hew to President Obama's timeline to withdraw U.S. troops by the end of 2014, but he would part ways with the president by giving greater deference to the judgment of military commanders.
Beyond that, Romney has revealed little about what his guiding principles would be for committing U.S. troops in conflicts around the world or what elements have shaped his thinking about Afghanistan — subjects likely to be broached in Monday's foreign policy debate.
His caution about delineating specific positions may rest on both a family history complicated by a prior war, and his imperative to balance the needs of a party that values displays of strength overseas with those of voters who are weary of war.
Like Obama, Romney never served in the military and would have little foreign policy experience to speak of upon assuming the presidency. But he came of age in the midst of the Vietnam War, receiving deferments from the draft as a student and later as a Mormon missionary. As a freshman at Stanford, Romney joined a counter-protest against antiwar demonstrators — a stance in line with that of his father, George Romney, a three-term Michigan governor.
Romney was abroad on his mission, however, when his father shattered his 1968 presidential candidacy by telling a Michigan television host he'd "had the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get" from military generals during a Vietnam trip two years earlier.
Jonathan Moore, who was George Romney's chief advisor on Vietnam, said in an interview that the elder Romney was "too blunt and too rigid" but "willing to get into trouble for his beliefs," adding that "it was the wrong time to indulge that."
The younger Romney has given Americans only a vague sense of the direction he might take as commander in chief. He has steered away from in-depth critiques of the muscular approach of President George W. Bush in Iraq and Afghanistan and discussions about how his two visits to Afghanistan in 2006 and 2011 shaped his thinking on that conflict.
He has criticized Obama for not doing more to secure stability in Syria and Libya, but he has not said whether he would consider committing U.S. troops as part of a peacekeeping force in either nation. Romney has also said he would take a tougher line than Obama on preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
About 60% of Americans favor a rapid withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, according to a recent Pew Research Center study. Nearly two-thirds of those surveyed also said the U.S. should be less involved in the Middle East.
Facing that political reality, Romney has focused on policy around the edges — needling the president over past decisions, for example, rather than addressing the security concerns on the ground in Afghanistan.
He faulted Obama for announcing "a precise date" for withdrawal based on "a political calendar," but does not quibble with his timeline. He has said the president made a mistake by removing surge troops in Afghanistan during the midst of the fighting season in September instead of waiting until November.
And he has argued for staying the course there, without saying much about what he envisions for that country when troops leave. When confronted by a tearful Ohio mother of a soldier who told him that there was no clear mission for U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Romney answered that he would bring the troops home as soon as the "mission is complete."
He defined the mission as one in which Afghanistan would have a security force that was "capable of maintaining the sovereignty of that nation," but he said the U.S. would not be able to "hand on a silver platter their freedom."
"They will have to fight for that, earn it, keep the Taliban from taking it away from them. But we've given them that opportunity," he said at that Dayton town hall event. "We're going to finish the job of passing it off to them and bring our troops home as soon as humanly possible."
Romney's campaign has posted more ambitious goals for Afghanistan on its website: eliminating Al Qaeda from the region, degrading the Taliban and other insurgent groups, and ensuring "that Afghanistan will never again become a launching pad for terror."
His most frequent talking point has been that he would base his decisions about withdrawing troops "on conditions on the ground as assessed by our military commanders."
Asked last year whether he would adhere to Obama's 2014 timeline, Romney told PBS' Judy Woodruff that he "would listen to the generals" and, based on their judgments, "of course pursue that course." When Woodruff noted that it was the role of the commander in chief to make independent judgments, Romney said he would make his own decision based on their input. The Obama campaign has used those statements to argue that Romney's commitment to Afghanistan could be open-ended — a point that the president is likely to press on Monday night.
For the most part, Romney has spoken of his foreign policy in broad terms, stating, for example, that he would pursue an approach of "peace through strength" and seek to preside over "an American century."
The volatile situation in Afghanistan is not unlike the one his father faced in 1967. Moore noted that George Romney's campaign advisors struggled to craft his position on Vietnam at a time when there was broad disagreement about the situation on the ground and uncertainty about how the growing skepticism about the war would influence the election.
In a strategy memo to George Romney as the 1968 campaign got underway, Moore and a colleague framed those political difficulties, arguing that Romney would "probably have to emphasize the dove side more than the hawk side since neither the facts of the situation nor the politics of the situation will accept a total straddle." They went on to say that the campaign should "try to disassociate ourselves from the administration without losing our own middle position."
It is unclear the extent to which his father's experience navigating the politics of war affected Mitt Romney's thinking now or as a young man.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times last year, Romney noted that he spoke with his father about the Vietnam War from time to time while at Stanford and said he joined the counter-protest because he cared about his parents "and felt they were right."
Once he was on his mission in France, he said, he wasn't plugged in to the "political ups and downs" and relied on his father's weekly dispatches for much of his news.
"I was really engaged in what I was doing," he said. "I watched with interest what happened from time to time from the letters, but I didn't get daily newspapers."
Still, Romney has spoken admiringly of his father's candor in that campaign and his willingness to stand by his views, no matter the cost.
maeve.reston@latimes.com
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Rahimi to Face Dominican Republic Boxer in Kabul Bout
TOLOnews.com By Mir Sayed Saturday, 20 October 2012
Afghan boxer Hamid Rahimi arrived in Afghanistan on Saturday ahead of his "Fight 4 Peace" match in Kabul with Dominican Republic rival Rafael Bejaran.
Rahimi and Bejaran, both based in Hamburg, Germany, will fight each other on October 30 in Afghanistan's first time hosting an international pro-boxing match.
The World Boxing Union champion for 2012 told TOLOnews on Saturday that he had pushed for the bout to be held in Kabul.
"I requested that the competition be held in Kabul because I want to change the system of athletics in Afghanistan and I also want the world to know that Afghanistan has best athletes," Rahimi said.
The winner of the match will take home the belt "Fight 4 Peace" from the World Boxing Union.
In the six years since Rahimi, 29, began professional boxing, he has fought 21 times and only lost once.
Bejaran, 31, who has been fighting for four and a half years has lost two of 16 matches.
It will be the first time the two middleweights will fight each other.
Rahimi, the first Afghan boxer to win a World Boxing Union championship, was born in Kabul in 1983. With the ongoing civil war, he and his family fled Afghanistan in 1992 to Germany.
He began to train in boxing and martial arts when he was 14, reportedly after he met with some bullying at school from fellow pupils.
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