MMU: U.S. Will Keep Fighting as Afghans Take the Lead, Panetta Says, 03 February 2012

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03 February 2012

FEATURE STORY

U.S. Will Keep Fighting as Afghans Take the Lead, Panetta Says

BUSINESS

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NATION

Nato Will Stick to its Previous Plan, Rasmussen Says
Romney Criticizes Afghan Pullout Plan, but Obama Is Eager for the Debate
To the Afghan Exits
In winding down war, a fundamentally different challenge in Afghanistan than in Iraq
'Substantial’ troop pull-out from Afghanistan planned for early 2013
Pentagon Says Afghanistan War Costs Dip as Surge Troops Leave
U.S. tries to ease confusion over Afghan plans
Afghanistan: 'This terrible war could have ended in a month’
Afghanistan fears early US pull-out
The Taliban who may leave Gitmo
NATO members rattled by U.S. combat plan on Afghanistan
Afghanistan’s Supply Problem
Panetta Draws Fire Over Afghan Shift
The administration’s muddled message on Afghanistan
US troops in Afghanistan: How big is shift from 'combat' to 'assistance'?
Panetta comment prompts questions, concerns in Afghanistan
Fake Heart Medicine Dealers will be Punished, MoPH Says
Premature Evacuation?
White House hits back at Afghan war critics
Plan for early end to US combat role catches Afghan officials by surprise
Still Britain rattles sabres. Nothing has been learned from Afghanistan
Why Obama Is Right to Withdraw From Afghanistan Early
No winners in Afghanistan’s war
Taliban, Al-Qaeda Sanctuaries in Pakistan: GMIC
Reduced U.S. Role in Afghanistan: Politics, By Other Means

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FEATURE STORY

U.S. Will Keep Fighting as Afghans Take the Lead, Panetta Says

New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
February 2, 2012
BRUSSELS

Reacting to consternation among NATO allies, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta sought to clarify on Thursday night that American troops would not step back entirely from combat in Afghanistan next year but would allow Afghan security forces a “lead” role.

“As I stated to our allies today, we hope that the A.N.S.F. forces will be ready to take the combat lead in all of Afghanistan sometime in 2013,” Mr. Panetta said, referring to the Afghan National Security Forces, the 300,000-strong army and police force built, trained and financed by NATO.

Mr. Panetta, who was visiting NATO military headquarters here, was reacting to concerns among the allies about his statement to reporters while traveling to a meeting with them here that “hopefully by the mid to latter part of 2013 we’ll be able to make a transition from a combat role to a training, advise and assist role” in Afghanistan. It was the first time that the United States had put a date on stepping back from a central role in the conflict, at least before the end of 2014, when most of the troops are scheduled to be home.

Mr. Panetta’s comments, which reflected the Obama administration’s eagerness to get out of the unpopular war, were immediately dissected by European nations that are under pressure from their parliaments to bring their troops home from the decade-long conflict. European officials said it would be hard to persuade their own countries to stay put if the United States were perceived as rushing to the exits.

France, however, continued to move toward accelerating its withdrawal from Afghanistan a year early. The French defense minister, Gérard Longuet, reiterated in an interview late Thursday in Brussels that his country would withdraw its combat forces from Afghanistan — 2,400 soldiers in Kapisa Province — by 2013, although about 1,200 French personnel would be left behind in a support role in Kabul and other areas until 2014.

At the same time, the French proposed on Thursday that all NATO nations fighting in Afghanistan should consider ending their combat roles in 2013 to give the Afghan forces more time to prepare for the departure of most foreign troops the next year. “We must not leave the most difficult for the end,” Mr. Longuet said.

Still, there was plenty of confusion over Mr. Panetta’s remarks. “He said the combat role will come to an end, but he also said combat will continue,” one senior NATO official said Thursday afternoon. At another point, the same official said that Mr. Panetta’s comments were premature, and that NATO would make any decisions about the combat role of the alliance in Afghanistan.

“I’m not saying that Secretary Panetta wasn’t right for what he said,” said the official, who asked not to be identified by name under ground rules imposed by NATO. “I’m just saying as NATO, there’s been no decisions — we’re still working this, we’re consulting with our allies. There are different views about when this should happen, how quickly it can happen.”

NATO was consumed by semantics for much of the day, but on Thursday evening, Mr. Panetta offered a general explanation of what putting the Afghans in a lead combat role would mean for American troops on the ground. Afghan security forces, he said, would “decide, obviously, patrols, tactics, enemy targets.” He added that “we’ll be there for support, we’ll be there for guidance, but they’re the ones who will be in the lead and conduct the operations.”

He defined a narrow mission for American troops — self-defense, Special Operations and emergencies. “Our troops are going to have to defend themselves, they’re going to have to deal with some Special Operations, they’re going to have to deal with some in extremis situations that might develop,” Mr. Panetta said.

Defense officials acknowledged that most details needed to be worked out by American commanders on the ground, and that Mr. Panetta was speaking from a level of 30,000 feet. Defense analysts noted that policy statements issued from capitals only went so far, particularly when it came to relying on the Afghan security forces, which have a mixed record. Afghan troops have fatally turned their guns on their American and French trainers several times recently.

“Major elements of the A.N.S.F. cannot possibly be ready to stand on their own by 2014,” Anthony Cordesman, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said in an e-mail.

The United States has about 90,000 troops in Afghanistan, but 22,000 of them are due home by the fall. No schedule has been set for the pace of the withdrawal of the 68,000 American troops who will remain, only that almost all are to be out by the end of 2014. NATO officials and the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, expect that a small international force will stay behind.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the secretary general of NATO, said Thursday that the alliance remained committed to the principle of “in together, out together.”

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Nato Will Stick to its Previous Plan, Rasmussen Says

TOLOnews.com
Thursday, 02 February 2012

Nato will stand by its previously agreed plan to wind down operation in Afghanistan by the end of 2014 with any changes to the schedule coordinated with allies, Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in a meeting ahead of the Nato Defence Ministers summit in Brussels.

Nato allies set end of 2014 the completion of handover process to Afghan security forces in 2010 at Lisbon summit.

"That decision and that roadmap still stands," Mr Rasmussen told reporters ahead of the Brussels meeting.

But he said that the final phase of the security transition will be completed by mid 2013 and Nato forces will hold their supportive and training role.

He also emphasises on a coordinated process of transition.

"From that time, Afghan security forces are in the lead all over Afghanistan and from that time the role of our troop will gradually change from combat to support. In that there is nothing new, It is of course of crucial importance that this change of role takes place in a coordinated manner," Mr Rasmussen said.

There are around 130,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan most of them US soldiers. Since the start of Nato mission in Afghanistan in 2001 at least 2,882 foreign soldiers have lost their lives.

More than 50 countries have contributed to the Nato mission in Afghanistan. US, Britain and France are the leading countries that have contributed to the Nato-led mission in Afghanistan.

On January 27th this year, French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced complete withdrawal of his troops by mid 2013.

Meanwhile, UK's David Cameron urges a slow and cautious withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has signed several strategic pacts with key Nato contributors including Britain and France and will sign a strategic agreement with the United States in the near future.

While the transition has turned to be the hot agenda, peace negotiations with the Taliban and other insurgent groups have dominated local and international media.

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Romney Criticizes Afghan Pullout Plan, but Obama Is Eager for the Debate

New York Times
By MARK LANDLER and HELENE COOPER
February 2, 2012
WASHINGTON

It did not take long for Mitt Romney to pounce on Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta’s statement Wednesday that American troops could end their combat role in Afghanistan by mid-2013, 18 months sooner than expected. Within hours, Mr. Romney lambasted it as “naïve” and “misguided.”

But President Obama, far from disavowing the Pentagon chief, seems eager to debate his Republican critics about a withdrawal timetable that his advisers contend is strategically sound, and which also happens to be politically popular. The White House said that Mr. Panetta’s remarks reflected the president’s resolve, supported by his experience in Iraq, not to wage a “war without end” in Afghanistan.

“The president made clear that U.S. forces are in Afghanistan to accomplish a mission, and they will not stay in Afghanistan forever, and they will not stay in Afghanistan any longer than is necessary to accomplish that mission,” said the press secretary, Jay Carney, when asked about Mr. Romney’s charges.

Though Republican candidates have often successfully used foreign policy against Democrats, they have struggled to turn Mr. Obama’s handling of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to their advantage, largely because polls show that a majority of Americans favor getting out of both countries as quickly as possible. Mr. Romney charged that the United States, by putting a more precise timeline on its military planning, was giving the Taliban and others a chance to wait out the Americans.

“Why in the world do you go to the people that you’re fighting with and tell them the date you’re pulling out your troops?” he said during a visit to a warehouse in Las Vegas. “It makes absolutely no sense.”

Mr. Romney issued a similar criticism last October, when Mr. Obama announced the pullout of the last soldiers from Iraq, declaring that the decision was either “naked political calculation or simply sheer ineptitude” and that it would jeopardize the hard-won gains made by American soldiers. But he said little more about Iraq, even as that country’s security deteriorated sharply late last year.

Part of the reason may be the general public weariness with these wars, even among some in the Republican Party. Last June, 79 percent of Americans said that they approved of Mr. Obama’s plan to reduce the number of troops in Afghanistan — beginning in 2011, with a pullout of 33,000 by the end of this summer — according to a New York Times/CBS News poll. Just 17 percent said they disapproved.

Given those feelings, Mr. Romney’s swift denunciation could play into Mr. Obama’s hands, foreign policy and political analysts said. His comments “demonstrate a political tin ear here at home,” said Brian Katulis, a national security expert at the Center for American Progress, which has close ties to the White House.

Mr. Panetta’s announcement, Mr. Katulis said, is a reminder to the Afghans that they must govern and secure themselves once American troops leave. But, he added, “it wouldn’t surprise me that there’s a second-level objective here, which is to demonstrate to the American public that there is a clear plan coming from the administration, while we don’t know what the other side is offering.”

Mr. Romney has said that he would listen to the military’s recommendations about when to bring back the troops. He said the president had “disregarded the counsel of his top military commanders” in speeding up the withdrawal, though Mr. Romney, too, has said that the troops should leave as soon as possible.

“After failing to outline a strategy for Afghanistan and being all over the map over whether and when to withdraw,” said Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, Mr. Romney “has made clear he would leave our troops indefinitely in Afghanistan, just as he would have in Iraq.”

At the same time, there is evidence of a continued divide between the White House and the military over the pace of withdrawal.

On Thursday, military officials insisted that nothing had changed, despite Mr. Panetta’s announcement. “This is the exact policy that the commander in chief announced last year,” one official said, speaking on grounds of anonymity. Except that Mr. Obama did not mention combat troops being out in 2013.

Administration officials claimed that the announcement was consistent with the president’s promise that the Afghan drawdown would continue at a steady pace until the United States handed over security to the Afghans in 2014. Mr. Panetta, they said, was merely signaling when the troops might be able to make the transition from combat operations to providing advice and training to Afghan troops.

Tensions over timing were also apparent on Capitol Hill. David H. Petraeus, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency and the former commander in Afghanistan, played down Mr. Panetta’s remarks in testimony before the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday, saying they did not represent a new development.

But Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan, a Republican and the chairman of the committee, disputed that, saying that it was “never our understanding” that American troops would step back from a combat role as early as 2013. “That was a change,” Mr. Rogers said.

For the Obama administration, the primary mission in Afghanistan was to destroy the capacity of Al Qaeda to carry out terrorist attacks, which officials said they had largely accomplished. Mr. Romney, officials said, seems to be arguing in favor of extending the war with an unclear goal.

“We’re focused on defeating Al Qaeda, whereas other people seem focused on the size and number of U.S. troops deployed overseas,” said a senior official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Scott Shane contributed reporting.

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To the Afghan Exits

Panetta makes the mistake of telling the truth.

Wall Street Journal
FEBRUARY 3, 2012

Leon Panetta committed the gaffe of telling the truth on Wednesday when he revealed how eager the Obama Administration is to tell Americans it is heading for the exits in Afghanistan. The Defense Secretary volunteered that the U.S. will stop taking a lead role in combat operations by mid-2013, a year earlier than planned, and that it will also scale back support for the Afghan military.

The news brought surprise and criticism from Capitol Hill to Kabul, since no one had been briefed on this possibility. Then yesterday Administration claimed that nothing had really changed. It even rolled out former Afghan commander and now CIA Director David Petraeus to say that Mr. Panetta's words had been "overanalyzed" and that he was merely describing a "progressive transition" before the planned combat pullout in 2014.

But Mr. Panetta is no rookie free-lancer, and others were reporting yesterday that the 2013 plan has been in the works for some time. Our guess is that the Pentagon chief had merely outrun his blocking by a few weeks.

The announcement follows Nicolas Sarkozy's remarks last week that he wants French forces out by the end of 2013. Both the French and American Presidents are facing elections this year, and both want to signal to their weary electorates that the military mission has been accomplished. As President Obama put it in October when he announced the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, "The tide of war is receding."

It may be receding for the U.S., at least for now, but it's far from clear that it will be in Afghanistan. The Taliban have taken major losses over the past two years, and the NATO-Afghan forces have established control over much of the south of the country. But the gains are still reversible with a premature withdrawal, and Mr. Panetta's announcement will not make the Taliban any more likely to concede defeat.

It's possible that U.S. forces could continue to take apart the Taliban enough to safely transfer all combat functions to the Afghans in another 18 months. It is also far from certain. The Taliban still have sanctuaries in Pakistan, and the Haqqani network that is protected by Pakistan intelligence still operates far and wide inside Afghanistan. All 33,000 of the U.S. surge troops are scheduled to be out of Afghanistan by this September, which will sharply reduce the ability to do offensive operations.

The withdrawal signal is also likely to increase the Taliban's price for negotiating a peace agreement. The U.S. has been courting Taliban leaders for talks, despite opposition from the Afghan government.

With U.S. forces ending most combat in 18 months, look for the Taliban to delay coming to the table and then to demand that thousands of their prisoners be released, that the U.S. cease its deadly night raids by special forces, and that NATO not retain any permanent bases after the complete pullout of U.S. forces scheduled for 2014.

Even if the Taliban agrees to a cease-fire, look for that to be discarded once the U.S. leaves. The analogy here is to the end of the Vietnam War, a case study in the perils of negotiating from weakness.

Americans are tired of war—a healthy instinct—but public support for the Afghan surge has stayed remarkably high considering how rarely Mr. Obama talks about it. Save for Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman, the Republican Presidential candidates have backed the war effort. Congressional criticism from the left has been muted with a Democrat in the White House. This decision seems driven entirely by Mr. Obama's own political desires, not any public antiwar groundswell.

As a candidate in 2008, Mr. Obama called Afghanistan the war worth fighting. He later announced the surge, but with fewer troops than the generals said they needed and with a date certain for withdrawal. Now he has twice moved up the date for reduced U.S. combat operations.

Perhaps he calculates that the death of Osama bin Laden makes him politically invulnerable against a possible deterioration in Afghanistan, and that a Taliban advance won't happen before the election in any case. He may be right. But he's also taking an enormous risk that Afghan forces are ready to hold the gains of the surge, and that the U.S. sacrifices won't be in vain.

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In winding down war, a fundamentally different challenge in Afghanistan than in Iraq

Washington Post
By Greg Jaffe and Kevin Sieff
Friday, February 3, 2012

The narrative that the Obama administration has laid out for winding down the war in Afghanistan has a familiar feel: It is intended to evoke the gradual withdrawal from Iraq.

But the administration faces a fundamentally different challenge in Afghanistan and a host of problems that it did not have in the latter days of the Iraq war.

In Afghanistan, heavy fighting is likely to persist well into 2014, particularly in the provinces along Pakistan’s border, senior military officials said. In contrast with Iraq, the Afghan government and security forces will require billions of dollars annually in U.S. support for the foreseeable future. It seems unlikely that the insurgents’ haven in Pakistan will shrink.

“In Afghanistan, you will be fighting a much tougher war over the next few years compared with Iraq post-2008,” said retired Lt. Gen. David Barno, who previously served as the top U.S. commander in Kabul.

Obama administration officials made the comparison to Iraq on Thursday as they scrambled to clarify Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta’s remarks that the United States hoped to end its combat mission in Afghanistan by the middle of next year, more than a year earlier than scheduled, and shift to advising Afghan forces.

“Iraq is a helpful reference point in this,” said White House spokesman Jay Carney. Just as in Iraq, he said, American advisers would remain in the country and would “continue to participate in combat missions.”

But by mid-2010, when the Obama administration declared an end to the U.S. combat mission in Iraq, American forces had already pulled out of the country’s major cities, where the war’s fiercest and bloodiest battles took place. The 49,000 U.S. advisory troops that remained took casualties, but the vast majority of the fighting was carried out by Iraqi forces.

In Afghanistan, Taliban forces still control swaths of territory in the mountainous eastern regions along the border, where they continue to kill Afghan government forces and intimidate villagers.

“Are we ready to take over? In some places, we are,” said one Afghan commander, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “But in others, we aren’t now, and we won’t be in a year.”

The Afghan commander’s concerns were echoed by senior U.S. military officials in Kabul who insisted that Panetta’s remarks did not signal a change in U.S. policy or even a planned diminution in combat operations for U.S. forces.

In many ways, the dust-up caused by Panetta’s remarks reflects a political divide within the Obama administration over how quickly the United States can and should turn over responsibility for security to an Afghan government that remains weak.

Senior military officials cautioned that the U.S. forces would still be in the lead in battles abutting havens in Pakistan, where commanders believe insurgents still receive assistance from that country’s intelligence service.

“We’re still going to be fighting,” said a senior military official in Kabul. “As time passes, we’ll become more distant to the [Afghan forces] as they become more self-sufficient and capable across 2014-2015.” The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to appear as though he was contradicting his civilian leadership.

In Afghanistan, U.S. and Afghan officials have sought to build confidence among Afghan soldiers and civilians in the ability of the country’s institutions to maintain security. For the past six months, Afghan and U.S. officials have held formal ceremonies to celebrate the transition of cities, districts and provinces to Afghan control — early steps toward a post-NATO Afghanistan.

Billboards have been posted across the country with photos of U.S. soldiers handing their guns over to their Afghan counterparts. Afghan units have begun crafting their own missions and going on independent patrols.

Such measures, although sometimes dismissed as hollow symbols by officials in Kabul, have prompted Afghan officers to play a more active role in traditionally NATO-led military operations, Western military officials say.

Though more than a dozen formal transition ceremonies have been held since last summer, most have been in relatively peaceful provinces or in small patches of cities, sometimes only a few square miles.

Those handovers are a far stretch from the challenges to come. American officials planned to use early transition exercises as a litmus test for the broader shift to Afghan control.

Afghan commanders questioned whether the looming security handover is a testament to their own progress or a product of U.S. politics and war weariness. “For those who understand the reality, Panetta’s announcement sends a vague message. Many will argue, how can we trust the U.S. when they keep changing their words?” said Afghan Maj. Kosh Sadat.

Even among senior U.S. military commanders there has been a spirited debate over how quickly to press Afghan forces to take on more responsibility. This spring, American commanders will begin pairing up some of their small advisory teams with the more capable Afghan forces, U.S. officials said. The full complement of American advisory teams should be in place by early 2013.

Some U.S. military officials have pressed for giving Afghan units more responsibility sooner to test their ability to stand on their own as U.S. forces withdraw. “The time to figure out how good the Afghan forces are isn’t in 2014,” said Andrew Exum, a senior fellow with the Center for a New American Security. “It is now.”

In Kabul, military officials worry about losing ground gained from the insurgency during tough battles over the past two years.

“In 2013, we are moving to the decisive portion of the campaign where the Afghan forces will be in the lead but heavily advised, assisted and enabled” by NATO forces, one senior military official said.

The Karzai administration appeared unfazed by Panetta’s statement, with officials claiming that they are still confident the United States will remain a stabilizing force in Afghanistan.

“The international troops are focusing more on the strengthening, equipment and funding of Afghan forces, and this will make the Afghan forces self-sufficient and ready to take on this big responsibility,” said Hakim Asher, a government spokesman. He called the statement a “natural part of the process of transition.”

But to many in Washington, Panetta’s remarks were interpreted as the latest sign of the administration’s eagerness to bring the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan to an end.

“We have interests in Afghanistan, but they are limited, so people are groping around for a limited way of dealing with it,” said Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “My worry is that we run the risk of backing into a situation where the investment we are making will not produce an adequate return.”

Sieff reported from Kabul.

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'Substantial’ troop pull-out from Afghanistan planned for early 2013

Britain is likely to begin withdrawing a substantial number of troops from Afghanistan by spring 2013 as the US begins to wind down its presence in the country.

Telegraph.co.uk
By James Kirkup, and Bruno Waterfield in Brussels
03 Feb 2012

Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, said the Government would “look at the pattern of withdrawal for next year”.

He made the comments after Leon Panetta, the US Defence Secretary, yesterday caused “consternation” in Downing Street after saying that the US would begin reducing its role in the region from 2013.

He said US forces would “make a transition from a combat role to a training, advise and assist role” in 2013.

Whitehall departments were taken by surprise by the announcement, as Britain has the second largest presence in Afghanistan but was not consulted by Washington.

But after frantic behind the scenes discussions with Nato and Washington, Mr Hammond told reporters in Brussels: “We are, I think, all actually in the same place”.

“We all recognise that in 2013 there will be an evolution in the mission. The Afghans will be having lead responsibility for security throughout the whole country but we will remain there in a combat support role and we will continue to do so in our case until the end of 2014.”

The “combat support” role would include the use of jets, surveillance aircraft, attack helicopters, medical evacuation and special forces rather than more vulnerable infantry.

It is understood that Mr Panetta, the former CIA chief, made his comments in light of the negotiations that have started between US forces and the Taliban leadership in Qatar.

There have also been suggestions that President Barack Obama will want to signal America’s early withdrawal as the presidential race begins. Following an announcement last week that France would end combat operations next year, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Nato Secretary General, said the alliance would keep its “solidarity and cohesion”.

All provinces are expected to transition to Afghan control by mid-2013, he said. “From that time the role of our troops will gradually change from combat to combat support.”

Britain’s presence will reduce by 500 troops to 9,000 by the end of this year but in March 2013 it is likely to be reduced by several thousand, defence sources said.

“We’ve announced a small reduction in the number of British troops later this year but we haven’t made any further decisions beyond that,” Mr Hammond said.

“We will be looking at the pattern of drawdown in consultation with our allies over the course of this year and making decisions for 2013 and 2014 on the basis of that.”

Previous British planning had assumed a “waterfall” timetable with troop numbers remaining near current levels until late 2014 then falling sharply.

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Pentagon Says Afghanistan War Costs Dip as Surge Troops Leave

Bloomberg
By Tony Capaccio
February 03, 2012
Feb. 3, 2012

The Pentagon’s monthly spending in Afghanistan dipped to $5.3 billion in October and November, down from an average of $7.8 billion a month in the fiscal year that ended in September, according to data compiled by the Defense Department comptroller’s office.

The drop reflects savings as U.S. military levels in Afghanistan decline. The U.S. stationed 98,000 troops there in October and 97,000 troops in November. There are 89,000 today, as the U.S. continues to draw down from the surge of 33,000 troops President Barack Obama approved in late 2009. An additional 23,000 troops are to be removed by September.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, attending his second Brussels meeting of NATO defense ministers since taking office last July, told reporters traveling with him Feb. 1 that the U.S.-led coalition would shift primarily to advising Afghan forces in 2013 as part of a transition to ending its primary combat role by 2014.

The U.S. still plans to keep some troops in Afghanistan after 2014 to conduct counter-terrorism missions and advise Afghan forces, Panetta said.

U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan reached a high of 100,000 in August 2010 and in March through May 2011. In November 2008, when Obama won the presidency, the U.S. had roughly 30,800 personnel in the country.

Each added soldier in Afghanistan may cost $1 million a year, according to an estimate by Peter Orszag when he was Obama’s budget director.

The Pentagon has obligated more than $1 trillion from September 2001 through Nov. 30 for war-related costs. The expenditures included $714.5 billion for Iraq and $352.3 billion for Afghanistan, according to the newly compiled figures by the Pentagon comptroller.

--Editors: Larry Liebert, Joe Sobczyk

To contact the reporter on this story: Tony Capaccio in Washington at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Walcott at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

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U.S. tries to ease confusion over Afghan plans

Reuters
By David Alexander and David Brunnstrom
Thu Feb 2, 2012
BRUSSELS

U.S. forces will cede the lead role in combat operations in Afghanistan next year, but will keep fighting alongside Afghan troops, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Thursday, as the Obama administration struggled to clear up confusion over its Afghan exit strategy.

Panetta surprised allies on Wednesday by suggesting the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan would end in 2013, the first time Washington had floated such a deadline.

On Thursday, Panetta emphasized to reporters that U.S. troops in Afghanistan would remain "combat-ready" as the United States winds down its longest war. But he said the troops would largely shift to a train-and-assist role as Afghan forces take responsibility for security before an end-2014 deadline for full Afghan control.

"I want to be clear: Even as Afghans assume the security lead, ISAF (international forces) will continue to have to be fully combat-ready and we will engage in combat operations as necessary," Panetta said.

Final decisions on the pace of troop withdrawals from Afghanistan and the hand-over to forces loyal to Afghan President Hamid Karzai are not due to be made until U.S. President Barack Obama and fellow NATO leaders hold a summit in Chicago in May.

But Panetta's remarks on Wednesday, made en route to a NATO defense ministers' meeting in Brussels, appeared intended to begin a discussion over timetables and possibly set the stage for an accelerated transition in Afghanistan.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said that while Panetta had not announced a new policy, it was possible and "desirable" to have the transition take place earlier.

"The president does not believe that U.S. troops should stay in Afghanistan for the sake of staying. They should stay there to fulfill their mission and then he will bring them home," Carney said.

Obama, who withdrew the last of the U.S. troops from Iraq at the end of 2011, has been willing to scale down the American presence in Afghanistan more rapidly than some of his military commanders preferred.

The United States entered Afghanistan in late 2001 following the September 11 attacks to overthrow its Taliban-led government, which sheltered Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda organization. Washington provides about 90,000 of the 130,000 foreign troops there.

While U.S. officials insisted there was no contradiction in the U.S. message, comments by a senior NATO official underscored the potential for confusion.

"He (Panetta) said the combat role will come to an end but he also said combat will continue. And that's exactly what I'm saying," the NATO official said.

Panetta, speaking in Brussels, said there was a general consensus among members of NATO's International Security Assistance Force that Afghans should take the security lead at some point in 2013, but that ISAF forces would have to continue participating in combat operations in some areas as necessary.

"Between now and the end of 2014, we're prepared to engage in combat, whether we're in the lead or the Afghans are," a U.S. defense official said on condition of anonymity.

NATO officials stressed that while the timelines had not been explicitly spelled out before, given the 2014 deadline, handing lead security responsibilities to Afghan troops would always have had to take place by the middle of next year.

'EXACTLY IN LINE' WITH POLICY

CIA Director David Petraeus told a congressional hearing that Panetta's comments had been "overanalyzed" and were "exactly in line" with the policy started last summer.

"If you are going to have it completed totally by the end of 2014, obviously somewhere in 2013 you have had to initiate that in all of the different locations so that you can complete the remaining tasks," he said.

If it can negotiate a bilateral troop deal, the United States is expected to maintain a modest-sized military force in Afghanistan even beyond the end of 2014, focused on advising Afghan forces and on targeted counterterrorism missions.

Karzai's fragile government expressed shock at Panetta's earlier remarks.

In Kabul, a senior Afghan security official said his government had not been informed of Panetta's announcement and said it "throws out the whole transition plan."

"Transition has been planned against a timetable and this makes us rush all our preparations," he said. "If the Americans withdraw from combat, it will certainly have an effect on our readiness and training, and on equipping the police force."

The U.S. Ambassador in Kabul, Ryan Crocker, had been in contact with the Afghan government regarding Panetta's comments, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

Panetta discussed transition plans with NATO defense ministers, including Germany's Thomas de Maiziere, who said he had "followed the debate of the last few hours with surprise."

De Maiziere and NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said later there was no change in the NATO plan and British Defence Minister Philip Hammond said allies were "all actually in the same place".

"We all recognize that in 2013 there will be an evolution in the mission," Hammond said. "The Afghans will be having lead responsibility for security throughout the whole country, but we will remain there in a combat support role and we will continue to do so in our case until the end of 2014," he said.

Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told a news briefing NATO would move gradually to a support role, but combat operations would continue throughout the transition period and the alliance was committed to a principle of "in together, out together."

Panetta's comments came after French President Nicolas Sarkozy, facing a tough re-election campaign, said last month that French combat operations would end by the end of 2013, an announcement that came after four French troops were killed by a rogue Afghan soldier.

Former U.S. NATO Ambassador Kurt Volker said Panetta had erred in putting an emphasis on the 2013 date, which would make withdrawal sound more imminent and affect the situation on the ground in Afghanistan.

"It's a mistake to try to accomplish something against a deadline, especially when it's such a daunting challenge. Everyone just plans around it," Volker said. "(The Taliban) say, 'OK, if the Afghan security forces are really in charge as of 2013, all the better.'"

The concerns were heightened given that Panetta's comments came just after British media published excerpts of a classified U.S. report saying that the Taliban, backed by Pakistan, remained confident of regaining control in Afghanistan despite a decade of NATO efforts.

Rasmussen said the alliance expected responsibility for security to be handed over to Afghan security forces throughout the country by mid-2013 and for them to have full control at the end of 2014.

"It is of course of crucial importance that this change of role takes place in a coordinated manner," he added, emphasizing that the changes of role would have to take into account "the actual security situation on the ground."

Panetta said Washington had not made any decisions on troop levels for 2013 but Washington did aim to withdraw most of its combat forces by the end of 2014.

Scaling back U.S. combat operations could give President Barack Obama an election-year lift by enabling him to point to progress in Afghanistan.

But Panetta's remarks have already drawn criticism from Obama's chief rival for the presidency and Republican lawmakers in Congress.

(Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom in Brussels, Rob Taylor in Kabul and Jeff Mason in Washington)

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Afghanistan: 'This terrible war could have ended in a month’

As his new book about the Taliban is released, former newsreader Sandy Gall on why it has all gone wrong in Afghanistan.

Telegraph.co.uk
By Neil Tweedie
03 Feb 2012

Even at the age of 84, Sandy Gall is a newsman. While most of the world sleeps, he is catching up on events, waking at 5am to listen to the BBC World Service. His home, a converted oast-house in deepest Kent, is crammed with books on recent and not-so-recent history. His mind, too, is crammed, with the results of a varied life in journalism, memories he shares in that clipped, slightly nasal voice, tinged with the merest hint of Scots; the one we knew so well, sandwiched between the bongs of ITN’s News at Ten.

“I started doing the 6 o’clock bulletin, I think,” he says. “It was 1968, and I’d been with ITN since 1963. I wasn’t very good, certainly in the early days – there was criticism of me doing it from within the network. My editor, who was a personal friend, said to somebody, 'Don’t make up your mind just yet, give him six months.’ ” They gave him rather longer than that in the end – 27 years, it turned out – until 1990.

Gall, though, was always more than a presenter. An experienced foreign correspondent – he spent a decade with Reuters before joining ITN in 1963 – the tea planter’s son never lost his hunger for adventure. During the Eighties, he made repeated visits to Afghanistan, trekking through mountainous territory to reach the mujahideen guerillas fighting against Soviet occupation.

The place has never left him. He has been returning ever since to chronicle the woes of a country that staggers from war to war; oppressed from within by the fundamentalism of the Taliban and the corruption of the Kabul elite, and from without by foreign powers who, as ever, use it as an arena for their rivalries.

Gall’s new book, War Against the Taliban, is an account of the latest phase in Afghanistan’s tortured recent history, starting with the eviction of the Taliban regime by the United States and its allies in the wake of the September 11 attacks, the botched hunt for Osama bin Laden that followed, and the subsequent counter-insurgency campaign waged by Nato against a resurgent Taliban from the middle of the decade onwards.

“I saw all these coffins going through Wootton Bassett and thought, 'How did we get into this mess?’ After 9/11, we started with the highest hopes for Afghanistan. Here was a chance to rebuild after what had been a terrible time for its people.”

There is plenty of criticism for those foolish enough to underestimate the perils of involvement in a country that has, over the centuries, eaten invading armies for breakfast. Not least the British, who in Helmand province rediscovered the kind of desperate frontier fighting (remember those lonely little “platoon houses”?) not witnessed since the early days of Empire.

Now, despite a vast expenditure of blood and treasure, the war is drawing to a predictably messy conclusion. The Obama administration is engaged in an unseemly race with the government of Hamid Karzai to conclude a peace settlement with the Taliban, and the British, always hanging on to American coat-tails, must get out as best they can. What went wrong?

“I think it was because Iraq took all the resources,” says Gall. “It was a complete disaster as far as Afghanistan went. There was also a lack of knowledge. Countries said they would do different things: Blair put his hands up for narcotics, the Germans put their hands up for policing – it was all very hotch-potch.

“The aim was reconstruction and development but nobody really had any idea just how tricky it would be, partly because they didn’t realise there had been this return of the Taliban. The other reason was the Karzai government: if there had been a really good leader, maybe it would have been different.”

There is another factor: the politics of the Indian sub-continent. The war in Afghanistan, says Gall, has to be seen in the context of Pakistan’s search for security in the face of its vastly more powerful antagonist, India. Pakistan’s Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has been playing a double game for years, posing as an ally of Western intelligence agencies

while providing succour to the Taliban. The aim: a friendly client state on Pakistan’s western border, free of Indian influence.

“The Taliban wouldn’t have lasted 10 minutes without Pakistan,” says Gall. “If they didn’t have safe havens in Pakistan, where would they go with their wounded? Where would their families go? One (Pakistani) MP recently said to the head of the ISI, 'You could end this war in a month if you wanted to’. I’m sure that is true. Pakistan kept this war going.”

A Nato report leaked this week confirms Pakistani complicity in aiding the Taliban. The Americans, says Gall, are now finally aware of the full extent of their supposed ally’s duplicity.

“It all came from the fact that bin Laden had been hiding in Abbottabad. That was a big shock to us and a big shock to a lot of Americans, because obviously the Pakistanis must have known. There are no two ways about it. Kayani (head of the Pakistani army) must have known, and the ISI must have known. My view is that the Americans now have to be very tough with the Pakistanis and say, 'This is just not good enough, we’re not going to accept this.’”

But time is on the side of Pakistan, isn’t it? The Taliban are biding their time, aren’t they? “They may say, 'Yes, we’re going to be much more moderate’ and so on, but in practice – we’ll see. The Taliban have been assassinating a lot of people for months now. I suppose this is really the ISI. They are preparing the ground. That’s quite clear to most Afghans.

“In the north they will not acquiesce in a Taliban takeover, so there may well be civil war and partition. Kabul is part of the north, really. The population is Persian speaking, not Pashtun, and they will not welcome anything that looks like a Taliban government. Civil war is the worst possible thing you could have.”

So more war then? What then was the value of a conflict that has claimed the lives of almost 400 British soldiers?

“There have been good things. Girls’ education has started up again, and education on the whole has been pretty successful. Kabul has been prosperous. OK, there’s a lot of poor people around, but Afghanistan today is a much more successful country than it was when the Taliban were driven out. The Taliban did nothing. But I think they have learnt a lot, too. They now realise that brutality has its own disadvantages.”

Gall believes journalists should avoid becoming too entangled personally in stories but he allowed himself that luxury in Afghanistan. In 1983, he created Sandy Gall’s Afghanistan Appeal to provide help for those maimed by war. His whole family help out, and two of his daughters have worked in Afganistan, one as a journalist. Gall travels to the country almost every year, and will be there again this year. Why does it draw him back?

“It’s going back in time; it’s like a medieval country in some ways. You walk past farmers threshing on the side of the road and they say, 'Oh! You must come and have a cup of tea’. So they down tools and take you into their home. The hospitality is amazing. It’s a culture of hospitality.”

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Afghanistan fears early US pull-out

Financial Times
By Matthew Green in Islamabad, Geoff Dyer in Washington and James Blitz in London
February 2, 2012

Afghanistan urged the Obama administration to stick to an agreed timetable for withdrawing its troops after the US caught allies off guard by saying it would switch to a training role next year.

The remarks by Leon Panetta, the defence secretary, surprised Afghan and Nato officials, who had assumed the US would continue to play a main combat role until the completion of a phased security handover to Afghan forces in late 2014.

US forces have succeeded in pushing the Taliban from southern strongholds, but questions over the readiness of Afghan troops have kindled fears that renewed conflict could erupt as they start to reduce their footprint.

Sediq Sediqqi, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s interior ministry, said Afghanistan still needed more time to build up its forces.

“We would like the American troops to leave according to the schedule which has already been agreed,” Mr Sediqqi said.

A general in the Afghan security forces said the US plan to switch to a training role in 2013 would be a “disaster for Afghanistan”.

“I have had always an ugly picture of what will happen after international forces withdraw,” he said. “This switch to training will bring that picture closer.”

Mr Panetta’s comments triggered frantic parsing by alliance partners, rattled by the prospect of the US making a quicker-than-expected break for the exit, while anxious to avoid giving the impression that Nato’s unity is starting to crack.

France’s decision last month to pull out of Afghanistan a year early has already served to rekindle fears that western resolve is starting to buckle.

Officials from Nato countries in Brussels and Islamabad privately expressed surprise at the remarks by the US defence secretary though the alliance sought to put on a united front.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Nato secretary-general, said the US plan to shift to a training role next year was consistent with the timetable agreed by Nato, which envisages a series of transitions to Afghan forces from mid-2013 to late 2014.

“That decision and that road map still stands,” Mr Rasmussen said before a meeting of Nato defence ministers in Brussels.

A senior UK defence official said the focus on training might make it politically easier in Washington for the US to sustain a troop level closer to the 68,000 present in Afghanistan in 2009. An additional surge of 30,000 troops that arrived in 2010 is due to have left by September.

“This should be seen more as a mission shift that reflects campaign progress,” the source said.

Mr Panetta said ahead of the Nato meeting that the shift to a training and advisory role would begin in the middle of next year and be complete by the end of 2013.

Although US military commanders have hinted about such a transition, Mr Panetta’s comments provided the first explicit timetable for how US combat operations will wind down in Afghanistan after more than a decade of fighting.

Some ambiguity lingers, however, over what the distinction between “training” and “combat” means in Afghanistan, where US troops frequently find themselves in firefights with insurgents while mentoring raw Afghan recruits.

With Barack Obama, the US president, facing re-election this year, the US has stepped up diplomatic efforts to try to kindle peace talks with the Taliban to end the unpopular war, including by encouraging the insurgents to set up an “office “ in Qatar.

Mr Panetta’s comments were immediately criticised by leading Republicans in Congress. Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, influential voices in the party on foreign affairs, said the announcement would send the wrong signal to US enemies.

“The Taliban has little incentive to engage in a meaningful negotiation with the Afghan government or with us to end the conflict when they believe the United States is leaving and that they can wait us out,” they said in a statement.

Additional reporting by Peter Spiegel in Brussels

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The Taliban who may leave Gitmo

CNN
By Adam Levine and Tim Lister, with reporting from Ted Barrett and Pam Benson
February 3rd, 2012

As part of its efforts to explore peace talks with the Taliban, the Obama administration is considering the controversial release of several senior Taliban figures from the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. The names of those being considered for release have not been disclosed, and the conditions are still being discussed. But diplomatic sources say they would probably be relocated to Qatar in the Persian Gulf, where the Taliban is negotiating the establishment of a liaison office to facilitate dialogue with the U.S.

The administration has said any discussion about releasing the detainees is very preliminary and hinges on the Taliban renouncing terrorism and agreeing to peace talks.

But the proposal, confirmed in congressional testimony this week, has come under attack in Congress. The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Mike Rogers, said Thursday that the U.S. was "crossing a dangerous line" by discussing the possibility of releasing the prisoners.

And in a letter to President Obama, Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-California, a former Marine officer who served in Afghanistan, warned that the release would "send the wrong message to the Taliban."

"Releasing prisoners strictly for the purpose of accelerating negotiations undermines the U.S. mission in Afghanistan and deliberately ignores the threat of a Taliban resurgence," Hunter wrote.

Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, who attended a closed briefing on Tuesday about the potential release, called it "really, really bizarre."

"This whole thing is highly questionable because the Taliban know we're leaving. ... Put yourself in their shoes."

"There are many people who are experts in the region who say they are rope-a-doping us."

McCain said Tuesday that he did not believe Qatar would ensure that the Taliban detainees were secured.

"These people really were in positions of authority. One of them was responsible for the deaths of several American soldiers," McCain said.

Officials say none of those being considered for release has been involved in killing Americans. And any proposed transfer would be part of consultations with Congress, according to James Clapper, director of national intelligence.

Clapper told the Senate Intelligence Committee this week that such transfers, though controversial, are not new when trying to end combat.

"In almost every case where we've had hostilities, that at some point in time, there are negotiations. I don't think anyone in the administration harbors any illusions about the potential here," Clapper said.

"Of course, part and parcel of such a decision, if it were finally made, would be the actual determination of where these detainees might go and the conditions in which they would be controlled or surveilled."

Clapper and Matthew Olsen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told the Senate committee that the five being considered for release were among those assessed in 2009 to be too dangerous to release and too difficult to be tried. But Clapper said that assessment, recently redone, was based on returning them to their "point of origin," meaning Afghanistan.

CIA analysts considered different scenarios, said CIA Director David Petraeus.

"Our analysts did provide assessments of the five and the risks presented by various scenarios by which they could be sent somewhere - not back to Afghanistan or Pakistan - and then based on the various mitigating measures that could be implemented to ensure that they cannot return to militant activity," Petraeus said Tuesday.

Clapper said the circumstances also need to be taken into consideration when assessing the risk.

"This is a different condition, though, in terms of the potential for negotiating some form of confidence-building measure with the Taliban," Clapper said.

A CNN analysis of detainee records at Guantanamo Bay published by WikiLeaks suggests the following detainees among those being considered for release. CNN has been told by a knowledgeable source that the list is accurate. The source spoke on the condition no name was used because the list has not been publicized.

Khair Ulla Said Wali Khairkhwa: Former Afghan minister of interior during Taliban rule, governor of Herat and a military commander. Alleged to have been "directly associated" with Osama bin Laden. According to a detainee assessment, Khairkhwa was probably associated with al Qaeda's now-deceased leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al Zarqawi. He is also described as one of the "major opium drug lords in western Afghanistan" and a "friend of current Afghan President Hamid Karzai." He was arrested February 2002 in Pakistan and was transferred to Guantanamo in May 2002. During questioning, Khairkhwa denied all knowledge of extremist activities.

Mullah Mohammad Fazl: Deputy minister of defense under the Taliban, senior military commander who was chief of staff of the Afghan army and commander of the Taliban's 10th Division. Wanted by the U.N. in connection with the massacre of thousands of Afghan Shiites during the Taliban rule. "When asked about the murders, detainee did not express any regret," according to the detainee assessment. Alleged to have been associated with several militant Islamist groups, including al Qaeda. Surrendered in November 2001 to Northern Alliance (opponents of the Taliban). Transferred to U.S. custody in December 2001 and one of the first arrivals at Guantanamo. Assessed as having high intelligence value.

Mullah Norullah Nori: Senior Taliban commander during hostilities with U.S. and allies in Mazar-e Sharif in late 2001. Taliban governor of two provinces and also implicated, according to detainee assessment, in the murder of Afghan Shiites. Nori claimed during interrogation that "he never received any weapons or military training." Surrendered in November 2001 to Northern Alliance and transferred to U.S. custody a month later. According to 2008 detainee assessment, Nori "continues to deny his role, importance and level of access to Taliban officials." Same assessment characterized him as high risk and of high intelligence value.

Abdul Haq Wasiq: Now 40 years old; formerly deputy director of Taliban intelligence. An administrative review in 2007 cited a source as saying that Wasiq was also " an al Qaeda intelligence member" and had links with members of another militant Islamist group, Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin. Wasiq claimed, according to the review, that he was arrested while trying to help the United States locate senior Taliban figures. He denied any links to militant groups.

Mohammad Nabi Omari: According to the first administrative review of Omari in 2004, he was a member of the Taliban and associated with both al Qaeda and another militant group Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin. He was the Taliban's chief of communications and helped al Qaeda members to escape from Afghanistan to Pakistan. Omari acknowledged during hearings that he had worked for the Taliban but denied connections with militant groups. He also said that he had worked with a U.S. operative named Mark to try to track down Mullah Omar. Omari is now 43 or 44 years of age. He has been held at Guantanamo for more than nine years.

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NATO members rattled by U.S. combat plan on Afghanistan

Some object to being caught off guard by Panetta's talk of transferring combat duties to Afghans in 2013.

Los Angeles Times
By David S. Cloud
February 2, 2012
Brussels

A U.S. proposal to step back from leading combat operations in Afghanistan by the middle of 2013 divided NATO on Thursday as some allies objected to being caught by surprise, and France suggested that the alliance completely end its involvement in fighting over the next two years.

Germany, Britain and other NATO members complained in closed talks at alliance headquarters here that they had been blindsided by Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, who described the U.S. plan to reporters on his way to Brussels on Wednesday, according to a senior NATO diplomat.

European governments, after backing the unpopular Afghan war for years despite little public support, said the U.S. plan was being viewed in news reports as an indication that Washington was eager to leave Afghanistan, which would make it harder for them politically to keep their own troops there, the official said.

Reflecting those concerns, French officials confirmed that Paris intended to pull its 2,500 remaining combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2013, and they suggested that the rest of the alliance examine whether it should follow the same timetable, according to a senior French diplomat.

Removing all combat forces in 2013 would be a year ahead of schedule, but French officials say the faster timetable would help the alliance extricate itself from the decade-old war. "We must not leave the most difficult tasks for the end," French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet said in a brief interview.

U.S. officials favor handing over lead responsibility for fighting the insurgency to the Afghans next year but keeping U.S. and allied combat troops there until the end of 2014.

U.S. officials insisted that the transfer of duties to the Afghans did not mean the U.S. would cease combat operations entirely, but several U.S. and NATO officials initially had trouble explaining what the change would mean in practice. The announcement also seemed to spook both Afghan officials and U.S. military commanders, who worried that it meant U.S. troops would be pulled out more quickly than expected, an impression that, despite multiple efforts, U.S. officials did not entirely dispel.

One senior NATO official briefing reporters explained the U.S. plan this way: Panetta "said that the combat role will come to an end. But he also said that combat will continue, and that's exactly what I am saying."

The U.S. plan also seemed to rattle NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. He told reporters Thursday morning that Afghan army and police personnel would be in the lead "by mid-2013," as Panetta had said, but at an evening news conference he announced that he needed to "clarify a few issues."

Apparently concerned that the U.S. announcement would lead other members of the alliance to withdraw their troops next year, Rasmussen pulled back from his earlier optimistic statement that Afghan troops would assume security responsibility throughout the country in 2013, with NATO taking on a support role.

"It may be 2013. We don't know yet. It depends on the situation on the ground," he said.

Panetta offered reassurance that U.S. forces would still be engaging in combat even after the Afghan army takes the lead role next year. "Everyone understands that there's going to be a transition here," Panetta told reporters after a day of meetings at NATO headquarters. "The Afghans will be in the lead, and we will continue to provide support."

Panetta said U.S. forces would train and advise Afghan units, conduct special-operations raids and be available to aid other troops in emergencies. He said American troops would only "engage in combat operations as necessary," a major shift away from the U.S.-dominated approach of the last decade.

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Afghanistan’s Supply Problem

The Diplomat
By David Axe
February 2, 2012

A snapshot of supply efforts at one remote coalition outpost in eastern Afghanistan illustrates the war's daunting logistical challenges and the potential shortfalls once foreign troops withdraw in 2014.

The U.S. Army's 172nd Infantry Brigade, working in conjunction with the Afghan National Army and National Police, established a new patrol base in Marzak, in mountainous northern Paktika Province, in early January. The goal: to stand up a new local police outfit capable of defending against Taliban militants moving between Pakistan and Afghanistan's heartland.

Marzak is accessible mostly by air. Just one narrow road – navigable only by lightweight vehicles – connects the village to the country's main Highway 1. Winter snows limit even these methods of transportation. Keeping the coalition troops fed, fueled and armed requires a "Herculean" effort, according to Capt. Jim Perkins, commanding U.S. troops in the village.

The International Security Assistance Force has the resources to meet this logistical challenge. But on its own, the Afghan government probably can't keep the Marzak outpost supplied.

Over a week in mid-January, Perkins' troops received several supply deliveries. On no fewer than five occasions, contractor-flown Mi-8 helicopters carried in so-called "sling-loads" of food and other goods, contained in nets dangling from the choppers' undersides. Heavier supplies – barrels of fuel, for instance – arrived by more dramatic means. Caribou cargo planes, famed for resupplying U.S. outposts during the Vietnam War, flew overhead at just a couple hundred feet, dumping pallets attached to fast-opening parachutes.

"You got some real cajones," one soldier radioed to the civilian Caribou crew after one successful drop.

Perkins says the Afghan police will have only minimal supply requirements once Western troops depart Marzak. But local police squad leader Noor Salam says he's counting on ISAF to keep his men supplied.

"The struggling ANA and ANP logistics system alone virtually ensures that even high-performing units can't be fully independent," wrote Anthony Cordesman, an analyst with Center for Strategic and International Studies.

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Panetta Draws Fire Over Afghan Shift

Wall Street Journal
By ADAM ENTOUS
FEBRUARY 2, 2012
BRUSSELS

The Obama administration scrambled Thursday to clarify its plans to switch to a train-and-assist mission in Afghanistan after North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies were surprised by the announcement of a U.S. strategy shift next year.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta met with NATO allies Thursday, saying that U.S. and international troops would play an active but limited role in combat operations even after the Afghans take the lead in 2013.

A day earlier, Mr. Panetta had publicly spelled out the Obama administration's goal: to shift from a combat mission to a train-and-assist mission in mid- to late 2013, a year before international troops are scheduled to pull out at the end of 2014.

Some senior U.S. officials in Brussels and Kabul were among those who appeared to be caught off-guard by the timing of Mr. Panetta's disclosure, which came a day before meetings with NATO counterparts.

In Washington, the announcement by Mr. Panetta drew criticism from some members of Congress. Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) said the plan "sends exactly the wrong signal to our friends and enemies in this conflict."

After meetings with NATO allies, Mr. Panetta said he saw a consensus within the alliance on changing the mission in 2013.

As part of the change, U.S. and other international troops would assume a support role and defer to the Afghans to decide on operations, including patrols, tactics and in selecting "enemy targets," Mr. Panetta said.

But Mr. Panetta explained that U.S. and NATO troops also would remain "fully combat ready" and still would engage in combat operations "as necessary" during the train-and-assist phase of the mission. In particular, he said, NATO forces after the planned 2013 transition would be able to conduct defensive operations and to launch special-operations missions.

Mr. Panetta made his initial comments about shifting from a combat role to a train-and-assist mission on Wednesday, on the eve of talks with NATO allies in Brussels where ministers planned to discuss next steps in Afghanistan. His initial statement raised questions about what combat role the U.S. and its allies would play between 2013 and the end of 2014, and officials chafed at headlines that suggested that combat operations would end earlier than planned.

Reactions in Brussels and Washington underscored the lack of clarity.

"He [Mr. Panetta] said the combat role will come to an end. But he also said combat will continue," a senior NATO official explained to reporters. "And that's exactly what I'm saying."

In Washington, officials sought to play down the planned shift as gradual and expected. White House press secretary Jay Carney said Mr. Panetta was describing what "could happen" and was not "making an announcement about a decision that had been made."

Some U.S. and NATO officials said Mr. Panetta raised eyebrows because he appeared to pre-empt an official announcement slated for a meeting of NATO leaders in May in Chicago. But a senior U.S. defense official said the alliance was "coalescing" around 2013 as "a transition date."

Mr. Panetta said he saw "no division of opinion in any of the meetings that I attended." adding that "Everybody understands that the final tranche of transition occurs in that year," referring to 2013.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy surprised the U.S. and other NATO allies last week by saying he would propose giving Afghan security forces "complete control of NATO's combat missions during 2013."

Gérard Longuet, the French defense minister, told reporters on Thursday that all French combat troops will be withdrawn by the end of 2013. Support personnel will remain there, but will be gradually drawn down.

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The administration’s muddled message on Afghanistan

Washington Post
By Editorial Board
Friday, February 3, 2012

IT’S BECOMING increasingly difficult to reconcile the Obama administration’s military and diplomatic initiatives on Afghanistan. Last month, the State Department unveiled a “fight and talk” strategy that could involve the transfer of senior Taliban commanders from Guantanamo Bay to Qatar. The aim, officials said, was to induce Taliban leaders to accept what they have repeatedly rejected: talks with the Afghan government and a peace settlement based on the current Afghan constitution, including its protections for women.

On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta floated an entirely different plan: an end to most U.S. and NATO combat operations in Afghanistan by the second half of 2013, a year earlier than expected, and a substantial cut in the previously planned size of the Afghan armed forces. So much for “fight.” Though Mr. Panetta didn’t say so, this strategy implies another big U.S. troop reduction in 2013, beyond the pullout of about one-third of troops already planned for this year. U.S. commanders have lobbied to keep the troop strength steady from this coming autumn until the end of 2014 — the current endpoint for the NATO military commitment.

The new timetable may sound good to voters when Mr. Obama touts it on the presidential campaign trail. But how will the Taliban, and its backers in Pakistan, interpret it? Before negotiations even begin, the administration has unilaterally and radically reduced the opposing force the Taliban can expect to face 18 months from now. Will Taliban leader Mohammad Omar have reason to make significant concessions between now and then? More likely, the extremist Islamic movement and an increasingly hostile Pakistani military establishment will conclude that the United States is desperate to get its troops out of Afghanistan, as quickly as possible — whether or not the Afghan government and constitution survive.

Administration officials argue that the plan for NATO to remain in Afghanistan until the end of 2014 hasn’t changed — and that negotiations are underway with the Afghan government for a U.S. commitment of trainers and advisers well past that date. In theory, a robust U.S. stay-on force — say, of 20,000 troops, with air support — could ensure against a Taliban return to power in Kabul and force its leaders to make concessions.

But the total U.S. pullout from Iraq can’t have inspired much confidence in Kabul about U.S. steadfastness. And the trend of administration policy is toward a much smaller effort in Afghanistan. Since the death of Osama bin Laden in a Special Forces raid last May, administration strategy has veered sharply toward the concept that narrowly defined U.S. interests, such as keeping al-Qaeda in check, can be accomplished through the use of Special Forces and drones while ground troops are withdrawn.

In our view that theory is badly mistaken. A rapid U.S. drawdown in Afghanistan will most likely lead to a renewed civil war in which the Taliban could again gain the upper hand. That would endanger U.S. interests throughout the region — starting with a nuclear-armed Pakistan — and mean an unforgivable breach of faith with the Afghan women and men the United States promised to enfranchise and defend.

But if President Obama has decided to pursue that course, there’s an inevitable next question. If the goal of a stable and democratic Afghanistan is to be subordinated — if timetables are to be accelerated, regardless of conditions — why should U.S. ground troops fight and die this year?

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US troops in Afghanistan: How big is shift from 'combat' to 'assistance'?

The US plan to end its combat mission in Afghanistan by the end of 2013, shifting to an 'advise and assist' role, may not mean a huge change for troops on the ground.

Christian Science Monitor
By Anna Mulrine, Staff writer
February 2, 2012

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said this week that the United States plans to end its combat mission in Afghanistan by the end of 2013.

What does this mean for US troops, exactly? Are they likely to be safer? To see less fighting?

In practical terms, probably not.

Who will carry out Obama's Afghanistan exit plan? Three new guys.

The move away from a “combat role” into, as Mr. Panetta explained it, an “advise and assist role” is replete with some murky military definitions.

For some time, Afghan forces have been “in the lead” for security in some provinces throughout the country. For US troops this still means providing plenty of help, analysts note. US soldiers and Marines come to the aid of Afghan forces in battle and continue to supply water, transportation, and other vital supplies.

Panetta explained that this transition will often be a matter of formality. “It’s still a pretty robust role that we’ll be engaged in,” he said Wednesday. “It’s not going to be kind of the formal combat role that we are now, but it clearly is going to be a role where we are going to be providing a great deal of support and assistance to the Afghan Army.”

He added, “Look, it doesn’t mean that – you know, we’re not – we’re not going to be combat-ready.”

US troops will have to continue to call on this combat-readiness in a country that remains in violent turmoil.

The intelligence community’s annual “threat assessment,” released this week, paints a picture of a Taliban-led insurgency that “has long ground in some areas.” However, the report notes, “its losses have come mainly in areas where ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] surge forces are concentrated.”

These US "surge forces" are set to come home later this year after the summer fighting season. Their ranks will decrease from some 90,000 now to roughly 68,000 by the end of 2012.

The Obama administration has yet to decide how many troops will leave the country in 2013.

Yet even as the number of US troops will decline, it is unclear that Afghan forces will be able to hold territory on their own. The annual threat assessment, produced by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Director of National Intelligence, among others, put the readiness of Afghan forces in stark terms: “In terms of security, we judge that the Afghan police and Army will continue to depend on ISAF support.”

That is precisely the concern of many US commanders on the ground in Afghanistan. For just this reason, then, Panetta's announcement sends a clear message to Afghan counterparts as well: that it’s time to step up the pace and take on more responsibility.

Still, this didn’t stop some lawmakers on Capitol Hill from decrying the move. Said Rep. Buck McKeon (R) of California, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, “While there have certainly been improvements in Afghan security forces’ capabilities, the committee has not seen a single assessment by our commanders that indicates that they have any confidence in such a swift transition.”

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Panetta comment prompts questions, concerns in Afghanistan

Washington Post
By Kevin Sieff
Friday, February 3, 2012
KABUL

Afghan security forces learned Wednesday that they may inherit their country’s 10-year-old conflict earlier than expected, leaving soldiers and officials here to question whether the looming security handover is a testament to their own progress or a product of American politics.

U.S. and NATO officials sought Thursday to clarify Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta’s announcement a day earlier that the United States intends to complete U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan by 2013, shifting to a training, advisory and assistance role before Western troops depart at the end of 2014. But the prospect of an expedited security transition still stirred concern, given the insurgency’s resilience in large swaths of the south and east, with questions of preparedness tempering pride in the progress of the nation’s army and police.

“Are we ready to take over? In some places, we are,” said one Afghan commander, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “But in others, we aren’t now, and we won’t be in a year.”

For the past six months, Afghan and American officials have held formal ceremonies to celebrate the transition of cities, districts and provinces to Afghan control — early steps toward a post-NATO Afghanistan.

Those transitions are part of a larger effort to build confidence among both Afghan soldiers and civilians in the ability of the country’s institutions to maintain security. Billboards have been posted across the country with photos of American soldiers handing their guns over to their Afghan counterparts. Afghan units have begun crafting their own missions and going on independent patrols.

Such measures, although sometimes dismissed as hollow symbols by officials in Kabul, have prompted Afghan officers to play a more active part in traditionally NATO-led military operations, Western military officials say.

“Instead of being afraid, the majority of Afghan army leaders I worked with were proud to take on a leading role,” said Fernando Lujan, an Army Special Forces major and a visiting fellow at the Center for a New American Security, who spent a year embedded with Afghan army units.

U.S. officials in Kabul insist that Panetta’s announcement does not signal a shift in policy or an expedited withdrawal. But some Afghans say it could be enough to shake the confidence of the army and police force, which now faces the prospect of inheriting the country’s most embattled provinces within the next eighteen months.

Though more than a dozen formal transition ceremonies have been held since last summer, most have been in relatively peaceful provinces, or in small patches of cities, sometimes only a few square miles.

Those handovers are a far stretch from the challenges to come. Although the distinction between combat and assistance can be murky in practice, Afghans will no doubt be expected to play a more active role in crafting and executing military strategy in places where the United States has fought for years without decisive victory.

American officials planned to use early transition exercises as a litmus test for the overall handover of the war effort. Panetta’s announcement means there may be less time than many expected to learn from early mistakes before combat operations end.

“For those who understand the reality, Panetta’s announcement sends a vague message. Many will argue, how can we trust the U.S. when they keep changing their words?” said Afghan Maj. Kosh Sadat.

The Karzai administration appeared unfazed by Panetta’s statement, with officials claiming they are still confident the United States will remain a stabilizing force in Afghanistan.

Still, some worry that the announcement also sends the wrong message to the Taliban, showing weakness during a critical stage of peace talks with the insurgency.

An accelerated timetable could play into peace negotiations, some analysts say, but it would be unlikely to mollify Islamic militants fighting the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan as long as U.S. troops of any kind remain in Afghanistan.

“Whether it is the Pakistani Taliban, the Afghan Taliban or al-Qaeda, the narrative is the same: They want to liberate Afghanistan from foreign occupation,” said Pakistani author Imtiaz Gul, executive director of the Center for Research and Security Studies in Islamabad. “The first major hurdle the U.S. and coalition forces face is opposition to the U.S. bases in Afghanistan. The Taliban have taken the maximalist position that foreign forces must leave lock, stock and barrel.”

Correspondents Sayed Salahuddin in Kabul and Richard Leiby in Islamabad, Pakistan, contributed to this report.

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Fake Heart Medicine Dealers will be Punished, MoPH Says

TOLOnews.com
By Shakeela Abrahimkhil
Thursday, 02 February 2012

The fake heart medicine dealers will be prosecuted, the Afghan Ministry of Public Health said on Thursday.

Two kinds of such medicines produced by the Punjab Pharmacy Institute have been imported to Afghanistan, the ministry added.

The ministry also called on Afghan pharmacies to quarantine such medicines.

The Ministry requested heart patients not to use Pakistani medicine until the fake medicines are fully identified.

Six types of fake medicines are said to have been produced illegally by the Punjab Pharmacy Institute.

Nearly 100 heart patients have lost their lives in Pakistan by using these medicines.

The ministry is trying to collect all the fake medicines from the market and will put them in quarantine.

"Six types of fake medicines that could cause death have been identified," Acting Health Minister Suraya Dalil said.

The ministry stressed that even though all the companies importing medicines to Afghanistan have licences from Afghan Ministry of Public Health but there are also other ways to bring fake medicines inside the country.

The ministry is concerned about smuggling of these medicines to the country.

There are many patients going to Pakistan for treatment and there is no guarantee that these patients don't use these medicines.

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Premature Evacuation?

Why cutting and running in Afghanistan is good politics for Obama.

Foreign Policy
BY MICHAEL A. COHEN
FEBRUARY 2, 2012

Barack Obama is nothing if not a trailblazing politician -- after all, when you're the first African-American elected to the nation's highest office, breaking the mold is sort of part of your political DNA. However, with the announcement by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta on Tuesday, Feb. 1, that the Obama administration intends to end combat operations in Afghanistan in mid-2013 he is laying out another unique course -- seeking re-election this November as the architect of two drawdowns of U.S. military engagements. This is the kind of thing doesn't happen too often in American politics.

Rather, U.S. wars tend to end not before, but after elections. In 1952, Harry S. Truman was forced from office, in part, because of his inability to end the slaughter in Korea. It was his successor, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who finally brought the war to a conclusion after running on a pledge that he would end the conflict. In 1968, an effort to begin disengaging the United States from the war in Vietnam also disengaged Lyndon B. Johnson from his dreams of another term as "your president." In 1972, the final breakthrough at the Paris peace talks came two months after incumbent President Richard Nixon had been overwhelmingly reelected -- and after he had dropped copious amounts of bombs on North Vietnam. In 2004, George W. Bush had decidedly little interest in talking about retreat from Iraq.

While not a hard and fast rule -- and one that is occasionally out of the hands of a commander-in-chief -- the general direction of wartime presidents is to avoid any hint of military vacillation or weakness before facing voters (even when fighting an unpopular war).

Not Barack Obama. He is running for reelection on a platform of bringing the troops home from Iraq, winding down the war in Afghanistan on a now accelerated timetable, and -- with the death of Osama bin Laden -- as the president who is ending the global war on terror.

Not surprisingly, Obama's Republican opponents are already taking him to task for the decision. GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney last night blasted what he called Obama's "naiveté" in signaling U.S. intentions to the enemy. He was joined by the 2008 GOP nominee, Sen. John McCain, who criticized Obama for sending "reassurance to our enemies that the United States is more eager to leave Afghanistan than to succeed." Romney, who briefly suggested last summer that it was time "to bring our troops home as soon as we possibly can" from Afghanistan, has now adopted the position that the United States must defeat the Taliban militarily. As he said in South Carolina last month, "These people [the Taliban] have declared war on us. They've killed Americans. We go anywhere they are and we kill them." It's a rather traditional playbook for a Republican -- but that doesn't mean it will necessarily work with voters.

On the surface, it is certainly unusual for a presidential candidate, particularly a Democrat, to hand his opponents a potential military cudgel by which to bash him. But Obama probably understands better than his opponents that such attacks have rather limited political saliency. Voters strongly oppose the war in Afghanistan and have for quite some time. Indeed, 56 percent of Americans would, if they had their way, bring U.S. troops home from Afghanistan immediately. Republicans will undoubtedly attack Obama's "retreat" from the war, but if the White House is assuming that voters won't care or that they will view the decision as a positive example of presidential leadership, they're probably right. It wouldn't be a U.S. presidential election cycle if Republicans weren't attacking their opponents as weak on national security -- but tradition shouldn't be confused with smart politics.

And this doesn't necessarily mean that Obama's decision was driven by political considerations, either. One of the more underreported elements of Panetta's comments on Tuesday was his call for an "enduring presence" by the United States in Afghanistan beyond 2014, which was the original NATO deadline for the withdrawal of foreign forces. While the U.S. combat mission might be ending sooner than originally planned, it's quite possible that the U.S. role in Afghanistan's politics will continue for some time.

Still, a desire to wind down the war quickly, the potential for kickstarting negotiations with the Taliban, and the recent decision by France to pull the plug on its involvement in Afghanistan in 2013 were likely greater influences on the administration's decision-making than creating an applause line for the fall presidential campaign.

Nonetheless, it is striking that the White House appears largely unconcerned about the political fallout from this decision. In 2008, candidate Obama ran on a platform of more fully resourcing the war in Afghanistan -- a stance that was motivated in part by a desire to shield himself from traditional GOP attacks on Democratic national security weakness. Within mere weeks of taking office -- and before even completing a serious review of the mission in Afghanistan -- Obama approved sending 17,000 troops to the war. In December 2009, according to Bob Woodward's account, he announced his intention to surge troops in Afghanistan against what appeared to be his better instincts. It was a decision, again, that appeared motivated, in part, by a desire to avoid charges of ignoring military counsel or not taking seriously enough the threat of jihadist terror. That now seems like a very long time ago -- and a very different Democratic politician.

To be sure, if Obama's State of the Union address -- bookended by reflections on the killing of bin Laden -- is any indication, Obama has not backed down from an inclination to tout his military bonafides. Indeed, the president's 2012 website provides a compelling snapshot into his campaign's mindset about how foreign policy will help their candidate in 2012.

It doesn't actually mention the words "foreign policy."

Rather the focus is on "national security" -- in particular, Obama's commitment to the nation's veterans and a strong military as well as his efforts to rid the world of the threat of loose nukes and al Qaeda terrorists.

Put it all together and we have a rather counterintuitive construct for a presidential candidate: tough enough to pursue and kill those that threaten America, but brave enough to take risks for peace and end America's wars. That such a strategy might work is unusual; that it's even being tried is fascinating indeed. A president running on a platform for ending and winding down America's wars -- fancy that.

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White House hits back at Afghan war critics

AFP
02/02/2012

The White House Thursday rebuked critics it implied favored an Afghan war "without end" after Republican candidate Mitt Romney said plans to end the US combat mission next year betrayed "naivety."

Mounting political debate over future Afghan strategy foreshadows what is likely to be a sharp clash between President Barack Obama and his eventual Republican opponent in November's presidential election over the war.

US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta effectively injected the war in Afghanistan back into the heat of the campaign on Wednesday, unveiling the updated strategy as he flew to Brussels for a NATO meeting.

He told reporters aboard his plane that Washington hopes to end its combat mission in Afghanistan in 2013 and to shift to a training role with the Afghan National Army, one year before most US troops are due to withdraw.

Romney, who accuses Obama of "appeasing" US enemies, said at a campaign event Wednesday that the troop decision would hand an important advantage to US foes in Afghanistan and faulted the ideal of any set withdrawal date.

"Why in the world would you go to the people you are fighting with and tell them the day you are pulling out your troops," Romney said.

"It makes absolutely no sense, it is naivety, it is putting in jeopardy the mission of the United States of America and our commitment to freedom."

White House spokesman Jay Carney declined to directly rebut Romney's comments but hit out at critics of Obama's approach on Afghanistan, and accused the previous Bush administration of neglecting the war.

"The president has a very clear, focused, achievable policy with a lot of muscle behind it," Carney said. "What he does not support is war without end."

Carney accused some Obama critics of ignoring the president's focused strategy and clinging to support for a previous Bush administration plan that "no two people involved in it could explain."

"Let's be clear that the policy (Obama) inherited was one of, you know, neglect in Afghanistan because of the focus on the war in Iraq," he said.

"He made clear that he would heighten the focus on the real enemy, which was Al-Qaeda. He has done that."

The idea of moving towards an advisory mission had previously been mooted, but Panetta's comments marked the first time the administration had posited an exact target date for the transfer of mission.

"Hopefully by the mid-to-latter part of 2013, we'll be able to make a transition from a combat role to a train, advise and assist role," Panetta said.

The comments were the strongest sign yet that Obama, who carried out a 2008 campaign pledge to bring all US troops home from Iraq, wants to go into the next election arguing he is well on the way to ending the 10-year Afghan war.

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Plan for early end to US combat role catches Afghan officials by surprise

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced Feb. 1 that the US could end its combat role in Afghanistan by mid-2013 even as concerns about Taliban strength rise.

Christian Science Monitor
By Ariel Zirulnick, Staff writer
February 2, 2012

• A daily summary of global reports on security issues.

US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced yesterday that American troops in Afghanistan would step back from their combat role in Afghanistan as early as mid-2013, more than a year before the full withdrawal scheduled for 2014.

The announcement caught the Afghan government and Army by surprise, Reuters reports. "A decision to push this a year earlier throws out the whole transition plan. The transition has been planned against a timetable and this makes us rush all our preparations," a senior Afghan security official said. "If the Americans withdraw from combat, it will certainly have an effect on our readiness and training, and on equipping the police force," the official said, adding that the US did not inform Afghanistan ahead of the announcement.

The New York Times attributes the unexpectedly early end to US troops' combat role to the Obama administration's "eagerness" to end the second war it inherited from the Bush administration.

Who will carry out Obama's Afghanistan exit plan? Three new guys.

In his announcement, Mr. Panetta downplayed French President Nicolas Sarkozy's decision to withdraw France's troops by the end of 2013, a year ahead of its NATO allies, the Times reports. His decision came after an Afghan soldier killed four French soldiers who were on a training mission – an action that has not been uncommon in the war there.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Panetta's decision was done to preempt any similar decisions from other NATO allies.

By announcing a specific timetable, US officials are hoping to head off a push by allies to pull out their forces more quickly. Public support for the war is falling in many countries, and with their economies struggling, governments are under pressure to trim their defense budgets.

With the expedited end to a combat role, US troops will turn primarily to training and advisory missions, similar to the way the withdrawal unfolded from Iraq, with the US focused on training Iraqi soldiers for more than a year before the last convoy left the country. Whether Afghan troops are ready to take on the central role is unclear – both the Army and police are "plagued by corruption, operational and personnel problems," according to the Los Angeles Times.

Afghan forces already have assumed control in Kabul, the capital, and some other areas, but those were already largely peaceful. The US and its allies retain military responsibility for the most violent parts of the country.

A senior Defense Department official traveling with Panetta said the US-led force "still needs to be there in robust fashion to back them up" until the end of 2014.

The Christian Science Monitor reports that the "steady string" of attacks on Western troops by rogue Afghan soldiers and police is both undermining military cooperation and heightening concerns about a Taliban infiltration of both the police and Army. There have been 42 such attacks since 2007, leaving 70 troops dead and many more wounded.

Pentagon officials warn of the potential “insider threat” from Taliban infiltrators, who are particularly difficult to detect. “A successful infiltrator is more likely [to be] competent and experienced,” warned Pentagon testimony submitted to the committee.

As a result, Taliban insurgents impersonating Afghan security forces may inadvertently be given important jobs within their unit. This, in turn, may allow them to facilitate “insurgent efforts by providing intelligence on coalition force tactics or movement, or by targeting high-profile ANSF or Afghan government officials.”

On top of those concerns, according to a NATO report leaked to the BBC, the Taliban still have substantial support among Afghans and receive assistance from Pakistani security services – an accusation Pakistan denied, the BBC reports. The report, based on on 27,000 interrogations with more than 4,000 captured Taliban, Al Qaeda, and other foreign fighters and civilians, states that Pakistan is aware of the location of several senior Taliban leaders.

The report also says that interest in joining the Taliban is on the rise among Afghans, including members of the government, and that the reduction of attacks in some parts of the country is a facade intended to hasten the withdrawal of coalition forces from the area so the Taliban can move in – often with the help of the police and Army.

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Still Britain rattles sabres. Nothing has been learned from Afghanistan

As we 'withdraw' from Afghanistan across the Taliban's golden bridge, we could be heading for catastrophe over Iran

Guardian.co.uk
By Simon Jenkins
Thursday 2 February 2012

The Afghan war, the longest in US history, is "scheduled to end" a year early, according to the Pentagon. Wars these days run to electoral timetables. The endgame is couched not as victory, let alone defeat, but as "expedited withdrawal".

It is obvious that Taliban commanders are reading Sun Tzu, and "building the enemy a golden bridge across which to retreat". They are talking to go-betweens, opening offices in Doha and giving soothing interviews. This week's leaked American intelligence report, The State of the Taliban, shows that the Afghan people, too, are coming to terms with the return of their former rulers, and might even welcome some stability and order after 10 years of Nato-induced chaos.

The US president, Barack Obama, has always hated this war of neocon fantasy, and is now calibrating his departure. Militarily, the path to defeat has been straightforward. While it is easy to bomb a capital and deploy armies to topple a regime, occupying foreign countries for any length of time is usually disastrous. Soldiers become brutalised, allies desert, operations become costly and counterproductive.

Nato strategists did not need Napoleon or Hitler for a warning, merely Soviet experience in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Even after Mikhail Gorbachev saw the writing on the wall and decided to withdraw in 1985, it took him four years to do so. As also indicated in this week's report, the Pakistanis, supposedly allies of the west, have long sided with the Taliban. Even Kabul's ruler and western puppet, Hamid Karzai, has said he would support Pakistan in any putative war with the US. It does not matter what America or Britain does. The logic of a prolonged occupation of a Muslim country is remorseless.

More alarming about the Afghan war has been its psychology. It has generated some two dozen books on my shelf, and every one of them warns, cautions, criticises, condemns. The Pashtun Taliban should not be underestimated. Defeating them by main force flew in the face of all experience. Pakistani intelligence would offer them sanctuary and support. Nato should not drive al-Qaida, a tiny Arabist cell in 2001, into alliance with the Taliban. The idea that force of western arms could turn a corrupt Muslim statelet into a sanitised, pro-western democracy was arrogant and unreal.

Every warning was disregarded in a classic of "cognitive dissonance". The Afghan war has been sustained by years of mendacity and deceit from western governments. Elected representatives, the media and public opinion were induced to buy the line that success was "just around the corner". Embedded journalists would report that the army was "winning hearts and minds" and the Taliban were on the run. Sooner or later Nato would "retrain" the Afghan army, despite constant reports of the hatred and unreliability this army felt towards the occupation. Just last week, the British government bizarrely pledged to build "an Afghan Sandhurst", presumably as a palace for some future Taliban warlord.

All military and diplomatic experience, all the history and the scholarship in the world, did not stop this crude punitive venture being backed by conservatives and liberals alike in both the US and Britain. It was declared a good war. The drumbeats of battle stifled criticism. Any general got a cheer who could boast that the war would be over in weeks, and without a shot fired. Critics were met with the timeless, drear refrain, that their talk was defeatist, cowardly and lacked patriotism. Like Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind, they were drowned by the lust for glory.

Nor were the lobbies idle. Bruised from its Iraq debacle, the British army wanted somewhere to walk tall. Helmand, with its echoes of Beau Geste and Lawrence of Arabia, was ideal. Behind the army lurked the call of money, an ever-burgeoning regiment of arms suppliers, security firms, contractors, NGOs and aid agencies, all fat on the war's staggering $500bn cost. Add to them Kabul's kleptocrats, politicians and aid recipients, and the war took on a self-sustaining quality. Even today few participants have an interest in its ending. Hundreds, then thousands, die, and no one can honestly say why.

Withdrawal will not be as easy as from Iraq, messy and unresolved as that remains. The new Taliban may be media-friendly and, for the present, amenable to calls for moderation. They are said to be more sophisticated than those who seized Kabul amid appalling bloodshed in 1996. But it is hard to believe their leaders will have cause to compromise in a year's time, hailed as heroes of Islam for having humbled the might of Nato. Their Pakistani backers will be equally exhilarated. Whatever might have been achieved against al-Qaida with minimal force in 2001 – on which I recommend Lucy Morgan Edwards' book The Afghan Solution – is past history. Resumed chaos beckons.

Unlike most European countries, sucked into the Afghan vortex by Nato blackmail, Britain and the US were willing warriors, with belligerence in their cultural genes. Discussing "what must be done" to order the rest of the world is second nature to their political class. Successive British governments bought into the lies and scaremongering of George Bush's war on terror. Gordon Brown and David Cameron alike claimed that the killing fields of Helmand were integral to safety on the streets of London, and indeed to the security of the British state. People believed them. War induced a cockeyed credulity.

The Afghan war has not made the west one jot safer, almost certainly the reverse. Islamist terrorism and its obverse, panicky security, is polluting this year's Olympic Games in London. Yet the war clearly responded to a yearning in many Britons to see the world as still their ancestral responsibility. To them a war that turns out right, such as in Libya, "proves" Britain's manifest destiny.

Which is why this is not the endgame. Britain is even now rattling sabres and dicing with disaster alongside the US against Iran. Such a war would be as catastrophic as could be imagined, and against a country that poses no conceivable threat to western security. The sole reason for going to war against Iran is to go to war against Iran. That is how we went to war against Afghanistan and Iraq. Clearly, nothing has been learned.

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Why Obama Is Right to Withdraw From Afghanistan Early

Hastening America's exit will be painful, and undercuts years of U.S. efforts, but it's our least bad choice in this doomed war.

The Atlantic
By James Joyner
Feb 2 2012

The Obama administration's acceleration of its Afghanistan withdrawal deadline to 2013, a year earlier than planned, is a break with America's commitment to its NATO and Afghan allies, an abandonment of a mission Obama deemed "essential" in his 2008 campaign, and kills any chances of negotiating an acceptable settlement with the Taliban. It's also the right thing to do.

On his way to a NATO ministerial, U.S. defense secretary Leon Panetta announced on Wednesday that "Hopefully by mid- to the latter part of 2013 we'll be able to make a transition from a combat role to a training, advice, and assist role."

A little more than a year ago, at the November 2010 Lisbon Summit , the NATO allies declared -- after substantial arm twisting by the Obama administration -- that the "ISAF mission in Afghanistan remains the Alliance's key priority" and "Afghanistan's security and stability are directly linked with our own security." The allies agreed that, by "the end of 2014, Afghan forces will be assuming full responsibility for security across the whole of Afghanistan" but that "Transition will be conditions-based, not calendar-driven, and will not equate to withdrawal of ISAF-troops."

So much for all that tough talk, which has been countermanded by Panetta's new timetable. So, too, has it shifted the administration's longstanding position on Afghanistan.

In a 2009 speech to the nation from West Point, Obama announced that he would send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan because he was "convinced that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan," which he termed "the epicenter of violent extremism practiced by al Qaeda." To the extent that was true then, it almost certainly still is.

On the campaign trail in 2008, Obama committed to "Finishing the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban," charging that the Bush administration had neglected the necessary war in Afghanistan for the unnecessary one in Iraq. Given that we are no closer to "breaking the Taliban's momentum," nor is Afghanistan any closer to being stable or ready to manage its own security, it's tough to see this hasty withdrawal as anything other than an admission of defeat and a cutting of losses.

Critics who worry that this announcement of a withdrawal severely undercuts our negotiating position with the Taliban are surely correct. They can easily bide their time now that they have a date certain.

So how can a decision that undermines our allies and our own negotiating power nonetheless be the right one? Because the alternative is to continue getting people killed -- not to mention inadvertently killing innocents -- in a fight we can't win.

The recent release of a secret NATO report on the Taliban focused on "revelations" that they're being directly helped by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency -- something anyone even casually familiar with the region has taken for granted for quite some time. The more valuable takeaway was the resilience of our enemy.

The report notes of the Taliban, "Despite numerous setbacks, surrender is far from their collective mindset. For the moment, they believe that continuing the fight and expanding Taliban governance are their only viable course of action." Additionally, "The Taliban leadership controls nearly all insurgent activity in Afghanistan. Outside groups such as al-Qaeda, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and others must receive permission from Taliban leaders prior to conducting operations on Afghan territory."

It's become painfully obvious in recent months that the governments in both Kabul and Islamabad are, to put it mildly, less than reliable allies. There's simply no reason to think staying another year is somehow going to turn things around.

Whether NATO's goals are achievable with unlimited time and resources is debatable. It's also moot. Most of our allies were going to have, at most, a token force in Afghanistan through the end of 2014. They were there largely at America's urging and they'll be happy to leave.

The Economist's Clausewitz columnist suggested that the report is overly pessimistic, fearing that Panetta's announcement "may have triggered an unseemly rush to for the exit." Alas, it began years ago. The United States supplies 90,000 of the 130,386 troops in ISAF and only a handful of members supply as many as a thousand. France had already beaten Panetta to the draw, announcing it would speed up its withdrawal after an Afghan soldier killed four French soldiers, deflating already abysmal public support in France for the war effort.

As with many other Obama foreign policy decisions, one might have wished for a better rollout. Consultation with our NATO allies and partners on the matter would have been good form. And, after a more than a decade of fighting, a presidential speech rather than a casual announcement by the defense secretary would have been more fitting.

Ultimately, though, hastening the day Americans stop dying for a lost cause is the right call.

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No winners in Afghanistan’s war

Financial Times
February 2, 2012

Hillary Clinton once promised that 2011 would be the year of a “diplomatic surge” in Afghanistan. Robust civilian effort would go hand in hand with the military campaign in a bid to restore security and stability in a ravaged country. Today this promise rings hollow as the US and its Nato ally France prepare to accelerate their withdrawal from combat operations, stepping up the pressure on Afghanistan’s ill-prepared security forces well ahead of the planned handover in 2014. Little has been achieved to ensure stability in a country still stewing in corruption and lawlessness.

The problem is that the west’s policy towards Afghanistan has not worked. It has largely been dictated by the military and intelligence communities. Despite lower-level diplomatic activity, there has been little effort to use that military pressure as a means of achieving a political settlement, as in Bosnia for example. This is in part due to the sharp deterioration of US relations with Pakistan, which continues to support Taliban insurgents as a countermeasure to Indian influence in Afghanistan. A US military report was leaked this week that details the help given by Pakistan’s intelligence services to Taliban attacks. It yet again highlights the urgency of working to shift the attitude of Pakistan’s generals, without whom there can never be a sustainable political settlement. This may mean that the west has to consider a less placatory stance towards India. But there will be no stability in Afghanistan without Pakistan’s involvement.

In the meantime, the US and French announcement risks encouraging hardcore Taliban, who now see international forces rushing for the exit. True they have been sorely weakened, and there are signs that some may be ready to negotiate. President Barack Obama’s solution to leave troops there, just not in combat roles, until 2014 is also something of an insurance policy if Afghanistan descends into chaos.

But the timing of the US and French withdrawals from combat is less than ideal. It is no coincidence that the retreat comes as presidential elections loom in both countries. In France, the death of four French soldiers last week has made the war a hot campaign issue, while in the US Mr Obama has been under heavy pressure for more troop cuts.

Political considerations are finally taking centre stage in the conflict. The tragedy is that they have little to do with stability in Afghanistan.

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Taliban, Al-Qaeda Sanctuaries in Pakistan: GMIC

TOLOnews.com
By Ratib Noori
Thursday, 02 February 2012

Head of Afghan government's media and information centre (GMIC) on Thursday said that Pakistan is a safe haven forterrorists and that Pakistani government supports militant networks.

It comes a day after a Nato report alleged that militant groups were directly being assisted by Pakistan's spy organisation, ISI.

"Afghanistan's stance has always been clear. It is a reality that the Taliban and al-Qaeda sanctuaries are based in Pakistan," Head of Afghan Government's Media and Information Centre, Hakim Asher, said.

Mr Asher said it is clear that militants are also received financial and military support on the other side of the Afghan border.

"They also received financial and military support there and this shows that they have the support of certain circles. This is crystal clear and there is no need to talk about it," Mr Asher added.

Pakistan has repeatedly been accused of fueling insurgency in Afghanistan. But Pakistan's Foreign Minister Hinna Rabbani Khar denied such allegations during an exclusive interview with TOLOnews on Wednesday.

Asked if she thought that the report showed US's lack of trust in Pakistan, Mrs Khar refused to comment.

"I don't want to talk about it. I think it unimportant. What should be asked is if the US will succeed in this war or not, and will Afghans win or not?" she said.

Meanwhile, some Afghan experts believe that Pakistan has never cooperated honestly with the Afghan government and that the country has always supported anti-government armed groups.

"Until Pakistan does not stop its support to anti-government armed groups, it will not be easy to bring peace and stability," Mohammad Asem, a member of the National Coalition of Afghanistan, said.

Experts believe that the main cause of tensions between Washington and Islamabad has been ISI's support to militant groups.

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Reduced U.S. Role in Afghanistan: Politics, By Other Means

TIME
By Mark Thompson
February 2, 2012

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s statement Wednesday that the U.S. plans to hand off all combat missions in Afghanistan sometime in 2013 has triggered howls from hawks who maintain it’s a step down a slippery slope headed to defeat. They may have a point. Nonetheless, the Obama Administration has plainly decided that its goals are better served by a calendar-driven pullout from Afghanistan.

The Administration’s bottom line, if you read between the lines, is simple: the war in Afghanistan has gone on for too long, the American people are tired of it, and we are bringing our troops home at all deliberate speed.

Yet shifting from a combat role to a training and assist role – what Panetta wants to happen sometime next year – is a fuzzy line that commanders can blur for certain units and in certain provinces. “A shift in mission statement has been talked about for several months, and that not much may change on the ground,” says an officer heading into the fight shortly. “The mission statement can say partnering/mentoring instead of combat, but if a Afghan-U.S. patrol gets in a fight, those U.S. troops will still fight the same way they were doing before. A lot of that is already going on.”

But the bottom line is clear: the U.S. is eyeing the exits and accelerating the process to depart. This should come as scant surprise: some military experts were upset when Obama declared U.S. troops would be gone by 2015; all Panetta did Wednesday was flesh out a decision already made by the President. The military justification for such action is simple: unless you tell the Afghans that they’re on their own, Americans will keep doing the fighting, and the dying.

But that’s about it. If a commander’s goal is to crush the Taliban, he’s going to want the U.S. military fighting them through each of the next two summers. That’s apparently not going to happen. By and large, Democrats will cheer the move, contending a decade of war –- and 1,890 U.S. deaths – are enough. Republicans acknowledge the cost, but insist that pulling out before the U.S. troops have cemented the gains for which they have fought and died means their sacrifice may end up in vain.

There is no doubt that the U.S. and its Afghan and other allies have made good progress in southern part of the country over the past two years. But few military officers Battleland has spoken with over the past six months feel Afghanistan’s own military will be capable of handling its security adequately by 2015, when all U.S. troops are due to leave – never mind 18 months before that.

Rep. Howard McKeon, R-Calif., chairman of the armed services committee, echoes those views. “Announcing a change in mission in Afghanistan — before we have even validated that the Afghan Security Forces can maintain stability in the areas we have already transitioned and ahead of the fighting season — is premature,” he said. “While there have certainly been improvements in the Afghan Security Forces’ capabilities, the Committee has not seen a single assessment by our commanders that indicates they have any confidence in such a swift transition.”

Max Boot, a military scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations, sounds gob-smacked by Panetta’s announcement. “Only in some alternative universe is this a winning strategy,” he writes. “In the world we actually inhabit it is a recipe for a slow-motion—or maybe not so slow—catastrophe.”

Fred Kagan, one of the architects of the 2007 “surge” of U.S. forces into Iraq, says Panetta’s announcement is premature:

There is no occasion to make any such decisions until the end of this fighting season or early in 2013 itself. When we have made the gains we can and must make, and when we have consolidated them to ensure that our efforts were not wasted and our security is not endangered—only then should we talk about drawing down more troops or changing their mission. To do otherwise is to court disaster.

All valid points, but to some degree beside the point. Wars never occur in a vacuum. A nation’s will and wallet get to vote, as does the calendar. “This decision,” Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona said, “reflects domestic politics in the United States, not conditions on the ground in Afghanistan.” Or, as Carl von Clausewitz preferred to put it: war is a continuation of politics by other means. So is, the major-general would agree, ending wars.

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