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04 February 2012
FEATURE STORY
Obama Got Message Supporting Talks With Taliban, but Maybe Not From Its Leader
BUSINESS
No articles featured today
NATION
Mullah Omar Sent a Letter to Obama Last Year: Officials
The spectre of comparisons
Analysis: Politics drives exit from Afghanistan
Cost drives NATO bid for smaller Afghan army
Record Number of Afghan Civilians Died in 2011, Mostly in Insurgent Attacks, U.N. Says
Obama gambles on new schedule for Afghan pull-out
The Coming Civil War in Afghanistan
Charges dropped against U.S. soldier in Afghan murder case
All In: The Education of David Petraeus
Afghans View Peace Talks With Hope, Suspicion
Please tell me again … What is the war in Afghanistan about?
Hekmatyar Refuses to Open a Political Office outside Afghanistan
Driven Away by a War, Now Stalked by Winter’s Cold
Can the Afghan economy be saved?
Reality behind the changing Afghan mission
Interview: Afghan analyst warns U.S. early pullout would fuel militancy
Pakistan PM to discuss Afghanistan reconciliation in Qatar
O'Hanlon: Please be careful on Afghanistan
NATO allies eye China in Afghan security cash crunch
If ISI ‘runs’ Kabul, India is threatened
Afghan orphans embark on U.S. road trip
Tracking Down Shady Passport Trade in Afghanistan
NATO ministers mull financing for Afghan security forces post-2014
Pakistan was Aware of US-Taliban Talks, Pakistani Analyst Says
PRESS RELEASES
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FEATURE STORY
Obama Got Message Supporting Talks With Taliban, but Maybe Not From Its Leader
New York Times
By MARK LANDLER
February 3, 2012
WASHINGTON
President Obama received a message last year, purporting to be from the elusive Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar, in which he expressed an interest in opening talks that could end the war in Afghanistan, according to several current and former administration officials.
The message, which was received last summer, also pressed Mr. Obama on the issue of releasing Taliban prisoners held in American custody, these officials said. The communication, however, was not signed by Mullah Omar, and its authenticity could not be verified by American officials, some of whom have doubts about whether it came from him or from other Taliban leaders.
Still, as one senior official put it, “it tracks with what we’ve heard from other Taliban intermediaries.” And a former senior official said the White House took the message seriously, whatever its source.
The disclosure of the message comes at a delicate moment, after the Taliban announced that they would open a political office in Qatar and the administration sent a senior diplomat to the Middle East to prepare the ground with allies for resuming preliminary negotiations with a representative of the group.
It also comes as lawmakers on Capitol Hill, and some inside the administration, have expressed opposition to releasing any Taliban prisoners. And it is surfacing as a campaign issue, with the Republican front-runner, Mitt Romney, saying that the nation should not be talking to its enemies.
The White House would not comment on the letter, which was first disclosed Friday by The Associated Press.
Among the hurdles in interpreting the message, officials said, are the mysteries around Mullah Omar, a shadowy figure who served as de facto leader of Afghanistan but who went into hiding after the September 2001 terrorist attacks and whose exact whereabouts and role in the Taliban leadership are not clear.
“The question has always been, ‘Is Mullah Omar in the loop and in favor?’ ” said Bruce O. Riedel, a former intelligence analyst who led the White House’s policy review on Afghanistan in 2009. “A message from him, or purportedly from him, would help answer that $64 million question.”
American intelligence officials believe that Mullah Omar is in hiding in Pakistan, perhaps in Karachi. Some administration officials remain convinced that he plays a central role in directing the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, and that he would have to be involved in any credible reconciliation process.
If authentic, the message would not be the first time that Mullah Omar has reached out to American officials. In 1998, two days after an American cruise missile strike on an training camp for Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, he unexpectedly telephoned a State Department official, Michael E. Malinowski, who took the call on his porch at 2:30 a.m. According to declassified records, Mullah Omar demanded proof that Osama bin Laden, the intended target of the strike, was involved in terrorism.
The message to Mr. Obama, a former official said, indicated that Mullah Omar was serious about talks. But it also reveals his frustration that the administration seems resistant to releasing Taliban prisoners, the former official said. Under a plan being discussed, at least five senior Taliban prisoners held in the military jail in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, would be transferred to house arrest in Qatar.
Among other hurdles is the role of Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, whose views on the process have been unpredictable. This week, the Afghan government said it wanted to pursue its own talks with the Taliban in Saudi Arabia — a reflection, some officials said, of Mr. Karzai’s frustration that he had been left out of the American effort to help open the office in Qatar. Adding to the complexity is the role of the Pakistanis, who have their own interests.
The negotiations could also be affected by Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta’s disclosure on Wednesday that American troops planned to end their combat role in Afghanistan in mid-2013, 18 months early — a signal, some analysts said, that the United States was rushing for the exit.
The Obama administration has defended the effort to explore talks with the Taliban, even as it concedes the risks.
“The reality is, we never have the luxury of negotiating for peace with our friends,” said Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton about the initiative earlier this month. “If you’re sitting across the table discussing a peaceful resolution to a conflict, you’re sitting across from people who you by definition don’t agree with and who you may previously have been across a battlefield from.”
Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting.
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BUSINESS
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NATION
Mullah Omar Sent a Letter to Obama Last Year: Officials
TOLOnews.com
Saturday, 04 February 2012
Former US officials have told media that the Taliban leader Mullah Omar had sent a letter to US President Barack Obama last year expressing willingness to hold talks.
The anonymous officials have said that the unsigned letter had reached President Obama in July last year through a Taliban mediator.
If the letter is officially confirmed to have been sent by the Taliban leader, it will show Taliban's strong willingness to hold peace talks.
It comes as Kabul and Washington have agreed to the establishment of a Taliban office in Qatar and stressed that the talks have to be led by Afghans.
But the main precondition of the Taliban to hold talks is the release of Taliban prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay detention centre.
The US Intelligence Department is assessing the risks of transferring five senior Taliban detainees from Guantanamo Bay to a third country as part of the efforts to set peace talks with Taliban, US Intelligence Chief, General David Petraeus told the US Congress.
In his testimony before the Congress the spy chief didn't mention any third country but there are reports that Taliban detainees could be transferred to Qatar which is acting as a mediator in peace negotiations.
Previously, there were reports that three high profile Taliban prisoners were released from Guantanamo Bay detention centre and transferred to Qatar.
Pakistan's Umat Daily reported that Mullah Khair Khwah, Mullah Noorullah and Mullah Afzal Akhund had been released and taken to Qatar.
Transfer of Taliban detainees was strongly criticised by Top US Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss,
There are also some reports that Afghan government will hold talks with Taliban in Saudi Arabia, while it agreed with the Taliban's political office in Qatar.
Pakistan's Foreign Minister, Hinna Rabbani Khar while visiting Kabul on Wednesday said that her country supported Afghan peace talks.
Afghan officials have said that Pakistan is an important player in the efforts to end the 10-year-old war in Afghanistan because many of the leaders of the insurgency are said to be sheltering on its territory.
Afghan officials have asked Pakistan's full cooperation in fighting terrorism.
Meanwhile, there are reports that Pakistan's Prime Minister will travel to the Gulf state of Qatar next week to talk with government leaders there about moves to broker a peace deal with the Afghan Taliban.
The Taliban last month announced its was setting up a political office in Qatar to facilitate talks.
A spokesman for Prime Minister Yosuf Raza Gilani said on Saturday that the premier would be in Qatar on Monday to discuss the peace process with the government there.
Afghan and US officials have frequently blamed Pakistan for creating instability in Afghanistan and accused the country of supporting terrorist networks. But Pakistan has always denied such allegations.
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The spectre of comparisons
Attempts to accelerate the drawdown of Western troops in Afghanistan are tempting but misguided
The Economist
Feb 4th 2012
RELISHING their country’s reputation as the graveyard of empires, Afghans are proud of having vanquished all the foreign armies that have ventured onto their soil. Yet the Soviet army, the most recent, was not exactly defeated: it withdrew in 1989 because it had wearied of an unpopular war that it struggled to justify to the people at home. Nearly 25 years later, America and its allies risk a similar failure of nerve and will.
This week Leon Panetta, America’s defence secretary, has aired hopes that NATO soldiers in Afghanistan can finish their combat mission as much as 18 months early—by the second half of next year, rather than the end of 2014 (see article). He has also raised doubts that the outside world can afford to stick to its plans to pay for a permanent 350,000-strong Afghan security force. Such a shift has obvious attractions. Operations in Afghanistan cost a fortune and take precious lives. It does not help that some of the killers are NATO’s supposed partners: rogue Afghan soldiers murdered four unarmed French trainers last month and an American marine just this week.
It is estimated to cost $1m to keep an American soldier in Afghanistan for a year—and some 90,000 are there, along with a further 40,000 from nearly 50 other countries. At a time when money is short, this is a huge sum. Moreover, the Obama administration has other strategic priorities. It wants to “pivot” eastward, to soothe maritime nerves jangled by China’s rise (see Banyan). And then there are elections, in France, America and elsewhere. Incumbents want to campaign as the men who are bringing the boys home.
For three reasons, however, succumbing to such electoral temptations, by even voicing the possibility of an early drawdown, is a mistake. First, limiting NATO’s combat role and the strength of Afghan forces threatens the “transition” to a counter-insurgency war almost entirely waged by locals. This has been bearing fruit: violence is down in Helmand and Kandahar provinces; better-trained Afghan troops are proving their mettle against the Taliban; surveys of Afghan opinion suggest that the Taliban’s popularity has fallen dramatically. Even so, the deadline of 2014 was always going to be difficult to meet. Nothing suggests that it can safely be brought forward, or that Afghanistan can get by with fewer troops.
Second, 2014 is a crucial year in Afghan politics. Foreign forces will be needed to secure the vote for a successor to the president, Hamid Karzai. Their absence might even tempt him to renege on his promise not to seek an (unconstitutional) third term. And third, just as progress has been made in bringing the Taliban into peace talks, whispers of an early withdrawal will only encourage their intransigence. They have always said that the foreigners have the watches, but they have the time. Pakistan, whose continued clandestine support for the Taliban was catalogued in a leaked NATO report this week, will have little incentive to turn against its old partners-in-jihad.
The price of failure
An early transition may mean that the West will leave Afghanistan without completing its first, limited goal—to stop the country providing a base for al-Qaeda and its fellow jihadis. Moreover, Afghanistan is at greater risk of becoming a swamp that festers regional rivalries—especially that between India and Pakistan. These would soon become America’s business. Lastly, the whole sorry story will send a chilling message everywhere about the worth of Western commitments.
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Analysis: Politics drives exit from Afghanistan
Associated Press
By DEB RIECHMANN
03/02/2012
KABUL, Afghanistan
The Taliban are not beaten, the peace process is bogged down in internal squabbles and Afghan security forces aren't ready to take control of the nation. Yet the U.S. and its partners are talking about speeding up — rather than slowing down — their exit from the war.
It's becoming dramatically clear that politics is driving NATO's war exit strategy as much or more than conditions on the battlefield.
Political calendars in the West were never supposed to influence the decision about when Afghan forces take the lead and allow international troops step back into support roles or leave altogether. The U.S., Afghan and other international leaders have said repeatedly that transition decisions would not be held hostage to international political agendas.
Then, after an Afghan soldier gunned down four French troops, President Nicolas Sarkozy suddenly announced last week that he was pulling French forces out of Afghanistan early. Sarkozy is facing an opponent in the coming presidential election who wants French forces withdrawn even faster.
Sarkozy boldly suggested that his NATO allies hand over security to the Afghan police and army in 2013 instead of by the close of 2014 — an end date they had all agreed upon at a meeting in Lisbon more than a year ago.
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta dropped another verbal bombshell this week at a NATO meeting in Brussels. He said the NATO allies had largely agreed to step back from the lead combat role in Afghanistan and let local forces take their place as early as 2013.
U.S. officials downplayed Panetta's statement, saying it was not a policy change but an optimistic look at the established 2014 end date.
Either way, it shows how badly the Obama administration wants out of the war.
Panetta's comment sounded different from what his predecessor told NATO allies just six months ago. "Resist the urge to do what is politically expedient and have the courage of patience," former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said then.
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said no final decision has been made but he noted the issue would be prominent in May, when President Barack Obama hosts the next NATO summit.
That meeting, in Obama's hometown of Chicago, will come less than six months before the U.S. presidential election. There has been speculation that Obama might announce some kind of accelerated pullout or simply underscore how America's involvement in Afghanistan is winding down.
"I definitely think there is a desire to say something appealing by Chicago," said Mark Jacobson, former deputy NATO civilian representative in Afghanistan and senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Washington.
He said Sarkozy's decision to fast-track France's exit clearly reflects his need to address pressing domestic pressure to bring forces home as his presidential re-election campaign begins. Politics, "however undesirable," always accompanies any coalition mission, he said.
Announcing that the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan will wrap up earlier than expected would give Obama more good news to report about his foreign policy. Already, the U.S. military has officially declared the end of its mission in Iraq in December 2011 when the last American troops left. Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was killed in May 2011 during a U.S. raid in Pakistan. And reviled Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi fell under a NATO onslaught without a single American casualty.
Lisa Curtis, senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation in Washington, said U.S. commanders in Afghanistan realize that American public support for the war is evaporating but they don't want to squander military gains of the past 18 months.
"The fear is that President Obama, under pressure from other NATO members and wanting to strike a popular chord with the U.S. electorate in an election year, will announce a drastic reduction in U.S. forces from Afghanistan in 2013 at the NATO summit in Chicago," Curtis said.
"By announcing a quicker transition to an Afghan security lead without drastically cutting troop numbers, the secretary of defense may be trying to meet the conflicting U.S. political and military goals," she said.
Assessments of the coalition's progress vary depending on who is asked, but nobody says the war against the Taliban has been won.
The coalition reports that violence is down in some areas of the country, Taliban fighters have lost territory and hundreds of their midlevel commanders have been killed and detained. The insurgency is "clearly on the back foot," says German Brig. Gen. Carsten Jacobson, a spokesman for the U.S.-led military coalition in Afghanistan.
The latest Afghan National Intelligence Estimate, however, warns that the Taliban will grow stronger and continue to fight for more territory, according to U.S. officials who have read the classified document. The estimate also warns that the Taliban will use discussions about prospects for peace to run out the clock until foreign troops leave.
It says the Afghan government largely has failed to prove itself to its people and likely will continue to weaken and find influence only in the cities. Meanwhile, peace moves toward the Taliban appear fraught with differences between the Afghans and their international partners over the venue and President Hamid Karzai's complaints that the U.S. is trying to control the process.
Anthony Cordesman, a national security analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, says the development of Afghan national security forces is in a "state of total confusion."
"Major elements of the Afghan security forces cannot possibly be ready to stand on their own by the end of 2014," Cordesman wrote in a report this week.
So far, Karzai has reacted cautiously to the idea that the bulk of the handover to Afghan forces could occur in 2013. He hasn't commented on Panetta's remark, but after France announced it was leaving early, Karzai said: "We hope to finish the transition ... by the end of 2013 at the earliest — or by the latest as has been agreed upon — by the end of 2014."
Mohammad Masoom Stanekzai, a Karzai adviser who has played a key role in trying to broker peace with Taliban leaders and lure their foot soldiers off the battlefield, said NATO should make sure that the transition to Afghan forces is successful.
"We should not rush up everything," said Stanekzai, who was seriously wounded when a suicide attacker posing as a Taliban peace envoy killed the head of the Afghan peace council last year. "We have to be cautious about the situation on the ground."
Deb Riechmann has covered the Afghan war since November 2009.
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Cost drives NATO bid for smaller Afghan army
Reuters
By David Brunnstrom and Justyna Pawlak
Fri Feb 3, 2012
BRUSSELS
Afghanistan could end up fighting Taliban insurgents with a national army and police force two-thirds the size envisaged, if plans discussed on Friday by NATO defense ministers, trying to balance security needs with budget cuts, gain traction.
The Afghan security force is due to grow to a peak of 352,000 by October, part of a hugely expensive drive to beef up their strength to deal with Taliban insurgents and allow the bulk of Western combat forces to withdraw by the end of 2014.
The effort is largely funded by the United States, at a cost of $11.6 billion for this year alone, at a time when the U.S. Department of Defense is suffering huge cuts to its budget.
While recognizing it will be many years before Afghanistan is able to pay for its own security, NATO states are keen to avoid recurring costs of such magnitude after 2014, so have been considering options for a much smaller future force, with the aim of reaching agreement at a summit in Chicago in May.
NATO diplomats said U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta had suggested a long-term target size for the police and army of 227,000, while French Defense Minister Gerald Longuet told reporters France would be happy with a figure around 230,000.
A senior U.S. defense official said the plan remained to build the force up to about 350,000, the size seen as necessary to give the Afghan military the internal support capabilities it will need to carry out operations on its own.
"Then there may be a leveling off or a drawing down," the U.S. official said.
He said experts from the International Security Assistance Force would travel to NATO soon to brief the allies on the size and cost options of different force levels.
The official said the final numbers would be based on "both efficiency - you can't go too low before you begin to take too high a risk - and the sustainability, the price tag of different options."
"ARMED UNEMPLOYED"
Diplomats and NATO officials said there were concerns about the dangers of building up such a large force and then cutting it back.
"The problem is: what are they going do?" said one diplomat. "You don't want large numbers of armed unemployed."
NATO said it was still some way from a decision.
"We discussed what could be a long-term sustainable size, but no decision has been made," NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told a news briefing. "We agreed we will engage in a consultation process leading up the summit in Chicago."
Longuet said the key issues were how to fund the Afghan security forces and what to do with trained fighters not needed after cutting back the size of the force. There was a danger they could turn to crime or insurgency, he said.
NATO's Rasmussen said the alliance was also making new plans to address possible infiltration of the Afghan Army's ranks by Taliban insurgents.
"All partners agreed to task our military authorities to develop a plan to counter, or rather to strengthen countering such infiltration ... before the end of February" he said.
"We have already taken a lot of steps, but in the light of recent events we agreed to strengthen those efforts."
Those concerns were highlighted last month after the Afghan Taliban said it had recruited an Afghan soldier who shot dead four French soldiers in an incident that prompted France to decide to pull out its troops early.
Officials say even the smaller Afghan security force could cost $4-5 billion a year to maintain, including about $1.1 billion from non-U.S. contributors.
The United States alone, which provides the bulk of the 130,000 international troops in Afghanistan, currently spends $130 billion in Afghanistan annually.
However, many military experts worry that limiting funding for the Afghan police and army could undercut hard-fought gains of the 11-year U.S.-led intervention in Afghanistan, and the Kabul government has warned that outside backers must not force it to choose between security and development.
Friday's discussion came after Panetta worried many Afghans and surprised Washington's allies Wednesday by suggesting the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan would end in 2013, the first time Washington had floated such a deadline.
Thursday, Panetta stressed 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.
His comments came soon 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.
(Additional reporting by Marine Hass; Editing by Jon Boyle)
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Record Number of Afghan Civilians Died in 2011, Mostly in Insurgent Attacks, U.N. Says
New York Times
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
February 4, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan
A record number of Afghan civilians were killed in the conflict here last year, the majority at the hands of the Taliban and other insurgent groups whose use of homemade bombs became more prevalent and whose suicide bombers killed more people each time, according to the annual United Nations report on civilian casualties.
Although the number killed — 3,021 civilians — represented a relatively small 8 percent increase in casualties over 2010, it was the fifth straight year in which civilian casualties rose. The overall trend suggested that the fighting was worsening and that, for all the talk about peace efforts and a drastic increase in the number of insurgents that NATO had killed and captured, day-to-day dangers for Afghan civilians were rising.
“To the Afghan people, the credibility and value of a peace negotiation process and progress toward peace will be measured by reduced civilian casualties and improvements in security,” said Georgette Gagnon, the director of human rights for the United Nations office here and the leader of the team that produced the report.
“Only through increased actions to protect civilians will the relentless toll of death and injury to Afghan children, women and men be ended during and following a peace process.”
The report, which has been released in each of the last five years, records the deaths of all noncombatants based on the United Nations’ reporting and investigations, and it has come to serve as a grim metronome of the war.
Of the documented deaths, 77 percent were caused by the Taliban and other insurgent groups, an increase from 2010 despite repeated pledges by the Taliban to try to avoid killing civilians. By contrast, the number of civilians killed by pro-government forces, including NATO troops, the Afghan Army and government-backed militias, fell to 410, or 14 percent of the total killed. In 9 percent of cases, the party responsible was not clear.
The Taliban’s responsibility for a rising number of deaths raises questions about the sincerity of their public pledges to try to avoid harming civilians. In both the code of conduct issued under the name of the Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar and in subsequent Taliban statements, the insurgents have pledged to be careful not to hurt civilians.
The Taliban and other insurgents have given accounts of receiving instructions from commanders in Pakistan and on the field in Afghanistan to look after civilians, according to a NATO report, leaked this week, that was based on thousands of interviews of detainees in Afghanistan. Yet the Taliban’s statements did not square with the facts, and they adopted increasingly harmful tactics, according to the United Nations report.
Most injurious were homemade bombs, which accounted for 967 deaths. Most are victim-activated antipersonnel mines, some so sensitive that a 45-pound child who treads on one while playing in a field can set it off, United Nations officials said. Such bombs do not differentiate between military and civilian targets and appear frequently to be scattered in areas regularly traversed by civilians.
Casualties from suicide bombings increased 80 percent, with 431 civilians dying in suicide attacks. The techniques used and the targeting of civilians were clear in most of those cases, the report said. Among the most devastating was one in Kabul on Dec. 6, when tens of thousands worshipers gathered to mourn Imam Hussein, one of the pivotal figures in the Shiite branch of Islam. A man wearing a suicide vest killed 56 people, according to the United Nations.
By contrast, there has been a gradual drop in casualties attributed to NATO troops since 2009. Although the drop was relatively small in 2011, it occurred despite intensive combat operations in southern and eastern Afghanistan. Generally, when NATO increases operations, there is also an increase in casualties. The United Nations praised NATO’s efforts both to adjust its tactical directives to troops and to retrain them to adhere to the new standards.
Still, aerial attacks by NATO accounted for the most civilian deaths of those attributed to government forces, with 187 people killed when NATO used aircraft to bomb houses it believed held insurgents.
Over all, the 39-page report charts a series of disturbing signs that suggest the country is becoming ever more dangerous for ordinary Afghans.
The report notes that more than 185,000 Afghans, a 45 percent increase over 2010 and more than in any previous year, were displaced in 2011, many as they fled conflict. The report also points out that while casualties caused by NATO are dropping, those that were the fault of Afghan government forces rose almost 200 percent just for the six-month period of June to December.
In that period, Afghan security forces killed 41 civilians, almost twice the number killed in the same six-month period in 2010. As Afghan forces take over more tasks currently carried out by NATO troops, there are serious concerns that casualties by pro-government forces could rise again.
One of the many Afghan civilians interviewed by the report’s authors described the underlying fear that many people live with here.
“I was late that day for work and missed the shuttle. A bomb hit their bus and killed them,” said the civilian, a member of the border police who works at an airport in Herat. “They were not just colleagues, they were my friends. It is difficult being a female police officer, and those women were my friends. We worked together, ate together and supported each other.”
She added: “My daughter is 9 years old, and every day before I leave for work, she cries and says, ‘Mama, don’t go to work. I don’t need to eat.’
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Obama gambles on new schedule for Afghan pull-out
Financial Times
By Geoff Dyer
February 3, 2012
Washington
The announcement that US troops will finish combat operations in Afghanistan next year is a bold political gamble that could help buttress President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign but which opens him up to substantial risks.
With the last US troops having pulled out of Iraq before Christmas, Mr Obama will be able to tell voters in the autumn that 11 years after the 9/11 attacks he is bringing to an end two hugely unpopular and draining wars.
The announcement by defence secretary Leon Panetta that US troops will shift to training Afghan forces from the middle of 2013 is likely to be part of a series of statements about a reduced US military role in the country, according to officials. A Nato summit in May in Chicago, Mr Obama’s home town, will provide a platform to drive the message home.
The killing of Osama bin Laden last year has both strengthened Mr Obama’s national security credentials and also paved the way for an accelerated wind-down of operations in Afghanistan, which had been due to finish at the end of 2014. al-Qaeda is “in the weakest position they have been in clearly since 2001 and we are on the road to degrading them even further”, Tom Donilon, national security adviser, said this week.
Republicans wasted no time in denouncing the apparent shift in strategy, with Mitt Romney, the frontrunner to be the party’s presidential candidate, accusing Mr Obama of putting the US mission at risk with his “naiveties”. “Why in the world do you go to the people that you’re fighting with and tell them the day you’re pulling out your troops? It makes absolutely no sense,” said Mr Romney at a campaign rally in Las Vegas.
The political risks for Mr Obama go well beyond his Republican opponents trying to label him as weak on foreign policy issues. The shift in strategy in Afghanistan could open the administration up to criticism from parts of the military, which in 2009 pushed for substantially more resources for a new offensive against the Taliban.
While such criticism would be particularly uncomfortable for a Democratic president, the administration received some political cover for its Afghanistan announcement from David Petraeus, the former general who is now head of the Central Intelligence Agency and who was the military leader lobbying hardest for the 2009 troops surge. Mr Panetta’s announcement about shifting to a training role has been “overanalyzed”, he said.
“If you’re going to have it completed totally by the end of 2014, obviously somewhere in 2013 you have to initiate that [transition],” Mr Petraeus said. “The idea is that we gradually stop leading combat operations and the Afghan forces gradually take the leadership.”
The administration would be more vulnerable if violence started to escalate, which Afghan politicians warned would be the result of an accelerated withdrawal, and if other countries involved in the Nato mission decide they should start to pull out quickly. France is already looking to withdraw its troops earlier than planned.
More broadly, the new timetable for ending combat operations underlines the gaps in the rest of the administration’s strategy for Afghanistan, whether it be over peace negotiations with the Taliban and other parties, over how to deal with Pakistan or how to actually handover security to an undertrained Afghan military. “The US has never set meaningful strategic goals for the war,” says Anthony Cordesman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “It has talked loosely about ending the threat of terrorism, but has not set any goal for what it is seeking in Afghanistan.”
Yet Mr Obama’s Republican critics also risk painting themselves into a corner over a war that is extremely unpopular. A December poll by Rasmussen found that 59 per cent of Americans wanted the troops to be withdrawn within a year, while only 29 per cent thought the war could be won.
Republicans also have to bear in mind the resilient popularity in this year’s primaries of Ron Paul, the libertarian-leaning candidate who favours a much more modest foreign policy. Mr Paul, whose boisterous campaign rallies have been punctured by cheers of “Bring ‘em home!”, is the one candidate to bring in substantial numbers of young and independent voters.
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The Coming Civil War in Afghanistan
It's not inevitable, but it's more likely than ever before. Here's how to avoid the worst.
Foreign Policy
BY ARIF RAFIQ
FEBRUARY 3, 2012
By the end of this summer, the 30,000 U.S. troops "surged" into Afghanistan by President Barack Obama's administration will have returned home. And according to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the remaining 68,000 American soldiers could end their combat role in Afghanistan by mid-2013, more than a year ahead of the White House's deadline for leaving the country.
America's war in Afghanistan is by no means over, but its end has already begun. That reality is clear to all Afghan factional chiefs and power brokers, who are preparing for the transition to a post-American Afghanistan. As Afghanistan's alliances and power dynamics shift, the risk of cvil, ethnic conflict breaking out in the country rises -- endangering not only Afghans, but their Pakistani neighbors as well. And ironically, talk of peace and a U.S. withdrawal is contributing to a widening gap between key Afghan factions, which, if not properly contained, could lead to a renewed civil war.
President Hamid Karzai's intentions remain one potential source of instability looming in Afghanistan's future. Karzai has said that he will retire from public office in 2014, but many Afghans believe he will remain in power through unconventional or extra-constitutional measures. The president reportedly supported U.S. plans to accelerate the withdrawal by a year, lending weight to the theory that he is looking for greater maneuverability to prolong his rule.
If Karzai steps down, his replacement -- should one not come from his own family -- is likely to adopt a more hostile approach toward the Taliban, increasing the odds that the insurgency will fester. Abdullah Abdullah, who came in second in the rigged 2009 elections and could throw his hat in the ring once again, is a major Taliban opponent. But if Karzai seeks to stick around, doing so will be no cakewalk. Karzai will face stiff resistance from both a parliament that increasingly demands an expansion of its oversight powers and a rejuvenated political opposition, the National Front for Afghanistan (NFA).
The NFA is a bloc of leaders from three major non-Pashtun communities -- the Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazara -- all of whom opposed the Taliban and Pakistan during the 1990s and remain hostile to both. As Karzai apparently seeks to hold on to executive power, the NFA is pushing for an overhaul of the country's political system. It advocates restructuring Afghanistan as a parliamentary democracy with proportional representation and locally-devolved power -- both of which would benefit non-Pashtuns.
Karzai, an ethnic Pashtun, seeks a political settlement with the three major insurgent factions -- all Pashtuns as well -- led by Mullah Muhammad Omar's Afghan Taliban. But the NFA, as well as a large bloc of parliamentarians from a diverse assortment of ethnic groups and political parties, are hostile to talks with the Taliban, and will at the very least demand a meaningful role in the peace process.
That remains difficult to imagine, as few Afghans aside from the insurgents remain involved in the peace talks. The most promising dialogue track has so far taken place outside of Afghanistan and involves the Afghan Taliban and the governments of Germany, Qatar, and the United States. The location of the Taliban's new office in Qatar was decided against the wishes of the Afghan government, which wanted the office to be in Ankara or Riyadh.
Karzai himself remains minimally involved in the talks and is trying to set up his own negotiations with the Taliban in Saudi Arabia. However, neither the Saudis nor the Taliban are keen on participating. The Saudis have distrusted the Taliban ever since it refused to hand over Osama bin Laden; they will engage the militant group only when it formally breaks ties with al Qaeda. The Taliban, meanwhile, want to cut out Karzai and engage directly with the United States to increase their negotiating leverage.
Karzai faces a difficult balancing act: He must first insert himself into a peace process the Taliban want him to have no part in, and then somehow manage to maintain ties with both the Pashtun Taliban and the non-Pashtun NFA. In any negotiations, the Taliban will undoubtedly push for greater implementation of Islamic law. But members of the NFA, female parliamentarians, and religious minorities such as the Hazara Shiites will resist what they will view as a possible reversion to second-class status.
Building trust between the NFA and the Taliban is key to a lasting political settlement in Afghanistan, but it will be no easy task. The Taliban believe that the NFA seeks a soft partition of the country under the guise of federalism, describing the group's leadership as "infamous warlords." And it is a giant and improbable leap for the Taliban to go from advocating the reestablishment of an authoritarian Islamic emirate to accepting the NFA's demand for a parliamentary democracy.
The underlying divisions between the three insurgent groups will also likely come out into the open if peace talks progress. In contrast to the Afghan Taliban, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-i-Islami (HIG) calls for a republican-style Islamic government that is more reconcilable with today's Afghan constitution. And Hekmatyar, who briefly served as Afghanistan's prime minister until he fled the Taliban's advance in 1997, likely remains an aspirant for the country's leadership. Both the parliament and Karzai's cabinet are replete with ex-HIG members, and Hekmatyar could present himself as a more practical, Islamic alternative to Mullah Omar. As a result, Hekmatyar's tactical alliance with the Taliban will likely come to an end once the U.S. presence recedes.
The future of the infamous Haqqani network is also unclear. While it does not have a rich political history, it is a group with a radical agenda and potent reach. In a stable political environment, the Haqqani network is likely to remain on board with the Taliban. Amid a political vacuum, the Haqqanis could seek to claim space in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, posing a particular security threat in Afghanistan's southeastern Loya Paktia region and the adjacent Kurram and North Waziristan tribal areas across the Durand Line.
With Afghanistan's three major political blocs and three major insurgent groups moving in opposite directions, the country is facing the prospect of total fragmentation. Here's the worst-case scenario: The U.S. military reaches a settlement with the Afghan Taliban that does not address the country's political future, Karzai holds on to power illegitimately while pressing for his own peace deal with the Taliban, non-Pashtuns rise in opposition to both Karzai and the Taliban, and the national security forces fracture along ethnic lines. At the same time, the three insurgent factions turn against one another as the Haqqani network exploits the chaos and maintains a rear defensive position in Pakistani safe havens. Meanwhile, Pakistan's own domestic Taliban resurges and Islamabad faces yet another wave of terrorism and Afghan refugees.
Such a catastrophe should encourage leaders in Washington, Kabul, and Islamabad to do everything in their power to reach a broad-based political settlement. To avoid this scenario, the U.S.-Taliban talks should somehow be transitioned to an Afghan-led process involving not only the Karzai government but also the NFA. Afghans will have to come to a consensus about the future of their system of government and power-sharing, with final approval from a loya jirga or grand council.
A lasting Afghan peace might be a pipe dream in the short term, but both Afghanistan and the United States should try to coax Pakistan into making the Taliban more amenable to one. In return, Pakistan would get an official seat at the table. While there can and likely will be multiple, parallel negotiating tracks, they should ultimately lead up to a multi-party conference involving the Karzai government, the NFA, Pakistan, the United States, and each of the three major insurgent groups.
Finally, to contain the Taliban's ambitions, it is imperative that coalition forces and Kabul focus on improving the quality, not the quantity, of the Afghan national army and police. The 300,000 army soldiers and nearly 150,000 national policemen -- in addition to the country's unruly local militias -- are not only financially unsustainable, but also dangerous. The massive number of unpaid, armed troops in this conflict-ridden country is a recipe for disaster. The militias should be phased out, and the army professionalized to serve as a bulwark against fragmentation. Only then, perhaps, can Afghanistan avoid the perils of its post-American future.
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Charges dropped against U.S. soldier in Afghan murder case
Reuters
By Laura L. Myers
Sat Feb 4, 2012
SEATTLE
The U.S. Army has dismissed all charges against the last of five soldiers to face a court-martial in the slaying of unarmed Afghan civilians, officials from their home base near Tacoma, Washington, said on Friday.
Army Specialist Michael Wagnon had been charged with premediated murder in the death of a villager in Afghanistan during a tour of duty in February 2010.
"As of right now, he's pretty much a free man," said Lieutenant Colonel Gary Dangerfield, a spokesman for Joint Base Lewis-McChord. "He is still in the Army but a free man."
Wagnon, 31, was released from military detention and placed under home confinement in April.
Dangerfield would not say why the charges were dropped, and a statement from the base said only that the move was "in the interest of justice."
Five members of the infantry unit formerly known as the 5th Stryker Brigade were charged with killing Afghan civilians in cold blood in random attacks staged to look like legitimate combat engagements. Seven other soldiers were charged with lesser offenses in a case that began as an investigation into rampant hashish abuse within the unit.
Wagnon's initial reaction to news of the dismissal was stunned disbelief, his defense attorney Colby Vokey told Reuters. He then became "ecstatic" and "really relieved," Vokey added.
'THE RIGHT THING TO DO'
Vokey, based in Dallas, called the dismissal "fantastic news." He said the "Army did the right thing. We maintained all along his innocence and the government said it was the right thing to do."
Pentagon officials have said that misconduct exposed by the case had damaged the image of the United States abroad.
Photographs entered as evidence showed the accused ringleader of the group, Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs, and other soldiers casually posing with bloodied Afghan corpses, drawing comparisons to the to the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq in 2004.
Gibbs was convicted by court-martial in November of murdering three unarmed civilians, drawing an automatic life prison sentence, but he will be eligible for parole in 8 1/2 years.
His chief accuser and onetime right-hand man, Army Specialist Jeremy Morlock, was sentenced in March of last year to 24 years in prison after pleading guilty to the same three murders. As part of his plea deal, Morlock had agreed to testify against the remaining witnesses, including Wagnon.
A third soldier charged with murder, Adam Winfield, pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter and was sentenced to three years in prison. A fourth, Andrew Holmes, was sentenced to seven years after pleading guilty to a single count of murder.
Wagnon was the last to face court-martial.
The dismissal of charges comes less than two weeks after a U.S. Marine Corps sergeant accused of leading a 2005 massacre of 24 civilians in the Iraqi city of Haditha pleaded guilty to one count of dereliction of duty. As part of his plea deal, the Marine, Frank Wuterich he was spared jail time and instead faces a maximum penalty of demotion to the rank of private.
Wuterich initially was charged with murder in connection with the Haditha killings. Six of the seven other Marines originally accused in that case previously had their charges dismissed by military judges, while another was cleared of criminal wrongdoing.
(Additional reporting and writing by Mary Slosson; Editing by Steve Gorman and Will Dunham)
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All In: The Education of David Petraeus
The Washington Independent Review of Books
Reviewed by Andrew Marble
That urge to tug on Superman’s cape — our innate curiosity almost demands it. What kind of person does it take to influence the course of history? How mortal are the seeming immortals that walk among us?
Gen. David Petraeus, the most lionized American general in the post-9/11 period, is one such larger-than-life figure. He has a reputation as a visionary, as a master strategist, tactician, diplomat, economic-development expert, media handler and even public intellectual.
His reputation is based on accomplishments. In 2006 he developed a revolutionary manual on counterinsurgency, based in part on successful nation-building efforts he led with aplomb in Mosul, Iraq, in 2003-4. In 2007 he applied the manual with great effect during his command of the “surge” of 30,000 additional U.S. forces that pulled Iraq back from the brink of civil war. A subsequent promotion gave him theater responsibility for, among other things, the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He soon agreed to what was, in effect, a demotion: becoming senior commander in Afghanistan with direct control of U.S. forces. Petraeus, President Obama believed, was the best hope the U.S. had for stabilizing the country enough to allow for a planned drawdown of forces there in a year’s time. Next, the U.S. Senate unanimously confirmed his nomination to the directorship of the CIA, a position Petraeus took after retiring from the military in 2011.
Even his body seems unbound by human limitations: Over the course of his 37-year career in the army, Petraeus seemed to have shrugged off a major gunshot wound to the chest, a crash landing while skydiving that fractured his pelvis and a bout with prostate cancer.
How did Petraeus become Petraeus?
All In: The Education of David Petraeus, a new book by Paula Broadwell with Vernon Loeb, is the most recent and highly anticipated contribution to a growing body of work that seeks to answer this question.
Broadwell’s credentials make the book more than just a run-of-the-mill biography. The book is grounded in her Ph.D. dissertation research, which traces key themes in Petraeus’s intellectual development — his education, his experience and the influence of key mentors — and examines how he put these intellectual principles to action during his career. Her research and interviews were supplemented with assistance from Loeb, a reporter and editor who has worked for many major U.S. newspapers.
But what will draw readers deep into this book is Broadwell’s unprecedented firsthand access to her subject. Petraeus, who has a penchant for reaching out to intellectuals and the media, unexpectedly offered her a front-row seat at what would become the final act of his military career. Over the course of 15 months, Broadwell embedded with Petraeus’ headquarters in Afghanistan as well as with units in the field; conducted a wide range of interviews; was given access to Petraeus’ private notes, letters and e-mails; and accompanied the four-star general on trips back to Washington.
All told, the book is based on three years of research and 700 interviews with 150 individuals. Although far from exposing the man behind the Lone Ranger mask, it is well worth reading.
The bulk of the book traces the arc of Petraeus’ command in Afghanistan. The starting point is his arrival at the White House to accept the job less than two hours after Obama removed Gen. Stanley McChrystal from the position over a controversial article in Rolling Stone. The symmetrical end point is Petraeus’ return to D.C. nearly a year later to discuss the start of the drawdown with U.S. policymakers and to be confirmed as CIA director. Interspersed throughout are flashbacks to key developmental stages of his life and career.
The book concludes by weaving together accounts of Petraeus’ last few weeks of active duty, reflections on the two U.S. wars in the Middle East and key themes in his career, particularly his last assignment in Afghanistan. The subjects treated here include counterinsurgency, coalition management, Petraeus’ leadership strengths and the impact that the Petraeus legacy will likely have on the military going forward.
Readers will find the book wide in scope, rich in detail, authoritative and peppered with insights. Particularly riveting are the firsthand accounts of key historical events, such as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ final visit to Afghanistan, the periods when Petraeus’ boots were on the ground in D.C. as he engaged with the White House and Congress, and even, tangentially, the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound.
It is a tall order, though, for one relatively slim book to cover the history of a great man’s intellectual development, provide detailed coverage of his command of a major ongoing war and link the two in a way that provides clear and compelling conclusions. This book inexplicably ranges across even more ground by also chronicling the war at the tactical level through the eyes of three battalion commanders and one Special Forces officer.
The scope, then, is ambitious. Perhaps as a result, this reviewer occasionally found the narrative difficult to follow, with the focus on the over-plentiful trees at times obscuring the view of the forest. Readers may wish that the author had injected more of her own voice into the narrative, both to explain the takeaways from the descriptive and analytical sections and to sharpen a larger argument about leadership development.
Author voice is important for a second reason. In many places it is unclear whether a particular statement or perspective belongs to Broadwell, Petraeus himself or others. For example, when discussing the initial response to Petraeus’ counterinsurgency manual, Broadwell states, “Petraeus welcomed the constructive criticism.” Yet there is no mention of how the author knows what Petraeus felt about the criticism, raising questions about the objectivity of the broader analysis.
True, the holder of each and every perspective cannot always be revealed in a book on a high-profile figure in a high-profile war, particularly when the subject still remains a heavyweight player in U.S. policymaking. But Broadwell’s exhaustive research and firsthand experience provide her great authority. I, for one, would be fascinated to know not only her own opinions but also exactly whose opinions and analysis she drew on to reach her conclusions.
This is important because the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are not minor conflicts, Petraeus is no insignificant man and the larger issues raised in the book — especially how Petraeus developed into a leader who shaped world events — are not trivial matters. For decades hence, researchers will be analyzing these two wars. Specificity will be key as we seek to understand how Petraeus’ development might inform the grooming of future American superheroes.
Andrew Marble holds a Ph.D. in political science, has worked for more than a decade as an editor in the field of U.S. policy on Asia and is currently writing a biography on the leadership of Gen. John Shalikashvili, former chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs (1993-97).
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Afghans View Peace Talks With Hope, Suspicion
NPR
By Quil Lawrence
February 3, 2012
The surprise announcement last month that the U.S. and the Taliban could soon begin peace talks in the Gulf state of Qatar may have increased the chances of a negotiated settlement in Afghanistan.
But Afghans are treating the prospect with equal measures of hope and suspicion — perhaps more of the latter from the government of President Hamid Karzai.
Coupled with Pentagon comments this week that U.S. troops might end combat operations a year early, some Afghans are beginning to wonder: Are talks with the Taliban about stabilizing Afghanistan, or just helping the Americans leave?
After lengthy discussions between the Taliban, the Americans, Qatar and Germany, the Taliban decided to open an office in Doha, the capital of Qatar.
What seemed like a breakthrough was not greeted warmly by Karzai. Afghan officials say they were deliberately bypassed in a concession to the Taliban, which has always refused to negotiate with what it labels the "puppet" Karzai government.
Advancing The Peace Process
This week, Karzai announced he had his own initiative, and would be meeting Taliban leaders in Saudi Arabia. In another snub, the Taliban denied Karzai's claim in a phone interview Friday.
Reports that talks will start in Saudi Arabia are completely false, said Qari Yusef, one of the names used by regular Taliban spokesmen.
Yusef said the Taliban is in the process of reaching an understanding with the international community through confidence-building measures that haven't taken place yet.
He was referring to a possible exchange of prisoners, in which Taliban fighters held in Guantanamo Bay would be released into Qatari custody. There is speculation that the Taliban, in turn, would set free Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, an American soldier held since June 2009.
The White House says releasing prisoners from Guantanamo would likely require congressional approval. It's also fairly clear that the process needs some sort of approval from neighboring Pakistan, which is believed to control the movement of most Taliban leaders. Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar made a rare visit to Kabul this week, and spoke to reporters at a news conference.
"Pakistan would stand behind any initiative, any initiative whatsoever that Afghanistan would take," she said. "So our only prerequisite in support of any initiative is that it should be Afghan-led, it should be Afghan-owned, it should be Afghan-driven, and it should be Afghan-backed."
Khar denied longstanding charges that the Pakistani intelligence service is funding and supporting the Taliban. And while Pakistan is widely blamed in Kabul for keeping the insurgency going, some Afghans agreed with Khar's point that the Afghan government needs to be in the lead of any peace talks.
For Afghans, Uncertainty Ahead
Sami Sadat, a former official in the Afghan Interior Ministry, says so far, the process has not only left out Karzai, it has also ignored the Afghan public.
"It's a political process. Unfortunately, it doesn't have its basis in the hearts and minds of the Afghan population. The majority of the Afghans feel it's a kind of a deal for the Americans to find their way out of Afghanistan," Sadat says.
He says a peace deal must not allow the Taliban to threaten the gains Afghans have made in the past decade. Sadat's fears rose this week when U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta remarked that the U.S. might transition from a combat role in Afghanistan by the middle of next year — a year sooner than previously expected.
Panetta later tried to clarify his remarks, but the Obama administration has yet to explain how quickly American troops will draw down from Afghanistan, and how many soldiers might stay on past 2014 as part of a strategic agreement with Kabul.
The uncertainty leaves Afghans hoping that some sort of peace plan can be worked out — and soon, says Sadat. Because if there's no peace deal by the time U.S. troops go, he says, the Afghans will be left once again at the mercy of the Taliban.
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Please tell me again … What is the war in Afghanistan about?
Foreign Policy Journal
By William Blum
February 4, 2012
With the US war in Iraq supposedly having reached a good conclusion (or halfway decent … or better than nothing … or let’s get the hell out of here while some of us are still in one piece and there are some Iraqis we haven’t yet killed), the best and the brightest in our government and media turn their thoughts to what to do about Afghanistan. It appears that no one seems to remember, if they ever knew, that Afghanistan was not really about 9/11 or fighting terrorists (except the many the US has created by its invasion and occupation), but was about pipelines.
President Obama declared in August 2009: “But we must never forget this is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans.”[1]
Never mind that out of the tens of thousands of people the United States and its NATO front have killed in Afghanistan not one has been identified as having had anything to do with the events of September 11, 2001.
Never mind that the “plotting to attack America” in 2001 was devised in Germany and Spain and the United States more than in Afghanistan. Why hasn’t the United States bombed those countries?
Indeed, what actually was needed to plot to buy airline tickets and take flying lessons in the United States? A room with some chairs? What does “an even larger safe haven” mean? A larger room with more chairs? Perhaps a blackboard? Terrorists intent upon attacking the United States can meet almost anywhere, with Afghanistan probably being one of the worst places for them, given the American occupation.
The only “necessity” that drew the United States to Afghanistan was the desire to establish a military presence in this land that is next door to the Caspian Sea region of Central Asia — which reportedly contains the second largest proven reserves of petroleum and natural gas in the world — and build oil and gas pipelines from that region running through Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is well situated for oil and gas pipelines to serve much of south Asia, pipelines that can bypass those not-yet Washington clients, Iran and Russia. If only the Taliban would not attack the lines. Here’s Richard Boucher, US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, in 2007: “One of our goals is to stabilize Afghanistan, so it can become a conduit and a hub between South and Central Asia so that energy can flow to the south.”[2]
Since the 1980s all kinds of pipelines have been planned for the area, only to be delayed or canceled by one military, financial or political problem or another. For example, the so-called TAPI pipeline (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) had strong support from Washington, which was eager to block a competing pipeline that would bring gas to Pakistan and India from Iran. TAPI goes back to the late 1990s, when the Taliban government held talks with the California-based oil company Unocal Corporation. These talks were conducted with the full knowledge of the Clinton administration, and were undeterred by the extreme repression of Taliban society. Taliban officials even made trips to the United States for discussions.[3] Testifying before the House Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific on February 12, 1998, Unocal representative John Maresca discussed the importance of the pipeline project and the increasing difficulties in dealing with the Taliban:
The region’s total oil reserves may well reach more than 60 billion barrels of oil. Some estimates are as high as 200 billion barrels … From the outset, we have made it clear that construction of the pipeline we have proposed across Afghanistan could not begin until a recognized government is in place that has the confidence of governments, leaders, and our company.
When those talks stalled in July, 2001 the Bush administration threatened the Taliban with military reprisals if the government did not go along with American demands. The talks finally broke down for good the following month, a month before 9/11.
The United States has been serious indeed about the Caspian Sea and Persian Gulf oil and gas areas. Through one war or another beginning with the Gulf War of 1990-1, the US has managed to establish military bases in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan.
The war against the Taliban can’t be “won” short of killing everyone in Afghanistan. The United States may well try again to negotiate some form of pipeline security with the Taliban, then get out, and declare “victory”. Barack Obama can surely deliver an eloquent victory speech from his teleprompter. It might even include the words “freedom” and “democracy”, but certainly not “pipeline”.
Notes
[1] Talk given by the president at Veterans of Foreign Wars convention, August 17, 2009
[2] Talk at the Paul H. Nitze School for Advanced International Studies, Washington, DC, September 20, 2007
[3] See, for example, the December 17, 1997 article in the British newspaper, The Telegraph, “Oil barons court Taliban in Texas“. For further discussion of the TAPI pipeline and related issues, see this article by international petroleum engineer John Foster.
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Hekmatyar Refuses to Open a Political Office outside Afghanistan
TOLOnews.com
Saturday, 04 February 2012
Leader of the hardline Hezb-e-Islami, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, has rejected calls to open a political office for his party outside Afghanistan.
Mr Hekmatyar has said his party has been suggested to open a political office in a country outside Afghanistan, but he has refused to do so because according to him opening an office outside the country would mean that his party is exiled.
The Hezb-e-Islami leader also slammed secret talks between the US and the Taliban saying such talks are not in the interest of Afghanistan.
He has said that the Kabul government will not survive after the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Afghanistan.
It comes as last month Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's appointed delegation led by Qutbuddin Hilal and Ghairat Baheer recently met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai to discuss peace talks and the Afghan government expressed optimism about the talks.
The comments come after Kabul and Washington recently agreed to the establishment of a Taliban office in Qatar and emphasised that the talks would be Afghan-led.
Meanwhile, it is said that Pakistan and Afghanistan are also making efforts to open talks with the Taliban in Saudi Arabia.
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Driven Away by a War, Now Stalked by Winter’s Cold
New York Times
By ROD NORDLAND
February 3, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan
The following children froze to death in Kabul over the past three weeks after their families had fled war zones in Afghanistan for refugee camps here:
¶ Mirwais, son of Hayatullah Haideri. He was 1 ½ years old and had just started to learn how to walk, holding unsteadily to the poles of the family tent before flopping onto the frozen razorbacks of the muddy floor.
¶ Abdul Hadi, son of Abdul Ghani. He was not even a year old and was already trying to stand, although his father said that during those last few days he seemed more shaky than normal.
¶ Naghma and Nazia, the twin daughters of Musa Jan. They were only 3 months old and just starting to roll over.
¶ Ismail, the son of Juma Gul. “He was never warm in his entire life,” Mr. Gul said. “Not once.”
It was a short life, 30 days long.
These children are among at least 22 who have died in the past month, a time of unseasonably fierce cold and snowstorms. The latest two victims died on Thursday.
The deaths, which government officials have sought to suppress or play down, have prompted some soul-searching among aid workers here.
After 10 years of a large international presence, comprising about 2,000 aid groups, at least $3.5 billion of humanitarian aid and $58 billion of development assistance, how could children be dying of something as predictable — and manageable — as the cold?
“The fact that every year there’s winter shouldn’t come as a surprise,” said Federico Motka, whose German aid group, Welthungerhilfe, is one of the few at work in these camps, which aid workers call the Kabul informal settlements — since describing what they actually are, camps for displaced persons or war refugees, is politically sensitive. The Afghan government insists that the residents should and could return to their original homes; the residents say it is too dangerous for them to do so.
The deaths occurred at two of the largest camps, Charahi Qambar (8 cold-related deaths), and Nasaji Bagrami (14 such deaths). Both camps are populated largely with refugees who fled the fighting in areas like Helmand Province in the south. Some people have been in the camps for as long as seven years; others arrived in the past year.
“There are 35,000 people in those camps in the middle of Kabul, with no heat or electricity in the middle of winter; that’s a humanitarian crisis,” said Michael Keating, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator in Afghanistan. “I just don’t think the humanitarian story is sufficiently understood here. You’ve got a lot of people who really are in dire straits.”
The United Nations and major relief groups last Saturday started what is called the Consolidated Humanitarian Appeal, asking donor groups and governments for $452 million in aid for the coming year, a 22 percent decrease from last year’s appeal of $582 million.
Far larger funds are separately available for development aid — nonemergency assistance to do things like build schools and infrastructure.
For many of the displaced people in Kabul’s camps, however, international humanitarian policy subjects them to a pitiless Catch-22.
The camps do not qualify for development aid because they are viewed as temporary facilities — and many Afghan officials oppose their presence. On a practical level, pouring aid into the camps would encourage people to stay in them, and perhaps draw more people there as well.
On the other hand, because the camps have been in a state of “chronic emergency,” most aid donors view that as, by definition, no longer a humanitarian crisis. “People seem to think you can’t call it an emergency if it’s going on for 10 years,” said Julie Bara of Solidarités International, a French group that has had a limited program of emergency food aid and sanitation in the camps, “but in fact it is.”
Her organization surveyed mortality rates in the camps in recent months. Among children under 5, Ms. Bara said, the camps’ death rate is 144 per 1,000 children, stunningly high even for Afghanistan, which already has the world’s third highest infant mortality rate. That means that one out of every seven children in the Kabul camps will not survive until his or her sixth birthday.
All of the 22 children known to have died were under 5.
Normally, Kabul’s winters are mild for a city in a mountainous country, but not this year. It was the coldest January in 20 years, according to Mohammad Aslam Fazaz, deputy director of the national disaster office. Most nights, temperatures have been dropping below 20 degrees. “There is no clear strategy to help these people,” said Mohammad Yousef, the director general of Aschiana, a well-respected Afghan aid group that provides education and other services in 13 of the camps. “They don’t have access to anything — health, education, food, sanitation, water. They don’t even have an opportunity for survival.”
Aschiana provides four teachers to the Charahi Qambar camp, where they are the only regular humanitarian presence. Residents say there used to be food distributions by the World Food Program in the camp, but that stopped last year. A food program spokeswoman, Silke Buhr, said the agency currently provided food deliveries in Kabul only to vulnerable groups like widows and the disabled.
In the worst-hit camps, even if the men can find work as day laborers or street peddlers, the pay is so scant that they have to choose between buying food or fuel, usually firewood. “You won’t die of hunger, but you will die of cold,” as one father put it.
When it comes to children, however, that is not strictly true. Poorly fed children are much more likely to succumb to hypothermia and disease.
Last month, Kabul suffered two heavy snowstorms, on Jan. 15 and 22, which added wet conditions to the miseries of the camps’ residents, since their dwellings are tents or mud-wall shanties with canvas or plastic roofs.
The combination of damp and cold proved deadly.
Mirwais’s father, Mr. Haideri, was awoken by the 5 a.m. call to prayer at the Charahi Qambar camp on Jan. 15 and found his son stiff as a board. “His color was dark, like when a leaf is frozen; you know it is frozen just by looking at it,” he said.
His wife and he have five surviving young children. “My wife keeps telling me, ‘You have to do something to save our other children, who will die in this cold,’ ” he said. “What can I do?”
That same day in the same camp, Mr. Ghani found his son Abdul Hadi with a fever; when they called for an ambulance, the rescue workers refused to come. “They told me it was too cold,” he said. Abdul Hadi bedded down under a blanket with his mother, but there was no heat in their hut, and the mud under them was wet. When his parents tried to rouse him late that night, Mr. Ghani said, “He was frozen stiff.”
In the Nasaji Bagrami camp, where 14 deaths from cold were reported, according to a camp representative, Mohammad Ibrahim, there were two families that each lost two children.
Born on the same day, the identical twins Naghma and Nazia died on the same night, Jan. 15-16.
The children who died had been tucked up under blankets, sleeping with family members. But camp residents explained that what happens is that very small children are often physically unable to keep blankets pulled tightly around them, and are too young to ask for help. So if there is no fire and they fall asleep, they die.
“Adults know how to keep warm, but the little ones do not,” said Mualavi Musafer, a mullah at the Charahi Qambar camp. His nephew was one of the children who died from the cold, he said.
Mohammad Ismail, a refugee from the Sangin district, one of the worst places in Helmand Province, also lost two children, one to the first snowstorm — his daughter Fawzia, 3 — and one to the second — his son, Janan, 5. Now he and his wife have two surviving children, a baby and their eldest child, 7-year-old Tila.
“The whole night they cry because of the cold,” Mr. Ismail said. “Tila misses her brother especially.” Her brother and sister are buried without formal headstones in a patch of wasteland that has become the Nasaji Bagrami camp cemetery. Tila knows the place. “She goes there every day to see her brother,” her father said.
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Can the Afghan economy be saved?
CNN
By Javid Ahmad and Louise Langeby
Friday, February 3, 2012
Whipsawed by a long-drawn U.S.-led military operation and a decade of erratic international economic assistance, Afghanistan is in shambles. With economic development always considered secondary to security concerns, little has been done in the past decade to establish a sustainable Afghan economy. While the international community has tried to generate a steady flow of aid, the Afghan government is still unable to cater to the population's basic needs. Moreover, the little economy we have seen evolve in Afghanistan since 2001 is predominantly based on the international security presence. The bulk of Afghanistan's gross domestic product (GDP) stems from international aid, and the impending 2014 deadline for the withdrawal of international combat troops will be accompanied by a parallel reduction in aid money. Thus, as the tide of war recedes, a large chunk of the economy will also disappear, posing an increasing threat to stability. The country's current economic trajectory beyond 2014 is fraught with corruption and uncertainty. However, despite the dire situation, Afghanistan's economic transition has received only minor policy attention, with the focus remaining on the ongoing security transition. Thus the question remains: How will Afghanistan sustain its economy beyond 2014?
The decrease in foreign assistance is like to cause today's economic bubble to burst, potentially plunging the country into an economic recession. And if the security environment further deteriorates, the country could face full economic collapse. A financing gap of 25 percent of GDP by 2022 due to increased military and non-military spending by the Afghan government further puts Afghanistan's economic stability at risk. While the international donor community can help to prevent a total collapse of the economy by decreasing aid gradually, the key to a prosperous Afghanistan is to invest in the long-term economic advantages the country has to offer.
One such advantage may lie in Afghanistan's geographic location. The New Silk Road strategy, often promoted by the United States, aims at linking Afghanistan with its South and Central Asian neighbors, transforming the country into a nucleus for regional trade. Focus should also be placed on rebuilding the oil and gas pipeline running from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and on to Pakistan and India. If done right, these initiatives might enable Afghanistan to attract increased foreign investment, connect the country to foreign markets, and promote growth, gradually reducing its dependence on foreign aid. However, the key to such a scenario lies in Afghanistan's relations with regional players, in particular Pakistan. Given its location, Pakistan is expected to serve as the main transit route for Afghan exports and access to the port cities of Gwadar and Karachi will remain crucial to Afghanistan's development. However, a volatile relationship with its eastern neighbor could mean a precarious dependency for Afghanistan.
Another potential economic trigger may be found in Afghanistan's untapped mineral reserves, ostensibly valued in the trillions of dollars. Based on cautiously optimistic assumptions by the World Bank, the iron ore project at Hajigak and copper mine at Aynak could deliver $2 to $3 billion to the extractive industry, with each deposit potentially generating over half a billion dollars in government revenue in just a few years. The mining industry may appear at first glance to be a potential panacea for the Afghan economy, but it will take decades before the country can reap the benefits of such a project. The Afghan mineral reserves require significant investments in infrastructure, and more importantly, effective and accountable governance that can efficiently and transparently manage revenues. Furthermore, in 2010, of the total $17 billion government expenditure, only $1.9 billion of the spending were drawn from Afghanistan's own sources of revenue; the rest: foreign assistance. Hence, besides the projected tax revenues and some foreign aid, even if mineral resources did manage to generate the estimated revenue, the Afghan budget would still face an annual deficit of $7 billion.
Rebuilding after more than a decade of conflict must also involve encouraging growth in Afghanistan's nascent private sector, a sector that has been stifled to some degree by the international donor presence. In a "donor drunk" economy, there are a large number of foreign, private NGOs, which dominate the private sector and make entry into it difficult for Afghan organizations. Although some of these private entities are effective development organizations at the grassroots level, many carry a negative perception among the Afghan people, who see the ubiquitous "briefcase NGOs" as money-making mechanisms for the people involved. Meanwhile, the influx of foreign money and employers has also artificially inflated labor costs for low-skilled workers over the past years, and has made Afghanistan an attractive venue for external laborers from neighboring countries such as Pakistan. However, as the flow of aid dwindles, those who have been paid hefty salaries over much of the past decade for low-skilled work for foreign entities may now prove more affordable to Afghan businesses, and will also open up more jobs for Afghan workers. While the initial transition phase from a military focused economy to a regular one will be difficult, it will leave room for a more long-term, sustainable economy to develop.
Regardless of Afghanistan's many potential sources of revenue, any real progress will be limited without the long-term support of the international community. While the West's future commitment to Afghanistan is vague at best, the increasing number of strategic partnerships with key allies signals a willingness by certain powers to remain involved in shaping Afghanistan's future beyond 2014. In the past week, Afghanistan has signed strategic partnership agreements with key European allies such as the UK, France, and Italy that ensure an enduring commitment and cooperation with Afghanistan in key areas, including economy, security, and governance. While only time will tell if the West really will stay committed to Afghanistan, this week's agreements are at least a step in the right direction.
Similarly, any future foreign aid funneled by the West to the Afghan government is effectively futile without properly addressing the raging corruption and lack of transparency and accountability in public finances. As the world's second most corrupt nation, any failure by the West and the Afghan government in tackling this menace in the so-called "transformation decade" would mean repeating and wasting yet another inefficient ten years of international assistance.
Today, as U.S. and NATO troops prepare to assume a lighter military presence, many Afghans fear a serious economic downturn when foreign aid and spending recede, leaving Afghanistan with little or nothing to fall back on. It is still uncertain if and how the Afghan government will function after 2014 without an open-ended $8 to $10 billion yearly commitment from the United States and Europe. However, responsibility for a stable and secure Afghanistan ultimately rests with the Afghans themselves, and there is still a sense of optimism among the Afghan people about the future of their country. The Afghan government, for its part, must foster transparency and accountability in public finances drawn from foreign aid, and work to cut leaks that enable corruption. If these reforms and the myriad of other challenges go unaddressed, the hard work and accomplishments of the past decade could easily unravel and ultimately lead to an even more troubled Afghanistan than we have seen in the past ten years.
Javid Ahmad, a native of Kabul, is Program Coordinator with the Asia Program of the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Washington, DC. Louise Langeby is a Program Associate with the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Brussels. The views reflected here are their own.
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Reality behind the changing Afghan mission
CNN
By Nic Robertson
February 2nd, 2012
While there are undoubtedly strong political (and financial) reasons for U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to set a firmer timetable for a change in mission of US forces in Afghanistan, they are probably not the whole story behind NATO’s evolving “end-game.”
French President Nicholas Sarkozy has already announced that his country's 3,600 troops deployed in Afghanistan will leave by the end of 2013 - a year early. That may have something to do with the fact that he is trailing badly in the polls ahead of presidential elections in April. But he is not alone. In Washington, London and Paris, Afghanistan is an unpopular war.
Panetta's suggestion that Afghan security forces can be capped now at just over 300,000 rather than the 350,000 target originally set is another indication of the prevailing mood. Money and popular support for the Afghan mission are in short supply. There's also an air of exasperation with Afghan President Hamid Karzai creeping in.
Sarkozy expressed it when he announced his sudden decision to get French troops out early - following the killing by an Afghan soldier of four French servicemen two weeks ago. The United States, too, has plenty of frustrations with Karzai, not least his recent attempts to stifle Washington's efforts to engage the Taliban in talks.
U.S. diplomats have long been criticized for not standing up to what are perceived as Karzai's wrong-headed policies, as well as his tantrums and whims. His latest plan to ignore the U.S. track for talks with the Taliban in Qatar and develop his own Saudi-hosted path is an effective slap in the face for President Barack Obama.
The United States wants many things out of these talks, not least a stable Afghanistan allowing an honorable exit for combat forces. But it also needs to set the conditions for what it was unable to agree to in Iraq - and that is to maintain a strategic regional foothold with large airbases and a troop presence. Iran is on one side of Afghanistan, Pakistan the other; and resource-hungry China also shares a border with Afghanistan.
So talks with the Taliban are not just about ending the war, they are about recognizing the Taliban's future political influence. They are, if the right conditions are set, about accepting the Taliban as political representatives of at least part of Afghanistan's majority Pashtoon population.
When Panetta talks about transitioning from combat to training operations by the end of 2013 he is also signaling to the Taliban U.S. combat forces will leave, and soon. For a long time the Taliban demanded foreign troops leave as a precondition for talks, a goal that is now in sight.
Panetta may be lowering other hurdles to a political settlement - although one at least appears inviolable: that the Taliban must renounce ties to al Qaeda.
Last year after much consideration, Obama signed off on exploring talks with the Taliban. Mullah Omar signed off on his side. A serious commitment had been made although there was (and still is) absolutely no guarantee of the outcome.
Now Karzai appears set to pursue his "alternate" Taliban talks track - at the very least, to muddy the waters and slow the talks process, and at worse scupper it altogether. If he successfully sabotages U.S.-Taliban talks, Washington can forget long-term strategic bases. The Taliban will make them unviable.
When NATO's combat forces pull out, the Taliban will, by talks or by fighting, expand their influence. Without some sort of political understanding, the Taliban will be able to obstruct resupply and every other part of the remaining U.S. and NATO mission.
A recently leaked NATO intelligence estimate that the Taliban are waiting to take power by force begins to look like a well-timed effort to undermine the transition that Panetta is in Brussels to discuss.
A western diplomat who talks directly to the Taliban told me recently "they [the Taliban] haven't made up their mind yet" whether to go for the "grand [political] bargain" or wait and "fight for control of the country." That view is echoed by Sherard Cowper Coles, the former British ambassador to Kabul.
The reason the Taliban may not want to fight for power could be pragmatic. When they took control of 95% of Afghanistan in the 90's they did it as much with Pakistani money - buying off enemy commanders - as they did in battle.
Mullah Omar's Taliban, the largest Taliban group also known as the Quetta Shura, the former Afghan government, the ones talking to the United States will not get that money now because Pakistan's military intelligence service, the ISI, does not trust them.
Sources say the ISI trusts and prefers to fund the much smaller Haqqani Taliban force. The Haqqanis have pledged allegiance to Mullah Omar publicly - but would likely be an adversary were he ever back in government.
Also the Taliban's ethnic foes in the North are far richer, better equipped and trained than the last time they fought, thanks to the North's close ties to the U.S. military. They pose a bigger challenge to Taliban (Pashton) hegemony than before.
So the question for these aging gray haired leaders who have been at war in some cases for up to 30 years is: Can they get better terms at the negotiating table?
Part of that calculation will be based on their assessment of the sincerity of the people sitting across the table from them.
Karzai may have cut across U.S. interests one time too many. Tough love is what some diplomats have advocated for his intransigence. An end to combat missions in 2013 will certainly be that, and the great unanswered question is: Will that be a bone the Taliban prefer to chew or bury?
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Interview: Afghan analyst warns U.S. early pullout would fuel militancy
Xinhua
By Abdul Haleem, Yangtze Yan
Feb. 3, 2012
KABUL
The announcement made by U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta saying the United States will end combat operations in 2013 would stimulate the Taliban and its associated insurgents to intensify activities in Afghanistan, an Afghan analyst warned Friday.
"The surprise decision announced by the U.S. defense secretary to end combat mission in Afghanistan would benefit Taliban and eventually lead to surge in militancy," Faizullah Jalal, a professor at Kabul University, told Xinhua in an interview.
According to media reports, Leon Panetta has said that the United States hopes to end its combat mission in Afghanistan by the middle of 2013, a year earlier than NATO had planned for, and that it will focus instead on training, advisory and assistance role.
It was the first time that the U.S. defense secretary hinted an early pullout of his soldiers from Afghanistan amid increasing Taliban-led insurgency.
At a summit in Lisbon in November 2010, the leadership of NATO member states had reached an agreement on gradual drawdown of the allied forces from Afghanistan and transferring security to the Afghan government by the end of 2014.
"Taliban and associated insurgents are still rampant and receiving training in their safe havens in Pakistan. If the U.S. and allied nations pull out their forces before 2014, Afghanistan would once again plunge into turmoil and bloody conflicts would be resumed among warring factions," Jalal said.
The professor stressed that the Taliban militants are active almost everywhere in the country and the withdrawal of the NATO- led forces would ultimately lead to Taliban reemergence and the resuming of bloody conflicts.
Panetta made the remarks days after a leaked NATO report, covered by certain media, accused Pakistan of supporting Taliban militants to retake Afghanistan after the NATO-led forces withdrawal in 2014.
Meanwhile, the analyst linked the U.S. early decision to end combat operations in Afghanistan to the U.S. internal policy, saying it is part of the efforts to back the Democratic Party to win the coming presidential elections.
"Since the U.S. has hugely paid for the war in Afghanistan. Its economy has shrunk and more than 1,800 U.S. soldiers have been killed. In a bid to be re-elected, President Obama has been endeavoring to muster public support and so, announcing early forces pullout and ending combat mission in Afghanistan is part of that policy," Jalal observed.
He warned that "leaving combat mission unfinished and leaving Afghanistan at lurch would facilitate extremist outfits to turn Afghanistan once again into safe haven and expand their political and military activities."
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Pakistan PM to discuss Afghanistan reconciliation in Qatar
Reuters
Sat Feb 4, 2012
Pakistan's prime minister will travel to Qatar next week to talk with officials from the Gulf Arab state on the Afghan reconciliation process, a senior government official said on Saturday.
The Afghan Taliban announced last month it would open a political office in Qatar, suggesting the group may be willing to engage in negotiations that would likely give it government positions or official control over much of its historical southern heartland.
Pakistan is seen as critical to U.S. efforts to stabilize Afghanistan and is believed to have influence over militant groups which have been fighting to topple President Hamid Karzai's government.
Ties between Islamabad and Kabul have been strained in recent months but Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar said after a visit to Afghanistan last week that ill will had eased considerably between the two neighbors.
Pakistan has not been playing a substantial role in the nascent Afghan peace process, she said, but would encourage militant groups like the Haqqani network or the Taliban to lay down their weapons if asked by Kabul.
"While it is not specifically on the agenda, Afghanistan will be discussed, including briefings from the Qatari leadership on efforts being made for the peace process, the Taliban office," said the Pakistan government official.
Khar is expected to accompany Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani on the February 6-8 Qatar trip.
(Reporting by Qasim Nauman, Editing by Jonathan Thatcher)
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O'Hanlon: Please be careful on Afghanistan
CNN
By Michael O'Hanlon – Special to CNN
February 3rd, 2012
This week, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta made big news by telling reporters that the United States would seek to end its combat role in Afghanistan sometime in 2013.
2014 had been the previous target date for such a change. The Obama administration later clarified (and caveated) this statement so it sounded like less of a big deal. But the statement was not actually withdrawn and it does represent something of a change.
I have my concerns about the latest Panetta statement because I think the administration continues to be inadequately careful in some of its messaging about Afghanistan. Not only American voters, but key Afghan and Pakistani partners hear such language and sense an administration no longer fully committed to the mission - one rushing for the exits, especially as election day in the United States looms.
I am not accusing the administration of politicizing the war. But others increasingly worry that it is doing just that. Some clearer, firmer rhetoric about our enduring commitment is needed to compensate and the sooner the better. In addition, it is important that we make a decision fairly soon about how many U.S. forces will stay in Afghanistan next year. We should stick to that decision. Ideally, the number should be as close as possible to the 68,000 figure that we are scheduled to reach in September - down from 90,000 today and 100,000 last year.
All that said, the change in mission makes sense. On my last trip to Afghanistan in November, some American commanders were advocating a faster transition - not to wash their hands of the war, but so that Afghans could be prodded to do even more. They wanted this transition to occur while the U.S. still had enough troops on the ground to provide assistance should the Afghans need it. Changing the mission to something that emphasizes advising and supporting (without pulling NATO troops out of combat altogether, to be sure) was not seen as an excuse to downsize faster. To the contrary, for some at least, it was seen as the right way to make use of our relatively large, enduring forces for the last year or two that they remain available in substantial numbers.
At the tactical level, one of the most brilliant and experienced Afghan experts I have ever met, former special forces officer and counterinsurgency advisor Roger Carstens, put it well in a blog at foreignpolicy.com today. I quote from his argument below:
“Left to their own devices, U.S. Army and Marine Colonels - Brigade Commanders in charge of 3,500 men and often given responsibility for one or more of Afghanistan's 34 Provinces – will relentlessly hunt down the Taliban (or Haqqani Network, etc), only nominally bringing their Afghan partners into the process.
And why should they? After all, their bosses usually made them responsible for security, governance, development, and rule of law – rating them on the progress that they make in their "battle space."
To support the efforts of the ANSF instead would require a Brigade Commander to assume risk, as the ANSF:
- may not be there in great numbers;
- may be lead by corrupt or incompetent leaders;
- may not have the staff or battlefield processes to conduct full scale military, police, and civilian operations across the area of a province;
- may not be exceptionally proficient at military or police operations.
The list goes on and on.
So rather than risk failure (and soldiers hate to fail) many (not all) commanders take on the responsibility of fixing and doing everything themselves.
Don't get me wrong - the Afghans are there - but the weight of success or failure seemingly rests on the back of the U.S. commander.
The problem with this is that if the U.S. Brigade Commander succeeds, he also fails.
Because in this counterinsurgency, the only way you ever really move towards a "win" is if you enable the Afghans in their efforts to foster security, governance, development and the rule of law in a way that makes their efforts sustainable – meaning that after we leave, the Afghans can secure their gains and hopefully make even more progress.”
Carstens is persuasive. Panetta’s mistake was to make it sound like changing the mission implied a lowering of our role. He was thinking too much about his American domestic audience and not enough about the wavering, fence-sitting Afghans and Pakistanis who wonder where to put their loyalties in the coming months and years and wonder if we are really still up to the task - and often wonder if they should hedge their own bets about which side to support in the war. But the specifics of his idea, properly balanced with an enduring U.S. commitment to Afghanistan and publicly announced plans for a gradual, careful troop drawdown, make good sense.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of Michael O'Hanlon.
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NATO allies eye China in Afghan security cash crunch
Globe and Mail
By Campbell Clark
Friday, Feb. 03, 2012
Ottawa
NATO allies are debating how big an Afghan military they can afford, paring down targets, and looking to countries like China to pony up some of the cash, Defence Minister Peter MacKay says.
The Canadian Forces are now playing a sizable role in efforts to train an expanded Afghan army, with 950 trainers posted in Kabul and some other centres until 2014.
But the question of who will pick up the bill for a multi-billion-dollar security force that Afghans can’t afford has led NATO to plans to pare down the planned size. The U.S. is proposing the goal of creating an army and police force totalling 350,000 by 2014 be trimmed to about 305,000, while France has suggested 230,000.
“I can tell you this, it will be somewhere between the aspirational goal that they set of 350,000, and the number that is being floated, that is 230,000,” Mr. MacKay said in a telephone interview from a meeting of NATO defence ministers in Brussels.
NATO defence ministers had an extensive discussion on how big an Afghan force should be, attended by Afghan Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak, and a briefing on the issue from the allied commander in Afghanistan, U.S. Marine General John Allen, Mr. MacKay said. Mr. MacKay said he expects no final pronouncement on the target figure will be made until leaders of NATO countries meet at a summit in Chicago in May.
The expansion is aimed at making the Afghan forces big enough to take over the lead of combat operations from NATO and other international troops by 2014. But the big targets set for bulking up the Afghan forces are running into the era of austerity in western nations, who are balking at picking up the tab, which is roughly the size of the entire budget of Afghanistan’s government.
“The other side of the equation is the sustainment, and what countries will contribute to that – the figure of just over $4-billion annually to sustain a force of about 230,000,” Mr. MacKay said.
A group of more than 60 countries who are now involved in Afghanistan and might contribute sums to sustain the forces – and others, like China, which have economic interests in Afghanistan – should put up money, too.
“There are other potential big contributors out there who haven’t been tapped yet, but who are going to be beneficiaries of security in Afghanistan. And to that list I would add the Chinese, who are doing a lot of mining right now.”
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If ISI ‘runs’ Kabul, India is threatened
The Asian Age
Feb 04, 2012
Classified Nato interrogation reports of insurgent detainees in Afghanistan reveal quite dramatically that the “direct” help to the Taliban by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence continues even as Nato forces, including American troops, prepare to leave the country by 2014 and President Barack Obama’s administration is in the process of setting up an elaborate spectacle in the name of peace and reconciliation talks with the Taliban to prepare the extremist outfit for a role in the future governance of the country.
With Mr Obama seeking re-election after declaring mission successful in Afghanistan, it is not surprising that an International Security Assistance Force spokesman should note that the leaked reports were raw material from the questioning of prisoners and did not constitute the end product of analysis throwing light on the strategic significance — if any — of what the detainees had to say. Pakistan foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar, who was in Kabul when the leak hit the international media earlier this week, was even more predictable, observing that the news reports were “old wine in an even older bottle”. She also repeated the old mumbo-jumbo about her country having no interest in poking its nose in Afghanistan, a claim the world dismisses as absurd and incredible. Whatever the disavowals on the American and Pakistani side, the leaked material is from as many as 27,000 interrogations of 4,000 detainees belonging to several groups, notably Taliban and Al Qaeda. Underlining the embryonic link between the militants of various groups and the ISI, a senior Al Qaeda leader, taken in Kunar in eastern Afghanistan on the border with Pakistan, has wryly noted in his interrogation (conducted by the Americans) that he can’t even climb a tree without the ISI knowing! With a touch of irony, the man also said: “Taliban is not Islam, it is Islamabad.” Small wonder that the classified document is unambiguous that the Taliban are confident of retaking Kabul with Pakistan’s help after the Western troops have left by 2014. If that happens, it will be back to 1996, and we may wistfully look at the international effort put in since 2001 (the destruction of the Taliban regime) as work gone up in smoke. The Americans will have to bear the cross, should this come to pass. They have mollycoddled the Pakistan Army and the ISI, although these institutions were helping the Taliban rebuild. The leaked material bears a close resemblance to the WikiLeaks disclosures on AfPak of a year ago, and in that sense constitutes corroboration. Given these disclosures the Afghans would be naïve to accept the US peace and reconciliation moves with the Taliban at face value. India too must speak up. This country has long-term stakes in Afghanistan.
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Afghan orphans embark on U.S. road trip
CNN
By Asieh Namdar
February 3, 2012
Six kids, one RV, 10 weeks and dozens of U.S. states.
A group of orphans from Afghanistan has embarked on a journey from Massachusetts to California and places in between, seeing more of the United States than many Americans see in a lifetime.
The road trip, which kicked off in January, is about "the kids getting an education in the landscape and history of America," says Ian Pounds, an American who's both their driver while in the U.S. and a volunteer at their orphanage in Kabul, the Afghan capital.
The four girls and two boys between the ages of 11 and 18 have seen the Boston Science Museum and Aquarium, the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, and the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. Destinations down the road include Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Native American storytellers in the Southwest, and nature hikes near San Francisco, before heading to New York City and back home to Afghanistan in March.
The youngest traveler is 11-year-old Shokofa, who also goes by Frishta. She wears a fuzzy pink hat and scarf, loves pizza, and plays the trumpet. The boys, Araj and Mohsen, are 13 and 12, inseparable. Mohsen dreams about being a filmmaker. The older girls -- Hala, Maria and Lida -- are 16, 17, and 18, respectively.
"It's amazing," Maria says of her American experience so far. "I like very much here. I learned more things and (have had) many experiences."
The kids are among an estimated 2 million orphans in Afghanistan. They are in the care of orphanages run by the Afghan Child Education and Care Organization and were chosen for this trip because of their grades and academic achievements. The tour, funded by grants from the U.S. Embassy's Afghan Women Empowerment program and Goldman Sachs, is also helping to raise money for the orphanages and building relationships between the two countries.
Pounds moved from the U.S. to Kabul to volunteer in the orphanage three years ago. He says the experience has changed his life, and he hopes the same type of travel experience can influence the children.
"It was important to me to climb up into the mountains near Nuristan and see the village where many of the children come from," he says. "It's equally important for them to come and discover America, where their teacher comes from, to immerse themselves, to develop a worldliness, poise, communication skills -- everything a teacher values in education."
The RV -- or "Magic Freedom bus," as they call it -- has everything they need for the road trip: plenty of beds, bathroom, kitchenette, refrigerator, stove, oven and microwave. And it's hard to miss the big bottle of ketchup on the counter.
Outside the front passenger door, a sign reads "Afghan Orphanage Children's Tour of America" with a photo of the children. That's spurred many impromptu meetings and kindness from strangers.
"So many people have stopped us, to say hi and to meet the kids," says Pounds.
And when someone at the Boston rental company found out what the RV was for, Pounds says, she gave the group a discount despite the almost 10,000 miles they expect to put on the vehicle.
Pounds is chronicling the experience in blog posts at the AFCECO orphanage site. "There's laughter at every turn as these children grow by leaps, and deeply affect the people they meet," Pounds wrote after one day.
The children all have similar stories full of heartache: parents dead from war or illness, or parents no longer able to take care of them because of drug addiciton, extreme poverty or other reasons. But sitting together inside the RV, the children reveal no bitterness or despair, only a determination to succeed.
"We are the future of Afghanistan," says Maria, who wants to be an engineer one day.
"We want to stay in Afghanistan and help our country," says Hala, who wants to be a doctor. Lida aims to teach.
Also traveling with the kids is Nasrin Sultani, a teacher from the orphanage. She worries about the violence the children have witnessed and continue to see. "We have troops from all over the world and still no security," she says. "Afghans, especially the women, don't feel safe." Her biggest wish: "feeling safe, and women having the same rights as men."
Pounds says one of the best "sights" so far for the children has been witnessing women's equality in action. "I think most notable is the freedom of girls and women to be in a position ... to be equal to men. That's very outstanding to them."
The older girls say their sources of inspiration are not pop stars but rather the late Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and Myanmar democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi.
So the journey continues, until their flight back to Kabul in March, just in time for Afghanistan's New Year celebrations, called "Noruz."
"I hope by seeing America, these children work even harder for peace and stability in our own country," says Nasrin.
And as they learn about all things American, they hope Americans come away with a deeper understanding of their world.
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Tracking Down Shady Passport Trade in Afghanistan
Clandestine meetings and confrontational officials make pinning down details of illicit passport sales a difficult job.
IWPR
By Abdol Wahed Faramarz
3 Feb 12
Afghanistan
It was eight in the evening when my mobile phone started ringing. It was a friend, Nazer Hussein, who had just returned to Afghanistan after two years away working in Iran. Now he wanted to go back there again, but although he had a permit for Iran, it was proving near-impossible to get a new Afghan passport.
Passport officials said that a pre-existing shortage had been made worse by high demand from Afghans travelling to Saudi Arabia to perform the annual hajj pilgrimage, so no new passports were to be issued for a few months. They asked people to be patient until new passports were printed.
However, some passport officers made it clear one could still obtain new documents – at a price. Officials had squirrelled away blank passports and were issuing them for money.
That was my friend Nazer’s experience. Despite visiting the passport office every day for three weeks, standing in line from early morning in the bitter winter cold, he never made it past the first security gate. In the end, he managed to obtain a passport by paying 400 US dollars to an intermediary.
When he told me about his experience, I shared it with the IWPR office in Kabul and they told me to go ahead and write the story.
I wasn’t quite sure where to start. I knew I would face many problems along the way. It would not be easy to trace people who had paid bribes to get passports, or to find the brokers who were in touch with department officials. Then there was the likely reaction of the passport department to the very sensitive story I was investigating. What if officials realised I was a reporter during the course of my investigations and decided to have me arrested?
It did prove hard to find an intermediary who was prepared to cooperate, even when I finally tracked some of them down through friends. Eventually, I found a go-between who was willing to talks. He called me late one winter night.
“Hurry up,” he told me. “The passport officer is waiting.”
Sleepily, I picked up my mobile phone and slipped out of my house without any of my family noticing.
Outside in the alley, all the houses lay in darkness. In the car, I asked my contact where we were heading, but he said nothing. We drove on, and after a while I realised we were in a part of town that was all but deserted at night, with just a few houses on the hills alongside the road and almost no traffic. Then I noticed there was a pistol underneath the driver’s seat. Fear began slowly creeping up on me. I thought it might be some kind of trap.
When we arrived at the location where the deal was to take place, the passport officer was shocked to find a journalist present and at first refused to conclude the transfer in my presence or even talk to me. I promised to protect his identity, and he laughed as he handed over a consignment of passports to the broker.
“I really feel sorry for you reporters,” he said. “You work hard, but no one listens. This trade is like a chain – everyone has a share in it, just like links in a chain. Go home and sleep.”
When I found some people who had paid money for passports, most were too scared to talk to me. From those who were willing to speak, I learned that the going rate was as high as 800 dollars a passport, although if you had a good relationship with an official, you might be able to buy one for as little as 300 dollars.
It was time to go to the passport office itself. There I found dozens of people waiting in line at the gate. I reached the policeman at the gate with difficulty and introduced myself.
“Get out of here,” he said. “Don’t talk too much. Dozens of journalists come here every day. The director isn’t here.”
I said I would interview the deputy director, but the policeman said he too was not there. I then said I would talk to any official who was available.
“You’re a tough cookie,” he conceded. “Go in, but you won’t get anything.”
When I entered the department, I found that the director, General Ayub, was in fact in his office, even though I had previously tried to call him on his numerous phone numbers without success.
He welcomed me warmly, but as soon as I asked a question about alleged corrupt practices, he became angry.
“These are rumours spread by brokers who manufacture fake passports and visas,” he told me. “They want to defame officials in this department. I vehemently deny this charge.”
My report was duly published, including comments from the passport agency head.
Shortly afterwards, I called an official at the interior ministry about a different matter. Before I could even speak, he said angrily, “The report on passports that you published is not true at all. It was irresponsible, and you have defamed the country’s police.”
He demanded that I present myself at the ministry immediately. I calmly replied that he could refer me to the commission which addresses media offences, and that if it believed that officials had a case against IWPR, we would cooperate with any investigation.
This only made him angrier. “Do you have a permit to work as a reporter?” he continued. “Does your office have a license and permit? Where’s your office? Who is your boss? Give me his telephone number.”
I answered that we had all these details, but then he put the phone down.
Although the principles of democracy and freedom of speech have supposedly been applied in Afghanistan for the last ten years, it seems that some of those appointed to safeguard these values are actually against them – and that different forms of pressure are exerted to stop publication of the truth.
Abdul Wahed Faramarz is an IWPR-trained reporter in Kabul.
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NATO ministers mull financing for Afghan security forces post-2014
Associated Press
03/02/2012
BRUSSELS
NATO’s top official said Friday that the alliance expects regional powers to contribute to a multibillion dollar fund to finance the Afghan army and police after they assume full responsibility for the war in 2014.
Since Afghanistan — one of the world’s poorest nations — cannot foot the estimated $6 billion (€4.6 billion) annual bill, NATO nations will have to pay the bulk of it. But austerity measures and budgetary cuts caused by the financial crisis in the United States and Europe are making it difficult to raise the money within the alliance.
Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he was appealing to the entire international community to help finance the force.
Asked whether he was specifically referring to China, India and Russia, he replied: “It’s a call on the whole of the international community to contribute to financing the Afghan security forces because I think it is also in the interest of countries in the region to see a stable and secure Afghanistan.”
“So my call on the international community also includes countries in the region,” he said.
Fogh Rasmussen said defense ministers had also discussed the “sustainable size” of the future Afghan army and police, but that a final decision will be left to the NATO summit in Chicago next May.
The two-day meeting in Brussels of ministers from NATO’s 28 nations and 22 other countries taking part in the war in Afghanistan is meant to pave the way for the Chicago summit.
The Afghan army and police are scheduled to grow to more than 350,000 members by 2014. But some have projected that the force can be safely reduced in order to reduce its costs.
“A reasonable number would be 230,000,” French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet said after the meeting.
The Taliban insurgents are estimated to have about 20,000 armed men.
A related unresolved question that also will be taken up in Chicago is the number of U.S. and other foreign troops that might remain behind and what missions they would be assigned.
The debate on the costs of the Afghan security forces came after NATO allies agreed broadly on Thursday to step back from the lead combat role in Afghanistan and let local forces take their place as early as next year, a shortened timetable that startled officials and members of the U.S. Congress.
Longuet said Paris would start drawing down its 3,600-strong contingent in March, and expects the withdrawal to be completed by mid-2013.
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta caused a stir when he said that he foresaw American and NATO forces switching from a combat role to a support role by mid- to late-2013. He said this was a natural transition in line with the NATO goal, announced in November 2010, of having every Afghan province placed in government control by the end of 2014.
Until that remark, however, it was widely assumed that NATO forces would remain in the lead until the end of 2014, when most foreign forces are scheduled to be withdrawn.
His remark prompted some Republicans in Washington to complain that the Obama administration was unwisely telegraphing its intentions to the Taliban.
Fogh Rasmussen also announced that NATO would purchase five long-range reconnaissance drones for the alliance’s new Ground Surveillance System.
Although the alliance has been planning the purchase for more than a decade, it was only after the recent air war over Libya that the matter received serious consideration. During that conflict, NATO air forces had to depend almost entirely on U.S. drones and surveillance aircraft for targeting information.
A group of 13 nations will purchase the Northrop Grumman drones known as the Global Hawk, which can stay aloft for 24 hours, and NATO will then maintain and operate them on behalf of all 28 allies.
“This will give our commanders the ability to see what is happening on the ground at long range and over periods of time — around the clock, and in any weather,” Fogh Rasmussen said.
The NATO announcement came just days after Pentagon officials said budget cuts will force an end to purchases of the Global Hawks for the U.S. Air Force in favor of retaining the less expensive, high-altitude U-2 spy plane.
___
Slobodan Lekic can be reached on Twitter at http://twitter.com/slekich
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Pakistan was Aware of US-Taliban Talks, Pakistani Analyst Says
TOLOnews.com
Friday, 03 February 2012
Pakistan was aware of details of the talks between the US and the Taliban as well as about plans to establish a Taliban office in Qatar, Pakistan political analyst Saleem Safi said.
Pakistani political analyst, Saleem Safi says that Pakistan was aware of details of the talks held between the United States and the Taliban.
He believes that no talks could have taken place between the US and the Taliban without Pakistan and that no talks can take place in the future without involvement of Pakistan.
"The talks in Qatar are planned after consultation with Pakistan. It is clear that the Taliban representatives who went to Qatar used a Pakistani airport to fly there," Mr Safi said.
"Whatever contacts the US officials have established with the Taliban could not have been possible without Pakistan's information," he added.
Meanwhile, Afghan MP Mirwais Yasini who has met with some Pakistani politicians says that Maulana Fazl-u-Rahman believed that during the Taliban rule in Afghanistan there was neither any government nor sharia and that the Taliban had only occupied Afghanistan.
It comes as a recent Nato report obtained by media organisations said that Pakistan was supporting the Taliban in a way so that the militant group could come back to power after withdrawal of foreign forces.
The report said that Taliban were being directly assisted by Pakistan intelligence agency, ISI. But Pakistan's Foreign Minister Hinna Rabbani Khar dismissed such allegations, during a recent exclusive interview with TOLOnews in Kabul.
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