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05 February 2012
FEATURE STORY
U.S. Plans Shift to Elite Units as It Winds Down in Afghanistan
BUSINESS
No articles featured today
NATION
Panetta Urges International Community to Fund Afghan Forces
Military comeback a distant dream for Afghan Taliban
Patrick Cockburn: The death of the American dream in Afghanistan
In Afghanistan, a new approach to teaching history: Leave out the wars
Pakistan seeks a place at Qatar Taliban talks
Car Bomb Kills Seven in Afghanistan
Taliban condemned for Afghan casualties
Afghan police: US soldier shoots Afghan guard
Afghan Taliban deny Mullah Omar wrote to White House
Panetta surprised his European colleagues with Afghanistan announcement
Taliban Local Commander Killed in Kunduz Clashes
U.S. brigadier general dies in Afghanistan
Coalition Commander Says Afghan Plan Still Intact
Afghan Troops Should Not Enter Pakistan: Petraeus
Afghan who killed French troops paid to infiltrate army
‘Pakistan is a resilient country’
America’s Drones, Transparency, and Accountability
PRESS RELEASES
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FEATURE STORY
U.S. Plans Shift to Elite Units as It Winds Down in Afghanistan
New York Times
By THOM SHANKER and ERIC SCHMITT
February 4, 2012
WASHINGTON
The United States’ plan to wind down its combat role in Afghanistan a year earlier than expected relies on shifting responsibility to Special Operations forces that hunt insurgent leaders and train local troops, according to senior Pentagon officials and military officers. These forces could remain in the country well after the NATO mission ends in late 2014.
The plan, if approved by President Obama, would amount to the most significant evolution in the military campaign since Mr. Obama sent in 32,000 more troops to wage an intensive and costly counterinsurgency effort.
Under the emerging plan, American conventional forces, focused on policing large parts of Afghanistan, will be the first to leave, while thousands of American Special Operations forces remain, making up an increasing percentage of the troops on the ground; their number may even grow.
The evolving strategy is far different from the withdrawal plan for Iraq, where almost all American forces, conventional or otherwise, have left. Iraq has devolved into sectarian violence ever since the withdrawal in December, which threatens to undo the political and security gains there.
Pentagon officials and military planners say the new plan for Afghanistan is not a direct response to the deteriorating conditions in Iraq. Even so, the shift could give Mr. Obama a political shield against attacks from his Republican rivals in the presidential race who have already begun criticizing him for moving too swiftly to extract troops from Afghanistan.
Unlike in Iraq, where domestic political pressure gave Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki reason to resist a continued American military presence into 2012, in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai and his senior aides have expressed an initial willingness to continue a partnership with the United States that includes counterterrorism missions and training.
Senior American officials have also expressed a desire to keep some training and counterterrorism troops in Afghanistan past 2014. The transition plan for the next three years in Afghanistan could be a model for such a continued military relationship.
The new focus builds on a desire to use the nation’s most elite troops to counter any residual terrorist threat over the coming months as well as to devote the military’s best trainers to the difficult task of preparing Afghan security forces to take over responsibilities in their country.
The plan would put a particularly heavy focus on Army Special Forces, also known as the Green Berets. They would be in charge of training a variety of Afghan security forces. At the same time, the elite commando teams within Special Operations forces would continue their raids to hunt down, capture or kill insurgent commanders and terrorist leaders and keep pressure on cells of fighters to prevent them from mounting attacks.
Created by President John F. Kennedy in the 1960s, the Green Berets have as one of their core missions what is called “foreign internal defense” — using combat, mentoring, language and cross-cultural skills to train local forces in rugged environments, as they are today in missions conducted quietly in dozens of nations around the world.
Just as significant would be what the American military’s conventional forces stop doing.
Americans would no longer be carrying out large numbers of patrols to clear vast areas of Afghanistan of insurgents, or holding villages and towns vulnerable to militant attacks while local forces and government agencies rebuilt the local economy and empowered local governments.
Those tasks would fall to Afghan forces, with Special Forces soldiers remaining in the field to guide them. This shift has already begun to take place.
The defense secretary, Leon E. Panetta, surprised NATO allies last week when he announced that American forces would step back from a leading role in combat missions by mid-2013, turning over security responsibilities to Afghan forces a year earlier than expected. The description of the shift to a Special Operations mission in Afghanistan by senior officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the final plans have not been approved, go a long way toward explaining what Mr. Panetta sketched out for the allies.
White House officials confirmed in broad terms the shift to a Special Operations mission, and said a formal announcement on the future of the mission was expected at the May summit meeting of NATO leaders in Chicago.
“The president said in June that when the drawdown of surge forces is complete in September, U.S. troops will continue coming home at a steady pace and our mission will shift from combat to support as the Afghans take the lead,” said Tommy Vietor, the National Security Council spokesman.
The United States has about 90,000 troops in Afghanistan, with 22,000 of them expected to leave by this fall. No schedule has been set for the pace of withdrawal for the 68,000 American troops who will remain, although some administration officials are advocating for Mr. Obama to order another reduction by the summer of 2013.
The planning for a transition of the Afghanistan mission is a central effort among the Pentagon’s civilian planners and the military’s Joint Staff, as well as among officers at the United States Central and Special Operations Commands.
Senior Pentagon officials involved in the planning acknowledge that a military effort with a smaller force and a more focused mission could be easier to explain to Americans who have tired of the large counterinsurgency campaigns of Iraq and, previously, Afghanistan.
To be sure, some American conventional units would be called on to handle logistics and other support services — transportation, medical care, security — to enable the Special Operations missions to continue.
But that would require a far smaller American presence to help the Afghans protect recent security gains while minimizing American expenses and casualties.
The plan first calls for creating a two-star command position overseeing the entire Special Operations effort in Afghanistan. Next, the three-star corps headquarters that currently commands the day-to-day operations of the war — and is held by an Army officer from the conventional force — would be handed over to a Special Operations officer.
Officials said that no final decisions had been made on the timing of the transition, although it is likely to begin late this year as the rest of the surge forces are withdrawn. There has also been no decision on the number of troops to be committed to the mission as it evolves in 2013 and into 2014, officials said.
Officials noted the progress in creating new “Afghan Strike Force” units to carry out commando-type raids, and they said that the effort to create an Afghan National Army — which had been focused on building as large a force as possible — would shift to emphasize quality and capability.
Officials conceded that the Afghan National Police program remained a huge disappointment, but said that a great value in American investment had been organizing local Afghan police units, drawn from the villages they are assigned to protect.
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BUSINESS
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NATION
Panetta Urges International Community to Fund Afghan Forces
TOLOnews.com
Sunday, 05 February 2012
The US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta on Saturday urged the international community to help pay for strong Afghan security troops despite worldwide economic pressure.
US is spending around $12 billion a year to train the Afghan security troops, which is expected to rise to 352,000 men to take over security when Nato combat forces withdraw by the end of 2014.
"To sustain sufficient security, the Afghan security forces require adequate financial support," Mr Panetta said.
The United States has predicted that the annual price tag of training and equipping Afghan security forces in coming years will be around $6 billion.
The US wants the international community to contribute $1 billion per year after 2014 in addition to the United States' assistance.
Meanwhile, the British Defence Secretary Philip Hammond has said that Nato ministers would consider two critical questions: "What should be the long term size of the Afghan security forces and how are we going to share the cost of supporting that between different members of the international community. Those are discussions we have started here and we will continue at Chicago."
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 a Nato summit in May in Chicago.
The Afghan army and police are scheduled to grow to more than 350,000 members by 2014. But some have proposed that the force can be safely cut in order to reduce its cost.
The long-term size of the Afghan force and cost of maintaining it will be a key topic at a Nato summit in Chicago in May.
Five days ago the US Defence Minister had said that the United States hoped to end its combat mission in Afghanistan by the middle of next year.
The timetable described by US Defence Minister appeared to be the first time the United States has said it would shift into a supporting role, training and advising Afghan troops, by next year.
His remarks came as France also said that it will end combat mission in Afghanistan by the end of 2013.
But Nato chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Thursday said that Nato will stand by its previously agreed plan to wind down operation in Afghanistan by the end of 2014 with any changes to the schedule coordinated with allies.
The US has around 90,000 troops in Afghanistan, fighting insurgents. It has lost 1,890 soldiers in the Afghan war since 2001.
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Military comeback a distant dream for Afghan Taliban
Reuters
By Rob Taylor
Sun Feb 5, 2012
KABUL
A secret NATO report showing the strength of confidence among the Afghan Taliban is raising concerns from Kabul to Washington that the militant group might overrun the country again when foreign combat forces finally leave.
But analysts doubt the militants, who rose from the ashes of Afghanistan's civil war, will be able to again race into the capital in pick-up trucks, hang their opponents in public and once more impose their austere brand of Islam on the country.
Although still much feared, experts say they don't have the military capability to seize control of the whole country when NATO combat troops withdraw in 2014.
Despite the bold predictions of Taliban detainees whose opinions formed the basis of the NATO report, which was leaked last week, circumstances have changed substantially. A partial comeback appears to be the best the Taliban can hope for.
"When they ruled before, many people had fled Afghanistan. There was no young generation. Without much fighting, they captured 90 percent of Afghanistan. But now the situation has completely changed," said Waheed Mujhda, Kabul-based expert on the Taliban.
"They accept that the time has changed. They accept that it's impossible for one party to capture all Afghanistan and rule all over Afghanistan."
The Taliban, ousted after a U.S. invasion in 2001, was able to sweep to power in 1995 partly because it was able to exploit the chaos gripping Afghanistan in the years following the end of the failed Soviet occupation.
DIFFICULT TO TOPPLE GOVERNMENT
The Afghan army and security forces may still be deeply flawed, but their mere size would make it difficult for the Taliban to simply topple the government when NATO troops go.
With an estimated 25,000 fighters at the most, the Taliban is hugely outnumbered by NATO and Afghan forces.
Its budget too is miniscule, put at just $150 million a year. By contrast, the United States has spent some $500 billion on its 10-year war there.
"The government is very fragile but we have to keep in mind it is supported by a 250,000 strong security apparatus ... which is also supported by the international community and these two big elements were missing when the Taliban seized the country in the mid-90s," said Pakistani security analyst Imtiaz Gul.
Without tanks and fighter planes, the Taliban could find itself battling government forces -- and remaining Western special forces - for years.
And a survey by The Asia Foundation showed that the proportion of respondents who say they had some level of sympathy with the motives of armed opposition groups reached its lowest level last year.
Also standing in the way would be the threat of a renewed civil war from the Taliban's old ethnic foes, a small army of Western advisors likely to remain after 2014, and the opposition of many ordinary Afghans.
A surge in U.S. and NATO troop numbers that began in 2010 has suppressed the Taliban on the open battlefield, forcing the insurgency last year to turn to assassinations and high-profile attacks in Kabul to regain a psychological advantage.
Taliban commanders still speak of waging jihad until Islamic rule is restored. But some militants are starting to long for a peaceful end to Afghanistan's years of conflict.
"There are fighters who had suffered losses, lost their family members in fighting and became homeless who want a peaceful solution to the long war," said a Taliban commander who identified himself by his codename Qari Baryal.
In a surprise announcement last month, the Afghan Taliban announced it would open a political office in Qatar, suggesting the group may be willing to negotiate -- for government positions or official control over much of its historical southern heartland.
That also suggests it thinks the odds of a complete takeover are slim and is instead looking for major gains in the political arena.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said it was too soon to say how political maneuvers towards peace negotiations could unfold, although the Taliban was open to conciliation.
But there are questions over how cohesive the Taliban can remain.
Ghulam Jelani Zwak, director of Afghan Analytical and Advisory Centre, said he believes peace talks and the NATO withdrawal will lead to the break up of the Taliban between more extreme insurgents and those willing to accept a peace deal.
"But there is no open sign of disaffection in the Taliban, and so we can only guess at that," he said.
MEDIEVAL JUSTICE
The Taliban's medieval justice and punishment system -- including hangings, oppression of women and amputating the limbs of thieves -- was initially accepted by Afghans because it brought security and an end to a period of chaotic warlord rule.
Today, many Afghans have grown accustomed to improved access for women to education and work, and an economy in which growth has averaged 9.1 percent. Foreign investment has climbed sharply from zero in Taliban days to a peak of $300 million in 2008.
Social networks like Facebook and Twitter are catching on among young Afghans, providing a forum for users to criticize the government and the Taliban.
Kamran Bokhari, a South Asia expert at global intelligence firm STRATFOR, said the Taliban had become interested in a political solution over fighting because it needed both a withdrawal of foreign troops and international acceptance of a more moderate face to take part in eventual power sharing.
For those still fighting against Taliban militants, they remain a formidable foe. They have proven resilient in the face of American-led NATO firepower during the war, outsmarting the best U.S. military minds through the use of homemade bombs, sophisticated high-profile attacks and political savvy.
At remote Afghan army posts, soldiers like Nassem Gul doubt their own ability to repel the Taliban that has kept NATO at bay for over a decade.
"When the Taliban try to overrun our post, we think first to call NATO air support. If there is no air support it is very difficult to fight and even hold this post," said Gul, complaining he needs heavier weapons than his AK-47 rifle.
(Additional reporting by Serena Chaudhry in ISLAMABAD and Hamid Shalizi in KABUL, Editing by Michael Georgy and Jonathan Thatcher)
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Patrick Cockburn: The death of the American dream in Afghanistan
A devastating leaked Nato report shows the extent of US failure, as the Taliban prepare for the occupying forces to leave
The Independent
By Patrick Cockburn
Sunday 05 February 2012
The United States' announcement that it plans to end the combat role of its troops in Afghanistan earlier than expected, and before the end of next year, is a crucial milestone in the international forces' retreat from the country. Coming after the French decision to go early, the US move looks like part of a panicky rush for the exit. More important, Afghans like to bet on winners, and the US action will convince many that these are increasingly likely to be the Taliban and Pakistan rather than the Afghan government. No wonder Nato officials looked so anxious as they pretended that the US action had not come as a nasty surprise.
The decision, revealed by the US Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta, with deliberate casualness to journalists on his plane, is an admission of failure. The US has an army of 90,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and is spending $100bn a year, but has still been unable to defeat 20,000-25,000 Taliban who receive no pay at all.
A little over 10 years ago, I was standing on a small hill by a ruined textile factory 40 miles north of Kabul watching the plumes of fire erupt on the skyline as US bombs and missiles exploded in the Taliban front line. In the next few weeks the Taliban government imploded and I was able to drive nervously but safely to Kabul and, soon after, to Kandahar.
It is an extraordinary turn-around that a decade later the Americans are departing and the Taliban are back in business. A leaked Nato report on interrogations of 4,000 captured Taliban, al-Qa'ida, foreign fighters and civilians shows that Taliban prisoners are in a confident mood. They believe their popular support is growing, Afghan government officials secretly collaborate with them, and, once foreign troops are gone, they believe they are going to win. The authors of the Nato report say "Afghan civilians frequently prefer Taliban governance over Giroa [Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan] usually as a result of government corruption, ethnic bias and lack of connection with local religious and tribal leaders." This enables the Taliban easily to recruit more fighters to replace their casualties.
As in Iraq, departing US troops will leave behind a very different political and military landscape in Afghanistan from the one they hoped to create. In the Iraqi case, power is held by Shia religious parties closely linked to Iran, which is the opposite of what the Americans wanted to see when they captured Baghdad in 2003. In the Afghan case, the government of Hamid Karzai has waning authority as the US steps back and Afghans take out insurance policies to ensure personal survival by making approaches to the Taliban. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, powerful US armies failed to impose their control or restore peace.
America's wars launched in the aftermath of 9/11 led Washington to overplay its hand disastrously. This was not so obvious at the time as it is now. At first sight, both wars looked easy because they were against feeble, isolated enemies, unpopular in their own countries. But successful invasion is very different from successful occupation. In neither Baghdad nor Kabul did the US have an adequate local partner. No neighbouring countries wanted the occupations to succeed. Above all, the US underestimated the extent to which foreign occupation generates resistance.
The Nato report, based on no fewer than 27,000 interrogations, is full of interesting facts about the Taliban prisoners' optimistic perception of where they stand today. It is not so much that Taliban are greatly liked, but that the government and its local emissaries are loathed for their corruption, incompetence and violence. This is evident even among people whom self-interest should lead to support the status quo. I was talking to an estate agent in north Kabul just over a year ago, when, after denouncing government corruption, he furiously told me that "people are so angry there will be a revolution". On an earlier occasion, I was having a rather boring interview with a mid-level official, who told me of all the good things the government was planning to do. I asked him, without expecting much of interest to emerge, if he wanted to say anything off the record. He said quietly that indeed he did and, without changing his tone of voice, went on to describe the members of the government he had just been praising as a gang of warlords and racketeers.
Such opposition to the government does not necessarily mean support for the insurgents, but it creates a political vacuum which they swiftly fill. The former Communist political and military commander for the whole of southern Afghanistan, General Nur al-Haq Ulumi, told me that the Communist Party in the 1980s had 200,000 members as core supporters. "I doubt if there are more than 40 people really loyal to Karzai," he added. "He does not even have the full support of his own cabinet."
Candid about Afghans' criticism of their government, the Nato report is diplomatically reticent about the other main reason why the Taliban has been able to survive, recover and absorb the US counter-offensive in 2010-11. The Taliban benefits from simply being Afghans who are fighting foreign occupation, and "occupation" is the word used by both Taliban and government officials. The Pashtun, the community to which the Taliban mostly belong, are notorious for their detestation of foreigners.
In one respect, Afghanistan has been militarily more difficult for the US than Iraq. In the latter country, in the aftermath of the sectarian slaughter of 2006-07, Sunni and Shia were more frightened of each other than they were of American troops. The presence of US soldiers in any Baghdad neighbourhood at this stage of the war meant less violence inflicted on ordinary people. The situation in Afghanistan is exactly the reverse of this, with the arrival of foreign forces inevitably bringing more violence as special forces carry out night raids to kill local Taliban militants.
An American success in Afghanistan was impossible once the Pakistan army had decided to give full backing to a return of the Taliban. The US faced the same strategic weakness as the Soviet army during its Afghan campaign. However many setbacks the anti-Soviet mujahideen or the anti-American Taliban suffered, they could always retreat across the 1,600 mile-long border with Pakistan to rest, re-organise and re-equip. President Barack Obama was told during his first days in office that the heart of military problems facing the US in Afghanistan lay in Pakistan, but Washington could never work out an effective way of dealing with it. The Nato report just leaked tellingly quotes a senior al-Qa'ida commander from Kunar province in eastern Afghanistan saying: "Pakistan knows everything. They control everything. I can't [expletive] on a tree in Kunar without them watching. The Taliban are not Islam. The Taliban are Islamabad."
The US has failed in Afghanistan and the Taliban will become stronger. But it is unlikely they can win a total victory. The non-Pashtun communities, a majority of the population, will resist them. Reconciliation will be very difficult in a country as deeply divided as Afghanistan. The war may soon be over for the Americans, but not for the Afghans.
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In Afghanistan, a new approach to teaching history: Leave out the wars
Washington Post
By Kevin Sieff
Sunday, February 5, 2012
KABUL
In a country where the recent past has unfolded like a war epic, officials think they have found a way to teach Afghan history without widening the fractures between long-quarreling ethnic and political groups: leave out the past four decades.
A series of government-issued textbooks funded by the United States and several foreign aid organizations do just that, pausing history in 1973. There is no mention of the Soviet war, the mujaheddin, the Taliban or the U.S. military presence. In their efforts to promote a single national identity, Afghan leaders have deemed their own history too controversial.
“Our recent history tears us apart. We’ve created a curriculum based on the older history that brings us together, with figures universally recognized as being great,” said Farooq Wardak, Afghanistan’s education minister. “These are the first books in decades that are depoliticized and de-ethnicized.”
High school students across the country are expected to receive the textbooks in time for the school year this spring. The books are the only ones approved for use in public classrooms as part of the new “depoliticized curriculum.” Elementary and middle school textbooks, which also conclude history lessons in the early 1970s, have been distributed over the past several years.
As Western leaders look to wind down their part in the war, the inability of Afghans to agree on a basic historical record casts doubt on a much more complex exercise that is critical to the country’s future: the creation of a government that would unite Afghanistan’s disparate groups.
But Afghan officials insist that the new textbooks will be one of the government’s best state-building tools, offering a fresh perspective to a generation raised in the middle of a war but unencumbered by the biases of the past four decades. During much of that time, warring political and ethnic groups used their own course materials, imbued with their own ideologies and peppered with their own heroes and villains.
“That’s how we got our extremist ideas,” said Attaullah Wahidyar, director of publication and information for the Education Ministry. “Now, we’ve learned our lesson.”
Foreign powers only deepened divisions, distributing books to further their own political agendas and bringing the “New Great Game” in Central Asia into Afghan classrooms.
In the 1970s, the Soviet Union printed books that stressed communism’s virtues and the importance of Marxist theory. During the last years of the Cold War, the United States spent millions on Afghan textbooks filled with violent images and talk of jihad, part of a covert effort to incite resistance to the Soviet occupation. During the Taliban’s reign in the 1990s, conservative Islamic texts were imported from Pakistan. In western Afghanistan, Iranian textbooks that openly praised Tehran-backed militant groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas were for years distributed in public schools.
‘A sensitive history’
When educators, scholars and politicians gathered to overhaul the curriculum, beginning in 2002, they were intent on undoing the politics of Afghan historiography. But they could not agree on how to address the country’s descent into civil war or its various insurgent groups. Even the mention of key figures — the Northern Alliance commander Ahmad Shah Massoud or the Taliban’s Mohammad Omar — would spark fierce loyalty or hostility, officials said, paralyzing any history lesson.
Educators suggested that the only solution would be to omit the period after King Mohammed Zahir Shah, whose ouster in 1973 ushered in an era of chronic political instability. Among those charged with crafting the new curriculum, there was near-universal agreement.
“We aren’t mature enough to come up with a way to teach such a sensitive history,” Wahidyar said.
Foreign donors reviewed the books to ensure there was no religious content and that materials were well designed, but they made no suggestions related to the omission of recent history, Afghan officials said.
The high school textbooks were funded by the U.S. military’s foreign aid arm, the Commander’s Emergency Response Program.
U.S. military cultural advisers “reviewed the social studies textbooks, grades 10-12, for ‘inappropriate’ material, such as inciting violence or religious discrimination. Content of these textbooks, such as events or dates, are the responsibility of the Ministry of Education,” said David Lakin, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Afghanistan. “There were no discussions between [U.S. military] officials and the Ministry of Education on the teaching of Afghan history.”
Despite the broad consensus, some Afghan scholars and educators have pushed back, claiming the new textbooks mark an abdication of the ministry’s academic responsibility.
“This will be the biggest treason against the people of Afghanistan. . . . It will be a hindrance to all of our spiritual and material gains over the last four decades,” said Mir Ahmad Kamawal, a history professor at Kabul University. “All these young people will be deprived of knowing what happened during this period.”
‘Community-building’
Afghan education officials have begun crisscrossing the country, trying to persuade 8.2 million students and their families that a fair curriculum will emanate from Kabul.
The new history lessons will be taught even in villages still controlled by insurgents. Officials say that if they detailed the atrocities committed during five years of Taliban rule, the textbooks would almost certainly be disputed and discarded.
“We’re talking about community-building through education, and that includes the insurgency,” said Wardak, the education minister. “This curriculum needs to appeal to all Afghans.”
Wardak recently spoke to groups of teachers and students in eastern Afghanistan, explaining that they should come to expect uniformity and accuracy in new public school lessons. If sources of tension can be avoided, he said, the Education Ministry might stand a better chance of recruiting the more than 4 million children currently out of school.
“The curriculum is a national one, based on Islamic principles. It’s not just for Pashtuns or Tajiks or Hazaras,” he said in front of a packed meeting hall in Nangahar province. “The curriculum will bring us all under one roof. It will encourage brotherhood and unity.”
Then he toured schools, hospitals and mosques. In one public building, portraits of Afghan leaders over the past 200 years lined the wall. Wardak pointed to a photo of Mohammed Daoud Khan, who assumed power in 1973.“That’s where the division started,” he said, “and that’s where our history books end.”
Special correspondent Sayed Salahuddin contributed to this report.
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Pakistan seeks a place at Qatar Taliban talks
Financial Times
By Matthew Green, Farhan Bokhari and Michael Peel
February 4, 2012
Islamabad, Abu Dhabi
Pakistan’s premier will visit Qatar on Monday for talks about the Gulf State’s push to help the US and Afghan government start peace talks with the Taliban.
Qatar aims to play host to a planned Taliban office to make it easier for the Afghan government and US officials to make contact with insurgents. Washington wants to negotiate an end the fighting in Afghanistan before the vast majority of foreign troops leave by the end of 2014 and US officials have been urging Pakistan to support its efforts.
Yusuf Raza Gilani, Pakistan’s prime minister, will travel to Doha to discuss talks with the Taliban and other issues, Pakistani officials said on Sunday.
Western officials have been encouraged by the security hierarchy’s decision to allow Taliban representatives based in Pakistan to travel to Qatar. Pakistan’s intelligence agencies, which acknowledge maintaining contacts within the insurgency, have quashed past attempts by Taliban commanders to reach out to the Afghan government without their go-ahead.
“The visit is pretty much about the negotiations. Pakistan wants to make certain, we are not left out of the Afghan process which is due to take place in Qatar,” said an official in Pakistan’s foreign ministry.
Mr Gilani was due to be accompanied by Hina Rabbani Khar, Pakistan’s foreign minister, who visited Kabul on Wednesday to try to repair a sharp deterioration in ties triggered by the murder of Burhanuddin Rabbani, the former Afghan president, in September.
Rabbani had been the head of a High Peace Council mandated by the Afghan government to make contacts with insurgents. Afghan officials blamed the ISI, Pakistan’s main spy agency, for the murder, though the accusations were more a reflection of entrenched suspicions rooted in Pakistan’s history of backing Afghan insurgents than hard evidence.
Mrs Khar said Pakistan was prepared to do whatever Afghanistan asked, to help the government foster dialogue with insurgents, though she warned that the start of negotiations proper was still “miles away.”
Hopes of starting talks have been complicated by the Afghan government’s fears that it might be sidelined in negotiations.
Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s president, recalled his ambassador to Qatar in December to register his concern that his government was being left out of US-Taliban talks.
Afghan officials have floated the idea that Saudi Arabia – a rival of Qatar – might serve as a facilitator, raising the prospect of more diplomatic wrangling.
Pakistan’s security forces supported the emergence of the Islamist militia as a proxy force in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s and experts say that they continue to provide a degree of strategic direction and logistical support to the movement. But Pakistan’s relationship with the Taliban has evolved since the 1990s, with ties between Taliban leaders and their handlers in the ISI strained by mutual mistrust.
A US military report based on interrogations of some 4,000 Taliban and al-Qaeda detainees that was leaked last week suggested that the ISI continues to play a significant role in steering Taliban strategy – though the authors did not find significant evidence Pakistan is providing funding or weapons.
Pakistan’s military, which dominates policy-making on Afghanistan, says it wants to see stability in its neighbourhood, though it remains far from certain that the army could usher the Taliban into a deal, even assuming it believes such an outcome suits its interests.
“Among the Taliban, not everyone is on board and there are deep divisions,” said a Pakistani intelligence official. “Many Taliban see the US practically losing the war. Why would they want to negotiate when they also see themselves in a position of increasing strength?”
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Car Bomb Kills Seven in Afghanistan
Associated Press
FEBRUARY 5, 2012
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan
A car bomb exploded just outside the police headquarters of a southern Afghanistan city on Sunday, killing at least seven people, officials said.
The blast went off at a parking lot outside the police building in Kandahar, said Saisal Ahmad, a spokesman for the provincial government. Five police officers and two civilians were killed, and least 19 people were wounded, he added.
The blast was large enough that it shattered windows in nearby buildings.
No one immediately claimed responsibility.
Although the international military coalition in Afghanistan has poured resources into Kandahar city and surrounding areas in recent years as part of a push to take back insurgent strongholds, the area has remained dangerous and there have been repeated attacks against government installations.
In the north, meanwhile, Afghan police said that an American soldier shot and killed an Afghan guard at a U.S. base Friday, apparently because the American thought the guard was about to attack him.
There have been a growing number of attacks by Afghan soldiers against international forces in Afghanistan in recent years, some the result of arguments and others by insurgent infiltrators. Last month, an Afghan soldier shot and killed four unarmed French troops at a base in eastern Afghanistan.
Friday's shooting in Sari Pul province in northern Afghanistan resulted from an unfortunate misunderstanding, said Sayed Jahangir, the deputy police chief for the province.
Afghans guard the outside perimeter of the base and Americans guard inside. Mr. Jahangir said that the Afghan guard—a man named Abdul Rahim—wanted to go into the base and started arguing with the American at the door. Mr. Rahim did not raise his weapon, but the American thought he was about to do so and fired, Mr. Jahangir said.
"Our initial reports show that the American thought he was acting in self defense," Mr. Jahangir said. Mr. Rahim was a private guard, not an Afghan soldier or policeman, Mr. Jahangir said.
U.S. forces were "aware of an incident in northern Afghanistan" and were investigating, said U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings. He declined to provide further details.
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Taliban condemned for Afghan casualties
McClatchy Newspapers
By Jon Stephenson
04/02/2012
KABUL, Afghanistan
The Taliban and other insurgent groups were responsible for nearly 80 percent of the civilian deaths in the war in Afghanistan last year, said a U.N. report released Saturday.
A leading Afghan politician and women's rights activist labeled Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar a hypocrite and called his followers terrorists in the wake of the U.N. report into civilian casualties.
"Civilian casualties by any side are not acceptable," said Fawzia Kufi, a member of Parliament and head of the National Assembly's women's affairs committee. She said the Afghan government as well as U.S. and international forces had to accept responsibility for not doing enough to protect innocent Afghans in the conflict.
But the Taliban had made terrorism the centerpiece of their strategy in Afghanistan. "They go for terrorist attacks," said Kufi, "They are intentionally targeting civilians."The report said the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan documented 3,021 civilian deaths in the conflict in 2011 - up 8 percent from 2010, which saw 2,790 deaths, and an increase of 25 percent from 2009, when 2,412 civilians were killed.
The U.N. said "anti-government elements" - shorthand for the Taliban and other insurgent groups - were responsible for 2,332, or 77 percent, of conflict-related deaths in 2011, up 14 percent from 2010.
The report said 410 civilian deaths, or 14 percent of the 2011 total, were caused by operations by "pro-government forces,"
or Afghan, U.S. and international security forces, a drop of 4 percent from 2010. A further 279 deaths, or 9 percent of civilian fatalities, could not be blamed on any side.
Kufi accused the Taliban and Omar of hypocrisy and dishonesty.
"Mullah Omar said during (last year's Muslim festival of) Eid that civilian casualties were unacceptable, and that deliberately killing civilians was a breach of human rights," but the insurgents were attacking more civilians than previously, she said.
The U.N. report said the record loss of life of Afghan children, women and men "resulted from changes in the tactics of anti-government elements and changes in the effects of tactics of parties to the conflict."
Insurgents "used improvised explosive devices more frequently and more widely across the country, conducted deadlier suicide attacks yielding greater numbers of victims, and increased the unlawful and targeted killing of civilians," the report said.
The Taliban were targeting civilians as an act of terror, said Kufi, because they were being defeated, but "they cannot justify their actions."
Attempts Saturday to reach Taliban spokesmen for comment were not successful. U.S. Gen. John Allen, who commands forces in Afghanistan, said they would continue to do everything possible to reduce Afghan civilian casualties.
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Afghan police: US soldier shoots Afghan guard
AP
05/02/2012
KABUL, Afghanistan
An American soldier shot and killed an Afghan guard at a base in the country's north, apparently because the American thought the guard was about to attack him, Afghan police said Sunday.
There have been a growing number of attacks by Afghan soldiers against international forces in Afghanistan in recent years, some the result of arguments and others by insurgent infiltrators. Last month, an Afghan soldier shot and killed four unarmed French troops last month at a base in eastern Afghanistan.
Friday's shooting in Sari Pul province in northern Afghanistan resulted from an unfortunate misunderstanding, said Sayed Jahangir, the deputy police chief for the province.
Afghans guard the outside perimeter of the base and Americans guard inside. Jahangir said that the Afghan guard — a man named Abdul Rahim — wanted to go into the base and started arguing with the American at the door. Rahim did not raise his weapon, but the American thought he was about to do so and fired, Jahangir said.
"Our initial reports show that the American thought he was acting in self defense," Jahangir said. Rahim was a private guard, not an Afghan soldier or policeman, Jahangir said.
U.S. forces were "aware of an incident in northern Afghanistan" and were investigating, said U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings. He declined to provide further details.
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Afghan Taliban deny Mullah Omar wrote to White House
Reuters
Sat Feb 4, 2012
KABUL
The Afghan Taliban denied on Saturday that the group's leader Mullah Omar wrote to the White House last year.
The White House received a letter in 2011 which purported to come directly from Mullah Omar, asking the United States to deliver prisoners whose transfer is now central to American efforts to broker peace in Afghanistan, an Obama administration official said Friday.
"Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan rejects this baseless rumor with the strongest of words," a statement on the Islamist group's website said, using the name by which the Taliban often calls itself.
The letter, intended for President Barack Obama, reportedly expressed impatience that the White House had not transferred five former senior Taliban officials out of Guantanamo Bay military prison.
The White House itself was "skeptical" the letter was actually from Mullah Omar, the official said, though others within the administration believed it was authentic.
"Hoping for surrender from the Afghan people is an unrealistic wish and a goal which could not be achieved by America in the past ten years," said Saturday's statement, attributed to Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.
The Taliban last month said it would open a political office in Qatar, suggesting the group may be willing to engage in negotiations.
After more than a decade of war, Washington and its allies are announcing plans to steadily withdraw their troops amid doubts about the ability of the Afghan government and its nascent security forces to confront ongoing violence.
This week, U.S. Defense Secretary surprised Kabul by suggesting the American combat mission could end in 2013, well ahead of the end-2014 deadline agree with Afghan President Hamid Karzai for the exit of foreign combat troops.
"The U.S. is committed to the Lisbon timetable, which means that combat operations by international and Afghan forces are fully resourced and capable as necessary until the end of 2014 and beyond," U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker said in a statement Saturday.
"This is not a change in policy or strategy but recognition of the progress we all agreed to achieve in Lisbon."
(Reporting by Daniel Magnowski; Editing by Jonathan Thatcher)
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Panetta surprised his European colleagues with Afghanistan announcement
Foreign Policy (blog)
By Josh Rogin
Saturday, February 4, 2012
MUNICH
At Saturday's morning session of the 2012 Munich Security Conference, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta clarified that NATO forces will not stop fighting in Afghanistan in 2013, but he confirmed that the U.S. hopes to hand over the combat lead to Afghan forces that year. Many European and NATO officials in the room were still a little miffed they had to learn about the strategy shift in the newspapers two days ago.
On the way to Brussels to attend the NATO defense ministers meeting Feb. 2, Panetta made news by saying that U.S. forces will transition out of a lead combat role next year. "Our goal is to complete all of that transition in 2013," Panetta said. "Hopefully by mid- to the latter part of 2013 we'll be able to make a transition from a combat role."
On Saturday morning here in Munich, sitting beside Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Panetta made the same announcement again, but this time with a bit more nuance.
"Our bottom line [in Afghanistan] is ‘in together, out together.' As an alliance, we are fully committed to the Lisbon framework and transitioning to Afghan control by 2014. Our discussions included considerations about how ISAF will move from the lead combat role to a support, advise, and assist role as Afghan security forces move into the lead," he said. "We hope Afghan forces will be ready to take the combat lead in all of Afghanistan sometime in 2013. But of course ISAF will continue to be fully combat capable and we will engage in combat as necessary thereafter."
Prior to Panetta's statements this week, the only public milestone between now and the full transition of responsibility to Afghan forces at the end of 2014, as was announced at the Lisbon conference last year, was the Sept. 2012 deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. surge forces, as announced by President Barack Obama last June.
Panetta's remarks this week place a new milestone in the middle of those two dates, by setting a public goal of handing over lead combat responsibility for the last geographical area in Afghanistan, known as Tranche 5, over a year before the full handover of responsibility is set to take place.
European officials here in Munich said they understood the reason for the new milestone, which is to give the Afghans some time to adjust to having the combat lead while NATO forces are still present in large enough numbers to help them out, especially if there are bumps along the road.
But several NATO and European officials were shocked and some were even a little miffed that Panetta had made a major change in the messaging over the Afghanistan war without giving them a heads up.
There are two different theories as to why Panetta decided to announce the 2013 milestone on the plane to Europe, before telling his NATO counterparts about it, despite that he was about to see them only hours later.
Some here in Munich think that Panetta simply spoke too fast and didn't mean to surprise his European colleagues. Others believe that Panetta wanted to announce the news on his own terms, rather than tell the Europeans and then have it leak out to the press, perhaps in an even less articulate way.
One high ranking European official told The Cable that his government was expecting such an announcement at the NATO summit in Chicago in May, not here in Europe in February.
"The feeling was, well we can't say the same thing in Chicago as we said in Lisbon," the official said, referring to the expected May announcement. "It was all carefully planned and now that plan is completely ruined."
European governments had told the Obama administration that announcing a new milestone for drawdowns in Afghanistan was politically difficult for them, but that they were willing to go along with it, albeit reluctantly.
"We said, ‘Okay, if Obama needs this politically, that's fine. But please consider the bad side effects for us. This is hard to explain to our constituencies," the European official said. "Before today we could still say the drawdown was conditions based. Now we can't make the argument that it's anything but politically motivated."
Panetta's main mission Saturday was to reassure European countries that the United States was not abandoning Europe despite the defense budget cuts in the U.S. and the American strategic pivot to Asia. He announced that a battalion sized U.S. military force would rotate to Europe as America's first concrete presence in the NATO Response Force.
"Our military footprint in Europe will remain larger than in any other region in the world," he said.
In the question and answer session following his remarks, Panetta said that the Pentagon was not planning to implement the defense "trigger" set to go into effect in Jan. 2013, which would mandate $600 billion in additional defense cuts over the next ten years.
"Sequestration is a crazy formula," he said. "We're not paying attention to sequester. Sequester is crazy... If sequester happened, the strategy I just developed would have to be thrown out the window."
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Taliban Local Commander Killed in Kunduz Clashes
TOLOnews.com
Sunday, 05 February 2012
A Taliban local commander was killed in clashes with Afghan police in northern Kunduz province on Saturday night, local police said.
The incident happened when a Taliban group attacked on a police checkpoint in Khanabad district of Kunduz province and Bashir a Taliban local commander was killed during clashes, Kunduz police said.
Other Taliban militants escaped from the areas, officials said.
Afghan police and civilians suffered no casualties during the attack, police officials added.
Kunduz police said that the militant group planted improvised explosive devices and launched attacks against government forces in the province.
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U.S. brigadier general dies in Afghanistan
CNN
By the CNN Wire Staff
February 5, 2012
U.S. Brig. Gen. Terence Hildner died in Kabul of apparent natural causes, officials said, making him one of the highest ranking officers to die in Afghanistan.
He was 49.
Hildner, who was commander of the 13th Expeditionary Sustainment Command, Fort Hood, Texas, was in Afghanistan to support the NATO training mission.
"The unfortunate and untimely death of Brigadier General Hildner was a shock to our unit and Families," Col. Knowles Atchison, 13th ESC rear commander, said in a statement posted on the Foot Hood website. "Both forward deployed elements and we at home station are deeply saddened by this loss. We will all pull together through this difficult period and care for one another."
The circumstances surrounding his death are under investigation, the statement said.
Hildner graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1984 and attended the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College in 1997. A Connecticut native, he listed his home in Fairfax, Virginia.
In 2003, Hildner assumed command of the 13th Corps Support Command's Special Troops Battalion at Fort Hood. That battalion conducted two operational deployments during his years in command -- the first in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the second in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Previously, Hildner served in Iraq during Operation Desert Storm and participated in the last U.S. patrol along the East-West German border before its reunification.
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Coalition Commander Says Afghan Plan Still Intact
Voice of America
By Al Pessin
February 04, 2012
Brussels
The commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, U.S. Marine Corps General John Allen, says the plan for a transition to full Afghan security control is intact after the announcement that American troops will largely end their combat duties next year, rather than the following year as had been widely expected.
General Allen took command of international forces in Afghanistan last July. Since then, his mission has been to put himself out of a job - to train Afghan troops to take over, against a weakened Taliban, by the end of 2014.
“It is a difficult job,” he says. “The Taliban continues to carry out spectacular attacks, and most Afghan troops start with a will to fight, but few professional soldiering skills.”
Then last week, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said he hopes U.S. troops will be able to end their combat mission by late 2013, more than a year ahead of the final handover agreed to at the NATO summit in Lisbon in 2010. The announcement surprised some foreign officials and other experts, but General Allen says that was always part of the plan.
“That has been the plan all along. It has not accelerated the Lisbon-based timeline. We will continue to serve right alongside, support the ANSF (Afghan National Security Forces) through the remainder of '13, across all of '14, right to the end of '14, which was the roadmap out of Lisbon.”
Still, General Allen says while Afghan forces are to be in the lead throughout the country starting in the middle of next year, foreign troops should expect to do some fighting.
“We will never be in a situation where there is no combat or no likelihood of combat. The enemy gets a vote here. This has been a virulent insurgency. We should fully expect, as advisers always have been, that advisers when they are supporting combat forces are going to be exposed to combat.”
So the general does not expect the Taliban to give up easily. But he also rejects the findings of a secret U.S. military report leaked to the British media last week. The report says captured Taliban fighters claim their organization is stronger than Western officials say it is.
“The Taliban who are in our custody might be very interested in portraying for us that they're willing to wait until after 2014. But frankly, that's a bankrupt narrative because there's going to be an international force of some form or another aiding the ANSF long after 2014.”
Foreign help for the Afghans after 2014 will largely involve money and training for its civilian government and security forces.
But General Allen and other security experts say some sort of small but capable foreign force will also be needed.
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Afghan Troops Should Not Enter Pakistan: Petraeus
TOLOnews.com
Saturday, 04 February 2012
The CIA Director General David Petraeus has told a congressional committee that he believes Afghan forces should not enter Pakistan to destroy the sanctuaries that the Taliban leaders allegedly enjoyed in that country, reports said.
"With respect should the Afghan forces be allowed to go, well, I think that's obviously a question for Afghanistan, but I think they probably have sufficient fights on their hands without invading the soil of another country, even as significant as is the threat that is posed by some of these safe havens across the border," Petraeus said.
Mr Petraeus has also told the committee that the United States should further develop a northern supply route to support US and Nato troops in Afghanistan, adding that the US and Russia were already cooperating with each other in this connection.
The comments come as Pakistan recently blocked Nato supply route to Afghanistan that passes through the Kheyber Pass. The supply route was blocked in response to a Nato air strike on two Pakistani checkpoints near Afghan border that killed 24 soldiers on Nov 2011.
After the incident relations between Pakistan and US deteriorated.
Meanwhile, during a discussion on Pakistan's role in the Afghan dispute, Director of National Intelligence Gen. James Clapper claimed that senior Taliban leaders still enjoyed sanctuaries on Pakistani soil.
"And the support of Afghanistan's neighbours - notably and particularly Pakistan - will reign essential to sustain the gains" that the US-led forces had made in that country.
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Afghan who killed French troops paid to infiltrate army
AFP
04/02/2012
A renegade Afghan soldier who shot dead four French troops paid a bribe to rejoin his country's army after deserting, the US news website McClatchy said on Saturday.
The 21-year-old soldier had already bribed a recruiter to enter the army a first time, he said during questioning after the killings in January, according to the first pages of his statement seen by AFP.
In April 2011, the recruiter "asked me if I wanted to serve in army, I said yes but told him I didn't have National ID," the soldier said in his statement, shown to AFP by McClatchy.
"He told me to pay him some money and he would take care of it."
He said he paid 500 Afghanis ($10) and the recruiter took him to a nearby hotel to prepare the paperwork, before going to the training centre.
After eight months in the army, the soldier said he "escaped" to Peshawar, Pakistan's main northwestern city that borders Taliban and Al-Qaeda strongholds near the Afghan border, where he stayed "some time".
When he returned to Kabul, he said he paid the same recruiter 800 Afghanis to re-infiltrate the army.
On January 20, the man shot dead four unarmed French soldiers during training at a base in Gwan, in the eastern province of Kapisa.
During initial questioning, the soldier claimed he carried out the attack because of a video showing US Marines urinating on the dead bodies of Taliban insurgents, security sources told AFP in the days after the killings.
The incident prompted French President Nicolas Sarkozy to say his country would end its combat role in Afghanistan by the end of 2013 -- instead of the planned NATO deadline of the end of 2014.
On Friday, NATO defence ministers meeting in Brussels endorsed a French proposal to beef up security measures to stop insurgents infiltrating the Afghan army.
NATO did not provide details about the plans but they are expected to focus on better controlling the recruitment of Afghans, more thorough investigations of potential recruits and the use of biometric technology.
Six percent of overall NATO deaths in Afghanistan have been attributed to attacks by Afghan security forces, according to a confidential alliance report leaked to the media last month.
"These events are rare but they are symbolically important for the credibility of the Afghan army," French Defence Minister Gerard Longuet said on Friday.
"Quantitatively, they are marginal. Media-wise, they are unbearable."
Some 40 attacks were committed by Afghan forces against NATO troops in the last four years, including 18 last year, Longuet said.
There are about 130,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan, working with more than 300,000 members of the Afghan security forces.
France will gradually withdraw its 3,600 troops, eventually leaving behind around 400-500 military trainers at the end of 2014, when NATO is scheduled to end its combat mission, Longuet said.
NATO allies voiced hope this week that Afghan forces would take the security lead across the country next year, with foreign troops in a backup role.
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‘Pakistan is a resilient country’
DAWN.com
Feb 4, 2012
KARACHI
In Pakistan’s diversity lies a measure of its resilience. This was argued by distinguished journalist and author Anatol Lieven during his talk at the Oxford University Head Office on Saturday.
Mr Lieven’s talk basically gave a sketch of his book ‘Pakistan: A Hard Country.’ He began by asserting that Pakistan was not a failed state and said the people who had gathered to listen to him were proof of it. Pakistan was not Afghanistan, Chechnya or Somalia. He maintained that his book was about the sources of resilience in Pakistan, which could be sources of stagnation as well (in terms of development). To explain his point, he said he had used the expression ‘Janus-faced’ many a time in the book, and that the editors had made 18 deletions of the phrase, leaving just half a dozen. The book was an attempt at discussing power in the country, how it is exercised and what are its roots – religious, cultural etc. This central theme was set against the background of the war in Afghanistan and the rise of militancy in Pakistan. He told the gathering that when an American publisher read it he was taken aback because he had thought that it would be about the Taliban and an impending Islamic revolution in Pakistan. He added that it also discussed the role of the military and the four provinces and the difference within those provinces.
Mr Lieven said he had spent a lot of time talking about the diversity in Pakistan. For example, how Karachi was different from the rest of Sindh and how Punjab was an immensely varied region. Also, the important role that kinship played in the country’s politics and power struggles. In his view, a measure of its resilience lay in the country’s diversity, because of which, however, it was sometimes difficult to get things done. He argued that Pakistan couldn’t have an Iran-style revolution because it didn’t have a monolithic culture.
Mr Lieven said that as he was a journalist he got quotes from the Pakistani people in their own words. The problem with the West was that it didn’t listen to people directly and therefore had a flawed understanding of things. If you were to know about the tribal justice system in Balochistan, you had to talk to a Baloch sardar, he pointed out.
With respect to militancy in Pakistan Mr Lieven said that although the fear of terrorism was pervasive, and that it had claimed numerous victims, the insurgency was limited, particularly after the 2009 Swat operation in which militants were driven back. However, he added that insurgency was common in the region and, except for Bangladesh, every country had faced it.
Mr Lieven said sympathy for the Afghan Taliban in areas like Peshawar was similar to the support for the mujahideen in the ‘80s. It did not necessarily mean an Islamic revolution. He argued that up to a certain point the situation did appear perilous but the post-Musharraf scenario proved that if the state and the army made a concerted attempt things could be done. He said his book also took issue with the US foreign policy. The US should realise that Pakistan is a much more important country than Afghanistan and that it needs to tread lightly here. He said however that the Osama bin Laden operation had impacted public opinion in the US, and if there was a terrorist attack in the US or India in future, US retaliation could be severe. It was important for Pakistan to continue visible cooperation against international terrorism, he remarked.
Replying to a question, Mr Lieven said one of the reasons he used the word ‘hard’ in the title of the book was that he would often hear the phrase ‘Pakistan is a hard country’ from the locals. He gave the example of a Chaudhry in Punjab who, explaining the killing of his detractors, commented that Pakistan was a hard country.
Responding to a query about bin Laden’s killing, he said there was an intellectual awareness about Pakistan in important circles in the US. The US was engaged in a war it could not win but was determined not to be seen to lose. He informed the gathering that he once asked an American general to define victory. The general replied he couldn’t define victory but knew that defeat looked like Saigon.
On the question of Balochistan he said there was a time when only one tribe would be rebelling against the state but now a mass of semi-educated de-tribalised youth were joining the Baloch rebellion.
Anatol Lieven is professor of International Relations and Terrorism Studies at King’s College, London and a senior fellow of the New America Foundation in Washington DC.
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America’s Drones, Transparency, and Accountability
Council on Foreign Relations (blog)
By Micah Zenko
February 4, 2012
On Monday evening, President Obama made the unprecedented decision to publicly acknowledge U.S. drone strikes against suspected terrorists and militants in Pakistan. During a Google+ “Hang Out” webchat, the president overturned seven and half-years of policy when he stated that: “Obviously a lot of these strikes have been in the FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan] going after al-Qaeda suspects.”
Obama’s careful statement was the first explicit acknowledgment from a U.S. government official of the CIA’s drone strikes. It was a welcome and long-overdue recognition that the policy of pretend secrecy harmed U.S. national interests by allowing myths and misperceptions to fester about this growing and controversial program. The president’s statement sets the stage for a speech that Attorney General Eric Holder will soon make, which will reportedly contain “a carefully worded but firm defense of its right to target U.S. citizens.” This is in response the use of a CIA drone in late September to kill Anwar al-Awlaki, a New Mexico-born U.S. citizen, who was also a key leader of an Al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen.
With President Obama’s explicit mention—that came within a longer four minute discussion of drones—the use of armed drones outside of the battlefield of Afghanistan can no longer be considered covert actions, which under U.S. law are those operations “where it is intended that the role of the United States Government will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly.”
What has been the reaction of administration officials to this new era of openness initiated by President Obama’s acknowledgment? Though perhaps Attorney General Holder’s forthcoming speech will answer some of the numerous outstanding questions regarding drones, if the past week is any indication, nothing has changed.
First, a minor point, but there remains no transcript of the President’s Google+ webchat. When White House spokesperson Jay Carney was asked on Tuesday if a transcript would be made available, he said “we don’t put out transcripts of interviews” conducted by the president with people via the web. However, the White House did release transcripts when Obama did similar events for Facebook (April 20, 2011) and Twitter (July 6, 2011). Moreover, the president spoke at the Washington Auto Show earlier that day, and the White House revealed what he thought about “that Camaro with the American Eagle and the American flag.” It should also publish a transcript of his comments made during the Google+ webchat.
Second, when asked about Obama’s statements regarding the drones, White House spokesperson Carney was comfortable to speak at length about how U.S. counterterrorism policies are effective and “exceptionally precise, exceptionally surgical and exceptionally targeted.” However, when a reporter asked a follow-up question of whether the president’s statement “was purposeful or not?” Carney responded: “I’m not going to discuss broadly or specifically supposed covert programs. I would just point you to what he said.” (emphasis added) Thus, the White House spokesperson is permitted to indirectly praise the CIA drone program, but is unaware if it remains a covert operation.
Moreover, on the same day that Carney refused to say if Obama’s comments were intentional, a senior administration official confirmed to CNN that they were “neither a slip-up,” nor a “secret message to the Pakistanis.” Thus, while anonymous administration officials can explain the fact that the President uttered a statement and shed light on why he did so, the official White House spokesperson cannot.
Third, during his Google+ webchat the president also responded to a New York Times story about the State Department’s use of unarmed surveillance drones in Iraq, which included the potential use of U.S. contractors to control them. Obama stated that “The truth of the matter is we’re not engaging in a bunch of drone attacks inside of Iraq. There’s some surveillance to make sure that our embassy compound is protected.” Later, when asked about her organization’s potential use of drones in Iraq, State Department Spokesperson Victoria Nuland, stated: “I don’t have any comment on that, no,” but noted that there is “an ongoing dialogue about what’s appropriate” in terms of providing security for the Embassy’s presence in Baghdad. Nuland also noted “let me take the question” for a future response, but none has been posted on the State Department’s “Media Center” where such questions are usually answered with a news release.
In October 2011, in response to a New York Times Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the legal memo that reportedly justifies the killing of U.S. citizens, the Department of Justice responded that it “neither confirms nor denies the existence of the documents described in your request. We cannot do so because the very fact of the existence or nonexistence of such documents is itself classified, protected from disclosure by statute, and privileged.” That policy of pretend secrecy is no longer sustainable. On the day after Obama’s Google+ acknowledgment, the ACLU filed a new FOIA request for several U.S. government agencies for “the legal authority and factual basis for the targeted killing” of three U.S. citizens. The morning after his inauguration, President Obama stated that “the Freedom of Information Act is perhaps the most powerful instrument we have for making our government honest and transparent, and of holding it accountable…Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”
Thought it took ten years since drones were first widely-introduced for U.S. military and intelligence operations for the public, members of Congress, the media, and human rights organizations to press the White House to explain and defend their use. President Obama should live up to the principles he promised three years ago, and authorize the release of the Department of Justice memo that contains the legal justification for targeting U.S. citizens, and more broadly direct his administration to answer questions about America’s ever-expanding use of drones.
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