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AKHBAR TOLO (TOLO News)
More Afghans turn to TOLO than any other news service as a source of reliable, impartial and accurate information. TOLO offers the most reliable coverage and analysis of local and international events, presented by a dedicated team of experienced reporters based around the country. TOLO NEWS, weeknights at 6:00pm.
08 February 2012
FEATURE STORY
Afghan chief Karzai arises as obstacle to U.S. talks with Taliban
BUSINESS
No articles featured today
NATION
Pakistan Supports Afghan-Owned Peace Initiative: Gilani
Afghan Officials Question Reports of Children Dying in Camps
CIA digs in as Americans withdraw from Iraq, Afghanistan
Afghan police 'poisoned and shot' in Kandahar
Taliban lite? Afghans ponder power-sharing
Pakistan’s new envoy brings liberal charm but faces slim chance for diplomatic thaw
Afghans Hedge Bets Amid Mixed Messages From U.S.
US aims for Afghan talks breakthrough at May summit
US General to visit Pakistan
Afghanistan and the Guantanamo Roach Motel
After 10 years in Afghanistan, success depends on where you’re standing
What happens when troops - and money - leave Afghanistan?
Talking with the Taliban
Pakistan Tries to Take Part in Afghan Negotiations: Afghan Senators
US special operations' Afghan role could expand
New Afghan schoolbooks shun history of wars
Afghan Reintegration Drama
Afghans Worried About Early Exit Of French Troops
Baby Girls Seen As Mixed Blessing In Afghanistan
Chicago Summit to Finalise Long-term Support to Afghan Forces
U.S. drone attack kills 10 in Pakistan: officials
Winding Down the Combat Mission in Afghanistan
Afghan child labor fears grow as aid dries up
NDS Captures 3 Suicide Attack Organisers
PRESS RELEASES
Police and Justice Actors Agree on First Joint Police-Prosecutor Cooperation Manual
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FEATURE STORY
Afghan chief Karzai arises as obstacle to U.S. talks with Taliban
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly tried to thwart the most focused U.S. effort yet to bring the insurgents to the bargaining table, observers say.
Los Angeles Times
By Laura King
February 7, 2012
Kabul, Afghanistan
On the face of it, President Hamid Karzai has every motive to do all he can to bring about talks with the Taliban. Instead, the Afghan leader is emerging as a prime impediment to urgent U.S. efforts to jump-start negotiations with the insurgents.
Since the start of his second term in office, Karzai has repeatedly declared that his top priority is finding a political settlement to the bloody Afghan conflict and bringing the "disaffected brothers" back into the social and political fold.
Karzai's self-interest is at stake. NATO's military clock is ticking down, accelerated by the United States' recently announced push to wind down its combat role next year. And without Western backing, the Afghan leader is well aware that his own survival — political, and perhaps literal — could be in doubt.
Yet Karzai has repeatedly tried to thwart the most focused American effort yet to bring the insurgents to the bargaining table, launching a series of actions that appear to be almost deliberate provocations aimed at the United States, diplomats, analysts and observers say.
Before the Taliban movement last month announced its intention to open an office in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar to facilitate an "understanding" with the U.S.-led coalition, Karzai had worked assiduously behind the scenes to scuttle any such contacts. He loudly objected to the prospective locale, and recalledAfghanistan's ambassador to Qatar, complaining that his administration had been left out of the loop in key discussions.
Under heavy U.S. pressure, Karzai grudgingly agreed to the Qatar arrangement. But within weeks, presidential aides disclosed that the Afghan leader was seeking to set up parallel meetings with the insurgents, in Saudi Arabia. The Taliban issued an unusually specific denial that it intended to talk in Saudi Arabia with the Karzai government, which it routinely mocks as a "puppet regime."
Last week, Karzai enlisted the support of visiting Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar, who declared at a news conference that Pakistan would support an Afghan-led peace process, an implicit warning against too much U.S. control over the direction of the prospective talks in Qatar.
The moves leave the United States and its allies in the awkward position of publicly proclaiming that any peace process must be "Afghan-owned" and "Afghan-led," even as the Karzai administration is dismissed by the Taliban as irrelevant and continues to be a problematic partner to the West.
Many observers see the Afghan leader's role as a potential spoiler as far outweighing any other influence he wields.
"I think President Karzai is completely cut off from the process," said Haroun Mir, an analyst at the Afghanistan Center for Research and Policy Studies.
Part of the president's aggrieved stance regarding contacts in Qatar can be traced to the spectacular failure of more than a year of high-profile efforts on his own part to open a channel to the insurgents.
In 2010, Karzai set up a body known as the High Peace Council and declared it the clearinghouse for any contacts with the Taliban. In September last year, an assassin posing as a Taliban peace envoy killed the council's head, former President Burhanuddin Rabbani, with a bomb hidden in his turban.
In the wake of that debacle, Karzai found himself under fire from political rivals who had all along objected to any rapprochement with the insurgents, particularly stalwarts of the staunchly anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, dominated by ethnic Tajiks.
Even while the North Atlantic Treaty Organization force tries to present at least the appearance of unity among the Afghan government and its Western allies, the mercurial president tends to react sharply to any perceived heavy-handedness on the part of the U.S.-led coalition, particularly when actions by the NATO force result in Afghan deaths.
The United Nations said Saturday that civilian deaths last year hit a record high for the 10-year war. Although most of the fatalities were blamed on insurgents, Karzai has repeatedly said the Western military must be held to a higher standard.
The president does not hesitate to push back against his Western patrons. Late last year, Karzai publicly laid down seemingly untenable conditions for a long-term American presence in Afghanistan, including an end to the U.S.-led nighttime raids that have decimated the Taliban field command structure, and a demand that American troops be subject to Afghan law in the event of alleged wrongdoing, a deal-breaker in efforts to strike a similar accord in Iraq.
Last month, the president railed against foreign efforts to turn Afghanistan into a laboratory for what he called "political experimentation," while some of his aides sought to stoke fear that the West might agree to an effective partitioning of the country to placate the Taliban. U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker was forced to deny the existence of any such plan.
More recently, Karzai set a deadline of this week for turning over suspected insurgents captured by the U.S.-led military coalition to Afghan authorities, and the transfer of the main U.S.-overseen detention center to full Afghan control. Although the transfer of control had been envisioned for sometime this year, the president's timeline appeared to catch the Americans by surprise, and rights groups said detainees might be subject to abuse in Afghan hands.
In the eyes of many Western diplomats, Karzai's greatest contribution to the peace process would be an indirect one: cleaning up endemic corruption within his government. The Taliban movement has long capitalized on his failure to do so.
The insurgents firmly believe that an image of incorruptibility is one of their greatest assets in the struggle for public support, according to a classified military report leaked last week, which was based on interviews with thousands of captured Taliban fighters. Popular anger against the Karzai government, the thinking goes, will help the Taliban move to the political forefront once the West has pulled out.
Another crucial factor is the stance that Pakistan will take on any peace talks. Because most of the movement's leadership is based on its soil, the Islamabad government could block Taliban representatives from leaving the country, or arrest senior Taliban figures seeking to negotiate with the West. That happened in 2010, when Pakistan detained top Taliban military commander Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who was said to have been making peace overtures at the time.
In the face of considerable mutual mistrust, the Taliban and U.S. officials have both indicated that any talks in Qatar are likely to be preceded by reciprocal confidence-building steps, including a prisoner exchange and perhaps some limited truces in parts of the country, but Karzai has made it clear that he expects to sign off personally on any such measures.
The insurgency, meanwhile, is giving little sign it will dial back the fighting even once any talks are underway. Asked about American plans to move next year from a combat role to a training and advisory one, Taliban spokesman Qari Yousaf Ahmadi was uncompromising.
"As long as they are here," he said, "our jihad goes on."
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BUSINESS
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NATION
Pakistan Supports Afghan-Owned Peace Initiative: Gilani
TOLOnews.com
Tuesday, 07 February 2012
During his three-day trip to Qatar, Pakistani Prime Minister, Yosuf Raza Gilani said that his country supported Afghan-led peace process.
He also called Doha's role vital in stability of the region.
At the time of his departure from Pakistan, the prime minister reiterated stance of his government to support Afghan-led and Afghan-owned initiatives for a stable Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs welcomed Mr Gilani's statement and hoped for an honest Pakistani role in Afghan peace efforts.
"Pakistan plays a vital role in the Afghan peace process," a spokesman for Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Janan Musazai said. "We hope for an honest involvement of Pakistan in this process. We thanked for the comments made by Mr Gilani and Foreign Minister Khar."
Before Mr Gilani's trip to Qatar, Pakistan's Foreign Minister, Hinna Rabbani Khar visited Afghanistan and emphasised on her country's support of Afghan peace efforts.
"Let me also say quite clearly we have to start engaging in the end of blame games," she said. "We have to evolve a cooperative approach which is there to deal with the common challenges that both the countries face and attain to ensure a better future for our people."
Meanwhile, in a meeting between Mr Gilani and a delegation of Afghan parliamentarians last week, he said that peace in Afghanistan was critical for peace and security in Pakistan.
Mr Gilani's efforts come as recently a Nato revealed report showed strong support of Pakistani officials to Afghan Taliban.
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Afghan Officials Question Reports of Children Dying in Camps
New York Times
By ROD NORDLAND
February 7, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan
Afghan government officials cast doubt Tuesday on whether more than 20 children who died in camps recently had perished from the cold.
The officials were sharply critical of some of the camp residents, complaining that they had exaggerated their circumstances to attract more aid and that news accounts of the deaths were “one-sided.”
Mohammad Daim Kakar, the director general of Afghanistan’s disaster assistance agency, confirmed that camp officials, parents and religious leaders in two of the camps in Kabul had reported the deaths of 21 children from the cold, as well as two elderly adults. The New York Times, quoting similar sources, found 22 cases of children under 5 who had died there as of last week, with a 23rd case reported on Sunday.
Mr. Kakar said all the cases his agency had been told about concerned children who were reported to have died at night. “Is that reasonable that all of them would die at night?” he said. He was also suspicious because the deaths were not registered, and he said camp officials did not take his agency’s investigators to cemeteries to show them fresh graves.
“I am not saying they are liars, but for us it is a question mark,” he said.
In the past month, temperatures at night have typically been dropping into the mid-teens, much colder than usual, and there have been several heavy snowstorms.
“Of course they die at night,” said Mohammad Ibrahim, the camp representative at the Nasaji Bagrami camp, which has had the most child deaths. “What do they expect? It is colder at night.”
He and the camp mullah, Walid Khan, furiously denied that any officials had tried to see the cemetery there and had been rebuffed.
“Let them shave off my beard if I am lying,” Mr. Ibrahim said. They led journalists from The Times to the cemetery on Tuesday and pointed out each of the stones marking the graves of the 16 children 5 and under who had died in that camp since Jan. 15, including a pair of paving stones used to mark the graves of two twin 3-month-old girls, Naghma and Nazia Jan, who died the same night, Jan. 22. The markers could just be seen poking through 18 inches of snow.
“I buried every one of them,” Mullah Khan said. The men’s accounts were corroborated by the graveyard’s caretaker, Abdul Rasoul.
Of those 16 children, the camp officials said, 15 under 5 had died of the cold; the 16th, the 5-year-old daughter of Mr. Khan, the mullah, died of burns after accidentally spilling a pot of boiling water on herself while trying to stay warm. “I blame the cold for that, too,” Mr. Khan said.
The most recent victim there was a 1-year-old, Qader, son of Sayed Azam, officials there said. He died Friday, but his death was not reported until Sunday.
Most victims were children who were discovered late at night or early in the morning, frozen and dead in unheated tents and huts after supplies of firewood and other fuel were exhausted.
Mr. Kakar said that despite his suspicions, aid supplies would be increased to the camps, which are inhabited mostly by refugees who fled fighting in other parts of Afghanistan. At the two hardest-hit camps, Nasaji Bagrami and Charahi Qambar, most of the victims were from families who fled Helmand Province in recent years. Camp officials at Charahi Qambar reported eight deaths in all, the most recent two last Thursday.
Mr. Kakar made his comments at a news conference held jointly with a spokesman for the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation, Islammudin Jurat. Mr. Jurat was critical of what he called one-sided news reports of the camp deaths that failed to take account of efforts made in the past on behalf of the residents.
Mr. Jurat said that his ministry had warned before winter began of a possible disaster this year, but that international aid groups had ignored that warning. He also said that the ministry had offered the camp residents land on which to resettle in Helmand Province, but that they had wanted to be resettled in the Kabul area, which was not possible.
“Our vision toward them is a humanitarian vision,” Mr. Jurat said. “Nine ministries of the Afghan government are working on this issue and how to locally reintegrate them or send them to the provinces they want to go to and distribute land plots and establish towns for them in order to put an end to this problem.”
He also said that past aid efforts had failed because camp residents had sold the aid they were given. At one point, he said, rental houses were found as alternatives for camp dwellers during winter months, but they soon left them to return to their tents, instead subletting the premises for income.
“That is a lie,” Mr. Ibrahim said. “They haven’t given us anything. I’ve been to the Ministry of Refugees asking for assistance, even shouting for assistance, and nothing has happened, no help.”
Meanwhile, however, widespread Afghan news coverage about the deaths of the children has spurred action from many local sources. Private Afghan businessmen, as well as companies like Roshan, a mobile telephone carrier, and Ariana Television, through their charitable arms, have visited both of the worst-hit camps in recent days, handing out aid, including food, firewood and cash payments.
Numerous readers responded to articles in The Times about the deaths of the children by offering contributions.
The Lamia Afghan Foundation, an American charity started by Lt. Gen. John A. Bradley, who is retired from the Air Force, said that because of the reports of the children’s deaths it was diverting winter aid to help people in the camps.
General Bradley said he had arranged for 25,000 pounds of winter clothing and food packets, which his organization had already shipped to Afghanistan, to be delivered to the camps this week by the Afghan aid group Aschiana.
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CIA digs in as Americans withdraw from Iraq, Afghanistan
Washington Post
By Greg Miller
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
The CIA is expected to maintain a large clandestine presence in Iraq and Afghanistan long after the departure of conventional U.S. troops as part of a plan by the Obama administration to rely on a combination of spies and Special Operations forces to protect U.S. interests in the two longtime war zones, U.S. officials said.
U.S. officials said that the CIA’s stations in Kabul and Baghdad will probably remain the agency’s largest overseas outposts for years, even if they shrink from record staffing levels set at the height of American efforts in those nations to fend off insurgencies and install capable governments.
The withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq in December has moved the CIA’s emphasis there toward more traditional espionage — monitoring developments in the increasingly antagonistic government, seeking to suppress al-Qaeda’s affiliate in the country and countering the influence of Iran.
In Afghanistan, the CIA is expected to have a more aggressively operational role. U.S. officials said the agency’s paramilitary capabilities are seen as tools for keeping the Taliban off balance, protecting the government in Kabul and preserving access to Afghan airstrips that enable armed CIA drones to hunt al-Qaeda remnants in Pakistan.
As President Obama seeks to end a decade of large-scale conflict, the emerging assignments for the CIA suggest it will play a significant part in the administration’s search for ways to exert U.S. power in more streamlined and surgical ways.
As a result, the CIA station in Kabul — which at one point had responsibility for as many as 1,000 agency employees in Afghanistan — is expected to expand its collaboration with Special Operations forces when the drawdown of conventional troops begins.
Navy Adm. William McRaven, the Special Operations commander who directed the raid that killed Osama bin Laden last year, signaled the transition during remarks Tuesday in Washington. “I have no doubt that Special Operations will be the last to leave Afghanistan,” McRaven said.
The CIA declined to comment. But current and former intelligence officials quibbled with the accuracy of McRaven’s assertion.
“I would say the agency will be the last to leave,” said a CIA veteran with extensive experience in Afghanistan and Pakistan. “We were the first to get there” after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the former official said.
Force size evolving
U.S. officials said the size of the agency’s presence in Afghanistan over the next several years has not been determined, and the CIA’s assignment is likely to be adjusted as the administration’s troop withdrawal plans evolve.
In some scenarios, teams of CIA and Special Operations troops could divide territory and lists of Taliban targets with Afghan forces, although officials said there will probably be extensive collaboration and overlap.
CIA paramilitary operatives were the first U.S. personnel to enter Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks, linking up with Northern Alliance fighters weeks before U.S. military commandos arrived. More than a decade later, the CIA still has extensive paramilitary assets there.
“Like Special Forces, the intelligence community is used to doing a lot with a small footprint, using its agility to address a host of national security concerns,” said a U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.
The agency controls counterterrorism pursuit teams made up of dozens of Afghan fighters funded and trained by the CIA. The CIA has largely bankrolled and built the Afghan intelligence service. And the agency maintains a constellation of bases along the border with Pakistan.
Some of those sites are likely to be closed, current and former officials said. The 2010 death of seven CIA employees and contractors in a suicide bombing by a double agent at a CIA base in Khost province underscored the vulnerability of such remote outposts. As conventional forces depart, officials said, the agency will probably concentrate more of its remaining employees at compounds in Kabul and at the Bagram air base north of the capital.
As a result, more territory may be ceded to the Taliban. “We can lose the countryside, but I don’t think we’re going to lose Kabul and Bagram,” said the former senior CIA officer, who added that the agency could end up adding paramilitary personnel in Afghanistan as the size of the U.S. military deployment shrinks.
The Obama administration has said it plans to pull about 22,000 troops out of Afghanistan by September, reducing the overall U.S. force to 68,000. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta fanned speculation that the drawdown could be accelerated by saying last week that the United States hoped to end its combat mission in Afghanistan by mid-2013.
If the agency is tapped to play an expanded role in Afghanistan and Iraq, the landscape will be familiar to many across the CIA’s senior ranks. Retired Army Gen. David H. Petraeus commanded U.S. forces in both countries before taking over as director of the CIA. A senior CIA operative who twice served as station chief in Kabul now heads the agency’s Special Activities Division, its paramilitary branch.
Scaling back spending
The pressure to maintain a sizable presence in Kabul and Baghdad comes as the CIA and other intelligence agencies face spending cuts for the first time since their budgets began expanding after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The CIA’s annual budget is believed to be about $5.5 billion. In congressional testimony last week, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper said, “We’re not going to do more with less and all these other cliches. . . . We will just simply have less capability.”
At their peak, the CIA’s stations in Kabul and Baghdad were the largest and second-largest in agency history, surpassing the size of the CIA’s station in Saigon at the height of the Vietnam War. CIA veterans stressed that those totals included more security, support and analytic personnel than clandestine operatives.
At the high point of the U.S. military surge in Iraq, the CIA had as many as 700 employees in the country. Most worked in Baghdad’s Green Zone, but hundreds were also scattered across safe houses in population centers and regional U.S. military outposts.
The departure of U.S. forces in December has forced the agency to shutter many of those facilities, according to former CIA officials who said the agency’s presence has probably been reduced by half.
“We had bases all over the country, but that’s not the case anymore,” said a second former CIA officer who served in Iraq. The development is likely to hamper intelligence collection, the former officer said. “You can’t put hundreds of people in the embassy and expect that to be your platform in Iraq.”
Staff writer Julie Tate contributed to this report.
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Afghan police 'poisoned and shot' in Kandahar
BBC News
By Bilal Sarwary
7 February 2012
Kabul
At least five policemen have been shot dead at a checkpoint in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, officials say.
Intelligence officials say the men were first poisoned by a police cook who served them food at the checkpoint.
After they collapsed, the men were shot dead. It is unclear if the cook was involved in the shooting but he has since gone missing.
A Taliban spokesman said they carried out the attack, but their involvement has not been independently verified.
Analysts say it is the latest in a series of similar incidents which have heightened concerns about rogue elements within the security forces.
Intelligence officials say it is not yet clear what motivated the cook to poison the men, however he appears to have stolen the weapons, ammunition and communication equipment of the policemen before fleeing in a police vehicle.
A spokesman for the governor of Kandahar gave a different account of events, saying the men were shot dead after an argument involving members of a private security firm.
There have been several incidents in the past of Afghan security forces being poisoned and then attacked.
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Taliban lite? Afghans ponder power-sharing
NBC News
By Akbar Shinwari
07/02/2012
KABUL
With U.S. and NATO combat troops expected to withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, Taliban leaders are approaching the negotiating table with the Afghan government to discuss both an end to the war and their role in the country's future.
But the idea of the Taliban -- with its history of establishing and running an extremist Islamic state -- becoming an official force in the nation is frightening to many.
NBC News spoke with Afghans around the country about the possibility. They reflected on what life was like under the Taliban regime more than a decade ago, how life changed after they lost power following the American-led invasion and what they think of their possible return to power. Sonya Hadees, a 27-year-old lawyer in Sheberghan, Jowzjan Province [If the Taliban return] it will affect our lives from many angles. Our freedom will be restricted and our connection with the rest of the world will be limited. We will only be connected to Pakistan.
It will also affect our justice and judiciary system. The female lawyers will not be allowed to work. Women’s jails will not be able to have female lawyers to file their cases.
Education will be limited and there will be no education for females. If males want to get an education, they will have their subjects and studies selected by the Taliban. And our country will be further behind the world in education.
Mohammad Nabi, a 30-year-old shopkeeper in Jalalabad, Nangarhar Province It will be good if the Taliban join the present government. But if they come with their own government and take over, then I am against this. There was no education during their time and the economic situation was not good when they were in power. I can easily say there was zero business at that time.
The only thing that was good during their regime was security. We had security back then, but not now. So it will be good if they will have a joint government.
If the Taliban come back it will have big impact on our lives. Most important, it will impact education and my kids, especially the girls. They will be not able to go to school. And a comeback of the Taliban will also affect our businesses. All the big business men will leave the country and no one will invest here.
Abdul Basir Wafa, a 31-year-old United Nations employee in Paktia Province Paktia is a Pashtun-majority province. Most Pashtuns areas are already under the control of Taliban, so there is definitely some sympathy for the Taliban here. I can say that 90 percent of the people here in our province are hoping the Taliban will join the current government. I am working for a non-governmental organization and we always face problems whenever we leave our home or office because they target us wherever they can.
We do not want them to come in power like they were in the past because people still have a lot of bad memories from that time. Economically, there were a lot of problems during their regime; there were no jobs. But now, although we blame the current government for not doing enough, we can still say 80 percent of the people are living a better life than they were during the Taliban time. Today, we have kids going to school, especially girls.
Lastly, it will be good if the Taliban come and join the current government. There will be less violence with people like me because currently we are always facing violence and attacks.Attaullah, a 35-year-old community health worker in Badakhshan Province Security is the most important objective for us, and the Taliban can provide that. The only ones who are afraid are those who want to be more Westernized, the ones who want a more Western Afghanistan.
Regarding women rights, I’ll say that the Taliban have said if they come back to power they will give women opportunities, but in an Islamic frame. Women will be allowed to go to school, be teachers and even doctors in the hospitals. But I am not sure they will let women take part in social organizations.
With the Taliban coming back into the government ordinary Afghan citizens will not be affected. Because Afghans want security and that is why they will have no problem with Taliban. Personally I do not have any problem with the Taliban or the current government.
Wazhma Frogh, 32-year-old women’s activist in Kabul, Kabul Province [The] Taliban “return” was already envisaged when the government and Afghan people (through their members of parliament and the loya jirga) agreed for a political settlement aimed at bringing peace. That is why the Afghanistan Peace and Reintegration Program was developed and a reconciliation process that meant talking to the leaders took more shape.
I personally and professionally have been engaged in the peace process as part of the women's movement. We are trying to make the process more people oriented and community-based. We are a product of war and civil war for all these years, unless we as Afghans reconcile, [the] insurgency won’t end.
A peace process that is inclusive and eventually allows the insurgents to come back, renounce violence and become part of a social democratic process -- that is a dream of every sensible Afghan citizen. I think this country is really tired of killing and fighting and we want an end to any kind of violence and war.
If the Taliban come in that way, then who will have a problem? But if they return in leadership positions without any due process on their past injustices and atrocities; if they come back bringing the same misery they enforced on us a decade ago; if they return with the same political patronage system and revert all our democratic achievements; then of course I am very worried about that return.
I feel the past 10 years have given us historic opportunities, of course with some failed experiments. But we are not the same generation we were when the Soviets left and we all started killing and fighting for position.So the optimism is that after 10 years of education, liberty and political freedoms, Afghans won’t engage in the same kind of civil war.
NBC News Atia Abawi contributed to this report.
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Pakistan’s new envoy brings liberal charm but faces slim chance for diplomatic thaw
Washington Post
By Pamela Constable
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
In both style and substance, Sherry Rehman was born to be a Washington diplomat and hostess. She has a designer wardrobe, a chestnut coif and camera-ready makeup. She also has a BA from Smith, a CV full of democratic credentials and the articulate self-confidence of her country’s Westernized elite.
But Rehman’s arrival as the new ambassador from Pakistan, a nuclear-armed, terrorist-plagued nation of 180 million, has come at a time of unprecedented anti-American clamor among the Pakistani public, which has been increasingly drawn to conservative Islamic values and infuriated by U.S. drone attacks and other perceived aggressions.
She has also landed in Washington at a time of deepening bilateral mistrust, marked by the covert U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden, the shooting of two Pakistanis by a CIA contractor and, most recently, the November attack by U.S. forces in Afghanistan that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. Ongoing tension between these two formal allies in the war on terrorism has plunged U.S.-Pakistan relations to their lowest point since the end of the Cold War.
Moreover, the civilian administration that appointed Rehman is deeply unpopular, besieged by the courts and the media, and under constant pressure from Pakistan’s powerful military establishment. The crisis has led to repeated rumors, so far unrealized, that the elected government is about to fall.
Rehman, 51, seems undaunted. She learned the art of politics at the side of the late Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan’s former prime minister, a liberal icon and a steel magnolia par excellence. Since taking up her post two weeks ago, the new envoy has handled her challenging portfolio with similar, purposeful charm.
“You’ll have to airbrush out the circles under my eyes. I was up all night with a Pentagon crisis,” Rehman remarked cheerfully to a photographer last week, posing for portraits in Pakistan’s embassy, a hushed and impersonal marble fortress off Connecticut Avenue in Northwest Washington.
The crisis in question had erupted after a stinging new comment on Pakistan’s “double dealing” by Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, which Rehman spent hours attempting to spin lest it provoke an apoplectic reaction from her country’s easily offended generals.
Making her entry equally difficult are the tumultuous, intrigue-filled circumstances that led to the forced resignation of her predecessor, Husain Haqqani, in late November. That incident, a reflection of the constant plots, rumors and institutional power struggles that consume Pakistani politics, became a full-blown scandal known as “Memogate.”
Haqqani, a former journalist and academic long critical of Pakistan’s military, was ordered home and accused of treason after he was said to have written a memo asking U.S. officials for help in preventing a coup d’etat. Haqqani denied the charges, but he spent most of December and January hiding inside the prime minister’s house, saying he feared for his safety. By last week, the furor had eased and Haqqani, given back his right to travel, was reportedly heading back to the United States as a private citizen.
In an interview last week, Rehman was careful not to criticize Haqqani, a one-man political operator who was constantly tweeting, meeting and spinning in several directions at once. But she signaled that she intends to do things differently, saying, “I am not a solo flier. I like to consult and to act institutionally.”
Asked what Pakistan’s army brass thought of her appointment, she answered euphemistically. “The message I am getting is that everyone is able to work with me,” she said. “I come from a long tradition that is anti-establishment, but I am very clear that here, I speak for one government.”
After months of turmoil, Rehman’s appointment has been viewed as a breath of fresh air in Islamabad and Washington. William Milam, a former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, described her as “tough and courageous,” and said she represents “the traditional values of Jinnah’s Pakistan, tolerance and moderation.” Mohammed Ali Jinnah was the founder of Pakistan in the 1940s, and Rehman chairs a foundation dedicated to preserving his vision of Muslim democracy.
Accolades have also poured in from Pakistan’s Internet-savvy diaspora. “GREAT CHOICE,” Arif Khan, a Pakistani American, posted in one of dozens of complimentary online responses to a recent news story about Rehman. “She is a liberal and an educated person, not stuck to religion like glue. She has a moderate interpretation of Islam, which needs to be presented to the modern world of six billion non-Muslims. Good luck, Sherry, and welcome to the USA.”
Rehman has few illusions that her liberal credentials, including 20 years as a prominent journalist, will help thaw the deep freeze between Washington and Islamabad. A series of disputes and incidents, capped by the fatal U.S. air assault on two Pakistani border posts in November, have left their so-called strategic partnership in a state of exhaustion. After years of pledges to cooperate in fighting Islamic extremism and violence, bolstered by millions in U.S. aid, both military establishments seem to have abandoned all pretense of trust.
“We are in a process of strategic reset,” Rehman said, speaking from an obviously vetted script. “I feel strongly that Pakistan and the United States can have a rational, constructive, predictable and transparent relationship, but we have not had that in a sustained way for too long. We need to lower expectations and do business in a grounded way. We need a relationship that is invested with less emotion.”
Yet even such a pragmatic, scaled-down agenda will be difficult to pursue given the continuing political crisis in Pakistan, where the civilian government that appointed Rehman is bogged down in power struggles with an array of institutional and personal adversaries. In a way, the ambassador’s toughest diplomatic balancing act will be internal.
President Asif Ali Zardari, Bhutto’s widower, is a weak and unpopular leader whose tenure has been clouded by corruption charges and recurrent rumors of an army takeover or a judicial “soft coup.” Last week, the Supreme Court threatened to impeach Prime Minister Yusuf Gilani for not pursuing corruption cases against Zardari that have long been stalled in Swiss courts.
Rehman, a longtime legislator from the ruling Pakistan People’s Party, once served the fledgling Zardari-Gilani administration as information minister. But in 2009, she abruptly quit in frustration over the government’s attempt to place restrictions on press freedom, remaining a member of Parliament and foundation official.
So why did she agree to this new appointment? Was it in part because Washington offered her haven from a country where outspoken liberals are increasingly under threat of violent attack? Just a year ago, Rehman was confined to her family mansion in Karachi, under 24-hour police guard, after receiving death threats from radical Islamists. At this moment she is facing charges of blasphemy against Islam, a capital crime in Pakistan, which were filed by Islamist groups in connection with her public support for reforming the nation’s draconian blasphemy laws.
“I have never run away from Pakistan, and I will be back as soon as I can,” Rehman asserted sharply. “I never left when the mullahs were at the door. Washington is lovely, but this is a hardship post for me.” Noting that her husband and college-aged daughter have stayed behind at home, she insisted that she had accepted the post only because the government “asked me to step up to the plate at a difficult and challenging time for Pakistan. I had very little option,” she said. “I have never said no to an opportunity to serve my country.”
Although Rehman’s new role in Washington requires her to be cagily circumspect on issues of military and foreign policy, it is allowing her some breathing space on domestic social issues she has long championed, including the rights of women and religious minorities. Last week, she chose to hold her first embassy dinner in honor of Paul Bhatti, a visiting Christian leader whose brother, a former Pakistani cabinet minister for religious minority affairs, was assassinated last year. The dinner was low-key, with no speeches, but it made her point.
“We may be under siege, but we will not be silent,” said Rehman, who dresses in traditional Pakistani tunic-and-trouser ensembles but does not wear a Muslim head scarf. “We must empower minorities where we can, and protect all vulnerable groups against the extremist tide.”
For a moment, Rehman sounded a lot like her mentor, Bhutto. The longtime People’s Party leader was assassinated in 2007 while greeting a crowd of supporters; she had hoped to run for Parliament after years in exile. Rehman, one of her closest aides, was inside Bhutto’s vehicle when the former premier collapsed, fatally wounded. The unsolved attack robbed the nation of its most charismatic leader and perhaps its best hope for democracy after a decade of military rule.
Asked if she wished she could be here representing a Bhutto administration, Rehman shook her head. “I see myself as her ambassador, too,” she said. “It has always been her. I can never end a speech without making a tribute to her.” On the wall of Rehman’s new embassy office, in a prominent spot usually hung with portraits of current Pakistani officials, smiles the instantly recognizable face of Benazir Bhutto.
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Afghans Hedge Bets Amid Mixed Messages From U.S.
NPR
By Quil Lawrence
February 8, 2012
After a long hiatus, the Afghan and U.S. governments this week reopened talks on a strategic partnership that will determine how many American troops stay in Afghanistan past the end of the NATO mission in 2014.
The resumption of talks comes amid a flurry of contradictory statements from American officials and NATO members about the shape of the foreign mission in Afghanistan. When President Obama first arrived at the White House he said troops would begin pulling out in the summer of 2011. Then a NATO meeting pushed the end of the mission to 2014. Last week, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta muddied the waters further, suggesting that the U.S. combat mission might end by 2013.
U.S. officials have downplayed the mixed messages, and Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesman Janan Mosazai says Kabul is not concerned.
"Frankly, we're not confused about it," he says. "We have always maintained that Afghan security is an Afghan responsibility."
Mosazai says the transition will be conditions-based and gradual, to be completed by 2014. If conditions allow foreign forces to leave sooner, that would be welcome news, he says, but Afghanistan will need international support for many years to come. The partnership agreement that Kabul and Washington are still hammering out will specify the type of support.
Until that deal is signed, though, it's hard for Afghans to know what's ahead and the uncertainty may be helping the insurgents.
Confusion And Uncertainty
U.S. Marines are credited with pushing the Taliban out of the Marjah district of southern Helmand province. As the forces pull out now, tribal elder Haji Khalifa Mohammad Shah says a strategy for security hasn't been made clear.
Shah says he is hearing too many messages at once — from the Afghan government, from the U.S. and from other NATO governments.
He quotes an Afghan proverb that says, "with too many midwives, the baby comes out backward." Shah is blunt about what he's doing: His tribe is reaching out to both the Taliban and the government because he's not sure which one will prevail if and when American troops leave.
"It's very dangerous," says Gen. Abdul Hadi Khalid, Afghanistan's former deputy interior minister. People deal with the insurgents for their own protection, he says.
Khalid says the mixed messages leaves many Afghans unable to feel confident about the future. Estimates about how many American troops will remain range from 5,000 to 30,000, he says. The size of the Afghan force after 2014 is also unknown; NATO governments recently began to lower the estimate of how large an Afghan army and police force they are willing to finance.
Khalid blames some of the confusion on election-year politics in the U.S. and elsewhere, which he says can make politicians say almost anything. In the meantime, he says, the Taliban are spreading the word about their planned return in 2014.
This week's resumption of talks is a step toward answering some of the many outstanding questions. Both sides are pushing for an agreement in time for a NATO summit in Chicago this May, at which point Afghans and Americans should have a much clearer picture of how many U.S. troops are staying in Afghanistan for the long term.
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US aims for Afghan talks breakthrough at May summit
Reuters
By Missy Ryan and Warren Strobel
Feb 8, 2012
WASHINGTON
* Obama administration hoping to broker Afghan peace deal
* Taliban is weakened, but vows to fight on
* US exit plan slowly coming into focus
The United States is seeking to accelerate fragile talks with the Taliban so it can announce serious peace negotiations at a NATO summit in May, officials say, in what would be a welcome bright spot in Western efforts to end the war in Afghanistan.
The Obama administration is hoping it can declare a start to authentic political negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban at the May 20-21 summit in Chicago, after a year of initial, uncertain contacts with militant representatives.
It would be a needed victory for the White House and its NATO partners in Afghanistan as they struggle to contain a resilient insurgency and train a local army while at the same time moving to bring their troops home over the next three years.
But even meeting the goal of setting political talks in motion, let alone completing them, will not be easy.
U.S. diplomats must execute a series of good-faith measures, including moving Taliban detainees out of Guantanamo Bay military prison; convincing militants to drop their opposition to talks with an Afghan government they deem illegitimate; and navigating political opposition at home months before a November election that President Barack Obama hopes will give him a second term.
The administration had tried to pull those elements together before a global summit in Bonn, Germany in December.
A senior U.S. official, while not disputing that some in the Obama administration want the peace talks announced by the Chicago summit, cautioned that Afghan reconciliation is not formally on the agenda.
NATO leaders will focus on how and when to shift the military mission in Afghanistan to an advise-and-train effort, giving Afghan security forces the lead in combat missions.
As for the peace talks, "We want reconciliation done as soon as possible," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Even if the Obama administration is successful in getting the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the Taliban, whose government was toppled in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, at the same table to discuss the country's political future, there are no guarantees that talks would yield a deal.
There is even less certainty about whether an agreement would stick.
The motivations of the militant group, whose leadership is based in Pakistan, remain mysterious even as the White House prepares to send negotiators to a new meeting with Taliban representatives that could solidify the transfer of the five Taliban detainees from Guantanamo Bay prison to Qatar.
It is not known if the Taliban is truly interested in peace, or simply wants to recover its prisoners and wait out a Western coalition that appears determined to narrow its involvement in a long, costly war.
Critics of the U.S.-led reconciliation plan note that the Taliban's incentive for making concessions may be lessened considerably due to an accelerated timeline for wrapping up the NATO military role in Afghanistan.
France has announced it will pull its troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2013. In a move that could signal a swifter U.S. exit as well, the Pentagon said last week that U.S. forces will cede the lead combat role to Afghan forces next year.
While Obama's decision to send an extra 33,000 'surge' troops to Afghanistan in 2009-10 certainly weakened the Taliban, the militant group remains potent, able to re-equip and regroup across a poorly controlled border with Pakistan.
END OF COUNTERINSURGENCY?
In that gloomy context, the State Department-led peace initiative, a controversial idea among U.S. officials from the start, has taken on increasing importance.
Merely setting the talks in motion would be a victory for the White House, helping the United States to transition the bulk of its forces out of Afghanistan with the promise of a possible political settlement.
While the obstacles are numerous, most worrying to many of Obama's closest advisers may be the simmering opposition to the transfer of five former senior Taliban out of Guantanamo.
Even Obama's Democratic allies appear reluctant to defend the prisoner transfer or, more generally, to go to bat for a plan that could return some degree of power to a group known for its brutality and its links to al Qaeda.
The Obama administration has stressed that its eyes are open about the risks inherent to its peace gambit.
In one reflection of its attempts to contain those risks, the administration has been considering a plan under which, if the detainee transfer is approved by both sides at the upcoming meeting, Taliban prisoners would be transferred to Afghan custody in Qatar in two tranches.
Two or three detainees would be sent initially. If all went well after a waiting period, and the detainees did not slip away to rejoin the fight, the remainder could follow.
The Chicago summit is also expected to bring into focus Washington's strategy for withdrawing the bulk of its approximately 90,000 soldiers remaining in Afghanistan.
Under a plan announced by Obama last year, the United States will shrink its force to around 68,000 by fall 2012, officially ending Obama's 'surge.' Still unclear is how quickly he will remove the remaining forces.
Several news organizations reported over the weekend that the Pentagon was moving to shift its Afghan focus to special operations. While most Western combat troops are due to leave by the end of 2014, the United States hopes to keep a small force focused on counterterrorism and training there beyond then.
One U.S. official said that while no decisions have been made, one plan under consideration would shift conventional forces to a new special operations command that would be headed by a two-star general. That general would report to the overall commander of U.S. and NATO troops.
"If the nature of the mission changes from counter-insurgency and conventional combat to counterterrorism-focused efforts, in support of Afghan security forces, it stands to reason," the official said on condition of anonymity. (Editing by Warren Strobel and Doina Chiacu)
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US General to visit Pakistan
Associated Press
February 07, 2012
WASHINGTON
A senior U.S. military commander will visit Pakistan this month in what could be an important step in healing the rift between the two nations, officials said Tuesday.
Gen. James Mattis, commander of U.S. Central Command, will meet with Pakistani Army chief Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani to talk about the U.S. investigation into airstrikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in a Nov. 26 exchange of fire at the border with Afghanistan.
Mattis would be the first high-ranking official to visit since the strikes that sent relations between Washington and Islamabad to a new low and prompted Pakistan to close its border to NATO war supplies headed for Afghanistan, according to two U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the sensitive matter publicly. News of the planned visit came as Pakistan's defense minister said Tuesday the country should reopen its Afghan border crossings to NATO troop supplies after negotiating a better deal with the coalition.
Without providing details, Pakistan Defense Minister Ahmad Mukhtar told the private Geo TV that the government should negotiate new "terms and conditions" with NATO, then reopen the border.
Mattis will be presenting the Central Command investigation that found a combination of mistrust and bad maps led to the airstrikes on two Pakistani outposts in the November incident. The Defense Department said the investigation found U.S. forces — given what information they had available to them at the time — reacted in self-defense and with appropriate force after being fired upon from the direction of the Pakistani border.
Pakistan refused to participate in the investigation and has rejected its conclusions. The U.S. expressed regret, but did not apologize, despite the embarrassing series of communications and coordination errors. The State Department is supporting a proposal circulating in the administration to issue a formal apology for the Pakistan soldiers' deaths, according to the New York Times, which first reported the planned Mattis visit in Tuesday editions.
Often difficult U.S.-Pakistani relations have taken a number of especially hard hits in the past year, including fallout from the U.S. military assault in Pakistan last May that killed Osama bin Laden. Pakistani leaders have also complained about repeated U.S. drone strikes in their country, largely by the CIA, that have targeted militants who launch attacks against NATO troops in Afghanistan. But the final straw was the Nov. 26 cross-border attack.
Islamabad has said it is re-evaluating its relationship with Washington and the Pakistani parliament is working out new guidelines to define the U.S.-Pakistan alliance. The parliament is expected to vote on a revised framework for relations in mid-February. That could pave the way for the government to reopen the supply line.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar said last week that she didn't think it would be much of a problem to reopen the route after the parliament vote. And the defense minister Tuesday echoed this view, saying "I think the people who are deciding, who are giving recommendations, will make the right decision."
For most of the 10-year war in Afghanistan, 90 percent of supplies shipped to coalition forces came through Pakistan, via the port of Karachi. But over the past three years, NATO has increased its road and rail shipments through an alternate route that runs through Russia and Central Asia. The northern route is longer and more expensive, but provided a hedge against the riskier Pakistan route.
Before the Nov. 26 airstrikes, about 30 percent of non-lethal supplies for U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan traveled through Pakistan. The U.S. has since increased the amount of supplies running through the north, but the cost is much greater. Pentagon figures provided to the AP show it is now costing about $104 million per month to send supplies. That is $87 million more per month than when the cargo moved through Pakistan.
___
Associated Press writers Asif Shahzad in Islamabad and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed to this report.
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Afghanistan and the Guantanamo Roach Motel
The National Interest Online (blog)
By Paul R. Pillar
February 7, 2012
One of the latest efforts by members of Congress (especially, but not exclusively, Republicans) to impede the executive branch's conduct of foreign policy concerns the possible transfer of several Afghan Taliban out of the detention facility at Guantanamo, as part of the process of negotiating an agreement with the Taliban. Specifically, the move would entail transferring five senior Taliban from Guantanamo to Qatar as a good-faith gesture. One anonymous Republican member of Congress forecast strong opposition if the Obama administration attempted this transfer, saying, "If they do that, then all hell breaks loose. There's just no way."
Opposition to this move probably reflects a combination of several misconceived and unhelpful beliefs:
That negotiating is mutually exclusive with fighting. A substantial modern history of warfare, including the U.S. wars in Korea and Vietnam, demonstrates that not only are they not mutually exclusive, but negotiating while fighting may be the only way out of a war with even a hope of a satisfactory outcome. This belief is related to a more general one...
That diplomacy is a reward that should not be bestowed on enemies. This attitude merely handicaps ourselves by removing one of our tools of statecraft. The late Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin said it best: you negotiate peace with your enemies, not with your friends.
That we need not and should not make concessions to an adversary to achieve peace. Negotiations that are conceived as all taking and no giving seldom work. The transfer of the five Taliban hardly even merits being considered a concession. It would be only an act of good faith to help make a negotiating process possible.
That the Afghan Taliban are international terrorists. The Taliban are an insular group concerned with the internal political and social structure of Afghanistan and having no affinity to the transnational terrorist ideology of al-Qaeda. The prime objective of negotiations with the Taliban should be to eliminate any possibility of future alliances of convenience between the Taliban and the likes of al-Qaeda. The Taliban have given plenty of indication that such an outcome is achievable.
That something better than a very messy compromise is achievable in Afghanistan. This is related to the belief that prolonging U.S. involvement in the combat in Afghanistan can somehow achieve what a decade of such involvement to date has not achieved. A spokesman for House Armed Services Committee chairman Buck McKeon reacted to the possible Taliban detainee transfer by saying, "It would seem that the Taliban are free to wait the president out and recoup their senior leaders without obtaining any real guarantee for a peaceful, stable or free Afghanistan.” Eschewing negotiations and prolonging the war would guarantee a peaceful, stable, or free Afghanistan? This war certainly has given no reason to believe it would.
That Guantanamo ought to be a roach motel where detainees check in but never check out. If the prospect of a settlement to end the war in Afghanistan is not worth letting five detainees out of Gitmo, then what ever would be worth it?
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After 10 years in Afghanistan, success depends on where you’re standing
Globe and Mail
By Graeme Smith
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Istanbul
One of the most-discussed items on The Globe and Mail’s website yesterday was my colleague Paul Koring’s thoughtful look at the last decade of Canada’s mission in Afghanistan.
I’ve been asked to write some thoughts about this milestone, 10 years after Canadian troops landed in Kandahar, and in some ways my own opinion feels about as worthy as any of the several hundreds comments on Mr. Koring's analysis. War and violence have a way of splintering our understanding of events into countless shards of individual experience; any reporter covering the police beat will tell you that every witness at the scene of a shooting has a different take on the incident.
That problem gets magnified in a country like Afghanistan, awash with gunfire and explosions, seen from a distance through the flawed instruments of the media. We end up with wildly divergent views of the battlefield. It’s also distressing for a journalist like me, who spent years trying to explain Afghanistan, to see that the newspaper’s message boards still light up with chatter about 9/11 conspiracy theories and other misinformed views.
But even if you don’t wear a tinfoil hat, you probably have entrenched opinions about the Afghan mission; this informal survey is not scientific, but suggests that the war divided Canadians into camps. Some think we were right to go into Afghanistan and should join future combat missions, while others disagree vehemently. Few respondents came down somewhere in the middle, but that’s probably where my own opinion is located. I could see the argument for military action in Afghanistan in 2001, and nothing in my reporting over the last decade suggests to me that the whole idea of humanitarian intervention is wrong.
I was standing in Benghazi as Colonel Moammar Gadhafi’s tanks rolled into eastern Libya last year, before NATO took action. Ideas such as the “responsibility to protect” doctrine seem a lot less abstract in those circumstances, when you’re looking around at people who will probably die if the international community fails to intervene. (Some of the BBC’s brave reporting from Syria this week has the same effect.)
Nobody seems sure that things will work out smoothly in Libya, but it’s already clear that Afghanistan is headed down a darker path. The foreigners were promising all kinds of things when they deployed their troops, but the core elements of the international agenda in Afghanistan – peace, democracy, rule of law, good government – have not been realized, despite the huge sacrifices. As Mr. Koring correctly says: “In war, the outcome matters.”
This week, the United Nations reported that civilian deaths increased for a fifth consecutive year in 2011, and the best that can be said about the violence statistics is that the trends are leveling off, which roughly corresponds with the end of the military surges.
Counterinsurgency theory suggests that at a certain level of saturation by security forces in a particular area should eventually quell an uprising, but if that’s true then the magic number was never achieved in Afghanistan. The rest of the NATO agenda was probably best summarized in a quote at the very end of this multimedia package, from retired Colonel Pat Stogran, who said: “Claims by ministers and mandarins of great accomplishments are impossible to verify. At best there is a thin veneer of progress.... .”
I saw big changes, which you could call “progress,” on my most recent visit to Kandahar last summer. The influxes of foreign troops and money had visibly strengthened the presence of pro-government forces. But the retired colonel was right: those advances felt thin, and dangerously brittle. He’s not the only officer raising such concerns, and we should listen to these naysayers. Their advice may help Afghanistan avoid anarchy or civil war in the next decade.
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What happens when troops - and money - leave Afghanistan?
The drawdown of foreign troops – now slated for 2013 – could destabilize Afghanistan's economy – or, according to some, help stem rampant corruption.
Christian Science Monitor
By Tom A. Peter, Correspondent
February 7, 2012
Kabul, Afghanistan
After three decades of conflict, Afghanistan has a complicated relationship with war.
No one wants the fighting to continue. But many are worried what will happen if the foreign aid, social opportunity, and, in some parts of Afghanistan, relative security the fighting has brought ends.
As the international community accelerates its withdrawal from Afghanistan, many here say they'll be fine. As long as foreign spending continues, they say, security and the new status quo will remain. If the US and its allies cut development spending as their troops leave, however, many Afghans and aid workers worry that it could have a devastating affect on everything from women's rights to the stability of the entire economy.
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“There will be much corruption on one side, and on the other, there will not be enough troops to secure the country, especially the rural areas,” says Mahmood Khan, a member of parliament from Kandahar Province.
Still, reflecting the view of many Afghans, he doesn't think that Afghans or the international community will give up on the development work they have started. “Something has been done in the last 10 years, and we have spent lots of money which has come from foreign sources.” Shifting war timetable, shifting money
Last week, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced that American troops would switch from a combat role to a support role in Afghanistan by mid- to late-2013, with all provinces in Afghan control by the end of 2014. The news came after French officials announced that all 3,600 of their troops stationed here will be completely withdrawn by mid-2013.
Initial estimates indicate that it will cost $6 billion annually to maintain Afghan security forces, following the drawdown – about three times Afghanistan’s current national tax revenues.
Currently, 90 percent of the Afghan government’s budget comes from foreign sources, and about 97 percent of the country’s GDP has come to depend on foreign aid and international military spending as well. The World Bank has even warned of economic collapse in Afghanistan if international donors pull funding too fast.
Indeed, the mark of foreign spending is clear. Over the past decade, NGOs and companies working with or for foreign organizations have grown, especially in the nation’s capital. As NATO looks to cut back, many of those that depend on foreign funding to survive – as well as those that are self-sustaining – are concerned.
“If the security decreases in this country, women will be the first victims. They will go back to their homes,” says Najiba Ayubi, the managing director of the Development Humanitarian Services for Afghanistan at the Killid Group. “No family will give the women their right to work. It will affect women’s rights.”
Ms. Najiba is one of many Afghan women who have benefited from the presence of foreigners. She not only has a job outside her home, but a high-level one.
Her organization has been self-sustaining since mid-2005, but she says that without foreign organizations holding the purse strings for many lucrative contracts and pressuring companies to hire women, it’s unlikely that Afghanistan would have as many women in the workplace as it does now.
Najiba says she does not think the new time table gives Afghanistan enough time to prepare.
Indeed, there are daily reminders that the country is far from secure. On Sunday, a car bomb left at least seven people dead and another 19 injured in the restive city of Kandahar. The southern region of Afghanistan has seen the largest concentration of foreign troops, yet remains one of the more troubled spots in the country.
News of the bombing came just one day after the United Nations released a report indicating that civilian causalities increased for the fifth consecutive year in 2011. The number climbed 8 percent, from 2,790 civilian deaths in 2010 to 3,021 last year. Some say it's best that foreign military presence ends
Still, there is a population of Afghans who think they may ultimately be better off without any foreign military presence.
While it's true that his organization benefited from the help of foreign organizations, says Lal Gul Lal, who has run the Afghanistan Human Rights Organization since 1997, AHRO can survive on donations from wealthy Afghans as it did when it first began.
“After almost 11 years, they [NATO] didn’t do anything to create a permanent solution to Afghanistan’s problems,” says Mr. Lal. “I think if they leave Afghanistan there will be no effect.”
There is even some hope that cuts in foreign spending could ultimately lead to less corruption in Afghan society – a major concern in a nation ranked the second most-corrupt in the world by Transparency International.
Already, the US has determined that more than $60 billion has been lost in Afghanistan and Iraq contracting due to fraud, mismanagement, and lack of oversight.
“If we get less money than now and we have a transparent administration, I think that will be better than we are now. We have NGOs working in different sectors, but they are corrupt and grabbing money and no one knows where all the money goes,” says Ismattuallh Shinwari, a member of parliament from Nangarhar Province.
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Talking with the Taliban
Direct negotiations with the radical Islamists are key to lasting Afghan and regional stability
Financial Times
By Ahmed Rashid
After eleven years of war the Taliban’s public declaration that they will hold talks with the United States in Qatar is a major breakthrough for the political process, for Afghanistan’s internal stability and for the relative peace that will be needed by the US and NATO in 2014 before they can exit Afghanistan in good order and without too much bloodshed. The year-long clandestine talks brokered by the Germans, fostered by Qatar and eventually ending in direct meetings between US officials and Taliban representatives will hopefully lead to a major reconciliation with the Kabul regime. The Taliban’s present insistence that they will only talk with the Americans is not realistic in the long term, while Karzai’s recent policy flip-flops and contradictory statements belie the fact that he was kept in the loop every step of the way by the Germans. The talks will go ahead because there is no other alternative to ending the war.
The metrics of calculating how successful NATO forces have been on the ground combating the Taliban, despite heady announcements by NATO generals, are mired in considerable controversy and doubt. The ability of the Taliban, unlike al-Qaeda, to rebound from severe hits has proved them to be remarkably resistant to casualties, with a deep bench of commanders, logisticians, recruiters and administrators for their cause.
In a summer offensive the Taliban can still mobilize some 25,000 fighters – the same figure they had in the 2005-6 campaigns. Taliban survival is directly linked to the sanctuary, support and logistics they receive in neighboring Pakistan from various elements in that country. The US and NATO are preparing a comprehensive transition strategy for 2014 that entails handing over control of the country to government representatives at the district level and the newly-trained Afghan security forces, who now number some 352,000. However, an exit strategy is not a political strategy and that is precisely what is lacking to ensure the future stability of Afghanistan and the volatile region which surrounds this landlocked country.
Presidents Barack Obama and Hamid Karzai are both entangled in a series of strategic conundrums, which so far have not been adequately addressed. Karzai is determined to secure a strategic agreement with the US allowing for the presence of US trainers and special forces in the country well beyond 2014. Washington would like to do the same. But the Taliban are vehemently opposed to any such US-Kabul agreement as it will appear to be aimed at them. Karzai will find it impossible to conclude both a strategic agreement with the US and a reconciliation agreement with the Taliban. The two aims are mutually exclusive. The recent contradictory policy statements by Karzai on the issue of reconciliation and the opening of a Taliban office in Qatar point to the fact that this reality is now dawning on the Afghan government. Karzai cannot be a partner to both the US and the Taliban and expect the Taliban to buy it. The Taliban have made it clear they expect all US troops to leave by 2014. Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar will find it hard enough to sell the idea of reconciliation to his fighters. He will find it impossible to sell the idea of co-habitation with the Americans beyond 2014. Many Afghans, including Karzai, want a prolonged presence of foreign troops to guarantee their own safety and security. However a Taliban-Kabul deal can only be agreed when all foreign troops have left. There is not enough consideration in Washington or Brussels of this strategic conundrum.
Moreover the US, NATO and Kabul cannot hope to achieve even a modicum of regional non-interference in Afghanistan if US forces stay beyond 2014 because most neighboring states are opposed to a prolonged US presence. In particular, China, Iran and Pakistan are extremely suspicious of US intentions (for example about US training bases in Afghanistan being used to spy on these countries.)
Here, too, a prolonged US presence would imply that no regional non-interference guarantees are possible. Finally, it is still unclear what Pakistan may demand in return for restoring relations with the US and Kabul and helping the peace process. The US, NATO and Karzai need a political strategy on several counts. Firstly, a political strategy must start by holding talks with the Taliban that lead to confidence building measures on both sides to reduce the violence so that negotiations on power-sharing between the Taliban and Karzai can take place.
However, the administrations of both Obama and Karzai are deeply divided on talking to the Taliban. The US military would like a longer lead time to mount offensives and degrade the Taliban further, while the State Department sees no way out but talks. Similarly Karzai is surrounded by differing opinions and numerous conspiracy theories among his advisers as to what the talks mean for their political future.
Secondly, a political strategy must entail a dialogue and eventual political agreement among Afghanistan’s neighbors to limit their interference in Afghanistan. Apart from India all others – China, Russia, the five Central Asian republics, Pakistan and Iran – are against any long-term presence of US troops in Afghanistan beyond 2014. Recently intra-regional relations have gotten even worse. In the past six months we have seen the collapse of US-Pakistan relations and the refusal of Pakistan to even meet with US officials until their internal review process is over. In addition, the crisis between Iran and the rest of the world over Tehran’s nuclear weapons program has further jeopardized any hope of Iran playing ball on Afghanistan. The regime sees Afghanistan as a potential battle ground if the US/Israel were to bomb or invade Iran. Attempts at a regional reconciliation have become even more difficult.
Thirdly, there must be greater internal political cohesion inside Afghanistan. Karzai has failed to create a national consensus on supporting talks with the Taliban, nor has he offered a vision for the post-2014 Afghanistan. With many Pashtuns supporting reconciliation with the Taliban and most non-Pashtuns rejecting it, the ethnic divide in the country has widened enormously and will grow more belligerent as the Taliban talks progress. Ethnic divisions could explode after 2014. Some experts even predict civil war.
In addition, there has been little preparation done by the West or Kabul to prepare for what is going to be a huge economic downturn in the country as aid levels drop precipitously, economic panic prevails and investment is reduced. Already businessmen, regime politicians and others who can afford it are moving their families abroad. Tens of thousands of Afghans who presently work for US or NATO forces will be rendered jobless.
At the December conference in Bonn, the Afghans received a commitment from the international community that during the “Transformation Decade” from 2015 to 2024, they will pay for a substantial part of Afghanistan’s security and governmental costs. The West, however, has to provide some guarantee now that such sums will be available for several years to come. At a time of global economic recession, the US, NATO and the wider Muslim world must obviously share such a burden.
It is also uncertain what Pakistan – the main regional stakeholder with the Taliban leadership on its soil – will do given its poor relations with both Kabul and Washington. Ideally, Pakistan should be included in any talks; Islamabad should be persuaded to allow Taliban to travel and discuss the issues freely; it should free the Taliban prisoners it is holding, and ultimately it ought to give the Taliban a deadline for leaving Pakistan and returning to Afghanistan. All of these steps would speed up a peace settlement between Kabul and the Taliban. Yet at present Pakistan is far removed from even talking to the main interlocutors. Finally, there is the plethora of political events in 2014 that at present appear far too many and dangerous for a fledgling Afghan state to cope with. These include a US and NATO troop withdrawal with all its resultant side effects; the test of whether the Afghan army can hold its ground; a presidential election, as Karzai will have to step down and new presidential candidates be found. All this against the backdrop of a loss of public confidence inside Afghanistan and a lack of agreement among neighboring states. Moreover, Karzai may decide at the last moment to hang on to power, citing possible chaos after NATO’s withdrawal, in which case political calculations will be even more muddied.
To cope with all these uncertainties, the US, NATO and Karzai will have to be far more constructive, proactive and flexible in their planning than they have been so far. The outlines of a much wider and deeper strategy should be ready in time for the NATO summit in Chicago in May. They should be made public so that the Afghans and the regional states can draw confidence from such plans rather than continuing to believe in a host of conspiracy theories about US and NATO intentions. Both Afghanistan and the Western alliance still have a long way to go before all the pieces for an Afghan peace and a political exit strategy fall into place.
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Pakistan Tries to Take Part in Afghan Negotiations: Afghan Senators
TOLOnews.com
Tuesday, 07 February 2012
As Pakistan is isolated, it tries hard to take part in Afghan peace negotiations, several Afghan Senators said on Tuesday.
The comments came as on Monday, Prime Minister, Yosuf Raza Gilani, went to Qatar and met with the Qatari Prime Minister to discuss about Afghan peace negotiations.
The Senators emphasised that there is no guarantee that Pakistan will be honest in peace negotiations with the Taliban.
Tensions between Islamabad, Washington and Kabul have raised concerns among Pakistani officials, Senators believe.
"Pakistan is isolated in the region and tries to hold the central role in Afghan peace negotiations," Ali Akbar Jamshidi, Member of Afghan Upper House said.
The senators asked the government to take the responsibility of negotiations from US and Pakistan.
"Fighting is going on in Afghanistan and Afghans are getting killed every day, but the negotiations belong to Pakistan and the US," Gul Ahmad Azimi, a member of Afghan Upper House said on Tuesday.
Senators believe that their efforts paved the way for Pakistani Prime Minister to visit Qatar.
"I can tell you very confidently that our efforts paved the way for his visit," Senator Gul Ahmad Azimi, said.
Pakistani's prime Minister, Yosuf Raza Gilani visited Qatar on Monday to discuss Afghan peace negotiations with officials there.
Afghan government believes that Mr Gilani's trip will not have a positive or negative impact on the negotiations and called it an Afghan problem.
Afghan officials stressed on Afghan-led talks.
Strengthening of relations and signing trade agreement are called the main purpose of Mr Gilani's trip to Qatar but Islamabad has said that he will discuss Afghan peace talks with the Qatari officials as well.
"As far as Mr Gilani's trip to Qatar is concerned, it will not have a positive or negative impact on the peace negotiations. It neither accelerates the process or slows it down," Abdul Hakim Asher, Head of the Government Media and Information Centre said on Monday. "So, it's clear that we want Afghanistan to lead the negotiations."
Afghans will finally take the leadership of the talks, Afghan officials believe.
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US special operations' Afghan role could expand
Associated Press
By KIMBERLY DOZIER
07/02/2012
WASHINGTON
A U.S. admiral said Tuesday that special operations forces in Afghanistan are preparing for a possible expanded role as American forces begin to withdraw after a decade of war.
Adm. Bill McRaven, the special operations commander who led last year's Navy commando raid against Osama bin Laden, confirmed that special operations forces would be the last to leave under the Obama administration's current plan, and that the Pentagon is considering handing more of the Afghan war responsibility over to a senior special operations officer as part of that evolution.
McRaven said special operations would combine targeting and training operations this summer to prepare for a smaller overall U.S. presence, but he stressed that no final decisions had been made.
"I have no doubt that special operations will be the last to leave Afghanistan," McRaven told a Washington audience, though he said he did not expect their numbers to rise.
"As far as anything beyond that, we're exploring a lot of options," he said.
The White House is considering handing the entire Afghan campaign back to special operations forces — an evolution expected to stretch well past the drawdown of most conventional NATO troops in 2014, according to multiple officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the still-evolving plans.
Senior administration officials have described turning the mission over to special operations forces as a possible way to provide security with fewer U.S. troops, because of their ability to work in smaller numbers and with local forces on such missions as night raids or patrolling villages. Administration officials believe that smaller presence will be less offensive to the Afghans.
Afghan participation in the controversial night raids against insurgents has not stopped Afghan president Hamid Karzai from criticizing them and blaming the U.S. for unnecessary civilian casualties, but U.S. officials believe his criticism will be more muted as his forces take on a greater role.
The administration's emphasis on partnering with Afghan forces is driving McRaven's streamlining of special operations in Afghanistan, blending the village security operations with the elite Joint Special Operations Command's terrorist-hunting cell based at Bagram, which is working on degrading the Taliban militant network with focused raids.
"We feel like we have to become not only more effective but more efficient," McRaven said.
Under the current system, if the special operations terrorist hunters have five potential insurgents to hit in a given area, they will likely choose to strike a high-value target, instead of spending their time hunting lower level insurgents menacing a local village that fellow U.S. Army Green Berets are trying to secure, according to a U.S. military official.
With one commander in charge of all special operations, he could decide to clear out those lower level insurgents to secure the village, leaving the high value target for another night.
During McRaven's remarks at a Washington area hotel, there was an outburst from a retired special operations general who was angry at media coverage of special operations missions, such last year's raid in Pakistan by Navy commandos known as SEALs that killed bin Laden, and the recent SEAL rescue of two Western hostages in Somalia.
"Get the hell out of the media," retired Lt. Gen. James Vaught shouted at McRaven.
McRaven calmly responded that avoiding media coverage was impossible in the 24-hour news cycle, and that while he objected to revealing sensitive tactics, the media could be useful, especially when reporting operations gone wrong.
"Having those failures exposed in the media helps us do a better job," McRaven said. "So sometimes the spotlight on us makes us better."
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New Afghan schoolbooks shun history of wars
AFP
07/02/2012
The Afghan government has published new textbooks for schoolchildren that shun the country's modern history of conflict in an effort to promote national unity, an official said Tuesday.
"In the past four decades we have had some topics that were controversial," education ministry spokesman Amanullah Iman told AFP -- referring to Soviet occupation, civil war, the rise of the Taliban and a US-led invasion.
"We have decided not to include them in the new curriculum," he said.
The books, published with the help of international donors who are believed to be mostly American, aim to avoid inflaming old enmities, he said.
They are expected to be distributed in time for the beginning of the school year in spring.
"In the new textbooks we have avoided naming individuals and parties who were involved in conflicts in the past four decades -- we have omitted topics that would create divisions among people," said the spokesman.
"We cannot let education be a battleground between people and parties. And the solution is to omit the names of these people and parties from textbooks in order to protect national unity."
Afghanistan's education system has been through many changes since the country's last monarch, King Zahir Shah, was overthrown in 1973, leading to an invasion by the Soviet Union in December 1979 and 30 years of war.
When Soviet troops were in Afghanistan in the 1980s, textbooks that preached communism were printed and taught in schools.
In turn, they were countered by books backed by the United States that were filled with anti-communist ideas of resistance against the Soviets.
Then, during the rule of the hardline Islamist Taliban from 1996 until their overthrow by a US-led invasion in 2001, schoolbooks were dominated by the promotion of jihad, or holy war.
Girls were banned from going to school and madrassas or religious schools became the main source of education for boys.
"The education in Afghanistan should be non-political, and we are trying to depoliticize it," Iman said, rejecting the idea that the new books were themselves political.
Since the fall of the Taliban, education in Afghanistan has expanded rapidly and the education ministry says there are now around 8.2 million students in school, up from around 1.2 million 10 years ago.
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Afghan Reintegration Drama
The Diplomat
By David Axe
February 7, 2012
Off and on for a decade, the Afghan government and its allies in the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force (IASF) have tried to convince Taliban fighters to lay down their weapons and rejoin mainstream society.
But so-called "reintegration" has proved difficult, to say the least. Across Afghanistan, government authorities have reported only a handful of documented, successful reintegrations among the thousands of active Taliban fighters.
Efforts in Paktika Province, in remote eastern Afghanistan on the border with Pakistan, illustrate the obstacles to large-scale reintegration.
In Paktika, Afghan and ISAF authorities have used a mix of tactics in an attempt to persuade extremist fighters to switch sides. These include: radio broadcasts promising Taliban fighters amnesty and protection; face-to-face meetings between U.S. and Afghan officials and high-level Taliban; and the offer of government jobs to reintegrating fighters.
The year-old Afghan Local Police (ALP) initiative, a sort of community militia trained and equipped by ISAF and Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), is critical to reintegration efforts. Some Taliban fighters have been offered jobs with the ALP. Moreover, ISAF believes the local police can provide the security necessary to protect former Taliban from reprisal.
Cultural researchers from a U.S. Army Human Terrain Team (HTT) interviewed residents of the town of Sar Howza, in northern Paktika, to gauge their feelings about reintegration.
"Villagers who are willing to talk about reconciliation have mixed opinions on whether it will actually be successful," the researchers reported. "Some thought the Taliban and other insurgents would be willing to reconcile; most thought the Taliban would fight until coalition forces were expelled from the country."
Complicating this assessment is the apparent fragility of the ALP program and its vulnerablity to being co-opted by warlords. "A number of ALP precursor programs failed, as well as [did] a community policing program established under the Soviets that devolved into militia groups fighting on behalf of warlords," HTT reported.
"HTT believes we will not see high-level insurgents reintegrating until the ALP and ANSF have clearly established control of the key districts in Paktika," the researchers warned. If the ALP collapses, security – and reintegration – will be that much more elusive.
Even given reasonable levels of security, some Afghans doubt Kabul's commitment to reintegration. "One ALP stated he doubted reconciliation would even happen," the researchers added. "'It’s been in the news a lot,' [the policeman] said. 'There have been lots of rumors about big meetings in Kabul. But it’s been 10 years…'"
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Afghans Worried About Early Exit Of French Troops
NPR
By Ahmad Shafi
February 8, 2012
On a plateau amid the towering Hindu Kush Mountains, Hukum Khan, a 31-year-old Afghan farmer, has brought his horse to a scenic bridge in the Kapisa province of Afghanistan. Unable to farm during the winter, he rents his horse out to visiting tourists who have come from Kabul, about 60 miles to the south.
Khan says the presence of French troops hasn't made much difference in his life in the last 10 years. He says if the French really wanted to help now, they should go after the corrupt officials in his province.
But local authorities in Kapisa say the 3,900 French troops deployed here have held an important line against the Taliban. With their superior weaponry and better tactics, they have prevented the Taliban from opening a northern front in their campaign to surround Kabul, according to Muhajir Agha, a local police officer.
Agha concedes that Afghan security forces are not ready to fill the gap if the French leave any time soon. He thinks it will be at least two years before his comrades will be ready to defend Kapisa alone.
But France recently announced it will pull out all combat troops by the end of 2013, a year earlier than other coalition forces. The move came after four French troops were killed by a rogue Afghan solider on Jan. 20.
The French decision has come as a surprise, says Hussian Khan, the head of the provincial council in Kapisa, and it's left many of his constituents feeling betrayed and abandoned.
"You can't fight a war if you think there will be no casualties," Khan says. "We were not expecting such a shameful reaction from a highly developed country like France. They should step up their fight, not just retreat so disgracefully".
A member of the Afghan parliament from Kapisa, Dr. Mohammad Farouq, says the Taliban is strong in three districts in the southeast of the province, despite many joint Afghan and French military operations against the insurgents.
"A premature withdrawal of French troops will lead to a crisis in this area," Farouq says. "This is not the right time for them to leave. We do not have the forces to replace them right now to stop the enemy."
Farouq is afraid the French decision might prompt other NATO countries to follow suit, leaving the Americans to do most of the combat.
Washington says Afghan security forces are growing rapidly and will be able to assume security responsibilities once France pulls out, but there is still doubt by some in the province.
A local council member, who did not want to be named, says when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan more than three decades ago, the French were quick to lend a helping hand because Europe's security was threatened. Now that Kapisa, one of the smallest provinces in Afghanistan, is threatened by a resurgent Taliban, he says the French are leaving them out in the cold.
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Baby Girls Seen As Mixed Blessing In Afghanistan
RFE/RL
By Farangis Najibullah, Haseeba Shaheed
February 07, 2012
At the age of 29, childbirth is nothing new to Rukhsar, yet the expectant mother can't help being apprehensive about her fifth child.
Her first four children, aged between 2 and 12, are all girls, and she feels pressure to deliver a boy to please her husband. If she gives birth to another daughter, Rukhsar says, she fears he will seek a second wife.
"I would have to organize for him to get a second wife," she says. "I don't want him to get another wife, but I would have no other choice [in order to avoid divorce]."
Not having a son has placed enormous strain on the couple's marriage, says Rukhsar, a native of the eastern Afghan district of Surkhrud who gave only her first name.
In Afghanistan, tradition among many families dictates a strong preference for boys, and blame is often placed on the mother if she gives birth to a girl.
This is for a variety of reasons: sons are seen as future breadwinners; the continuation of a family's lineage; the inheritors of the estate.
Ehsanullah, a 33-year-old Kabul resident and father of two girls and a boy, explains that sons are expected to take care of their parents in old age. For many Pashtuns, he says, it's virtually unacceptable for elderly parents to live with a son-in-law.
On the other hand, says Ehsanullah, who gave only his first name, daughters can be a financial burden, and then they grow up and marry into somebody else's family. He says that before the birth of his third child, a son, he was embarrassed to tell relatives he had daughters.
'Sorry, It's A Girl'
"It doesn't mean that I don't love my daughters," he stresses, but there is another very real extreme that reveals itself in violence against mothers who "fail" to give birth to a son. Earlier this month, the issue made headlines when a man in Konduz Province allegedly strangled his wife after she gave birth to the couple's third girl, rather than his much-desired boy.
Women's rights activists in Afghanistan say that such extreme cases are highly unusual, but bullying and ostracizing women over the gender of their babies is not uncommon.
Ironically, most of the pressure does not come from the father of the baby girl, but from the mother-in-law and other family members. This is according to Anisa Imrani, who was recently put in charge of women's affairs in the eastern Nangarhar Province.
"A woman who gives birth to a boy gets completely different treatment after the delivery. Her husband's family feeds her with the best possible food available; they usually slaughter a chicken for her," Imrani says.
"The birth of a boy is celebrated with lavish parties. But when a girl is born, the mother feels ashamed and she has to deal with harassment by her in-laws."
Conservative Society
Imrani says that while no reliable statistics are available, the phenomenon is more widespread among less-educated families.
Farida Hoad, an Afghan obstetrician who has worked in Kabul's Malalai maternity hospital, places the blame on "ignorance."
"They don't understand and do not accept, that it's the father's chromosome that determines the gender of the child," says Hoad, a native of Nangarhar.
Parents' preference of sons over daughters is strongly connected to men's and women's primary roles in the deeply religious society, in which men are traditionally the bread-winners and women are the homemakers.
In more conservative families, girls and boys are treated much differently by their parents while growing up. "My sister and I are allowed to eat only after my brothers finish their food," explains Nuriya, a teenage girl from the eastern Paktia Province.
Sons As Insurance Policy
As the heads of their families, men not only look after their elderly parents but they are also expected to take care of their younger siblings if called upon. Therefore, Afghan parents see their sons as a kind of insurance policy for old age.
Gulghotai Mahmadzai, a 55-year-old housewife from the southern city of Kandahar, says the fact that she never bore a son means she now faces an uncertain future.
Mahmadzai and her husband separated after she gave birth to 10 daughters, and her husband went on to marry a 26-year-old woman in an effort to get a son. He now has two more daughters.
Moving in with one of her daughters is not an option for Mahmadzai, and she lives alone. But Mahmadzai says that if she had had a son, her life would have been completely different.
Afghan women's rights activists say education and raising awareness is key to changing the situation. They call on religious leaders and mullahs, who enjoy great respect in Afghan society, to take part in campaigns to end gender discrimination in families.
"Our religion forbade discrimination over the gender of the child, which was prevalent before the arrival of Islam," says Afghan religious scholar Mawlana Mustafa. "It's anti-Islamic and is a sign of ignorance and faithlessness."
In Surkhrud, Rukhsar's marriage hangs in the balance as she waits to find out her baby's gender. If the ultrasound determines that she isn't carrying a boy, Rukhsar says, divorce or the prospect of having to share her husband with a second wife is imminent.
"Nothing else can change my situation," Rukhsar says.
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Chicago Summit to Finalise Long-term Support to Afghan Forces
TOLOnews.com
Tuesday, 07 February 2012
Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Tuesday said that the upcoming Chicago Summit will finalise a specific plan for long-term support to Afghan security forces.
The spokesman for Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Janan Musazai, said Nato's role will be vital in the mobilisation and training of Afghan security forces after 2014. He said Chicago Summit is expected to emphasise on Nato presence in Afghanistan and its important role to mobilise and train Afghan forces.
While there have been concerns about withdrawal of foreign forces by the end of 2014, Mr Musazai says the Nato leaders who will attend the Chicago Summit will emphasise on long-term cooperation between Nato and Afghanistan.
"We stress on two key issues at the summit, which means long-term strategic partnership with Nato as a security organisation, and also long-term financial support to Afghan security forces," the spokesman for Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
It comes as 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.
The US Defence Minister had previously 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 recently 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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U.S. drone attack kills 10 in Pakistan: officials
Reuters
By Haji Mujtaba
Tue Feb 7, 2012
MIRANSHAH, Pakistan
A U.S. drone aircraft killed 10 suspected militants in Pakistan's North Waziristan region near the Afghanistan border on Wednesday, security officials and residents said, the fifth such strike this year.
The unacknowledged Central Intelligence Agency drone program, a key element in U.S. counter-terrorism efforts, was apparently halted after a November NATO air attack from across the Afghan border killed 24 Pakistani soldiers enraged Pakistan.
The United States resumed attacks with the missile-firing drones in northwest Pakistan on January 10.
In Wednesday's attack, a drone fired two missiles at a house suspected of being a militant hideout in the village of Thapi, 15 km (10 miles) east of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan.
The building was completely destroyed and 10 suspected militants were killed, Pakistani security officials said.
"Almost all the men were burnt beyond recognition," a villager said after visiting the destroyed house.
"Dozens of militants arrived later and took over rescue work. They pulled out nine bodies," he said, requesting anonymity.
Security officials and villagers said the dead included foreign fighters but they did not specify their nationalities.
Several militant groups, including the Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda, have a presence in Pakistan's northwestern ethnic Pashtun regions, taking advantage of a porous border with Afghanistan to conduct cross-border attacks, or plot violence elsewhere.
North Waziristan is also an important base area for the Haqqani network, an Afghan militant faction allied with the Taliban which the United States says is one of its deadliest adversaries in Afghanistan.
While the Haqqani faction says it no longer needs a sanctuary in North Waziristan and has made enough battlefield gains in Afghanistan to stay there, it is known to still operate in the Pakistani border region.
A Pashtun tribal elder said militants usually avoided gathering, limiting groups to three or four people to minimize losses in the event of a drone attack. But they had dropped their guard recently.
"It has been freezing cold in the last few days and then there were no drones for some time. That's why the militants started living together and suffered heavy losses," the elder, who declined to be identified, told Reuters.
The use of the unmanned aircraft over Pakistan is opposed by most members of the public and Pakistani politicians, who regard the attacks as violations of sovereignty that produce unacceptable civilian casualties.
But despite its public stance, Pakistan has quietly supported the drone program since President Barack Obama ramped up air strikes after taking office in 2009.
(Additional reporting by Jibran Ahmad in PESHAWAR and Saud Mehsud in DERA ISMAIL KHAN; Writing by Qasim Nauman; Editing by Serena Chaudhry and Robert Birsel)
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Winding Down the Combat Mission in Afghanistan
The Impact of Defense Secretary Panetta's Announcement on a New Timeline
USIP
February 6, 2012
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters this week on his way to Brussels that the U.S. would end the combat mission in Afghanistan by the end of 2013. American troops, he said, would transition to a train-and-assist mission. The statement took many NATO officials there by surprise. The administration has sought to clarify that the American combat mission would not end completely, but would be greatly reduced.
USIP’s Andrew Wilder, who directs the Afghanistan and Pakistan programs, Shahmahmood Miakhel, director of USIP’s office in Kabul, and Omar Samad, a senior Afghan expert at USIP, gave their perspectives on the matter.
What do you think the defense secretary’s announcement will mean for NATO operations on the ground? Does it help or hinder peace talks? Some believe it reflects an American signal of strength. But how will it be perceived by the Taliban?
Andrew: At this point it remains unclear what Secretary Panetta’s comments will mean for NATO operations on the ground, because there is still lots of confusion about what his statement actually meant. At one level, they could be interpreted as simply clarifying that as troop levels decline, the military mission will inevitably change. At some point there will be insufficient troops to sustain a major fighting mission as well as an Afghan National Security Force (ANSF) training mission, and so it’s not that surprising to be saying that by 2013 the main focus will shift from fighting to training and assisting the ANSF. But the announcement may be interpreted differently in Afghanistan, especially coming as it does shortly after French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s comments about withdrawing French troops before 2014. There, it may be seen as further evidence that the international community will “cut and run” and abandon Afghanistan, much as it did in 1992. There is an urgent need for a strategic communications campaign to emphasize that the U.S. remains committed to an enduring partnership with Afghanistan, albeit at more sustainable levels than in recent years. It would also help to reassure Afghans that they are not being abandoned if the U.S. and Afghan governments could quickly finalize the Strategic Partnership Agreement, which defines the nature of the U.S.’s military and economic support to Afghanistan post-2014.
What is your sense of the capabilities of the Afghan forces? What will they need to do over the next couple years to achieve the capability they need to reach by late 2013?
Shahmahmood: The announcement of the troops' withdrawal was premature and the ANSF will not be ready to take full responsibility by 2013 or even 2014. The whole military transition is based on several assumptions, but not reality, on the ground. I believe this announcement further strengthens the Taliban position to keep pressure on the Kabul government and the international community and it may demoralize the ANSF. Also, Afghanistan’s neighbors will hedge their plan around the international forces’ withdrawal, rather than be cooperative for enduring peace in Afghanistan.
This announcement seemed to come as a bit of a surprise to Kabul. What do you think the impact of this statement will have on the Afghan government and how could it help or hinder the U.S.-Afghan relationship?
Omar: Thousands of miles away from the noisy U.S. electoral arena, the impact of Secretary Panetta’s statement on the Afghan government will be four-fold. Internally, the Afghan government will see it partly linked to U.S. domestic political dynamics, and partly as applying the gradual draw down of forces in Iraq and applying it to an Afghan context, and as a prelude to the full transfer of security responsibilities by the end of 2014.
Unlike the French decision that was unexpected and was in reaction to a specific event, Kabul will try to explain that this decision falls within the parameters of the 2010 NATO decision in Lisbon. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who likely had hints such an announcement was coming, will analyze the impact in terms of his own domestic political standing, his administration’s capacity to cope with the consequences and the effect on the insurgency. He will also look at how this will affect talks that are now underway on U.S. and Afghan strategic cooperation.
The Afghan defense and security institutions are going to make a case for accelerating the process of strengthening the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police, especially focusing on better equipment, heavy weapons systems and air defense capabilities. These and the question of funding the Afghan military (based on troop-level numbers) after 2014 will need to be decided at the NATO summit in May in Chicago. Overall, this decision will neither help nor hinder U.S.-Afghan relations, but will add an added dimension to take into consideration on all items that make up this complex relationship that goes beyond the bilateral mode. At the end of the day, what will matter most is what happens on the ground, militarily and politically speaking, between now and 2013 (after the American election), that may alter conditions and policies.
How will the Afghan civil society and general public react to this policy statement?
Omar: The Afghans, especially civil society and political actors, are, among other worries, already concerned about a number of things that include the capacity of Afghan forces by 2014, the economic fallout of the drawdown and the confused state of the “reconciliation” process. They will also fear the continued meddling of regional players the specter of a civil war. This decision will further increase domestic stress factors along fault lines that exist, and increase the gap between public perceptions and a coherent policy formulation. The result may be more people sitting on the fence or the mobilization of various interest groups asking for change and more guarantees.
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Afghan child labor fears grow as aid dries up
Reuters
By Amie Ferris-Rotman
07/02/2012
KABUL
Dwindling development aid as the war winds down in Afghanistan means child labor in the impoverished country is at risk of becoming more widespread, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) warned on Tuesday.
Half of Afghanistan's population of 30 million are under 15, with almost two million children in full or part-time work, UNICEF estimates of a country where war, poverty, unemployment and pride in having large families have created a huge underage labor market.
With foreign troops fighting Taliban insurgents pulling out by the end of 2014, global attention is dolefully shifting away from Afghanistan and its humanitarian needs, said the ILO's representative to Kabul Herve Berger.
"The issue of child labor may fall below the radar screen and be seen as less important after 2014," Berger told Reuters. "What is key here is ensuring enough sustainability."
Berger cited a report by the UN agency detailing one of the worst forms of child labor -- brickmaking in the dusty kilns in the country's east, where children work in a slavish cycle of debt that is almost impossible to escape.
Though both child labor and so-called bonded work are illegal in Afghanistan, children as young as five churn out hundreds of bricks a week for a few dollars to pay off family debts which swell the longer they work there.
Poor health from harsh working conditions, reliance on shelter and electricity provided by brick employers and denied education mean brickmakers are tied to their work.
With Afghanistan's construction boom -- a third of which is supported by foreign aid -- expected to dampen as aid dries up, brick demand will slump and the children will be forced further into poverty as the balance tips in favor of the employers.
This mirrors what could happen to Afghanistan on a larger scale when the aid vanishes, a process which has already started.
"All service sectors will be affected as aid dries up. Lower profit margins mean more children will be working," said Sarah Cramer, project manager at Samuel Hall Consulting, which conducted the study for the ILO.
Civilian aid, the vast majority coming from the United States, peaked in 2010 in Afghanistan and Washington has said it will spend less on development as it withdraws troops.
U.S. economic and humanitarian aid to Afghanistan fell from $4.1 billion in 2010 to $2.5 billion in 2011. The UN World Food Programme only managed to raise half of its Afghan budget last year as donors cut back as global economic woes mounted.
U.S. aid will be even lower this year as Washington shifts to sustainability projects, which they say require lower levels of funding.
Ensuring sustainability is one of the key concerns to be voiced at the major Afghanistan conferences in Chicago in May and Tokyo in July, Berger said.
He said that despite Afghanistan's pledge last year to set a minimum age for coal mine workers at 18, the country must be vigorous in eradicating child labor when exploring its untapped mineral deposits, plans which are already unfolding in the face of disappearing aid.
(Reporting by Amie Ferris-Rotman; Editing by Nick Macfie)
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NDS Captures 3 Suicide Attack Organisers
TOLOnews.com
By Shahla Murtazaie
Tuesday, 07 February 2012
Three suicide attack planners were captured on Kabul - Jabalseraj highway, while they were trying to escape to Pakistan, a spokesman for the Afghan National Directorate of Security (NDS), said on Tuesday.
These men were involved in suicide attacks which killed high ranking government officials in the north of the country, the NDS spokesman, Lutfullah Mashal said.
They are men of Qari Abdul Rahim, a local Taliban commander in Takhar who deserted to Pakistan.
The men were responsible for conducting terrorist activities throughout the province, Mr Mashal added.
Attacks which killed 303 Pamir zone Commander, General Dawood Dawood, Former Provincial Police Chief of Kandahar Shah Jahan Noori, Former Provincial Governor of Kunduz Mohammad Omer and a member of Afghan parliament Abdul Mutaleb Baig, were organised by the detained men, according to the NDS.
"The NDS managed to capture the murderer of Mutaleb Baig who was assassinated several months ago," Lutfullah Mashal added.
"I got familiar with one of the Taliban members Qari Abdul Rahim in Shamshatu area of Pakistan," one of the arrestees said.
They were helping other terrorist networks in Kunduz, Badakhshan and parts of Baghlan province," the NDS spokesman added.
Another terrorist network was captured in Kabul, Lutfullah Mashal, told reporters in Kabul on Tuesday.
These men were planning to attack several high profile buildings in Kabul, he added.
Meanwhile, Mr Mashal said that recently some of the regional intelligence and terrorist networks are trying to defame NDS among Afghan people by accusing the department of making baseless accusations.
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PRESS RELEASE
Police and Justice Actors Agree on First Joint Police-Prosecutor Cooperation Manual
8 February, 2012
Kabul, Afghanistan
In a groundbreaking ceremony at EUPOL Headquarters, major players in the justice and law enforcement sectors got together with the objective of adopting for the first time a comprehensive joint training resource for Police and Prosecutors. Experts from five institutions have been co-writing an extensive Police-Prosecutor Cooperation Manual, which combines theory lessons on Afghan laws and procedure with best practices recommendations and modern teaching methodologies.
A case study, which is central to the Manual and involves a fictitious Saranwal Amanullah and Samuniar Nasraddin, was pilot-tested by AGO and MoI trainers over the course of 2011 through the provincial “CoPP” project run by EUPOL and GIZ. The resolution confirmed that the Cooperation Manual had been reviewed internally by each of the institutions and would be recognized as an official training resource for police and prosecutors in Afghanistan’s Capital and provinces.
High-level representatives of the MoI and the AGO and their respective training institutions for police and prosecutors, the Ministry of Justice, the Supreme Court and the Independent Bar Association got together to sign a joint resolution that represents the culmination of more than two years of work. Deputy Minister of Interior Lt. General Mirza Mohammad Yarmand praised the work of the MoI representatives on the Manual Working Group and told them: “You deserve special recognition for your hard work.” Meanwhile, Deputy Attorney General Amini recalled the day the idea of a Manual was born: “It is hard to overstate how far we have come in our work,” he said. “We started with an empty piece of paper and some ideas, and today have a full-fledged Manual that will be very useful to police officers and prosecutors, as well as other justice actors such as defence lawyers and judges.”
Supreme Court Judge Abdul Malik Kamawi, the Head of Administration of the Judicial Branch, praised the Manual in a letter with the following words: "The Manual … is a very useful training resource … and is a productive step for ensuring justice and rule of law in the country. The Supreme Court wants to assure you that we agree that the Manual be included in the syllabus of training programmes."
Also present at the ceremony was Geoffrey Cooper, Acting Head of EUPOL Afghanistan, which led the compilation and editing process of the Manual, and Jari Vaarnamo, the Director of Crisis Management Centre Finland, which funded the development of the Manual on behalf of the Finnish government. Geoffrey Cooper expressed his satisfaction at seeing such a high-level group of justice and law experts gathered in one place and commented about the manual: "I am envious. I am certain, United Kingdom would also benefit from it." Mr. Vaarnamo commended the work of the Manual Working Group, a group of twelve Afghan experts who had spent two weeks in Finland consolidating all materials, proof-reading the final draft and cross-checking the Manual for consistency with Afghan law and practice. He welcomed the Resolution as a necessary step prior to the printing of the Manual as an official training resource. The official launch of the Manual will take place in a ceremony in Finland in March 2012. The Finnish government and EUPOL plan to print sufficient copies for all institutions and other agencies interested in police-justice actor training.
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