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12 February 2012

 

 

 

FEATURE STORY

The truth about Taliban 'reintegration'

 

 

BUSINESS

No articles featured today

NATION

Afghan Parliament to Summon Minister of Interior
In Afghanistan, a Soviet Past Lies in Ruins
Afghans fret flight of hard cash a sign of things to come
Lack of Internet Cuts Off Afghan Province
Risks of Afghan War Shift From Soldiers to Contractors
Afghanistan denies Taliban army infiltration systemic
Afghan Minister of Immigration Accused of Employing Relatives
Gunmen kill provincial judge, child in Afghanistan
Taliban: Changed, but still a potent threat
Pakistan denies sending NATO supply via its airspace
Afghanistan unites behind cricket team in defeat to Pakistan
Roadside Bomb Kills 5 Afghan Policemen
Taliban threatens Prince Harry with death, capture
13 militants surrender gov't in northern Afghan province
US Army Officer’s Leaked Report Discredits Afghanistan War Success Story
Qatar talks and Pakistan
Afghan women fear Taliban return

PRESS RELEASES

Statement by Special Representative and Head of the EU Delegation to Afghanistan Ambassador Vygaudas Ušackas on the International Day against the Use of Child Soldiers

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FEATURE STORY 

The truth about Taliban 'reintegration'

The much-vaunted "reintegration" of the Taliban, which Britain has funded with £7 million, is not quite what it seems, writes Ben Farmer in Kabul.

Telegraph.co.uk
By Ben Farmer
11 Feb 2012
Kabul

Wrapped in shawls against the cold, some with scarves to hide their faces, the men stand in front of a table bearing an arsenal of assault rifles and rockets.

As the insurgents renounce their armed struggle and declare they have made peace with Hamid Karzai's government, local journalists film the ceremony for the evening television.

Such scenes are now a common feature of Afghan news bulletins and portray one of the main pillars of Nato's strategy to overpower the Taliban and force them to the negotiating table prior to the planned exit by US and British forces.

However, The Sunday Telegraph has discovered disturbing evidence that all is not as it seems.

New figures have now shown that over the last 18 months the "reintegration" scheme which Britain has funded with £7 million has attracted only 19 militants in Helmand province, where British troops are fighting.

And in at least one Afghan province, the insurgents pledging to change their ways and uphold the Afghan constitution were not what they seemed, officials have disclosed.

Some 200 insurgents in the northern province of Sar-e Pol have recently been struck off the programme, officials told The Sunday Telegraph, because checks subsequently found they were not genuine fighters but instead imposters seeking cash handouts.

The news will not surprise the scheme's sceptics who allege that Western tax-payers are being duped by criminals, the unemployed and corrupt local officials while the real fighters stay in the conflict, or only join the government temporarily.

A leaked Nato report earlier this month also appeared to cast doubt on the very premise of the reintegration programme - that Taliban fighters are tired, motivated by money and want a way out.

Interrogators who have questioned thousands of insurgent prisoners in the past year reported instead that they remain motivated, feel their support is rising and their victory inevitable as foreign troops withdraw.

Fighters in Helmand, where the great majority of Britain's 397 dead have been killed, remain too afraid of their comrades in the Taliban to publicly relinquish the struggle and join the scheme despite security gains in the province, Nato and Afghan officials said.

Under the scheme, agreed two years ago at the London conference on Afghanistan, fighters are offered amnesty, training, jobs and aid for their villages if they leave the insurgency.

Around 3,000 men have joined nationwide in the past 18 months, but figures show the take-up in the southern and eastern strongholds of Taliban support, including in Helmand were Britain has been fighting for six years, has been negligible compared to that in the relatively peaceful north.

Nato officers insist that the low figures do not reflect the unknown number of fighters who are quietly laying aside their weapons without publicity and settling their differences with Hamid Karzai's government.

Major General David Hook, the British officer who leads Nato support for the Afghanistan Peace and Reintegration Programme (APRP), said the numbers painted only a partial picture.

"They don't want to come in, because they are afraid that coming in to us exposes them to the threat of the Taliban," he told The Sunday Telegraph. "At the moment some of them are more afraid of the Taliban than they are of being killed or captured.

"The question here is how many people have done what Afghans traditionally do when they get tired of fighting. They have just gone home, laid their weapons aside and gone back to normal society. This informal effect is difficult to measure."

British commanders point to lower levels of violence in districts such as Nad-e Ali as proof that fighters must be relinquishing the fight. But critics say the scheme is not working where it is most needed.

Pressure for a breakthrough is likely to increase as the 2014 deadline for withdrawal of international combat troops approaches, increasing anxiety over how the Afghan security forces will hold up when in charge.

Politicians in the US and elsewhere - in several cases facing imminent elections - are under pressure to speed the drawdown of troops.

Leon Panetta, the US defence secretary, said last week he wanted America to switch to mainly training missions by the middle of next year, and France has promised to hasten its exit as Nicholas Sarkozy faces a tough presidential election campaign this spring.

Diplomatic efforts have focused on trying to open channels to the Taliban's ruling council, most recently by agreeing a political office in Qatar, in the hope of one day helping Mr Karzai's government reach a political deal or "grand bargain".

Envoys in Kabul hope tentative talks may begin within weeks in the Gulf State, though even the most optimistic stress any resulting peace process would probably take years.

Marc Grossman, American special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, reportedly met Taliban negotiators in Qatar late last month.

One of the most imminent obstacles he faces is a Taliban demand that five of their leaders are transferred from Guantanamo Bay prison, where they have been held for a decade, as a confidence-building measure.

Mr Grossman has said no decision has been made, but the concession faces growing resistance from American congressmen.

At the other end of the scale, the APRP and Maj Gen Hook aim to weaken the insurgency by drawing away lowly fighters motivated more by unemployment and local grievances than ideology, or who are weary after years of fighting.

Donors have set up a trust fund of £92 million, including £7 million from Britain, to fund it.

The money pays for Afghan officials to reach out to fighters in their area and then provide a monthly stipend of around £100 as well as training and jobs to those who want to settle, plus aid to their villages.

Such reintegration is unlikely until a broader peace deal is reached, some critics argue. Fighters will not defect piecemeal until their comrades also stop fighting and they are free from the threat of reprisal, their argument goes.

Maj Gen Hook disagrees, saying the two approaches feed off each other.

"The more we can integrate, the more we undermine the coherence of the various organisations, the more likely we are to have talks, because we are taking the wind from their sails," he explained.

Another fear is that those joining the scheme are either not real fighters, or are only joining temporarily to gain a respite from the coalition surge.

Such concerns stem from memories of similar reintegration ceremonies in the late 1980s when Najibullah, the Soviet-backed president, tried to persuade the Mujahideen to give up their struggle, often with large sums of money.

A running joke at the time was that the same men could be seen handing in their weapons each week.

Maj Gen Hook rejects the possibility the same is still happening and said greater vetting had been brought in. Anyone wanting to join the scheme is now verified locally and then again by Afghan defence and security officials in Kabul.

Eye and fingerprint scans are taken so they cannot try re-joining later on.

He admits the rush to set up the scheme had caused problems at first and it was still "of variable quality".

But the programme was now running at "warp speed", he said, and the 200 Sar-e Pol cases proved new vetting checks were weeding out fakes.

He said: "Because we hadn't established a proper vetting process, they were all accepted into the programme and for the past nine to ten months, it's been a constant issue, because when we vetted them nationally, we realised that they weren't all bona fide insurgents.

"The double vetting has been to take away stuffing the programme with local cronies and to make sure that the people who come in are insurgents and not just common criminals, which was I think a justifiable criticism at the start of the programme." The Sar-e Pol imposters had not been given any of the £100 per month allowance, he said.

"I am reasonably confident the Afghans have a robust process because they turn people away all the time," he added.

Syed Anwar Ahmadti, governor of Sar-e Pol, said more than 600 insurgents had joined the government in his province in the past year and confirmed that 200 had subsequently been judged fraudulent.

He however disagrees with that ruling, made in Kabul, and believes that the men had been fighting the government. The decision not to pay them will discourage others from laying aside their weapons, he said.

"It doesn't matter if they don't have guns, they were helping the insurgency in logistics or some other capacity, without guns." Sceptics allege the "insurgents" are in some cases only local men who are rounded up and given old weapons to hand in, so that local officials can appear efficient while also raking off a share of the reintegration money.

Syed Obadullah Sadat, a council member from the eastern province of Ghazni has publicly denounced a defection last month by more than a dozen fighters as a sham.

He said: "The process is fake, people are doing it for money. It's all just for show, it's nothing. These people are told to show up with a few old guns so it looks like a success."

Dr Ghani Bahadari, the Afghan official in Ghazni who runs the scheme, rejected the criticism as "gossip".

He said: "The reason they joined the government is that their leaders have established an office in Qatar and showed their interest in peace. They have also told us they are tired of war."

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BUSINESS

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NATION

Afghan Parliament to Summon Minister of Interior

TOLOnews.com
By Saleha Sadat
Saturday, 11 February 2012

Some of the members of the Afghan House of Representatives on Saturday said that the Afghan Minister of Interior, Besmellah Mohammadi, should be summoned over the recent Nato attack in Kapisa.

The House of Representatives wants to summon the Afghan Minister of Interior over the killing of 8 Afghan children in a Nato air strike in Kapisa province.

The Afghan MPs blame what has happened on the local police appointed by the Afghan Interior Ministry in Kapisa province.

Afghan MPs said that Afghan Ministry of Interior should coordinate all operations with foreign forces.

On Wednesday eight Afghan children were killed in a Nato air strike in Kapisa province.

Nato has not provided details of the operation.

MPs accuse the Minister of Interior of not being able to pay attention to ensure security in some of the provinces.

"The Minister of Interior is the murderer of these eight Afghan children and the Minister has to be summoned to the parliament, Mohammada Iqbal Safi, a representative of Kapisa province, said.

The Afghan House Speaker Abdul Rauf Ibrahimi also condemned that attack by French forces in Kapisa province that resulted in the killing of eight Afghan children who were reportedly grazing sheep in the area.

The The UN's Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (Unama) recently said that more than 3,021 Afghans have been killed in 2011 conflict.

The deaths in 2011 compared with 2,790 in 2010 and 2,412 in 2009 showed that most of the deaths were caused by insurgents, the report found.

It was the fifth straight year that the toll has risen, with a total of 11,864 civilian lives claimed by the conflict since 2007.

Taliban-led insurgents caused 77 percent of the deaths last year, up to 14 percent from 2010, while Nato-led and Afghan government forces were responsible for killing 410 civilians -14 percent of the total, it added.

The UN said that improvised explosive devices (IEDs) were being used more widely and suicide attacks had become deadlier.

"The tactics of choice of anti-government elements subjected Afghan civilians to death and injury with increasingly lethal results in 2011," it said.

The report also said that civilian deaths in air strikes in support of the Afghan government rose in 2011.

"Afghan children, women and men continue to be killed in this war in ever-increasing numbers," the UN Special Representative in Afghanistan Jan Kubis recently said.

The UN Human Rights committee is worried over the civilian casualties that continued to rise year after year.

It comes as Nato is due to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014 after Afghan security forces will take over full security responsibility.

There are around 130,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, 90,000 of them are US forces fighting insurgents.

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In Afghanistan, a Soviet Past Lies in Ruins

New York Times
By GRAHAM BOWLEY
February 11, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan

As poignant in its imperial ambition as in its otherworldliness, the Soviet-era swimming pool atop Swimming Pool Hill here is as good a symbol as any of the doubtful legacy of empires.

Dug 30 years ago, it was barely ever used by Kabul’s swimmers, as the hill became entangled in barbed wire, first a gun placement for the Soviets and then the Taliban, before the whole area was bombarded by Western firepower in the 2001 invasion.

Now restored, its five diving boards hang pointlessly above an empty pool and an indifferent city stretched out below that is consumed with yet another stage of Afghanistan’s precarious history, the pending withdrawal of more recent foreign occupiers — the United States and its allies.

Like the pool, Kabul holds many glimpses of its Soviet past hidden in plain sight around its jumbled hillsides: a polytechnic school built in the 1960s, when the Soviet Union and the United States jostled for cold war influence in Afghanistan by building big infrastructure projects; or a car factory expanded after 1979, when the Soviet Army marched in to wrench this nation more forcefully into the Kremlin’s sphere of power and way of thinking.

The Soviets retreated in 1989, leaving Afghanistan to a civil war that swept up the Soviet-constructed edifices in the conflagration. However improbably, a few of these are still inhabited, like an engineering school, the Auto Mechanic Institute, where a second-year student in a green T-shirt picked his way one recent afternoon from the ghostly wreckage of bombed-out classrooms.

Others are simply wrecks, prowled only by the homeless, drug addicts and dogs — sobering artifacts that confront the United States and its allies as they begin pondering what their own legacy might be.

“The Soviets came in believing they could re-engineer other people’s societies, releasing Afghans from their medieval backwardness,” said Sir Rodric Braithwaite, a former British ambassador to Moscow whose book “Afgantsy” is about the Soviet occupation. “They didn’t transform Afghan society any more than we are going to.”

In 1980s Kabul, the Soviet Embassy on Darulaman Road, bustling with technicians and ideologues, was the locus of power, just as the American Embassy across town is today.

The current Russian ambassador, Andrey Avetisyan, 51, worked here as a young diplomat during the 1980s. He was here, too, when things became dicey in the early 1990s: he spent 16 days hiding in a bomb shelter as the mujahedeen divided up Kabul, and he was one of the last Russians to flee Afghanistan, in August 1992.

An urbane man in a smart dark suit, Mr. Avetisyan cuts something of an isolated figure in the echoing halls of the reconstructed Russian Embassy, a third of its former size. The grounds were home to donkeys and nomads during the Taliban years, but they are now hidden from the highway behind a curtain of metal blast walls.

He has a plan to restore 150 of the Soviet-era infrastructure projects, starting with a housing construction factory on the outskirts of Kabul near the airport.

“These were projects that were kind of the basis of the Afghan economy,” Mr. Avetisyan said. “Now it is difficult for me to see the state they are in.”

The starkest illustration of thwarted imperial ambition is the Soviet House of Science and Culture, near the Russian Embassy and the Kabul zoo. It is a modern, angular, concrete hulk where Soviets and Afghans gathered for lectures, films and the propagation of modernizing ideas that for a while refashioned Kabul, including a time when women could work outside the home in Western clothing.

But during the civil war of 1992-96, the House of Science and Culture was occupied by one faction and wrecked as another lobbed shells down from a nearby hill. Today, the auditoriums are littered with rubble; cold air comes in through rocket holes; and once-bold Soviet murals of men and women, Afghans and Russians, are hidden in the squalid darkness near cartoon images depicting a Taliban fighter instructing children to become suicide bombers.

“This used to be very luxurious,” said Mohammad Elyas, a heavy man with a big smile who was more intent on parking cars on the waste ground outside for 20 Afghanis each (about 40 cents) than contemplating the cultural center. “It is nothing now.”

Not every legacy bequeathed by the Soviets is lost. The Silo, an industrial bakery, fed the national Afghan Army and police. During the civil war, fighters threw their enemies from its rooftops. But its grimy yellow towers are once again turning out so-called silo bread for hospitals and schools.

The most enduring physical presence might be the Mikrorayon, gray apartment blocks originally built for Soviet administrators and the Afghan elite that stand amid the central suburbs of Kabul.

Also bearing the bullet and shell marks of the battles of the 1990s, they are cramped, run-down and patched, with clothing lines stretching haphazardly from windows to nearby trees. But the Mikrorayon are still some of the most prized homes for Kabul’s educated and wealthier middle class — a fact reflected in the loud street billboards for cellphones and private schools, and in the presence of young women walking the sidewalks in leg-hugging jeans unencumbered by the traditional dress.

“It is a safe place,” said Shir Mohammad Basheer, 50, a school principal who was fixing his car outside the four-room apartment that he shares with his wife and six children. “We have running water. We have electricity. We have central heating.”

“To be honest, Russia did this great work for Afghanistan,” he said. “We have not seen anything big built by the international coalition.”

Many Afghans’ remembrance of the Soviet years is colored by this rosy nostalgia. But the grounds of a museum near the main stadium hold reminders of a bloodier legacy: mines, shells, rockets, helicopters and other tools the Soviets employed to suppress their own insurgency, leaving hundreds of thousands dead, a ghastlier toll than the coalition’s, if these things can be compared.

Still, Abdul Wahid Taqat, a K.G.B.-trained intelligence officer during the Soviet years and now a military analyst who lives in an apartment near the Mikrorayon, said that he believed a powerful army and a muscular government were a valuable legacy. They allowed President Muhammad Najibullah, the last Soviet-backed leader, to withstand the mujahedeen alone for three years after 1989 before Moscow finally cut off oil and other supplies.

Then, of course, Mr. Najibullah was beaten, shot and hanged from a traffic light by the Taliban in Kabul in 1996.

“They left a strong Afghanistan behind, but today’s government will not last as long,” Mr. Taqat said, referring to the Soviets.

Up on Swimming Pool Hill one recent evening, five police officers in blue uniforms took time off from their duties, dancing in a circle near the swimming pool, their outstretched arms swaying to Tajik music floating from the window of their Toyota Land Cruiser.

Watching them, another Afghan taking in the air, Harun Merzad, 34, who was jobless and wearing a black hat and a G-Star Raw jacket, spoke of the Americans’ impending departure, and of the Soviets’ before it, with indifference — as if it was inevitable that once again Afghanistan would revert to what it always had been.

“I don’t have anything bad to say,” he said of the Russians with a shrug. “Except they were infidels.”

Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting.

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Afghans fret flight of hard cash a sign of things to come

Reuters
By Rob Taylor
Sun Feb 12, 2012
KABUL

* Hard currency flight seen accelerating before Nato 2014 handover

* Property prices in Kabul falling, reversing decade-long boom

In the crush of people in Kabul's Shahzada money market, conspiracy theories are a currency as hard as the bundles of cash in the hands of bearded traders trying to divine their future.

And the theory going around - amid the din of shouted exchange rates - is that Afghanistan's rich are preparing again to shift their money and lives from the country over fears of chaos or civil conflict after foreign troops leave.

"The money will all go out of Afghanistan. It is always like that. As soon as the foreign soldiers leave all the problems come back," says money changer Hajji Asadullah, gripping bundles of U.S. dollar bills, Gulf currencies and tattered local Afghani notes, all wrapped tightly in rubber bands.

Three years from the end of NATO combat missions and a total transfer to local security, Afghan officials are thinking hard about how to stop the flight of hard currency like dollars, euros or scrip from Gulf countries like the UAE that usually happens when nervousness overtakes their countrymen.

"It is the main topic of conversation now," says Naseem Akbar, who heads Afghanistan's Investment Support Agency and whose job is to lure investment, rather than stop it going out.

"The worry is about the country going into crisis, and parallel to that is that from now until 2014 we must work out how to avoid such a calamity."

PROPERTY A WEATHERVANE

A U.S. government audit report last year found it was almost impossible to track where much of the billions of dollars spent on security and development projects in the last decade had gone given the country's dysfunctional financial tracking system and poor bank oversight.

Wealthy Afghans have for years locked their money into safe havens and property elsewhere, with Dubai and its man-made Palm Jumeirah island being favoured locations, with an estimated $8 billion stashed away in the Arab emirate.

But Haji Sher Shah Ahmadzai, the millionaire owner of a group of construction companies in Kabul, said property prices at home jumped by 15 percent at the start of last year after foreigners pledged to support Afghanistan well beyond 2014.

Confidence however began leaching away with the September assassination of former president Burhanuddin Rabbani, who headed an Afghan peace council trying to launch talks with the Taliban.

It took a further blow as the United States, the Taliban and the Afghan government circle each other over possible peace talks in the Gulf state of Qatar, which could eventually see the austere Islamists return to Kabul as a political force.

"A flat cost around $220,000 months ago, but now it costs around $140,000 because of the uncertain situation," Ahmadzai told Reuters in his plush, heavily-guarded office in the upmarket Wazir area of central Kabul.

SIGNS OF UNCERTAINTY

Hardly any Afghans expect the Taliban to be strong enough to again rule the country by force, but memories of past brutality are enough to worry people about their influence, even as President Hamid Karzai tries to reassure his country.

In 2009, ahead of the last Afghan election, millions of dollars -- much of questionable origin -- made its way out of the country in suitcases and even on pallets loaded into aircraft, according to police at Kabul's main Airport.

Former vice president Zia Masood was stopped entering Dubai carrying cash worth $52 million and realeased without question, according to a cable from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul that appeared later on the whistleblower website Wikileaks.

In 2010 the Afghan government took over Kabul Bank -- the country's biggest commercial bank -- after a run on deposits caused by revelations that the bank's owners had lost millions of dollars they loaned to themselves to purchase property investments.

The investment support agency's Akhbar said that without steps to build confidence political and security gains in the past decade, uncertainty will dry up new investment.

"The short answer is that any sign of uncertainty is a major blow to investment," he said, calling for a redoubled effort by Karzai's government to tackle serious corruption and fix woeful infrastructure.

Afghanistan is perennially among the world's most corrupt nations listed by Berlin-based anti-graft body Transparency International.

CAR, APPLIANCE SALES DROP

But growth has defied that reputation, averaging around 9 percent in recent years as war and aid spending worth more than $50 billion fuelled a spending boom in Kabul's dusty streets, now choked with private cars as well as NATO convoys.

At a dealership for luxury Lexus SUVs, salesman Mir Alam said once reliable Afghan ministers had stopped buying in favour of armoured vehicles, while private buyers had also dried up.

"It's because of the Qatar talks. Car prices are not up, but still we haven't sold any for the past three months," Alam said. "Afghan businessmen have already left Afghanistan, or they have their money in hand in case they need to escape."

Mohammad Jawid, who sells appliances to the wealthy at the upmarket Kabul City Centre, said sales topping $5,000 a day before September were down to under to $500 now.

And the worries are the same for Abdul Haddi's Sarak Khumar electronic company.

"I've lost more than 60 percent of my customers. The rich I know are already out of Afghanistan, or just waiting to see what happens," Haddi said.

WORLD BANK WARNING

The World Bank has warned that growth that hit an unsustainable 21 percent in 2009-10 could collapse in the next few years as aid projects wind down and funds are re-directed into areas like health and education.

The country's medium-term growth and stubbornly high unemployment would depend on the government's ability to manage the transfer of security from international to national forces, and ensure political and fiscal sustainability, the bank said.

The Afghani currency has slipped following its rise through 2010-11 on the back of large capital inflows, sliding from 46.2 to the dollar to around 49, making foreign havens and currencies more attractive.

Jean-Luc Lemahieu, who heads the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Kabul, said Afghanistan needed a stronger system of capital controls, adding the agency is setting up financial investigations units to deal with not only laundering of money from the opium trade, but also monitor cross-border cash flows.

"It is a huge concern," he said. "This country cannot afford this and we need to have better capital controls and have the money within this country invested in productivity, so we can share the employment that is so required."

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Lack of Internet Cuts Off Afghan Province

Education, journalism and other areas held back by technology gap in Uruzgan.

IWPR
By Ahmad Shah Jawad
11 Feb 12
Afghanistan

Although internet access has increased in Afghanistan in recent years, people in the central Uruzgan province say they remain almost completely unconnected, leaving them isolated from the outside world.

About one million of Afghanistan’s 30 million inhabitants were online as of 2010, according to US-based internetworldstats.com, but officials say that in Uruzgan, one of the least developed provinces, hardly anyone has computer access.

Many students do not know what the internet is, while journalists told IWPR it is often impossible to report from Uruzgan because they cannot file stories electronically.

Provincial education officials have to communicate with Kabul via post, often waiting months for a reply, said Eid Mohammad Khan, deputy director of the provincial education department.

“We have to be provided with internet facilities. It would be a great help to government and non-government employees,” Khan said.

The province has few skilled teachers and no well-stocked library, he said, and educational opportunities are further hampered as students are unable to do research online and broaden their horizons.

“Nowadays, scientific information can be retrieved from the internet very fast,” Khan said. “All these problems could be solved if there was internet access.”

Ambitious students travel out of the province to spend two or three months learning IT skills elsewhere. One of them is high school graduate Samiollah, who recently returned from Kandahar in the south, which was an eye-opening experience for him.

“The internet is a different world. It is a unique teacher,” he said.

“Now I know how people behave in the rest in the world, and what direction we are moving in,” he said, expressing regret that young people in Uruzgan are missing out on knowledge and education.

Mohammad Yunus, who goes to the Saidal Khan High School in the provincial centre Tarin Kowt, said pupils like him had little chance of going on to university.

“We are very unfortunate in having neither professional teachers nor access to modern technology,” he said. “Universities won’t accept us because of these problems.”

Ezatollah, an 11th-grade school pupil in Tarin Kowt, laughed when asked whether he would like to access the internet.

“Brother, first explain to me what the internet is, and then I’ll tell you whether I am interested in using it,” he told IWPR.

Farid Ayel, head of the Uruzgan provincial press club, described how the lack of internet cafes hampered local journalists, who have to go round the handful of connected offices in Tarin Kowt asking permission to email their articles.

“Our press club doesn’t have internet yet.” he said. “Reporters file their stories and interviews by begging to use the internet in other offices. When they don’t get permission, they miss deadlines and their stories get stale. It’s a big problem.”

Local reporter Ajmal Wesal said the process of emailing stories was exhausting, and his articles would never see the light of day if no one would let him borrow their computer.

“Believe me, when I start work, I’m already really worried about how I will file my report and who I’ll ask to let me use the internet,” Wesal said.

A glimmer of hope recently appeared when the Afghanistan Research and Translation Centre attempted to open an internet cafe here. The centre sets up remote rural internet cafes in conjunction with local government, sharing the costs with it for the first year and training up local staff before handing the facility over to them.

Quite who is responsible for the project’s failure in Uruzgan is unclear, though the centre and local officials both blame each other. Centre director Abdollah Elham claimed that when he phoned deputy provincial governor Khodai Rahim about the project, he refused to cooperate.

But Rahim said he would like to see an internet cafe established, and denied that the phone call ever took place.

“What Elham said is not true. If he wants [to set up a cafe] we are prepared to cooperate with him by all means,” Rahim said. “We look forward to having people in Uruzgan who will work for the next generation and improve their abilities.”

Gholam Nabi Olfat, director of the provincial government’s culture and information department, said he would happily have helped establish an internet cafe, but Elham never contacted him.

Elham conceded that he had not done so, but thought this was unnecessary as he was already contacting the governor’s office.

“If Uruzgan’s culture department is really prepared to help, we are prepared to send our team to the province again,” he said.

Uruzgan residents said they were frustrated by the delay, and were paying the price for the lack of modern technology.

Yunus said that without basic IT skills, students stand little chance of finding work.

“In future, all work is going to depend on computers and the internet, but we lack both,” he said. “When we graduate from high school, we won’t know anything. Nobody will employ us. So we will have given 12 years of our lives for nothing.”

Ahmad Shah Jawad is an IWPR trainee reporter in Uruzgan province.

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Risks of Afghan War Shift From Soldiers to Contractors

New York Times
By ROD NORDLAND
February 11, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan

Even dying is being outsourced here.

This is a war where traditional military jobs, from mess hall cooks to base guards and convoy drivers, have increasingly been shifted to the private sector. Many American generals and diplomats have private contractors for their personal bodyguards. And along with the risks have come the consequences: More civilian contractors working for American companies than American soldiers died in Afghanistan last year for the first time during the war.

American employers here are under no obligation to publicly report the deaths of their employees and frequently do not. While the military announces the names of all its war dead, private companies routinely notify only family members. Most of the contractors die unheralded and uncounted — and in some cases, leave their survivors uncompensated.

“By continuing to outsource high-risk jobs that were previously performed by soldiers, the military, in effect, is privatizing the ultimate sacrifice,” said Steven L. Schooner, a law professor at George Washington University who has studied the civilian casualties issue.

Last year, at least 430 employees of American contractors were reported killed in Afghanistan: 386 working for the Defense Department, 43 for the United States Agency for International Development and one for the State Department, according to data provided by the American Embassy in Kabul and publicly available in part from the United States Department of Labor.

By comparison, 418 American soldiers died in Afghanistan last year, according to Defense Department statistics compiled by icasualties.org, an independent organization that monitors war deaths.

That trend has been growing for the past several years in Afghanistan, and it parallels a similar trend in Iraq, where contractor deaths exceeded military deaths as long ago as 2009. In Iraq, however, that took place as the number of American troops was being drastically reduced until their complete withdrawal at the end of last year. And last year, more soldiers than private contractors died in Iraq (54 compared with 41, according to Labor Department figures).

Experts who have studied the phenomenon say that because many contractors do not comply with even the current, scanty reporting requirements, the true number of private contractor deaths may be far higher. “No one believes we’re underreporting military deaths,” Mr. Schooner said. “Everyone believes we’re underreporting contractor deaths.”

Qais Mansoori, 20, may have been among the uncounted. An Afghan interpreter employed by Mission Essential Personnel, a leading provider of interpreters in Afghanistan, Mr. Mansoori was killed along with five other interpreters when Taliban insurgents overran the military base where the interpreters were staying in the Mirwais district of Kandahar Province in July 2010.

That attack, typically, was scantily reported, since no soldiers died — although the death toll was 17, including an unidentified American civilian, according to Afghan officials and Mr. Mansoori’s friends and family.

Under the federal Defense Base Act, American defense contractors are obliged to report the war zone deaths and injuries of their employees — including subcontractors and foreign workers — to the Department of Labor, and to carry insurance that will provide the employees with medical care and compensation. In the case of foreign employees, which many of the dead were, survivors generally receive a death benefit equal to half of the employee’s salary for life; American employees get even more.

Mr. Mansoori’s brother, Mohammad, 35, an employee of a mine-removal charity in Afghanistan, said his brother’s employer, Mission Essential Personnel, promptly contacted the family and made a lump sum payment of $10,004, never mentioning the lifetime annuity to which they were entitled — which given Mr. Mansoori’s salary of $800 a month would have been closer to $150,000 over his survivors’ lifetimes. “I wish he was still here to look after my father and mother,” Mohammad Mansoori said. Their father is blind, and Qais Mansoori was his parents’ sole support, he said.

A spokesman for Mission Essential Personnel, Sean Rushton, disputed that, saying that his company has been making biweekly payments of $190 to Mr. Mansoori’s family and will continue doing so for 29 years. The $10,004 lump sum payment was a voluntary death gratuity paid by the company, Mr. Rushton said.

There were 113,491 employees of defense contractors in Afghanistan as of January 2012, compared with about 90,000 American soldiers, according to Defense Department statistics. Of those, 25,287, or about 22 percent of the employees, were American citizens, with 47 percent Afghans and 31 percent from other countries.

The bulk of the known contractor deaths are concentrated among a handful of major companies, particularly those providing interpreters, drivers, security guards and other support personnel who are particularly vulnerable to attacks.

The biggest contractor in terms of war zone deaths is apparently the defense giant L-3 Communications. If L-3 were a country, it would have the third highest loss of life in Afghanistan as well as in Iraq; only the United States and Britain would exceed it in fatalities.

Over the past 10 years, L-3 and its subsidiaries, including Titan Corporation and MPRI Inc., had at least 370 workers killed and 1,789 seriously wounded or injured through the end of 2011 in Iraq and Afghanistan, records show. In a statement, a spokeswoman for L-3, Jennifer Barton, said: “L-3 is proud to have the opportunity to support the U.S. and coalition efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. We mourn the loss of life of these dedicated men and women.”

Other American companies with a high number of fatalities are Supreme Group, a catering company, with 241 dead through the end of 2011; Service Employees International, another catering company, with 125 dead; and security companies like DynCorps (101 dead), Aegis (86 dead) and Hart Group (63 dead). In all, according to Labor Department data, 64 American companies have lost more than seven employees each in the past 10 years.

The American dead have included people like James McLaughlin, 55, who trained pilots on a contract for MPRI and was killed by a rogue Afghan pilot who also killed eight American soldiers last April; and Todd Walker, Michael Clawson and James Scott Ozier, employees of AAR Airlift, who were killed in a helicopter crash in Helmand Province last month for which Taliban insurgents claimed responsibility.

For every contractor who is killed, many more are seriously wounded. According to the Labor Department’s statistics, 1,777 American contractors in Afghanistan were injured or wounded seriously enough to miss more than four days of work last year.

Marcie Hascall Clark began the Defense Base Act Compensation Blog after her husband, Merlin, a former Navy explosives ordnance disposal expert, was injured in 2003 while working for an American contractor. She and her husband have spent the past seven years fighting for hundreds of thousands of dollars in disability payments and medical compensation. “It was quite a shock to learn how little my husband’s body, mind and future were worth,” she said.

Taimoor Shah contributed reporting from Kandahar, Afghanistan.

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Afghanistan denies Taliban army infiltration systemic

ABC News
February 12, 2012

The Afghan government has downplayed a rogue soldier's claims that more Afghan army trainees are ready to launch deadly attacks against coalition soldiers.

In a video posted online by a jihadi network this week, Mohammed Rozi - an army trainee who shot and seriously wounded three Australians who were training him in Uruzgan province in November - said many of his colleagues dreamed of committing similar attacks.

Rozi, who escaped after the attack, falsely boasted in the video that he had killed 12 Australian soldiers.

But Afghan government spokesman Dr Hakim Asher says despite the claims in the video, the chances of similar attacks remains small.

"That is not a huge problem for Afghanistan. We believe that there were some mistakes and those mistakes are very few," he said.

International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) commander Brigadier General Carsten Jacobson agrees, saying such attacks are rare and are designed to breed mistrust.

"We have to take great care in recruitment in registering young men into the forces, but it is not systemic and it is not threatening and it will not stop our progress," he said.

Australian confidence in the mission in Afghanistan reached a new low last year when Rozi opened fire on the troops that were training him.

It was not clear what motivated the attack or whether he had been working with terrorist groups.

Now, the extensive video interview with Rozi answers some of these questions.

The video reveals the attack was carefully premeditated, with Rozi taking the time to watch his targets through binoculars before opening fire.

He said the Australian troops at the patrol base he shot were not armed.

He revealed he had initially been working alone, but was quickly taken in by the Taliban after fleeing the scene in a stolen humvee.

Rozi said he wanted to teach the troops a lesson and that Muslims in Afghanistan would not accept the presence of foreigners. 'Disgusting' video

Speaking during a tour of flood-hit parts of Queensland on Saturday, Prime Minister Julia Gillard described the video as "disgusting propaganda".

"The fact that there's this disgusting anti-Australian propaganda anywhere in the world is offensive to me and to all Australians," she said.

"It's aimed at trust, that's exactly what it's aimed - at denting our will.

"Well no amount of propaganda is going to dent our will at getting this mission done."

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott also spoke out about the video, saying Australians have every right to feel disgusted by the boasting.

He described it as a message designed to undermine Australia's confidence.

"Our enemies are trying to exaggerate their strength," he said.

The attack on the Australian soldiers in November was the third by a Afghan National Army (ANA) soldier in 2011, and came 10 days after three Australians were killed and seven were wounded when another Afghan soldier turned his weapon on his trainers.

In May, one Australian soldier was killed when a member of the ANA opened fire.

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Afghan Minister of Immigration Accused of Employing Relatives

TOLOnews.com
By Saleha Sadat
Saturday, 11 February 2012

Afghan Senate House said on Saturday said that Afghan Minister of Immigration has employed some of his relatives in some positions in the ministry.

Head of the Afghan Senate's Complaints Commission, Zalmai Zabuli, presented some documents showing that some people who have been employed by the Afghan Ministry of Immirgration are not even literate enough to fit the positions.

Nematullah and Noor Murad are apparently two relatives of the minister who have been employed for the salary of 40 to 60,000 Afghanis as advisors to the ministry.

"The minister's niece who is from Andkhoi and does not have a command in Persian, Pashtu or Uzbek language, has been employed as marketing advisor, because he only speaks in English and Urdu languages and gets a salary of 60,000 Afghanis," Mr Zabuli said.

But Afghan Minister of Immigration, Jamahir Anwari, dismisses the claims saying that the staff have been employed based on the rules of the ministry and agreement of the ministry of finance.

"Three people who have been employed were interviewed by a commission consisted of a representative from the ministry and a representative from the UNHCR," Mr Anwari said.

Mr Zabuli said that some senators have also complained to the President about the issue.

It comes as some of the other Afghan government cabinet members have been accused of employing unqualified people and being involved in corruption.

Recently the Afghan Oversight and anti-corruption office said that 70 cases had been referred to the Attorney General's Office and that some ministers are also involved.

Around 251 corruption cases have been recorded out of which 32 cases referred to the Attorney General's Office, according to the Oversight office.

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Gunmen kill provincial judge, child in Afghanistan

AP
By AMIR SHAH
February 12th, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan

Gunmen burst into a family home of a provincial judge in eastern Afghanistan, killing him and his niece in the latest assassination of an Afghan government official, authorities said Sunday.

Mohammad Nasir, the head of the appeals court for Kunar province, was visiting family in neighboring Nangarhar province Saturday night when gunmen stormed into his sister-in-law's house and opened fire, said Mohammad Asan, the administrator of Khogyani district in Nangarhar.

Nasir and his eight-year-old niece were both killed, Asan said.

Nasir's wife and another five children were wounded, said provincial health department adviser Sayed Hafandi. Two of the children are in serious condition at a hospital, he said.

Asan said they believe the gunmen went after Nasir because of his ties to the government. Taliban insurgents have assassinated hundreds of Afghan government officials and supporters in recent years, seeking to sap public confidence in President Hamid Karzai's administration.

The insurgent group has also said in public statements that it considers anyone working for the government or the international military a collaborator, not a civilian.

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Taliban: Changed, but still a potent threat

AFP
By Lawrence Bartlett
12/02/2012
KABUL

The medieval Taliban who ran Afghanistan with the Koran in one hand and a gun in the other now tweet and talk peace, but they remain a potent threat as a NATO withdrawal looms.

Ten years after being overthrown by US forces in response to the airborne Al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington, the insurgents have shown a ruthless resilience to the West's military might.

With the hardline Islamists who sheltered Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in contact with the United States in Qatar, the question of who they are now and what they want has taken on a fresh urgency.

There are fears in the capital Kabul that when the last of NATO's US-led 130,000 troops quit the country in 2014 the Taliban in their black turbans and long beards will come streaming back -- looking for revenge.

The Taliban have shown that they have changed since their days in power, using formerly shunned modern technology such as the Internet and engaging in banter with NATO spokesmen over the micro-blogging site Twitter.

On February 3, the following exchange took place between NATO's International Security Force (ISAF) and a Taliban spokesman:

ISAF: The snow in Kabul must have affected your comms & ability to get factual info on real events.

Taliban: No no, ops and comms well established and ongoing even in cold winter. Must have something to do with successes you've achieved.

And they use video to put their message across -- with masked anchors introducing footage of fighters training and other propaganda clips on their website.

But their fundamental beliefs remain rooted in a strictly conservative interpretation of Islam, which is widely shared in their strongholds in the south and east of the country.

There, the movement reviled in the west for blocking schooling for girls and whipping women who did not cover themselves from head to toe might win a large slice of support at the ballot box.

"In a free and fair election they might well get a lot of votes, in the south for example," said Kate Clark of the Afghanistan Analysts Network.

But the possibility of a negotiated settlement to the war is seen as being so far in the future -- and perhaps so improbable -- that few are willing to speculate on what a peaceful political landscape might look like.

"Many Afghans think that if the international force is not here in large numbers there will be some kind of wider of civil war," Clark told AFP.

Military and civilian analysts doubt that the insurgents can take the capital again -- as they did in 1996 during the civil war that broke out after the Soviet Union ended its 10-year occupation.

"The Taliban, the Afghan government, the world knows that it is impossible for one party to rule in this country with giving everyone a share," says a former senior official in the Taliban government.

"They really want peace," Maulavi Qalamuddin, former chief of the Taliban's feared religious police and now a member of President Hamid Karzai's High Peace Council, told AFP.

"It is not true that the Taliban want to buy time and keep everyone busy till 2014 when foreign forces leave, and then they would have a chance to topple the Afghanistan government and return to power," he said.

But, with their strength rooted in Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, the Pashtuns, the insurgents hold a key card in a country torn by ethnic rivalries.

Their survival is also "directly linked to the sanctuary, support and logistics they receive in neighbouring Pakistan from various elements in that country," says Pakistani author and veteran Afghanistan watcher Ahmed Rashid.

"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," Rashid wrote last week in the Security Times.

In a summer offensive, he said, they can still mobilise about 25,000 fighters -- the same figure they had in campaigns in 2005-6.

Analyst Clark pointed out that the Haqqani network, based on the border with Pakistan and blamed by the United States for high-profile attacks in Kabul, including the US embassy siege in September, sees itself as Taliban.

"Haqqani network is a name coined by counter insurgency specialists. It's not the name they call themselves -- they refer to themselves as Taliban," she said.

And despite reports of splits, Qalamuddin and others say the insurgents remain loyal to their reclusive, one-eyed leader Mullah Omar.

"The truth is that all Taliban are under the leadership of Mullah Omar, there is no split in their ranks," Qalamuddin said.

"I think they are a very coherent group, particularly in comparison with other Afghan armed actors, both state and non state," said Clark.

The Taliban's strength is also a reflection of the weakness of Karzai's government, widely viewed as corrupt and living off western military and aid money while the country remains one of the poorest in the world.

The insurgents range from a hardcore of those fighting out of a belief in their cause to "unhappy people", says ISAF spokesman Brigadier General Carsten Jacobson.

"They are unhappy with the local situation because they haven't seen governance, haven't seen the law, they fight out of dissatisfaction," he told AFP.

Such insurgents will have to be re-integrated with the rest of Afghan society if there is to be a non-military solution to the war, Jacobson said.

"The question is how much Taliban influence is Afghanistan willing to bear, and then how far can the integration of Taliban go -- and that is an Afghan question," he said.

"After every civil war in history the nation has to decide what can be forgiven and what cannot."

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Pakistan denies sending NATO supply via its airspace

Xinhua
Feb. 11, 2012
ISLAMABAD

Pakistan's Interior Minister Rehman Malik has categorically denied the U.S. claim that the country's air space is being used for sending supplies to NATO- led forces in Afghanistan following the closure of land supply route by Pakistan, local media reported on Saturday.

Addressing a Senate session on Friday, Malik said that NATO supplies have not been restored by using airport or airbase in Pakistan, the Nation newspaper reported.

Neither Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani nor President Asif Ali Zardari has ordered the resumption of NATO supplies through airspace, he said.

The minister said that he will ask the foreign or defense minister to present a comprehensive briefing on the issue to the house.

Talking to media on Thursday, U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter said that the supply to NATO-led forces in Afghanistan is being airlifted through Pakistani air space.

Pakistan blocked NATO supply route through its territory after a cross-border air strike by U.S. helicopters on two Pakistani checkpoints left 24 soldiers dead in November last year.

Pakistani parliament will decide whether or not to reopen the land supply route after review of relationship with the U.S.

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Afghanistan unites behind cricket team in defeat to Pakistan

Where invasion, aid, and piecemeal democracy have only partially succeeded, cricket has had its own moment as a unifying force in Afghanistan

Guardian.co.uk
By Barney Ronay
Saturday 11 February 2012

Where invasion, aid, and piecemeal democracy have only partially succeeded, cricket had its own moment as a unifying force in one of the world's most fractured regions on Friday afternoon. Afghanistan's one-day international match against Pakistan in Sharjah was their first against a Test playing nation and it proved a hugely popular success, with even the Taliban – who once banned cricket along with all other sports – sending a formal message of support to the team management.

Pakistan won the match by seven wickets, but it is the noisy enthusiasm of Afghan supporters both inside the Sharjah Cricket Stadium and in the country itself via saturation-level TV coverage that will endure as the most significant part of the day.

The country's minister of finance, Dr Omar Zakhilwal told ESPN Cricinfo: "There is nothing that can touch cricket in popularity or as a force for good in Afghanistan. There is absolutely nothing else that mobilises our society in the same way. Not politics, political events or reconstruction. Between 80-90% of kids will be watching this game and they play it on every street. President Karzai is watching and has phoned several times to get the latest news. Even the opposition Taliban have sent a message of support. Their spokesman said we are praying for the success of the team."

It is a potentially galvanizing moment that cricket in Afghanistan would do well to pursue and build upon: there are to date no further one-day internationals against full ICC members lined up, nor are Afghanistan yet deemed worthy of competing in the Asia Cup alongside India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

Cricket has a long informal history in Afghanistan. The game was introduced in the 19th century by British troops during the Anglo-Afghan wars, after which it effectively disappeared from the scene until the 1990s when Afghan refugees in Pakistan caught the bug and formed the Afghanistan Cricket Federation. In the last 12 years Afghanistan has become an affiliate member of the ICC, earning official one-day international status in April 2009.

Despite evidence of real talent within the populace – the fast bowler Hamid Hassan has impressed as an MCC young cricketer and has a fine burgeoning first-class record – further progress will have to come in the face of an absence of home international cricket due to security concerns and a paucity of playing resources.

Despite this the game is still hugely popular, with an expanding domestic league and much enthusiasm for both playing and watching the sport among young Afghans. The world's grandest powers have spent almost 200 years attempting to capture and colonise this most elusive nation. When it comes to hearts and minds cricket already looks to be doing a little better than most.

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Roadside Bomb Kills 5 Afghan Policemen

TOLOnews.com
Saturday, 11 February 2012

At least five Afghan policemen were killed in a roadside bomb blast in southern Uruzgan province on Saturday morning, local officials said.

One civilian was also wounded in the blast.

The incident took place in Chanartu district of Uruzgan today morning, deputy governor, Haji Khubirahim, said.

No group including the Taliban has claimed responsibility for the blast.

Insurgents use Improvised Explosive Devices to target Afghan and foreign troops, but most of the victim are often civilians.

A UN report recently said that more than 3,021 Afghans have been killed in 2011 conflict.

The deaths in 2011 compared with 2,790 in 2010 and 2,412 in 2009 showed that most of the deaths were caused by insurgents, according to the report.

It was the fifth straight year that the toll had risen, with a total of 11,864 civilian lives claimed by the conflict since 2007.

Taliban-led insurgents caused 77 percent of the deaths last year, up to 14 percent from 2010, while Nato-led and Afghan government forces were responsible for killing 410 civilians -14 percent of the total, it added.

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Taliban threatens Prince Harry with death, capture

CTV.ca
By CTVNews.ca Staff
Sat. Feb. 11 2012

The Taliban says it is gunning for Prince Harry just days after Britain's defence ministry confirmed that the 27-year-old royal will redeploy to Afghanistan.

A spokesperson for the insurgent group warned Britain's Daily Telegraph that it plans to capture or kill the prince, who is third in line to the British throne.

"A prince should use his position to help people, not to come and kill people around the world," Taliban spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid told the paper.

The chilling warning came the same week the prince completed a rigorous, 18-month training program to fly Apache attack helicopters. Prince Harry graduated as the best co-pilot gunner after training stints in California, Arizona and Britain.

The prince, who is known in the military as Capt. Wales, will fly air missions in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan. Ministry of Defence sources told the Telegraph he will serve a four-month mission. It's not known when he'll deploy.

As a co-pilot gunner, he'll operate Hellfire missiles and a chain gun.

In an interview with the Telegraph, the prince took the Taliban warning in stride.

"To be honest . . . I supposed I would be in that position anyway just being a part of that sort of family," the unshaven prince said in a videotaped interview from the Arizona training centre. "There's threats coming in all the time."

The insurgent Taliban group told the British newspaper that it will use "all its power" to kill or capture the royal soldier. Mujahid said if the prince was captured he would be treated like any other prisoner.

The prince spent more than two months as an infantry officer in Helmand in 2008, but his deployment was never made public. The secrecy was to protect him and his fellow soldiers from becoming targets. His tour was cut short when the media learned his whereabouts.

A blackout wasn't necessary this time, according to British officials, because he will be less vulnerable as a pilot.

The prince's deployment will be subject to review by senior generals and even the Prime Minister, the Telegraph report said.

In an interview with the British paper, the prince said he relished the opportunity to return to Afghanistan.

"Anyone who says they don't enjoy the Army is mad," he said. "You can spend a week hating it and the next week it could be the best thing in the world and the best job you could ever, ever wish for. It has got so much to offer."

The prince said he knows he's a target and worries his stature could endanger fellow troops.

"I would never want to put someone else's life in danger when they have to sit next to the bullet magnet," he said. "But if I'm wanted, if I'm needed, then I will serve my country as I signed up to do. "

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13 militants surrender gov't in northern Afghan province

Xinhua
Feb. 11, 2012
PUL-E-KHUMRI, Afghanistan

More than a dozen anti-government militants surrendered in Baghlan province, 160 km north of Kabul on Saturday, a local official said.

"Today, 13 armed rebels laid down their arms in Pul-e-Sar district and surrendered to the government. We appreciate their decision and hope other oppositions to follow the step," Head of the government-backed Peace Council in Baghlan province Abdul Samad Stanikzai told newsmen at a ceremony to welcome the former insurgents.

"With these people joining the peace process, the security situation in Baghlan province would be further improved," he said.

Baba, the commander of the former militants who, like many Afghans, goes by single name, said in his short speech,"We want the government to ensure justice, accelerate the reconstruction process and provide job opportunities."

Around 200 anti-government militants have given up militancy and resumed normal life in Baghlan province over the past one month.

Taliban militants fighting the government have yet to make comment.

More than 3,000 militants, according to officials, have laid down arms and resumed normal life in Afghanistan over the past one year, according to officials.

However, the Taliban outfit has termed the claim as baseless, saying no Taliban loyalists have surrendered.

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US Army Officer’s Leaked Report Discredits Afghanistan War Success Story

Eurasia Review
By Gareth Porter
February 12, 2012

An analysis by Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, which the U.S. Army has not approved for public release but has leaked to Rolling Stone magazine, provides the most authoritative refutation thus far of the official military narrative of success in the Afghanistan War since the troop surge began in early 2010.

In the 84-page unclassified report, Davis, who returned last fall after his second tour of duty in Afghanistan, attacks the credibility of claims by senior military leaders that the U.S.-NATO war strategy has succeeded in weakening the Taliban insurgent forces and in building Afghan security forces capable of taking primary responsibility for security in the future.

The report, which Davis had submitted to the Army in January for clearance to make it public, was posted on the website of Rolling Stone magazine by journalist Michael Hastings Friday. In a blog for the magazine, Hastings reported that “officials familiar with the situation” had said the Pentagon was “refusing” to release the report, but that it had been making the rounds within the U.S. government, including the White House.

Hastings wrote that he had obtained it from a U.S. government official.

Contacted by IPS Friday, Davis would not comment on the publication of the report or its contents.

Writing that he is “no Wikileaks guy Part II”, Davis reveals no classified information in the report. But he has given a classified version of the report, which cites and quotes from dozens of classified documents, to several members of the House and Senate, including both Democrats and Republicans.

“If the public had access to the classified reports,” Davis writes, “they would see the dramatic gulf between what is often said in public by our senior leaders and what is true behind the scenes.”

Davis is in a unique position to assess the real situation on the ground in Afghanistan. As a staff officer of the “Rapid Equipping Force”, he traveled more than 9,000 miles to every area where U.S. troop presence was significant and had conversations with more than 250 U.S. soldiers, from privates to division commanders.

The report takes aim at the March 2011 Congressional testimony by Gen. David Petraeus, then the top commander in Afghanistan, and the Defence Department’s April 2011 Report to Congress as either “misleading, significantly skewed or completely inaccurate”.

Davis attacks the claim in both the Petraeus testimony and the DOD report that U.S. and NATO forces had “arrested the insurgents’ momentum” and “reversed it in a number of important areas”.

That claim is belied, Davis argues, by the fact that the number of insurgent attacks, the number of IEDs found and detonated and the number of U.S. troops killed and wounded have all continued to mount since 2009, the last year before the addition of 30,000 U.S. troops and 10,000 NATO troops.

Davis notes that Petraeus and other senior officials of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the U.S.-NATO command in Afghanistan, have boasted of having killed and captured thousands of insurgent leaders and rank and file soldiers, cut insurgent supply routes and found large numbers of weapons caches as well as depriving the insurgents of their main bases of operation since spring 2010.

If these claims were accurate measures of success, Davis writes, after the Taliban had been driven out of their strongholds, “there ought to have been a reduction in violence not a continual, unbroken string of increases.”

In fact, Davis writes, Taliban attacks “continued to rise at almost the same rate it had risen since 2005 all the way through the summer of 2011″ and remained “well above 2009 levels in the second half of 2011″ even though it leveled off or dropped slightly in some places.

Davis notes that total attacks, total number of IEDs and total U.S. casualties in 2011 were 82 percent, 113 percent and 164 percent higher, respectively, than the figures for 2009, the last year before the surge of 30,000 troops. The annual number of U.S. dead and wounded increased from 1,764 in 2009 to 4,662 in 2011.

The veteran Army officer quotes Congressional testimony by Adm. Mike Mullen Dec. 2, 2009 as citing a lesser increase in Taliban attacks in 2009 of 60 percent over the 2008 level as a rationale for a significant increase in U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan, implying that the war was being lost.

Davis leaves no doubt about his overall assessment that the U.S. war effort has failed. “Even a cursory observation of key classified reports and metrics,” Davis concludes, “leads overwhelmingly to the conclusion that over the past two years, despite the surge of 30,000 American Soldiers, the insurgent force has gained strength….”

Davis is also scathing in his assessment of the Afghan army and police who have been described as constantly improving and on their way to taking responsibility for fighting the insurgents.

“What I saw first-hand, in virtually every circumstance,” writes Davis, “was a barely functioning organization – often cooperating with the insurgent enemy….”

Both in his longer report and in an article for Armed Forces Journal published online Feb. 5, Davis recounts his experience at an Afghan National Police station in Kunar province in January 2011. Arriving two hours after a Taliban attack on the station, Davis asked the police captain whether he had sent out patrols to find the insurgents.

After the question had been conveyed by the interpreter, Davis recalls, “The captain’s head wheeled around, looking first at the interpreter and turning to me with an incredulous expression. Then he laughed.”

“No! We don’t go after them,” he quotes the captain as saying. “That would be dangerous!”

According to Davis, U.S. troops who work with Afghan policemen in that province say they “rarely leave the cover of the checkpoints”, allowing the Taliban to “literally run free”.

Describing the overall situation, Davis writes, “(I)n a number of high profile mission opportunities over the past 11 months the ANA (Afghan National Army) and ANP (Afghan National Police) have numerous times run from the battle, run from rumors, or made secret deals with the Taliban.”

The draft posted online notes after that statement that the classified version of the paper has been “redacted”, indicating that Davis provides further details about those “secret deals” in the classified version.

The Army dissenter calls on the House and Senate Armed Services Committees to “conduct a bi-partisan investigation into the various charges of deception or dishonesty in this report….” He urges that such a hearing include testimony not only from senior military officials but from mid- and senior-level intelligence analysts from the Defense Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies.

Both Senate and House Armed Services Committees have exhibited little or no interest in probing behind the official claims of success in Afghanistan. That passive role reflects what many political observers, including some members of Congress, see as cozy relationships among most committee members,military leaders, Pentagon officials and major military contractors.

It remains to be seen whether Davis’s success in raising the issue of misleading claims of success in a front-page New York Times story Feb. 6 and in subsequent television appearances will bring pressure on those committees from other members to hold hearings on whether senior military officials are telling the truth about the situation in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military leadership in Afghanistan is brushing off Davis’s critique as having no importance. During a briefing in which he claimed continued steady progress in Afghanistan, Army Lt. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, deputy commander of U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, dismissed the Davis report as “one person’s view of this”.

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Qatar talks and Pakistan

The Express Tribune
By Editorial
February 12, 2012

The talks with the Taliban at Doha in Qatar seem to have taken on elements of reality after recent American diplomatic activity and Pakistan’s response to it. The parties that will take part in the talks will be the two major antagonists — the Hamid Karzai government and the Taliban of Mullah Umar — plus other stakeholders. From reports it is apparent that Pakistan’s concerns have been addressed by allowing it in plus the Afghan factions it thinks it controls. If reports about who will come to Doha to talk about post-withdrawal Afghanistan are accurate, then Pakistan has got want it wanted. India is absent while Pakistan is very much there. Pakistan has been backing the cause of the Afghan-Pakhtun side of the war and doesn’t enjoy any mutual level of confidence with the Northern Alliance containing Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek parties at present ruling Afghanistan in tandem with the government of President Karzai. The talks are being held in an atmosphere of implied reversal for the overall American war in Afghanistan and an undisclosed acknowledgement that America has to speak to the Taliban and Pakhtun factions from a position of weakness. This means that Pakistan gets the upper hand and will back its protégés — in so far it can control them — to achieve the objective of having a government in Kabul that will safeguard its strategic interests.

Washington’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Marc Grossman reportedly met Taliban leaders in Qatar as a sequel to his earlier talks with them in late January. The consistent stance of the Taliban led by Mullah Umar is that they will not talk unless the Americans leave Afghanistan, after which they will also not talk to President Karzai because “he is a puppet and nothing more” of the Americans. But there is obviously some movement on this front because the Taliban have agreed to open an office in Qatar, instead of Saudi Arabia which they preferred, and have been given satisfaction on how much leverage they will have during the talks. There is growing evidence that President Obama’s ‘surge’ has not yielded dividends in the shape of a tactical upper hand which would give America the chance to negotiate from a position of strength. Stories emanating from US military personnel back home after operations suggest that the US cannot rely on the Afghan police and military to fight the Taliban after the Americans leave.

A hitherto angry Pakistan now seems willing to talk about letting the Nato supply convoys resume and meetings that were made taboo have started to take place. Senior military officials from Pakistan, Nato and Afghanistan met for the first time in months this past week in what a post-meeting statement said was “an effort to improve border coordination”. An apology is finally being considered in Washington over the November 26 border attack that seriously damaged relations between the US and Pakistan. Although recent drone attacks have killed mostly al Qaeda fighters, and are supposed to taper off only after the US somehow reaches an understanding with Pakistan about al Qaeda and its Pakistani affiliates, the progress at Qatar is supposed to break new ground distinctly in line with the thinking of Pakistan.

Pakistan’s position — heavily blinkered by its perception of India as an encircling enemy interfering in Balochistan — is less studied about how far it can use the Taliban and the two Afghan factions that it is said to be fielding at Qatar. What kind of leverage will Pakistan exercise over them after the Taliban sense that the Americans want to quit in a hurry is still up in the air. The Taliban have never been reliable as partners in the past. It is not certain whether once ensconced in Kabul in place of the Karzai government they will help Pakistan fight its tough battles in Orakzai and Kurram against its own increasingly criminalised Taliban. Few in Pakistan realise that over the years Pakistan’s wrong policies have caused it to resemble Afghanistan in its internal landscape of a state with a weak writ and a heavy penetration of the enemy’s worldview — not India’s — among the general population.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 12th, 2012.

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Afghan women fear Taliban return

AFP
By Mushtaq Mojaddidi
11/02/2012
KABUL

As tentative steps are made towards peace talks between the United States and Taliban insurgents, Afghan women are worried about a possible return of the hardline Islamists to the capital Kabul.

When the Taliban were in power from 1996 to 2001, when they were overthrown by a US-led invasion, women were subjected to particularly brutal repression.

They were whipped in the street by the thugs of the religious police if they wore anything other than the all-enveloping blue or white burqa.

Girls were not allowed to go to school and women were not allowed to work.

Fear reigned in the capital, with women accused of adultery among those regularly executed in public at a sports stadium after Friday prayers.

Now, with the Taliban preparing to open an office in the Gulf state of Qatar ahead of possible negotiations with Washington, Afghan women want their voices heard.

"We fear the Taliban return to power," said Shukria Barakzai, a legislator from Kabul in the lower house of parliament. "There should be no deal between the Afghan government and the Taliban."

Barakzai said she objected to the US-backed idea of a Taliban office in Qatar, saying any talks should be held within Afghanistan and women should have a place at the negotiating table.

"We are also part of this land and they cannot ignore us," she told AFP. "Today is not Afghanistan of 1996, this is 2012 Afghanistan."

Under the Western-backed government of President Hamid Karzai girls are in school and women work.

The number of girls in education has risen from 5,000 when the Taliban were ousted in 2001 to 2.5 million, according to a spokesman for the education ministry and a report by a coalition of 16 aid groups last year.

And nearly 70 women are, like Barakzai, members of the 249-seat lower house of parliament.

Women did not want to lose the freedoms they had gained since the overthrow of the Taliban, said northeastern Kunduz province lawmaker Fatema Aziz.

"I fear that these peace talks with the Taliban may sacrifice the past 10 years of achievement the government had in every aspect."

Apart from education, the right to work and freedom from the burqa, the legislators also pointed to greater freedom of expression, which has seen rapid growth in print, television and radio outlets.

The chairwoman of the Afghan Women's Network, Afifa Azim, said she was not against peace talks in principle, although women were worried.

"The Taliban should also accept Afghanistan's constitution and they should observe Afghan women's rights," she said.

"We want to be at the negotiating table as a pressure force -- we want to raise our women's voice."

Since their overthrow, the Taliban have waged a 10-year insurgency against Karzai's government, which is supported in Afghanistan by 130,000 NATO troops.

Civilians have borne the brunt of the war, with a record 3,021 killed in 2011, according to a UN report this month.

The vast majority of the deaths were blamed on the insurgents, who kill indiscriminately with roadside bombs and suicide attacks.

NATO forces will end combat missions in 2014, handing over responsibility to Afghan security forces, and not only the women but most modern Afghans are jittery about the prospect of a Taliban return.

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PRESS RELEASE

Statement by Special Representative and Head of the EU Delegation to Afghanistan Ambassador Vygaudas Ušackas on the International Day against the Use of Child Soldiers

12 February 2012

On the International Day against the Use of Child Soldiers, the European Union underlines the need to step up efforts at all levels to protect children from the effects from war. The Special Representative and Head of the EU Delegation to Afghanistan Ambassador Vygaudas Ušackas highlights the necessity to address the short, medium and long-term impacts of armed conflict on children in an effective, sustainable and comprehensive manner.

“Today is the 10 year anniversary of the entry into force of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of Children in Armed Conflict. While this should have been a reason to celebrate we have to conclude today that progress is still too slow for the tens of thousands of children who still fight in forces in different countries or are victimised as part of armed conflict. Also in Afghanistan we see that children continue to be recruited as combatants, killed, maimed, raped or otherwise sexually abused. Schools and hospitals caring for children continue to be attacked and children continue to be denied humanitarian assistance. The EU remains deeply concerned about the situation of children affected by armed conflict in Afghanistan and calls upon the Afghan Government and the parties in the conflict to fully respect the rights of children and take all necessary measures to ensure that children are no longer victims of the armed conflict.”

In line with its Guidelines on Children Affected by Armed Conflict, the EU reaffirms its firm support to the work of the United Nations, particularly of the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary General for Children and Armed Conflict and the monitoring and reporting mechanism on children and armed conflict set up on the basis of the Security Council Resolutions 1539 (2004) and 1612 (2005), as well as to the implementation of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1820 on sexual violence in conflict. The EU reaffirms its full support to the work of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the fight against impunity for the recruitment and use of child soldiers. The EU furthermore expresses its support to the Paris Commitments and Principles on children associated with armed forces or armed groups. The EU also continues to support initiatives of civil society organisations promoting children’s rights in armed conflict.

End.

For further information please contact:

Communication and Information Section

EU delegation to Afghanistan

Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

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