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16 February 2012
FEATURE STORY
'The Majority of the Afghan People Support a Strategic Partnership With the U.S.'
BUSINESS
No articles featured today
NATION
Karzai Seeks Access to the Taliban in Pakistan Trip
After a Reassessment, NATO Resumes Sending Detainees to Afghanistan Jails
U.S., Afghans in Taliban Talks
Ignoring Allies in Afghanistan
This War Is Not Over Yet
US monitors Pakistan’s choice of spymaster
The Story of How U.S. Special Forces Infiltrated Pakistan
Bound by hatred of the US, Pakistan extremists and politicians join hands to shake government
Malnutrition Continues to Threaten Afghan Kids
High-level drug meeting focuses on Afghanistan
Taliban says U.S. to repeat Soviet defeat in Afghanistan
8 Afghan youths mistaken for attackers, coalition says
Taliban and Afghan's democracy: With U.S. troops set to leave, the country faces a broad challenge to its future
US Drone Kills Five Insurgents in Pakistan
Local Officials Play Truant in Afghan North
How Afghanistan's Freezing Temperatures Mean Trouble After Things Thaw
As Wars Wind Down, What Are U.S. Security Needs?
US general: Taliban use of child suicide bombers 'utterly despicable'
PRESS RELEASES
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FEATURE STORY
'The Majority of the Afghan People Support a Strategic Partnership With the U.S.'
Wall Street Journal
FEBRUARY 15, 2012
Here are excerpts from the Wall Street Journal interview with Afghan President Hamid Karzai conducted by Yaroslav Trofimov and Matt Murray in Kabul, Feb. 15, 2012.
Let me start by asking you about the peace talks. Do you feel you are being left out of the process?
There was for a year forms of contact going on between the Taliban and U.S. government officials, which we knew about, which we were informed about, which we allowed to happen, with a view that at a certain time the Taliban and the Afghan government will also be talking. But when the issue of the office [of the Taliban in Qatar] came and the manner in which it was handled, we felt that we had a different opinion, and that opinion was conveyed clearly to the U.S. government when we were in Bonn for the Bonn conference [in Dec 2011]. Subsequently to that the U.S. government, having noticed our view on that, began to negotiate with us, and [U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Marc] Grossman came to Kabul. We told Mr. Grossman our views and conditions.
Those were taken and put forward to the government of Qatar and the Taliban, and then Mr. Grossman visited me when I was in Italy. We have now reached an agreement. That means what we want has been put into action by the U.S. government, and what we want has been seen as being right.
Can you elaborate a bit?
I wouldn't do that now, for fear of disclosing something that should take its time to unveil. But for now I can say, the difference of opinion that we had has been largely removed. I'm sorry for my lack of freedom here to go further.
One of the issues was the Taliban including the government in the talks.
That was never an issue anyway. We were talking to the Taliban, we were talking to the senior-most of them. Contacts at different levels, official, personal, all sorts . We keep hearing in the press from time to time that the Taliban don't want to talk to us, but that's someone making a statement.
Are you pretty satisfied with the outcome here?
We are right now satisfied with the description of objectives that we've had and with the agreement of the U.S. government and taking our point of view to the others concerned.
How much progress the talks have made?
There have been contacts between the U.S. government and the Taliban, there have been contacts between the Afghan government and the Taliban, and there have been some contacts that we have made, all of us together, including the Taliban, in a third location. A third location. I can go that far.
Does this mean you are persuaded that Mullah Omar and the Quetta Shura are interested in peace?
People in Afghanistan want peace, including the Taliban. They're also people like we all are. They have families, they have relatives, they have children, they are suffering a tough time. I'm inclined to say that yes, they do want peace.
You sound pretty optimistic.
I don't think I sounded very optimistic. I said I'm inclined. Choosing my words very carefully here.
Is the strategic partnership with the U.S. ultimately incompatible with peace with the Taliban?
No. No, it could be compatible with the peace process. The majority of the Afghan people support a strategic partnership with the United States.
Can the Taliban accept some U.S. presence here long term?
It wouldn't be right for me to say specifically "yes." With a general view of the Taliban, the kind of a deal they would not have a problem with it — once the peace deal works out. Now I don't want to be speaking for them. But that's my view as I see things.
Do you see the Taliban have shifted in a meaningful way its position and changed its view on the possibility of peace talks?
As Afghan people, as people who've suffered as well, like the rest of the country they want a future, and that future is a compelling reason for all to seek peace and to have stability, and to have freedom to move back into their own country. This is a statement of principle. I hope it is true. Time will tell.
Do you think the military campaign in the last year has influenced their thinking?
Perhaps that too, the military campaign, and also the fact that it's been an ongoing bleeding wound for all of us for a long time, and we want it healed now. There are a lot of people in the Taliban who are the sons of the soil, and who do not want this country, the people of this country to suffer.Circumstances arrived at them, and at the country, that forced some of them to take arms. The majority of them were of this kind.
The others who are associated with al Qaeda, or terrorist networks, or linked to or are under the influence of intelligence agencies, we are not talking about those. That's not where we are seeking peace. We are seeking peace with the thousands of Taliban who are the majority in the movement, who have been forced to take up arms either because of the misunderstanding or circumstances imposed on them or other conditions... Those are definitively willing to seek peace, and those are the ones that we are seeking to have peace with.
Where do the Pakistanis stand here?
The Pakistanis stand a fair deal in this, they have a place in this. Pakistan's cooperation would make the whole matter easier for us, for the Taliban, and for the United States. Therefore we have been seeking Pakistani assistance in the peace talks for Afghanistan for quite some time. Also because In particular today Pakistan itself is in serious danger because of the militant extremism, because of terrorism occurring there, it would only be wise for us, the two countries, to take the opportunity and work it out.
Does this suggest that the ISI is ready not to back the insurgency in any way?
To that question I would say: "I hope"
Do you have anything beyond hopes from the Pakistan side?
At this point I cannot see anything beyond hopes. I see signs, but I cannot see anything beyond hopes.
Sounds like you are hoping for regional, coordinated approach?
The war on terror, if this is a war on terror, can only be won by a sincere regional and international cooperation. All have to believe they have something at stake and work together. In the absence of this it will become political and interest-oriented. The worst thing for an effective war on terror is the suspicion of states about the objectives.
Where are you with the Americans on the strategic partnership? Do you have outstanding issues such as Bagram? Have you made progress on these issues?
These have been lingering for long. I wish there was better cooperation by the U.S. with us on the issues that we've had among us for at least eight-nine years: civilian casualties, attacks on Afghan homes, raids on Afghan homes, taking prisoners and keeping prisoners.
This is no longer related to the war on terror. This is an issue of Afghan sovereignty, and a partnership can only be signed between two sovereign entities. Without resolving these outstanding issues between us any partnership signed will not be between two sovereign states. Therefore I am working hard to bring this recognition in the U.S. government that the signing of the partnership must happen once we have dealt with this issue
Do you have any sense of flexibility from the U.S. side?
I see more recognition of it. I see words expressed in this connection, in this regard. But I will need to see action.
You have set a deadline on Bagram, on detainee transfers.
Yes. Something must happen. I hope so very, very much. That's my request. Something must happen for us to move forward. Something must happen. We cannot have foreign forces in our country keeping prisoners. Nothing justifies it. Not a UN resolution. Not a Security Council thing. Not a bilateral arrangement. Not the war on terror - so called. Nothing justifies it.
You don't buy the Leahy Amendment argument about torture in Afghan facilities?
Not at all. Not at all. We are a very humane government, and we are a lot more mindful of it, of torture, of human rights violations. I can certainly tell you that as the president of Afghanistan, as a president, I can certainly say that this issue is more on my mind perhaps than any other individual that I know. Therefore it's an issue for us that goes to the core of our feelings. We have suffered at the hands of foreigners and, unfortunately, some of our own. Severe violations. And we want it ended. We don't allow it. We don't like it. And one of the reasons, and one of the reasons, in addition to sovereignty, is exactly the issue of the rights of Afghan people...
You sound insulted by this argument.
The argument of human rights? Absolutely. Absolutely. We stand tall on this.
What would be the consequence of the U.S. not transferring th Bagram detainees?
If the United States is treating Afghanistan as a sovereign country it has to prove it. And the proof is here.
The U.S. Military is training more Afghans to do night raids.
Well, after a long time. I wish this had been done earlier. We raised these issues years ago. And due action was not taken, due notice was not made until I became public about this, until I raised a voice, and quite a vocal strong voice. Night raids may have caused the arrest of some bad elements but night raids have caused more suffering to innocent Afghan families. So this is an area where Afghanistan is alert and not willing to accept any more of it.
Does it make a difference - American or Afghan night raids?
The Afghans going to an Afghan home will be done in accordance to the Afghan Constitution and laws. They cannot just go and barge into somebody's home. No. We have suffered in this country because of that. From the Soviet time to the following years and that, for the Afghan people, the main wound in Afghanistan for the past 30 years is the neglect of Afghan homes, the sanctity of those homes.
What are your feeling about the issue of immunity for American troops. Americans ended up walking away from a special relationship with Iraq over this issue.
The immunity to US troops? Well that's an issue that we can discuss. We're not yet there. First we have to resolve these issues. We want a partnership with America. And we will do all we can to make that possible.
How do you feel broadly about your government's relationship with the United States?
Well, we are very grateful to the American people for the help that they've sent to Afghanistan. This country's doing a lot better today than it did 10 years ago. Never in the Afghan history have we had so good a country as we have today in terms of the physical buildup of it: Roads, education, health services, a better livelihood. That would not have been possible without the United States and without our other partners in the international community. So we are very, very grateful. Now, the problems that we have on the issues that we spoke about earlier are not denigrating, or reducing, or sending into oblivion, the support and the taxpayers' money that has been spent in Afghanistan. We are grateful for that. We recognize it. And we are eternally grateful for that — as a nation, as a people. So the description of the US-Afghan relations is one of gratitude to the American people and one of recognition of their assistance to Afghanistan. And, at the same time, one of asking for improvements in changes in bad behavior where it occurs.
Were you surprised about Defense Secretary Panetta's comments about more forces withdrawing in 2013? How do you read it?
It doesn't make a difference for us. The withdrawal of US forces from 2013, or the beginning of withdrawal of US forces from 2013. This is our country. We have to protect our country. We have to provide for the security of our people. Now, if we can expedite the transition to 2013, we are actually thinking about this and quite aloud, about expediting the transition from 2014 to 2013. But we are not adamant or insistent upon it. I see nothing wrong in Sec. Panetta's statement. If it happens, good for us. If it doesn't happen, we can go along to 2014.
Did it surprise you?
No, it didn't surprise me. We have had so many surprises we no longer get surprised.
The perception is that you have had a very close relationship with President Bush. How would you compare the Bush era and the Obama era?
When President Bush and I began our relationship, this was a very rosy time. The United States has just arrived in Afghanistan in the form of a liberator of our country from the Taliban and al Qaeda, and our country was freed, with the help of the Afghan people and the international and American assistance. And the great expectation was there in the Afghan people for an Afghanistan that would be peaceful and growing, quick like a snowball, and in that environment we had a good relationship.
An added element to that was the warmth that President Bush gave to Afghanistan and the hospitality that the U.S. government provided to Afghanistan and to the Afghan people, and the First Lady's, Mrs. Bush, trips to Afghanistan, and the calls for education and the help that did arrive in Afghanistan. Matters that would make relationships difficult and hard began to arrive towards 2005-2006, and we did begin to talk about those issues, quite serious and, at times, quite heated. But the foundation was strong and one of trust. And that foundation allowed this difficult exchange to take place.
President Obama arrived when over civilian casualties over all these other issues of private security firms and civilian casualties and violations of Afghan homes and violations of Afghan laws had already made things tense. So it did not really begin with President Obama or the Democratic administration in Washington. I have tremendous respect for President Obama. He's a very nice person. Well intended. But things couldn't be as they were when we began with President Bush in 2002. That was a different beginning. This was the middle of the road almost. So it had to be different. It had to be tension ridden. And that's normal But it was a respectful relationship. There were mistakes made in the United States by certain officials, definitely, I don't know if that was the U.S. policy or if it was the officials who did that. But we ignored that for the larger good. The larger good is an Afghanistan that is stable and strong, an Afghanistan that is sovereign, and an Afghanistan that is allied and partnered with the United States of America and with others.
Do you feel satisfied by the inclusiveness, by the respect you receive from the Obama administration?
Well there are certain issues that we still have to resolve and we are not satisfied on that. But generally, on all other issues, we do have a respectful relationship and a good relationship. There was Secretary Gates who continued under President Obama for three years. Highly respected person. Very capable person who listened, who understood. There is now Mr. Panetta whom I have a very good relationship with. Secretary Clinton has always been very respectful to the Afghan people and to myself as a person, and I know her now for quite some time. So there are people in that administration that we value highly, that we respect highly, it's not about individual relationships, it's about issues.
Have you followed the campaign, the statements that Republican candidates have been making?
No. We see that as domestic, and issues that normally take place in any election. The United States still has a bipartisan approach to Afghanistan, that both parties support their mission in Afghanistan and that whoever is in government the issues will be the same, and the problems will be the same, the understandings will be the same and the effort towards a better future will be the same.
(...)
Mr. Romney is a good man, I've met with him many times when he was governor of Massachusetts. Good man. I have a fairly strong favorable opinion of him - not that I want to intervene. That's not the purpose. Just by way of remark.
Let me ask you about your election in 2014. How do you envision electoral reform?
We want to have an election law that's suited well to the needs of the Afghan people, that brings us a transparent election, that brings us an election that cannot be fraudulent, or cannot be called fraudulent. We want it Afghanized for that reason. We've had our experience in past elections and we've learned our lessons. If you want to go further, you may go to read Kai Eide's book, the U.N. special representative's book during that election. Now he has spoken about it.
Are you getting pressure over the elections?
No not at all, we have not had any discussion on the election law or the election of 2014 as far as laws or the form of elections.
I can say in general terms we want the election to be Afghan owned, Afghan-law election. It has to be run through Afghan law suited to Afghanistan's condition and make sure that the election commission is free within the country and outside of the country from interferences from outside and within the country. For me the best example of an election commission and of a dignified election is that of India. That's my model. An Indian election commission that cannot be influenced politically by the government of the time, or the politics of the time or the politicians of the time, that they have the freedom to act. And themselves as the commission behave in accordance with the interests of the country and the laws concerning the election.
When will the law be unveiled?
The law is being worked out. I will not be able to talk about it until I see it and it will come to the cabinet and I will see it.
You said that it will resemble India's law.
Resembles in two ways: one, an election commission that is absolutely independent of political influence. Political influence from within, political influence from without, from outside. A fair commission that's Afghan and apolitical and focused technically on the elections, not political on elections. Second - an election law that enables the commission to conduct a fair transparent election where the Afghan people can cast their vote and be sure that that vote is respected. That a genuine vote isn't counted as a fraudulent vote and that a fraudulent vote is not turned into a genuine vote. That's roughly what we want.
You have said you will not be running again in 2014. Have you thought of serving in a different capacity, and what it might be?
The different capacity is that I'll be an ex-president of Afghanistan. I'll be ready for advice when I'm asked for it on my experiences. And I'll be an Afghan citizen trying to help the country move forward in ways that I can as a citizen.
There has been speculation about this post of father of the nation in the constitution. Is that possible?
No, I don't think so and I think that's not the right thing. We shouldn't have too many fathers for this nation. I think we should move ahead and have presidents and have ex-presidents just like what you did in the United States. And that's the best model for us, I believe the United States system of government is the best model for us. You don't have fathers for the nation. You have a George Washington who's respectable and he's not called the father of the nation is he? Not officially, not in the constitution, [but] in public opinion. That's fine. I wish I can get there. That's fine. But not an artificially created title in the constitution. That's not right for the country.
May your brother Qayyum possibly run? Have you thought about that?
As a citizen he has the right to run like all other Afghan citizens. But if he asked my opinion I wouldn't recommend it. I have my views on the future and the election. As a citizen he has the right, but if he asks my opinion on it I wouldn't recommend it. It's a difficult job.
Would it be good for the nation to have a different last name for the next president?
Probably good for the nation, because whatever he does he'll be accused of having my backing for it. I think the country should move forward in a democratic way, have a president that can serve it in a manner that will have the Afghan people feel that that's genuinely their elected representative.
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BUSINESS
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NATION
Karzai Seeks Access to the Taliban in Pakistan Trip
TOLOnews.com
Wednesday, 15 February 2012
President Hamid Karzai is reportedly seeking Pakistan's support to provide access to senior Afghan Taliban leaders when he visits Islamabad on Thursday.
"We hope that Pakistan will arrange a purposeful meeting between us and so that we find a solution to our own problems," a senior Afghan official has told Reuters, emphasising hopes of direct talks with Taliban leaders.
"Pakistan has paid little attention to our concerns and the level of cooperation has not been sincere or honest so far."
Pakistan has consistently denied giving sanctuary to insurgents and denies the existence of any Quetta Shura, or leadership council.
Ties between Pakistan and Afghanistan got strained after the assassination of the head of High Peace Council, Burhanuddin Rabbani in September.
Afghan officials blamed Pakistan's intelligence agency for the assassination, allegations angrily denied by Islamabad.
Pakistan's Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar said after a recent trip to Kabul that Islamabad would support a process which is led and owned by the Afghans.
Karzai is expected to meet Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari during his visit which starts on Thursday part of the trilateral summit with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
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After a Reassessment, NATO Resumes Sending Detainees to Afghanistan Jails
New York Times
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
February 15, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan
A moratorium by NATO on transferring detainees to some of the Afghan government’s detention facilities has been lifted and transfers have resumed, NATO officials said Wednesday.
Last fall, the transfers were suspended in the wake of a devastating report from the United Nations that found evidence of routine human rights abuses and torture at 16 detention centers, including eight operated by the National Directorate of Security and eight operated by the police.
The United Nations report, which covered 47 detention facilities in 22 provinces, found that in some of them detainees were beaten with rubber hoses and hung from hooks, and that their genitals were twisted to extract confessions. The NATO commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John R. Allen, immediately halted detainee transfers to all Afghan facilities where the United Nations found abuses and put in place a remediation program.
Over the past four months NATO officials have assessed each of the jails named in the report and instituted a retraining program for the Afghan leadership at them, as well as the interrogators and guards. The Ministry of Interior and the National Directorate of Security, which run Afghan detainee operations, have cooperated, NATO officials said.
NATO said that it had resumed transferring detainees to 12 of the 16 detention centers, but that for four of them it was conditional, meaning that NATO could reverse that decision after further checks. Four places, including three where detainees reported routine abuse and in some cases torture, have not yet been certified for transfers.
The United Nations Convention Against Torture prohibits the transfer of a detained person to the custody of a state where there are substantial grounds for believing that the detainee is at risk of torture. There is also a United States law that prohibits assistance or training to the security forces of a foreign country if there is evidence of torture. Financing and assistance can continue, however, if serious remedial action is taken.
Typically when NATO troops arrest Afghans in the field, they hold them briefly for questioning and let them go if they are deemed to have no connection to suspicious activities. If they do appear to have insurgent connections, NATO troops either turn them over to the Afghan detention system or, in rarer cases, send them to the detention facility operated by the United States in Parwan.
The moratorium on transfers has meant that more detainees have either been transferred to Parwan or been ferried to Afghan centers where there have not been accusations of abuse. Those Afghan facilities are often further afield, which means NATO soldiers are holding more Afghans for longer periods than before and more soldiers are involved in detention operations than in the past, said Maj. Carl Dick, who is heading up the assessment and retraining effort.
Although NATO has little capacity to monitor all the detention facilities that it sends detainees to, if it hears of abuses from the United Nations or from the International Committee of the Red Cross it will halt transfers immediately until the facility has been investigated and if necessary, the problems have been resolved.
“As soon as there is reasonable doubt that there is inhumane treatment, we stop transfers,” Brig. Gen. Carsten Jacobson, the NATO spokesman, said.
The process raises tough questions for the future. Since there are fewer NATO troops in the field, it will be harder for them to retain oversight of detention operations. But as long as there are any NATO troops there will still be the need to transfer detainees to the Afghans, General Jacobson said. There will be even more reliance in the future on reports by the United Nations and the Red Cross, he said.
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U.S., Afghans in Taliban Talks
Karzai Says Secret Three-Way Negotiations Over Peace Settlement Have Begun
Wall Street Journal
By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV And MATT MURRAY
FEBRUARY 16, 2012
KABUL
The U.S. and Afghan governments have begun secret three-way talks with the Taliban, Afghan President Hamid Karzai told The Wall Street Journal, disclosing an important breakthrough in efforts to end the 10-year war.
Mr. Karzai, whose government had protested being left out of recent talks between Washington and the insurgents, added he believes most Taliban are "definitively" interested in a peace settlement.
"There have been contacts between the U.S. government and the Taliban, there have been contacts between the Afghan government and the Taliban, and there have been some contacts that we have made, all of us together, including the Taliban," Mr. Karzai said in the interview Wednesday in his office at the Arg Palace in Kabul.
He declined to specify the location of the talks or go into further detail, saying he feared that could damage the process.
Mr. Karzai's remarks suggest progress in tentative peace efforts as President Barack Obama begins withdrawing forces and prepares for the transfer of security responsibilities to Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
U.S. officials cautioned against reading too much into what came out of the three-way session, which was held in the past month to prepare the ground for further contacts.
Taliban spokesmen couldn't be reached to comment.
Meetings between Taliban emissaries and the U.S. in recent months have centered on opening a Taliban office in the Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar, and on confidence-building measures such as a possible transfer to Qatar of Taliban detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, U.S. and Taliban officials said.
A senior Obama administration official said the U.S. had assured Mr. Karzai that "all we were interested in was seeing if we could open the door for Afghan-to-Afghan talks."
These contacts began gaining traction about a year ago, after U.S. and German diplomats secretly met an aide to Taliban leader Mullah Omar, U.S. officials said.
The U.S. has been regularly briefing Kabul about these discussions, Mr. Karzai said. Until now, however, the insurgents have declared publicly that they won't negotiate with Mr. Karzai's "puppet regime."
Mr. Karzai on Wednesday brushed off those denials. "We were talking to the Taliban, we were talking to the senior-most of them," he said. "We keep hearing in the press from time to time that the Taliban do not want to talk to us, but that's someone making a statement."
Afghan officials said just weeks ago they were unhappy with Qatar's prominent role in the initial talks, and feared Kabul would be marginalized.
Mr. Karzai said the U.S. has now accepted his government's views and conditions, including a demand for representation in negotiations, and has conveyed them to Qatar and the Taliban.
"We have now reached an agreement," Mr. Karzai said. "That means what we want has been put into action by the U.S. government, and what we want has been seen as being right."
Significant hurdles to any possible deal remain, the largest being what Kabul and Washington say is Pakistani support for Afghan militant groups.
Mr. Karzai said he will ask for Islamabad's help in the peace outreach at a summit on Thursday in Pakistan with the Pakistani and Iranian presidents.
"Pakistan's cooperation would make the whole matter easier for us, for the Taliban, and for the U.S.," he said.
Pakistan's foreign minister said on a recent Kabul visit that she backs an Afghan-led peace process with the Taliban.
Mr. Karzai said he has seen no indication that the Pakistani intelligence service is ready to reduce its backing for the Afghan insurgency. Pakistani intelligence officials have denied fomenting attacks in Afghanistan.
Afghan efforts to open contacts with the Taliban were dealt a blow in September with the assassination of the top Afghan negotiator, former President Burhanuddin Rabbani. Afghan officials blamed the killing, by a purported Taliban emissary who arrived from Pakistan, on Pakistani intelligence. Pakistan denied the charge.
The latest round of talks is taking place after U.S. officials said they verified the bona fides of their Taliban interlocutors, and after the Taliban's leadership officially confirmed the group is talking with the U.S.
Mr. Karzai said separate negotiations with the U.S. on a strategic partnership agreement—which would establish a long-term American role in Afghanistan—don't contradict his peace quest, despite Taliban assertions they will keep fighting as long as a single foreign soldier remains on Afghan soil.
The Taliban, Mr. Karzai added, might even accept, in the framework of a peace agreement, a deal with the U.S. that allows for the long-term presence of American troops.
"People in Afghanistan want peace, including the Taliban. They're also people like we all are. They have families, they have relatives, they have children, they are suffering a tough time," he said. "There are a lot of people in the Taliban who are the sons of the soil, and who do not want this country, the people of this country, to suffer."
In the partnership talks with the U.S., friction persists over Mr. Karzai's demands the U.S.-led military coalition end night raids on Afghan homes, and that the U.S. transfer all Afghan prisoners to Afghan custody.
Coalition officials explain that while they are moving to address Mr. Karzai's concerns, doing so will require strengthening Afghan security forces first.
Mr. Karzai insisted the deal with the U.S. won't be signed unless his conditions on night raids and detentions are accepted.
"This is no longer related to the war on terror. This is an issue of Afghan sovereignty, and a partnership can only be signed between two sovereign entities," Mr. Karzai said.
Mr. Karzai, however, also indicated flexibility on the issue of immunity for American service members in Afghanistan, a deal-breaker in last year's attempts to negotiate a similar agreement between the U.S. and Iraq.
"That's an issue that we can discuss," Mr. Karzai said, adding: "We want a partnership with America. And we will do all we can to make that possible."
During the interview, Mr. Karzai reminisced about his "warm" relationship with President George W. Bush, and described Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney as a "good man" of whom he has "a fairly strong favorable opinion."
The Afghan leader added he had no intention of interfering in the election.
Mr. Karzai, whose presidential term runs out in 2014, reiterated that he won't seek another mandate, something prohibited by the constitution.
He also moved to squelch speculation he may seek power in another role, such as the currently vacant seat of "father of the nation," a position provided for in Afghanistan's constitution but without specific authority.
"That's not the right thing," he quipped. "We shouldn't have too many fathers for this nation."
Mr. Karzai also said he would advise his brother Qayyum, described by Western diplomats in Kabul as a leading potential successor, against running for the Afghan presidency in 2014.
"Whatever he does he'll be accused of having my backing," Mr. Karzai said, adding that it would be better for Afghanistan to have a next president with a different surname. —Adam Entous in Washington and Dion Nissenbaum and Maria Abi-Habib in Kabul contributed to this article.
Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and Matt Murray at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
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Ignoring Allies in Afghanistan
The Diplomat
By Jason Davidson
February 15, 2012
The United States’ NATO allies reacted with surprise and consternation to Defense Secretary Panetta’s recent announcement that U.S. forces would move away from a combat role in Afghanistan as early as mid 2013. Reports have emerged that the U.S. decision was based on a shift in U.S. strategy toward a greater focus on Special Operations forces to kill insurgents and train Afghans. The allies are surprised and angry because the Obama administration decided to change strategy and move up the withdrawal deadline in isolation, apparently informing allies only after the fact.
This isn’t the way to treat long-term allies that are fighting and dying alongside American soldiers, often at great political cost to their governments. And this isn’t the first time. The Obama administration has made its most important strategic decisions on Afghanistan on its own with little or no role for allies in the process. Administration officials have then announced the decision and left allies holding the bag.
As a presidential candidate Barack Obama had a different idea about alliances. In his July 2008 speech in Berlin, Obama set out to distinguish his view of allies from those of George W. Bush. Obama argued that the U.S. needed allies to share burdens and but also that a “true partnership” would require “allies who will listen to each other, learn from each other and, most of all, trust each other.”
America’s allies are certainly sharing the burden in Afghanistan. Today, over 40,000 NATO and other allied troops serve alongside 90,000 American soldiers and marines in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, there’s little evidence that the Obama administration has listened to and learned from its allies when making strategic decisions regarding Afghanistan.
In March 2009, the Obama administration concluded an Afghanistan strategy review that led to an approval of additional U.S. troops. In December 2009, Obama concluded the high-profile review led by Gen. Stanley McChrystal by approving an additional surge of 30,000 troops and a new counterinsurgency strategy to match. At the same time, Obama announced that the U.S. would begin a drawdown of its troops in Afghanistan in the summer of 2011.
A variety of accounts of these reviews suggest that the Riedel and McChrystal reviews were U.S.-centered processes in which allies were of almost no significance. In both cases, the president ultimately made a decision and communicated it to allies rather than incorporating them into the decision making process.
True, most of the contributing countries were supportive of the decisions Obama made in March and December 2009. That support just points out, however, how little it would have cost the U.S. to incorporate allies into the process. It’s also likely that through routine consultation some of the United States’ more prominent allies (e.g. the United Kingdom) are able to make their views heard, and it’s possible that some of those views get aired in the decision making process. This is not the same, however, as a process that would formally incorporate allies by giving them a seat at the table – even if they didn’t have a veto over decisions.
Why does it matter? First, if the Obama administration made allies feel like they could affect decisions on Afghanistan strategy they would be more vested in the fight and less likely to head for the exits. Allies’ exclusion from big decisions offers one possible explanation why they haven’t provided the number of troops or the rules of engagement Washington would like.
Second, if allies participated in the decision making process, strategic coherence would increase, rather than the patchwork reality wherein allies often enact their own strategy within their own sector. Finally, the United States could benefit from allies’ diverse perspectives. Many allies have been in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in 2001 and could bring their experience to bear. Some allies also have extensive counterinsurgency experience outside Afghanistan that could inform debate.
President Obama would do well to learn the lesson that Senator Obama seemed to know: if the U.S. is going to ask allies to share a costly burden such as the one in Afghanistan, it should also give allies a seat at the table when strategic decisions are made.
Jason Davidson is an associate professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the University of Mary Washington. Davidson is the author of two books: 'The Origins of Revisionist and Status-quo States' and 'America's Allies and War: Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq.'
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This War Is Not Over Yet
New York Times
By MARY L. DUDZIAK
Op-Ed Contributor
February 15, 2012
Los Angeles
THE defense secretary, Leon E. Panetta, recently announced that America hoped to end its combat mission in Afghanistan in 2013 as it did in Iraq last year. Yet at Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere, the United States continues to hold enemy detainees “for the duration of hostilities.”
Indeed, the “ending” of combat in Afghanistan and Iraq appears to have no consequences for the ending of detention. Because the end of a war is traditionally thought to be the moment when a president’s war powers begin to ebb, bringing combat to a close in Afghanistan and Iraq should lead to a reduction in executive power — including the legitimate basis for detaining the enemy.
But there is a disconnect today between the wars that are ending and the “war” that is used to justify ongoing detention of prisoners. Originally, the war in Afghanistan was part of the Bush administration’s “war on terror.” This framing had rhetorical power, but it quickly drew criticism because a war on terror has no boundaries in space or time, and no prospect of ever ending.
When he took office, President Obama abandoned the “war on terror” rhetoric, focusing instead on Iraq and Afghanistan. American war now seemed more manageable and traditional. A confined war in a specific war zone was a war that presumably could end once the enemy was defeated within that territory. But it was not so simple: Qaeda fighters slipped over the Afghan border to Pakistan, extending the zone of conflict.
Ending wars has never been easy, of course. On the Korean Peninsula, fighting came to a halt with an armistice agreement in 1953, but a peace treaty has never been signed, so there has been no formal end to that war. Faced with continuing threats from North Korea, American troops continue to maintain a presence in South Korea. Had today’s logic been applied there, Korean prisoners of war might still be serving the rest of their years in detention.
During the Vietnam War, North Vietnamese soldiers also crossed a border, into Cambodia. But once that war came to an end, the basis for ongoing detention of North Vietnamese enemy soldiers ended, even if a cold war against communism continued.
America’s recent wars have been hard to end, but our presidents have done their best to argue that our goals have been accomplished. President George W. Bush did this memorably when he declared victory in Iraq in May 2003 on the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln under the banner “Mission Accomplished” — and yet that conflict was far from over.
President Obama had his own “Mission Accomplished” moment, when he declared the “end of combat in Iraq” in August 2010. Like Mr. Bush’s episode, Mr. Obama’s was principally a media event, as reporters spoke with excitement about the historic moment, as American combat troops crossed the border into Kuwait. Yet at the time, 50,000 United States troops remained in Iraq, and the Army quickly reassured them that, even though “conflict” had ended, “conflict conditions” persisted, and hence soldiers would still receive additional pay for serving in a hostile zone. That first “ending” of the Iraq war has now been largely forgotten, eclipsed by the December 2011 withdrawal — a much more extensive drawdown than initially planned.
The “end of combat” in Afghanistan, slated for 2013, could become yet another made-for-media event. But at the very least it should force Americans to confront the contradiction of ending two wars while invoking a nebulous and never-ending third one to justify the continued detention of prisoners.
Administration lawyers have an answer for this: the original post-9/11 Authorization for Use of Military Force gave the president authority to act against Al Qaeda and its supporters.
Mr. Obama brought his definition of war into line with this more expansive view in January 2010 by declaring that the United States is “at war against Al Qaeda.” This broadened the scope of Mr. Obama’s rhetoric on war by divorcing it from geography. And it provided a way of bringing into the ambit of American war terrorists outside of Iraq and Afghanistan, such as Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born cleric tied to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula who was killed by an American drone strike in Yemen last September.
Like the Bush administration’s version of the war on terror, this war with Al Qaeda allows us to follow our enemies wherever they may go. It also enables us to continue framing terrorists as warriors, subject to detention without charges as long as threats related to Al Qaeda exist.
Mr. Obama is trying to have it both ways. Ending major conflicts in two countries helps him deliver on campaign promises. But his expansive definition of war leaves in place the executive power to detain without charges, and to exercise war powers in any region where Al Qaeda has a presence.
By asserting, for political purposes, that the nation’s two wars are ending while planning behind the scenes for a longer-term war against Al Qaeda terrorists, the man who pledged to bring America’s wars to an end has instead laid the basis for an endless battle.
Mary L. Dudziak, a professor of law, history and political science at the University of Southern California, is the author of “War Time: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences.”
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US monitors Pakistan’s choice of spymaster
Financial Times
By Matthew Green
February 15, 2012
Islamabad
In the many dramas to pit Pakistan against the US, Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, the head of the country’s premier spy agency, has been among the most influential, if least visible, of the protagonists.
Next month he is due to step down as head of the Inter-Services Intelligence, presaging change at an organisation that lies at the crossroads of the conflicts enmeshing Pakistan, Afghanistan and India.
The succession question has triggered barely a ripple in Pakistan’s normally boisterous media, with some pundits betting that the army will solve the dilemma by pushing for Lt Gen Pasha to stay on for a year.
But the issue is being keenly watched by the Obama administration, which wants to convince the ISI to nudge its former Taliban protégés into talks to end the Afghan war.
Although there are questions over how much control the ISI director can exert over its most opaque branches, US officials will be hoping that the new chief will take a tough line against the extremist groups the agency has nurtured.
The next director-general must also decide how far the ISI wants to repair its frayed ties with US intelligence, or appease the more Taliban-friendly elements under his command.
“Whoever takes over as ISI chief will wield huge influence over Pakistan’s relationship with the US,” said Shuja Nawaz of the Atlantic Council, a Washington think-tank. “The agency is not a neutral, intelligence-gathering operation – over time it has developed into a virtual policymaking body.”
Several ex-army officers believe one of the most likely candidates is Lieutenant General Muhammad Zahir ul-Islam, scion of a military family from Punjab province, who commands troops in the city of Karachi.
A seasoned officer who has served in a top ISI post, he enjoys a rapport with General Ashfaq Kayani, the powerful army chief, though some question whether he would be as blunt as Lt Gen Pasha.
“Pasha is capable of telling his boss ‘this is right and this is wrong’,” said Ikram Sehgal, a security commentator. “I doubt whoever replaces him will be quite as forthright.”
Inspiring fear at home, and suspicion abroad, the ISI embodies the ambiguities in Pakistani security policy that makes diplomats in Islamabad feel like they have stepped into a hall of mirrors.
Like the other potential candidates, Lt Gen Zahir ul-Islam belongs to a generation of soldiers who rose up the ranks while the ISI was quietly exploiting the protection afforded by Pakistan’s nuclear umbrella to nurture militants as a counterweight to India’s conventional might.
Such men have since witnessed the havoc wreaked in Pakistan by extremists who have slipped the ISI leash, and many have fought them in campaigns in the tribal belt near Afghanistan.
A rise in tensions between the government and army has further complicated the selection process, and officials say no decision has yet been taken.
Although the power to appoint the ISI chief technically rests with Yusuf Raza Gilani, the embattled prime minister, the army will expect him to endorse one of its candidates, adding a new dimension into the simmering civil-military struggle.
Lt Gen Pasha, who was appointed director-general in September, 2008, has earned a reputation for professionalism among US officials, even if the uncertain activities of his subordinates have sown intense mistrust.
The ISI retains close links with Afghanistan’s Taliban and jihadist groups in Kashmir, but it has also worked with the US to grab al-Qaeda suspects. Many of its operatives have been killed tracking Pakistani militants.
Suspicions of the ISI multiplied, however, following the killing of Osama bin Laden, the founder of al-Qaeda, in a US raid on a garrison town outside Islamabad.
Relations soured further in September, when Admiral Mike Mullen, then chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, accused the ISI of directing attacks on US forces in Afghanistan.
The high stakes at play might be a motive for the army to seek another year-long term for Lt Gen Pasha after his mandate expires on March 18. He has already had two extensions, however, and several experts believe he will be replaced.
Other possible options may include Lieutenant General Rashad Mahmood, who is serving in the city of Lahore, and Major General Isfandiyar Pataudi, who impressed instructors during a stint at the US Army War College.
With Pakistan’s institutional balance in flux, Mr Gilani might be inclined to try to bargain over the post, leaving space for surprises, said Kamran Bokhari of Stratfor, the global intelligence company.
“In the end he may go with Kayani’s choice in exchange for something on a different issue that strengthens the government’s position,” he said.
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The Story of How U.S. Special Forces Infiltrated Pakistan
Using special tracking technology and CIA oversight, teams have quietly crossed the border to challenge al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and their supporters in the Pakistani spy service.
The Atlantic
Feb 15 2012
With Osama bin Laden dead, al-Qaeda's capabilities severely diminished, and the United States scaling back operations in Afghanistan, what will President Barack Obama and his successors do with the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC)? A look at what they've already been doing outside of war zones gives us some hints.
In 2005, for example, a 7.6-magnitude earthquake killed 75,000 people in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. After four solid years of war in the region, the United States poured relief services into Pakistan as a show of solidarity with the nominal ally in the war on terror.
The U.S. intelligence community took advantage of the chaos to spread resources of its own into the country. Using valid U.S. passports and posing as construction and aid workers, dozens of Central Intelligence Agency operatives and contractors flooded in without the requisite background checks from the country's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. Al-Qaeda had reconstituted itself in the country's tribal areas, largely because of the ISI's benign neglect.
In Afghanistan, the ISI was actively undermining the U.S.-backed government of President Hamid Karzai, training and recruiting for the Taliban, which it viewed as the more reliable partner. The political system was in chaos. The Pakistani army was focused on the threat from India and had redeployed away from the Afghanistan border region, the Durand line, making it porous once again. To some extent, the Bush administration had been focused on Iraq for the previous two years, content with the ISI's cooperation in capturing senior al-Qaeda leaders, while ignoring its support of other groups that would later become recruiting grounds for al-Qaeda.
A JSOC intelligence team slipped in alongside the CIA. The team had several goals. One was prosaic: team members were to develop rings of informants to gather targeting information about al-Qaeda terrorists. Other goals were extremely sensitive: JSOC needed better intelligence about how Pakistan transported its nuclear weapons and wanted to penetrate the ISI. Under a secret program code-named SCREEN HUNTER, JSOC, augmented by the Defense Intelligence Agency and contract personnel, was authorized to shadow and identify members of the ISI suspected of being sympathetic to al-Qaeda. It is not clear whether JSOC units used lethal force against these ISI officers; one official said that the goal of the program was to track terrorists through the ISI by using disinformation and psychological warfare. (The program, by then known under a different name, was curtailed by the Obama administration when Pakistan's anxiety about a covert U.S. presence inside the country was most intense.)
Meanwhile, rotating teams of SEALs from Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU) Black squadron, aided by U.S. Army Rangers and other special operations forces, established a parallel terrorist-hunting capability called VIGILANT HARVEST. They operated in the border areas of Pakistan deemed off limits to Americans, and they targeted courier networks, trainers, and facilitators. Legally, these units would operate under the authority of the CIA any time they crossed the border. Some of their missions were coordinated with Pakistan; others were not.
As of 2006, teams of Green Berets were regularly crossing the border. Missions involved as few as three or four operators quietly trekking across the line, their movements monitored by U.S. satellites and drones locked onto the cell phones of these soldiers. (The cell phones were encrypted in such a way that made them undetectable to Pakistani intelligence.) Twice in 2008, Pakistani officials caught wind of these missions, and in one instance, Pakistani soldiers operating in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas fired guns into the air to prevent the approach of drones.
Forward intelligence cells in Pakistan are staffed by JSOC-contracted security personnel from obscure firms with insider names such as Triple Canopy and various offshoots of Blackwater, but it is not clear whether, as Jeremy Scahill of The Nation has argued, the scale of these operations was operationally significant or that the contractors acted as hired guns for the U.S. government. Sources say that only U.S. soldiers performed "kinetic" operations; Scahill's sources suggest otherwise. The security compartments were so small for these operations (one was known as QUIET STORM, a particularly specialized mission targeting the Pakistani Taliban in 2008) that the command will probably be insulated from retrospective oversight about its activities.
A senior Obama administration official said that by the middle of 2011, after tensions between the U.S. and the Pakistani government became particularly and perhaps dangerously high, all JSOC personnel except for its declared military trainers were ferreted out of the country. (They were easy to find using that same secret cell phone pinging technology.) Those who remained were called Omegas, a term denoting their temporary designation as members of the reserve force. They then joined any one of a dozen small contracting companies set up by the CIA, which turned these JSOC soldiers into civilians for the purposes of deniability.
By the end of 2011, SEALs and the CIA Special Activities Division ground branch were crossing the border to target militants whom Pakistan would not. Presently, Task Force Green (also known as TF 3-10) is the active counterterrorist task force in Afghanistan.
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Bound by hatred of the US, Pakistan extremists and politicians join hands to shake government
Associated Press
Published: February 15, Updated: Thursday, February 16, 2012
KARACHI, Pakistan
Bound together by hatred of the United States and support for insurgents fighting in Afghanistan, a revived coalition of supposedly banned Islamist extremists and rightwing political parties is drawing large crowds across Pakistan.
The emergence of the “Defense of Pakistan Council” movement has raised suspicions that the group has approval from elements in the powerful military and security establishment, aiming to bolster public support for a hardline position. The group’s rise comes as the military is trying to assert its position in renegotiating its troubled relationship with the United States and as Pakistan prepares for elections likely to take place later this year.
Some of the leading lights in the Defense of Pakistan Council have traditionally been seen as close to the security establishment, which has a long history of propping up radicals to defend its domestic interests or fight in India and Afghanistan.
On Sunday, the group’s bandwagon rolled into Karachi, the country’s commercial heart.
Between 20,000 and 30,000 men gathered close to a monument to Pakistan’s founder, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, whose vision of a liberal, secular Pakistan is often contrasted to the rise of hardline, often violent groups in the country.
The star of the gathering was Hafiz Saeed, the head of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a front group for Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant group accused by India and the West of sending Pakistani militants by boat to Mumbai in 2008 where they killed 166 people in attacks on a hotel and other sites.
“We demand Pakistani rulers quit the alliance with America,” said Saeed, who was placed under house arrest after the Mumbai attacks but has slowly re-emerged in public, without a response from authorities. “There can be no compromise on the freedom and sovereignty of the country.”
Members of Dawa patrolled the rally, some armed with automatic weapons, others on horseback.
Also represented on stage and in the crowd were Sipah-e-Sahaba, a feared Sunni extremist group that has carried out scores of attacks on minority Shiites in recent years. Its members have reportedly formed alliances with al-Qaida operatives in Pakistan.
A large banner that hung over the stage read “Wake up, countrymen, break the shackles of American slavery.”
That anti-American message has been amplified by the Pakistani army since U.S. airstrikes along the Afghan border in late November killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. The Pakistani army accused the U.S. of deliberately targeting the outposts, rejecting American assertions it was mistake.
Pakistan retaliated by closing its western border to NATO and U.S military supplies into Afghanistan, a key supply line for the war. Saeed and other speakers threatened civil disobedience if Pakistan reopens it. Their stance could hamper American hopes that Islamabad will quietly reopen the route in the coming weeks.
“We vow that the NATO supply will never be restored,” he said.
The alliance groups many of the same parties and clerics that banded together after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, capitalizing on anti-American sentiment. It formed a political alliance that won 50 seats in elections that took place in 2002.
The current government, which is broadly pro-American and doesn’t espouse political Islam, is under pressure from the courts and opposition parties. Elections are now seen as likely later this year, and the revival of the “Defend Pakistan” group appears to be a push by politicians grouped within it to win votes among the legions of Pakistanis who subscribe to Islamist views.
It could also be attempt by the army to put pressure on the ruling Pakistan People’s Party, which has repeatedly clashed with the generals since taking power in 2008 and has tried to get closer ties with India. The group has organized large rallies in several Pakistan cities; next week it plans a gathering in the capital, Islamabad.
Many of the speakers in Karachi rallied the crowds with warnings that Pakistan was under threat, and Islam its only defense.
“Do you swear to fight back with Islamic spirit, honor and dignity if anyone, whether American, NATO, Israel or India attack Pakistan?” asked Maulana Sami-ul-Haq, head of a hardline school that has sent thousands of people to fight in Afghanistan over the last 10 years.
“Jihad! Jihad!” the crowd roared.
Speaker after speaker also touted the army line on India, saying the neighboring country represents an existential threat to Pakistan. This stance justifies the security state that has been established since the two nations broke apart from the British-ruled subcontinent in 1947.
Liberals, democrats and peace activists have been trying for years to bring India and Pakistan closer together. But in the past, the army has funded and trained Islamic militant groups and their umbrella organizations to battle Indian forces in Kashmir, the disputed territory at the heart of the rivalry between the two countries.
“The security establishment of this country desires that ultra-radical parties should be brought into politics so that their doctrine against India, America or Israel could be infused to the masses,” said Tauseef Ahmed, the head of the Mass Communication department at the Federal Urdu University.
Also at the Karachi rally was Hamid Gul, a former general who headed the country’s spy agency in the late 1980s when Pakistan and the U.S. were supporting militants in their fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan. He has since become a leading voice in the media against America and in support of the Taliban. Documents released by the whistleblower site Wikileaks alleged he retained ties to the insurgency there, a charge he has denied.
Ejaz Haider, a security analyst, said the security establishment should be “checked for serious dementia” if it was using the council for its own purposes, given that many of its members have been linked to terrorism that is taking a deadly toll inside Pakistan.
“Far from this council defending Pakistan, Pakistan needs to be defended in right earnest from this cast of characters,” he wrote in an editorial in the Express Tribune newspaper.
____
Associated Press writer Chris Brummitt in Islamabad contributed to this report.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Malnutrition Continues to Threaten Afghan Kids
TOLOnews.com
Wednesday, 15 February 2012
Save the Childern has said in a new report that Afghanistan has the highest child mortality rate caused by malnutrition.
Lack of access to food, improper diets, and non-standard health measures are among the main causes of malnutrition in Afghanistan, according to the report.
One out of ten Afghan children dies due to malnutrition before the age of five, it says.
According to the report girls in other parts of the world have better nutrition level than boys, but that in Afghanistan girls' are more malnourished than boys which shows a 20% percent higher malnutrition level than girls in other countries.
Save the Childern and the Afghan Ministry of Public Health have found that one fourth of breast-feeding women in Afghanistan are malnourished who are likely to give birth to underweight babies.
"Most malnourished children in Afghanistan are 6-years of age, which means more attention should be focused on this category of children," the report says.
As thousands of children die of pneumonia and diarrhea, malnourished children are faced with more risks than better nourished ones.
Afghanistan has had the highest child mortality rate in the world, and children under the age of five have been the main victims, according to the report.
Capacity building and increasing the number of health personnel in Afghanistan could play an important role to decrease malnutrition in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Public Health says.
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High-level drug meeting focuses on Afghanistan
Associated Press
By GEORGE JAHN
Feb 16, 2012
VIENNA
Representatives from dozens of nations are supposed to focus on the menace of drugs in Afghanistan when they meet Thursday in Vienna. But with powerful foreign ministers among those attending, Syria is expected to dominate talks on the sidelines.
Named for the agreement that created it nine years ago, the Paris Pact meeting is meant to review steps taken to reduce production and trafficking of opiates from Afghanistan. It will look at ways to block financial flows from the illicit drug trade, choke the flow of chemicals used to make heroin and strengthen local initiatives to help combat drug abuse by Afghans.
But the meeting has no enforcing powers, and international attempts to reduce the Afghan drug problem have had little success.
A January report by the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime said revenue from opium production in Afghanistan soared by 133 percent last year to about $1.4 billion, or about one-tenth of the country's GDP, after the crop recovered from a 2010 blight and returned to previous levels.
A copy of the Vienna meeting's final declaration obtained in advance by The Associated Press reflects realities, saying that Afghanistan's drug problem "continues to be a serious concern."
"Illicit traffic in opiates, including heroin, is a growing problem," says the document, adding that revenues it generates fuel "corruption, organized crime and in some cases ... terrorist activities and insurgency."
Some high-level delegates have already announced that they will huddle on ways to end Syria's violence on the sidelines of the drug meeting.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters Wednesday that he will meet with French counterpart Alain Juppe to be briefed on a French plan to set up humanitarian corridors in Syria that are free of violence. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is also attending the conference, along with government ministers from Iran and Afghanistan.
The United States will be represented by Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns.
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Taliban says U.S. to repeat Soviet defeat in Afghanistan
Reuters
By Amie Ferris-Rotman
Wed Feb 15, 2012
KABUL
The Taliban used the 23rd anniversary of the humiliating Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan on Wednesday to taunt the United States that it would suffer the same fate as preparations to hand over security to a shaky government are underway.
"Selfish Americans must learn a lesson from ... the Russian defeat and no longer fight a meaningless battle with zealous Afghans and take their invading forces out as soon as possible," the Afghan Taliban said in an e-mailed statement to media.
Forces from the former Soviet Union exited Afghanistan in 1989 after handing over security to a shaky government that was quickly beset by heavy fighting led by mujahideen groups, many of which were initially aided by the United States and Pakistan.
Now the United States and NATO are racing against the clock to train a 350,000-strong force of Afghan police and soldiers who will take over all security responsibilities before end-2014, though scepticism looms that the target can be met in an increasingly violent war.
"Today's American occupying invaders and their coalition allies are facing the same future the Russian invaders faced in the past," the Taliban statement added, referring to the NATO-led war now dragging into its eleventh year.
Comparing the two wars is not limited to Taliban hype -- fears are surfacing amongst Afghans and analysts that a repeat of the aftermath could take place.
"When the Soviet troops left, it was both a military and economic withdrawal. And once Americans leave, everything else will go with them," said Mir Ahmad Joenda, who was a member of the Afghan parliament during Communist times and now works at the country's Civil Society Forum.
"There is a definite possibility of a repeat of 1989 and its aftermath," Joenda told Reuters.
Afghans -- even those of opposing political sides -- hold intense pride over the forced withdrawal of the former Soviet Union after a decade of war.
Afghan state TV showed rolling footage of Red Army troops atop armoured vehicles crossing a bridge at the former Soviet northern border on February 15 1989, an image that has become synonymous with the end of a war that still haunts Moscow and cost 15,000 Soviet lives fighting mujahideen insurgents.
After the dispirited Soviet exit, the Afghan communist government collapsed, leading to infighting between warlords and a vicious civil war that reduced much of Kabul to rubble and paved the way for the Taliban's rise to power in 1996.
"NATO LEAVING BEHIND AN IMPOVERISHED COUNTRY"
Washington has pledged military support and aid -- though at much reduced levels that the billions of dollars spent now -- well after its troops withdraw, much as the Soviets continued to prop up the Communist government of Mohammad Najibullah after their 1989 rush from the country.
But when the Soviet Union collapsed two years later, the aid vanished, Najibullah was ousted in 1992, and in the ensuing war two thirds of Kabul was razed and about 50,000 civilians died.
"Like the Soviets, NATO will be leaving behind an impoverished country crippled by corruption, a government whose writ doesn't extend to many places outside Kabul, and where insurgent fighters are presumably waiting out foreign forces to assert themselves," said Gregory Feifer, author of The Great Gamble, which examines the Soviet war in Afghanistan.
But unlike the Soviet exit strategy, Afghan and U.S. officials are seeking peace negotiations with the Taliban as a means to ushering in some form of stability when foreign combat troops leave though the talks lay in a very fragile state.
Alexander Golts, a military analyst in Moscow, said there was "no doubt" the Taliban would regain a share of power following the NATO pullout, and predicted it would occur more quickly for the austere Islamist group the second time round.
"American and NATO forces will leave Afghanistan with limited success, which means we cannot be absolutely sure that in two, three or in five months' time, the Talibs will not return to power".
(Reporting by Amie Ferris-Rotman, additional reporting by Mirwais Harooni in Kabul and Thomas Grove in Moscow, Editing by Rob Taylor and Ed Lane)
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8 Afghan youths mistaken for attackers, coalition says
CNN
By the CNN Wire Staff
February 15, 2012
Kabul, Afghanistan
Eight Afghan youths killed in a coalition airstrike last week were mistaken for potential attackers, the International Security Assistance Force said Wednesday.
Ground forces observing the village in Kapisa province, northeast of Kabul, "identified several groups of adult-sized Afghan males that were leaving the village at different times and in different directions," U.S. Brig. Gen. Lewis Boone, ISAF spokesman, told reporters.
"One of these groups, consisting of eight persons, appeared to be carrying weapons and heading for the nearby mountains," he said. "They were observed moving in open terrain in a tactical fashion, clearly keeping distance from each other. After approximately 500 meters they were seen to gather under a large boulder."
"Their purposeful movements and the weapons they were seen to be carrying led the ground commander to believe this group was getting ready to attack and were an imminent threat to the Afghan National Police and coalition forces in the valley," Boone said.
As ground forces and air support continued to observe, the aircraft dropped two bombs on the group, he said.
"Despite all tactical directives being followed precisely, we now know the unfortunate results of this engagement," Boone said. "In the end, eight young Afghans lost their lives in this very sad event. We again pass our most sincere condolences to the families and loved ones of those who died."
NATO also expressed "deep regret" in the wake of the airstrike.
"While the exact circumstances of this tragic incident remain to be determined, ISAF is taking appropriate action to ascertain the facts, and prevent similar occurrences in the future," NATO said in a statement.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai strongly condemned the strike last week.
Gen. John R. Allen, ISAF commander, has met with the provincial governor to express condolences, Boone said Wednesday. "As commander, he takes these terrible events very seriously and is committed to eliminating them completely."
Civilian deaths as a result of action by the NATO-led international coalition have long caused anger in Afghanistan, adding pressure on international forces to withdraw.
The international force has said avoiding civilian casualties is a high priority, a pledge it repeated following the recent deaths.
"My command's mission is to protect the civilian people of Afghanistan," Allen said earlier. "I take very seriously the loss of every Afghan life. We will continue to do all we can to ensure the safety of the Afghan population."
Boone said Wednesday, "Though we can never bring these young Afghans back to their families, we in the very least are promising to help this small community by other means in hopes that we may in some way improve their daily lives."
The number of ISAF-caused civilian deaths decreased by nearly 17% from 2010 to 2011, the coalition force said in its December monthly report.
Insurgents caused more than 85% of civilian deaths and injuries in 2011, according to the report.
CNN's Barbara Starr and Jennifer Deaton contributed to this report.
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Taliban and Afghan's democracy: With U.S. troops set to leave, the country faces a broad challenge to its future
The Philadelphia Inquirer
By By FAWZIA KOOFI
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
I will never forget the day I swore my oath as a member of parliament in Afghanistan.
Our national anthem was playing, and tears streamed down my face. I looked around the room and saw all of Afghanistan's faces reflected there; every ethnic group from my culturally diverse nation - more than 40 languages, with more than 200 dialects, are spoken nationally. And all beliefs were represented: men with turbans and beards, gray-haired elders in traditional robes, clean-shaven bespectacled bureaucrats wearing suits, and young women like myself.
This was the blossoming of democracy and the new start for my nation that I had dreamed of throughout the long years of Taliban rule, when my country was led by men who claimed to speak for God, but who plunged us into darkness.
We cannot allow them to rule again.
One of the most common misperceptions about my nation is that democracy was forced on an unwilling population by the West after the defeat of the Taliban in 2001.
This is not true.
My answer to people who ask me how I feel to have had democracy "imposed" on Afghanistan is this:
"Wouldn't any people, anywhere in the world, want the right to choose their own leader and vote for their own government if they could do so?"
I find it strange that anyone would think differently.
The fact is Afghanistan has a long and noble history of democratic traditions at both the local and national level. For example, locally we have a system of "jirga," a local council where elders from neighboring villages meet and discuss problems or solve disputes. Anyone can bring a problem or dispute to a "jirga" - and the council will listen to both sides of the debate and make a judgment. Their decision is final.
At the national level we have "Loya Jirga" - grand council. This system brings together regional leaders from all over the country. Immediately after the fall of the Taliban, we had a constitutional Loya Jirga that included representatives from all the different ethnic groups. At that gathering, the new democratic constitution of Afghanistan was agreed to and voted upon. Most recently, there has been a national Peace Jirga, which included village elders as well as politicians from all over Afghanistan.
Today, many Afghans have lost or are losing faith in their government. But that has nothing to do with not wanting democracy. Rather, it has everything to do with how little has changed for ordinary people despite the billions of dollars of international aid money spent in Afghanistan in recent years.
Most people still do not have access to clean water or electricity, even in Kabul, the capital city. In part this is due to government corruption - Afghanistan is ranked as one of the most corrupt countries in the world.
But it is also a failure of big international contracting firms that built roads, many of which were too small to allow farmers to pass trucks to get produce to market or that were made with such poor-quality asphalt that they need rebuilding already. Many hospitals were also built so badly that they failed to include basics such as plumbing, so they lay empty, unfit for patients. Yet the contractors still took their profit.
If Afghan people are cynical today, these are just some of the reasons. Yet they still risk their lives to vote in elections. I represent Badakshan, one of the poorest and most remote provinces of Afghanistan. Many people are illiterate, yet they love to talk about politics.
In recent weeks, there has been much discussion of so-called peace talks between the Taliban and the United States. The Taliban has recently opened a political office in the gulf state of Qatar, a key U.S. ally. Last year, the Taliban pulled out of similar talks with President Hamid Karzai. The United States now appears to believe that the only way to achieve lasting peace in Afghanistan (and allow a smooth pullout of the foreign military) is to allow the Taliban to participate in government. I feel strongly that this is the wrong approach.
The U.S. government has announced plans to withdraw all forces from Afghanistan by 2014. Yet even now, as they prepare to leave, my beloved country once more lurches into insecurity, violence, and the looming threat of Taliban rule once again.
I do not believe the Taliban will share power or will participate in democracy. It tries to assassinate me - and plenty of other female and liberal members of parliament, as well as opponents of its ideology - on an almost daily basis. Only a few weeks ago, Taliban gunmen attacked my car. I was inside for 30 minutes, not knowing if I would live or die. Three Afghan policemen were killed in the battle. Given that, can I really be expected to believe Taliban members would sit quietly in parliament alongside me? Impossible.
According to one U.N. estimate, nearly 90 percent of Afghan women suffer from some sort of domestic abuse. Some analysts believe that number may be even higher, making Afghanistan one of the most dangerous places to be a woman. Small but important gains have been made in women's rights in the last 10 years. By allowing the Taliban back as a legitimate force in government, we would undo all of those gains, betraying Afghan women.
The problems of my nation are vast, but they are not insurmountable. In my view, we need to continue to support the fragile democratic gains and structures of recent years, not give up on them. We need continued Western support. In time we will be ready to go it alone, but we are not ready yet.
Plunging us back into the darkness of Taliban rule is not the answer.
ABOUT THE WRITER
Fawzia Koofi is the author of the new memoir "The Favored Daughter: One Woman's Fight to Lead Afghanistan Into the Future." Readers may send her email to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . She wrote this for The Philadelphia Inquirer.
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US Drone Kills Five Insurgents in Pakistan
TOLOnews.com
Thursday, 16 February 2012
At least five insurgents were killed in a US drone strike in northwest of Pakistani on Thursday, local officials said.
The strike took place in Miranshah near Afghan border, Pakistani security officials said.
A security official said that two missiles were fired by a US drone on a compound used by militants in Spalga town near Miranshah in which five militants were killed.
Miranshah is the main town in North Waziristan region, known as stronghold of Taliban and al-Qaeda linked of militants.
Pakistan, after a Nato air strike on 26 Nov. 2011 on two Pakistani checkpoints near Afghan border that killed 24 Pakistani troops, blocked the Nato supply route into Afghanistan and asked US officials to vacate Shamsi airbase which was used for US drone operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
US resumed drone operations on January 10.
Recently many insurgents have been killed in US drone strikes in Pakistan.
US officials recently said that eight of al-Qaeda's top 20 leaders were eliminated in the past year, mostly in US drone strikes.
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Local Officials Play Truant in Afghan North
IWPR investigation finds that district government chiefs are rarely at their desks.
IWPR
By Jawed Bakhtari
15 Feb 2012
Afghanistan
One morning in May, 21-year-old Atifa says her father, Ali Mohammad, raped her. She says her father returned from the local market in Alizai village, in the Balkh province of northern Afghanistan, and found her at home alone.
She says he took a rope lying in the courtyard, tied her up and assaulted her. According to Atifa, none of the neighbours came to rescue her despite her screams.
Atifa and her mother Sakina decided to report the incident to the local government. They prepared a complaint and visited the district government office in Chimtal every working day for three weeks, without success.
The district sub-governor, Gul-Ahmad Payman, is mandated with ensuring security and justice for residents.
The only answer offered to Atifa and Sakina on their frequent visits to his office was, “The sub-governor is not in his office, and nothing can be done until he is here.”
Payman argues that he would fall prey to the Taleban if he frequents his office too often.
In the meantime, hundreds of people wait outside offices seeking legal remedies for their problems, only to be let down at the end of the day.
Sub-governors are appointed representatives of the government for their respective districts. The Afghan government allocates them six bodyguards and a monthly salary of 450 US dollars, plus another 450 dollars a month for expenses, along with a car worth approximately 20,000 dollars.
The job description for sub-governors, developed by the Independent Directorate of Local Governance, IDLG, makes it clear that these officials, like all civil servants, must be in their offices from 8 am to 4 pm every working day to deal with public grievances.
But a recent investigation by the Institute for War & Peace Reporting in Balkh province showed that 12 out of the 15 sub-governors there rarely appeared at their workplaces in 2011 between March and August, even though Balkh is considered one of the safest provinces in Afghanistan in terms of security threats and Taleban presence.
Salaries for all civil servants are based on forms compiled by the administrative employees of district governments. Records indicate that all Balkh province sub-governors received their full monthly salaries from March 21 through September 21, 2011. The forms indicate that the sub-governors were in their offices every working day.
Mohammad Isaq Sarwari, the finance director for Balkh province, was asked why his department found that these sub-governors were eligible to receive their salaries when they had rarely appeared in their offices over six months.
“I don’t know about this. I don’t check whether the sub-governors go to their offices or not,” he replied.
Rais Khan-Jan, head of Baba-Avaz, a village in Sholgara district, says district sub-governor Nimatullah Masab visits his office only once a fortnight.
Over the last two years, local residents have sent six pages’-worth of complaints to Balkh provincial governor Atta Mohammad Noor, accusing sub-governor Masab of extorting money from people. To date, the Balkh governor has not replied to these complaints.
An IWPR investigation showed that the Sholgara sub-governor had purchased two houses in Mazar-e Sharif during the two years he has held the post. One of these houses is in Mazar’s Karte Zeraat neighbourhood and the other in Guzar-e Mirza-Ghasem. The two houses are worth an estimated 1.5 million dollars, according to a local real estate expert.
It took an IWPR reporter 30 days to arrange an interview with Masab. When he was finally reached at his house in Mazar-e Sharif, he was asked why he did not go to his office.
“It’s enough for me to appear once a month at my office,” he replied. He admitted that fear of the Taleban affected his attendance rate.
Aside from fear of the Taleban, sub-governors in Balkh province give other reasons for absence from their offices.
Shir-Mohammad Abu-Tariq, the sub-governor of Marmul, says he stays in Mazar-e Sharif because his wife and children don’t like Marmul. Kishindih sub-governor Abdul-Ghafur Hamrah says he does not like the district because it is surrounded by mountains. Kaldar sub-governor Abdul-Matin Khwaja-zada says the road between Mazar-e Sharif and Kaldar is long and in poor shape, so he does not want to go to the district every day.
Taimur-Shah Payiz, sub-governor of Balkh district, gives a totally different reason, arguing that his numerous contacts with politicians mean he has to spend a considerable amount of his time in Kabul.
Sub-governors in Balkh province, many of whom have ethnic and political affiliations with the provincial governor, do not seem worried about the prospect of a government agency looking into their attendance records.
Marmul sub-governor Shir-Mohammad Abu-Tariq was asked what problems his absence from the local government office might create for residents, and replied that he did not care about people and was not responsible for solving their problems.
“The governor in Mazar placed me here, and I am answerable to him,” Abu-Tariq said.
Abdul-Matin Khwaja-Zada, sub-governor of Kaldar district, was asked why the local government office closed while he went with his family on a fishing trip along the river Amu-Darya for several days. As the reporter left his house, Khwaja-Zada handed him a white envelope containing 200 dollars, requesting that the interview not be published. The reporter turned him down.
Zabihulla Akhtari, director of technical services in Balkh province, told IWPR that a recent examination by his agency concluded that ten sub-governors were inefficient, and that Balkh’s provincial governor had warned the sub-governors of Chimtal, Sholgara, Kaldar and Kishindih that if local people filed any more complaints against them, he would report them to the provincial prosecutor’s office.
Akhtari said his agency was aware that many Balkh sub-governors did not go to work. When they did, he said his office’s assessment was that up to 70 percent of the tax money they collected was not sent to the government treasury.
Recruitment and dismissal of provincial governors and sub-governors is one of the main tasks of the IDLG, established three years ago by the Afghan government.
“It is absolutely unacceptable for a sub-governor not to appear in his office,” IDLG director Abdul-Khaliq Farahi said when told that 12 sub-governors in Balkh had not been going to their workplaces for the last six months. Farahi blamed Governor Atta Mohammad for not supervising his sub-governors properly.
“Sub-governors failing to report at their offices must be immediately laid off and reported to the prosecution office,” Farahi said.
Atta Mohammad told IWPR that he “swears to God” that if a single one of the sub-governors fails to go to work, he will force him out of his position at once, even though he did not have the authority to do so.
Atta Mohammad said six sub-governors are under suspicion. “By not going to their offices, they create a distance between people and government,” he said in an interview.
When Atifa, the alleged rape victim, finally gave up on reaching sub-governor Payman, she and her mother went to district police headquarters and filed their complaint. Police were quick to arrest Ali Mohammad and put him in the district prison – only to release him five days later.
Atifa and her mother claim his release was due to pressure from the sub-governor. Ali Mohammad is, they say, an old acquaintance of the sub-governor, going back at least 20 years to the time of the anti-Soviet resistance.
Atifa now lives in a safe shelter in Mazar-e Sharif run by a private NGO with financial support from USAID. She says that when her roommates go to sleep, she takes out her embroidered handkerchief and wipes away her tears.
She states that one week before the alleged attack, she became engaged to a fellow villager, but that as soon as the man got wind of the accusation involving the father and daughter, he revoked the engagement.
Her father, Ali Mohammad, has now joined a village vigilante force. He has been given a Kalashnikov assault rifle by the Balkh police department, and stands guard at night from the rooftop of his house. The government pays him a monthly fee of 5,000 afghanis.
Atifa’s mother Sakina has taken refuge in her father’s home in Mazar-e Sharif because she fears her husband may try to kill her.
Jawed Bakhtari is an IWPR-trained reporter in Afghanistan.
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How Afghanistan's Freezing Temperatures Mean Trouble After Things Thaw
TIME
By John Wendle
Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2012
The mud walled hut in which four-month-old Khair Mohammad froze to death was covered by an emergency aid tarp sagging under the weight of the snow. Throughout the camp in Kabul, similar dwellings were blanketed in white. The snow fell in heavy, wet flakes and stuck to the bare heads and thin shoulders of the camp's children — many wearing only shirts and rubber flip-flops. The kids were running to collect blankets and clothes haphazardly dropped off by a disorganized jumble of foreign aid agencies, Afghan NGOs and businessmen and sympathetic foreigners reacting to the news that around two dozen children had frozen to death in the past month in the makeshift camps housing the thousands of people displaced by Afghanistan's war.
"Maybe tonight everything will be okay or maybe more children will die. It's the same thing, day in, day out," says Sayed Mohammad, Khair's father, struggling with frozen hands to secure a tent rope to a stake outside his dirt-floored house. "Sometimes we have food. Sometimes there is no food. Sometimes we don't have any heat. Sometimes it's snowing. We have no control. If we have one thing, then we don't have another," Sayed tells TIME. "We have no choice. Some days we have no dinner and we just sit and look at each others faces," says Sayed.
"When it snows, I get tears in my eyes thinking about how many more dead there will be," says Julie Bara, a water, sanitation and hygiene program coordinator for Solidarites International, a French group that has been working at the camps in Kabul. "The future for these children is the most uncertain."
Khair died late last week, making him the 17th child to freeze to death in the Nasaji Bagrami IDP camp in just 30 days. Though numbers remain vague because of deaths left unrecorded by families and officials, Kargar Nuragli, spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Health, told TIME that at least 24 children had died from the unusual cold snap and heavy snow that has blanketed Kabul in the past month. But Khair's death is only the latest tragedy to befall Sayed Mohammad's family. "We moved to this camp because of the war. Two of my children died in Helmand province and my father and brother were killed there. We had to. We didn't come here out of luxury," Sayed tells TIME.
Indeed, Kabul is a fragile bubble of safety and relative economic prosperity — along with other large Afghan cities like Herat, Mazar-e-Sharif and Kandahar — in comparison to an impoverished countryside ravaged by a decade-long war. The only alternative would be camps in neighboring Pakistan or Iran — and the limbo of refugee existence. The plight of these Afghans will not get better when it gets warmer: there are other, larger problems that the issues in the camps only highlight.
Over more than 10 years of war the big cities have seen their populations of internally displaced people (IDP) and returnee refugees ebb and flow with the violence in the surrounding countryside. The numbers tell the story. Even as the fighting in southern Afghanistan stabilized, the IDP and refugee population in Kabul increased by around 5% in 2009, by about 10% in 2010 and by more than 23% in 2011. "The IDP population has been increasing exponentially since 2009. Just looking at the math, there could be a greater than 35% increase for 2012, taking the population to around 40,000," saysone aid worker who declined to be identified because of the delicacy of the politics involved. Right now there are 43 "informal settlements" around Kabul, totaling between 20,000 and 30,000 people according to two different censuses. And there are another 5,000 around the city limits.
And though recent media coverage of the wave of deaths of children under age five has spurred an increase in the amount of aid — organized or not — the government does not seem to have a solid, long-term plan to take care of "the poorest of the poor." What is more, the Afghan government fears that the availability of aid will only draw a wave of impoverished farmers to the relative safety of Kabul — a fear based on the experience of other humanitarian crises around the world. "The government is afraid," Dr. Mohammad Diam Kakar, director general of the Disaster Assistance Agency, tells TIME. "Abdul Karim Khalili, second vice president and director of the National Disaster Management Committee said at a meeting a few days ago that if we cannot find a solution and the IDPs will not go home, then, with the help they have received recently — which has been broadcast all over the world by the media — maybe we will receive more IDPs."
A spokesman for the Ministry of Refugees says that with international support, the government will provide people with land in any province and a two-room house. But where the money and land would come from — a sorely contested issue in a country with few documented land titles — is unclear. But the people at the camps know the score if they leave the bubbles of security and relative abundance of social services. "I went to the camps yesterday and they said they don't want to leave Kabul for any place," says Dr. Kakar. "They told me, 'we will not receive the support we are getting now from the government, the NGOs and the president if we go home. We will stay here.'"
But even the support the people get is not enough. "The future of these children will not be any different from how we live now. There are no schools. There are no clinics. They will be illiterate. They will be uneducated. They will have the same condition as us," says Wali Khan, an elder from Helmand who moved to the camp three years ago. And, observers agree, such a situation creates an opportunity for radical elements to gain a foothold in an already aggrieved population — the exact situation that led to the rise of the Taliban in the first place.
For their part, the Taliban made the point on a Twitter post that the recent deaths are "a sample of things which happen in areas ruled by ISAF." A spokesman for the group, Zabiullah Mujahed, says that, "if we come back into the power we will definitely have systems and programs to take care of people in any season," adding that, "We will take care of the needs of people very honestly without cheating or lying. We will not do as the current government is doing." But again, without having the infrastructure to collect taxes, the claims of both the government and the Taliban seem flimsy.
Back at the camp's whitewashed mud walled mosque a group of men huddled inside, their breath fogging the air. Most were visibly shivering. The Pashtuns are incredibly hospitable to guests and they apologized repeatedly for not offering a seat and a cup of tea, since the floor was only covered in a thin plastic prayer mat and there was no tea and no wood to make a fire. Shivering children stared in the door.
Standing in a huddle of shawls and turbans flecked in snow, the men told story after story of heartbreak, sorrow and death. Finally, a camp leader, Wakhil Mohammad Ibrahim, had had enough of the talk and issued a frustrated ultimatum to Afghan President Hamid Karzai — a challenge that illuminates the precarious knife-edge Afghanistan straddles just a few years from a international military withdrawal, one that could be accompanied by an exodus of aid agencies. "Under the Taliban we always got help. But now, we are here in Kabul and we are getting aid and we are getting help from a lot of countries and this son-of-a-bitch Karzai doesn't even care about us," Ibrahim says. The expletive is startling. The Pashtun use insults only when they are extremely agitated. "This is my message, this is my warning to Karzai: if you recognize us as Afghans, give us any job. We will do anything for our country, just provide us with the same condition the Taliban did when we were in Kandahar. If not, this country is yours. We will go to Pakistan, we will go to Iran and we will forget you."
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As Wars Wind Down, What Are U.S. Security Needs?
NPR
By Alan Greenblatt
February 15, 2012
U.S. troops have already left Iraq, the war in Afghanistan is winding down, and there hasn't been a major terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 2001.
So is America now safe enough to scale back its emphasis on security? Or are the potential threats no less dangerous — just less obvious?
These questions are not just philosophical, but practical. They're also the underpinning of the current argument about what the level of defense spending should be.
Cuts, But How Big?
President Obama's new budget proposal, released Monday, depends on reductions in military spending for a lot of its projected deficit savings.
After a decade of sharp increases, the Pentagon budget would be cut by about 6 percent next year, compared to this year's spending levels. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said the Pentagon can absorb the current cuts and can meet the nation's strategic security needs with fewer troops.
Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, Panetta restated the Obama administration's position that it will focus more on Asia and the Middle East in the coming years.
But Panetta, the military brass and many Republicans are concerned that even larger cuts could be on the way and those could substantially weaken the military.
"It asks the men and women in uniform who have given so much already to give that much more, so that the president might fund programs the American people don't want and can't afford," Howard "Buck" McKeon, the California Republican who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, said in response to Obama's budget.
Underlying this political debate, however, is a deeper question. The U.S. has overwhelming military superiority and there is no immediate threat from abroad, so how vigilant and well-armed should the U.S. be to preserve national security?
In a forthcoming article in Foreign Affairs, Micah Zenko and Michael A. Cohen argue that threats to the U.S. are routinely overstated.
Wars are less frequent — and far less deadly — than they were even a few decades ago. The U.S. has built up a military apparatus that dwarfs any potential rivals — spending nine times as much as China on defense, for instance.
Even terrorist attacks pose little threat to most Americans, Zenko and Cohen argue. They are fellows, respectively, at the Council on Foreign Relations and the Century Foundation.
They note that in 2010, 13,186 people were killed in terrorist attacks worldwide, but only 15 of them were Americans. In other words, Americans face greater risk from drowning in a bathtub.
"The world that the United States inhabits today is a remarkably safe and secure place," Zenko and Cohen write. "It is a world with fewer violent conflicts and greater political freedom than at virtually any other point in human history."
Risky Assumptions
Nonetheless, many Americans, including many defense policymakers, continue to feel that the world is a threatening place.
To cite one example, the potential for Iran to build nuclear weapons and threaten its neighbors — notably Israel — has been the dominant foreign policy concern in recent weeks.
And the argument that the U.S. can feel safe and secure because its wars are winding down and there are no immediate existential threats is based on several "fallacies," says Peter Feaver, a political scientist at Duke University who worked on national security issues during the George W. Bush administration.
The first, he says, is that the future will not be as dangerous as the present. The next is that, because the U.S. has achieved clear military dominance, it can rest on its laurels and reduce its military strength.
Feaver dismisses the argument that it's a waste of money to chase after al-Qaida just because it hasn't been able to launch another attack of the scope of Sept. 11, 2001.
"Their failure to launch is partially a measure of the success of those [counterterrorism] efforts, rather than, as some observers erroneously argue, a sign that they weren't needed," he says.
It's like arguing because someone never got mumps, he never needed a mumps vaccine.
Preparing For Future Threats
Feaver says the third fallacy is the idea that certain conflicts or parts of the world have no bearing on U.S. security interests and can safely be ignored.
The dangers of such an attitude, he says, have been amply demonstrated by American inattention to Afghanistan in the 1990s, which allowed al-Qaida to create its safe haven there.
There's no telling what threats may loom larger in the future, says Nora Bensahel, a defense analyst at the Center for a New American Security. "That's kind of how history goes," she says. "Things come up and surprise you."
Consider China. It may pose no military threat to the U.S. now, but its ambitions even within its region may eventually conflict with American interests.
Protecting against such an eventuality will require advanced sea- and aircraft of a sort that take years to develop and build up, Bensahel says. You can't just start from scratch once the danger is clear and present.
"What happens if we don't invest now in the airplanes and ships that we need?" she asks. "We may wake up 15 years from now and find that China controls traffic in the South China Sea, for example, where the U.S. has enormous economic interests."
Levels Of Risk Tolerance
It's impossible to plan for every scenario. There's no amount of military spending that would keep the nation completely safe.
"We could spend the entire federal budget on the military and we wouldn't be able to eliminate every risk to U.S. national security," Bensahel says.
That leaves open the question of how much risk policymakers are willing to tolerate. That's inevitably a political question, Feaver says, and one that never gets fully resolved.
After the Cold War, Washington was too complacent about U.S. security, he says. After Sept. 11, many politicians exaggerated the threat that terrorism posed, he adds.
"The al-Qaida threat was and to a certain extent is very, very serious, but it was not the Soviet Union with tens of thousands of nuclear-tipped missiles on hair-trigger alert," Feaver says. "So it's a categorically different threat."
Preserving Power
Even Obama's budget, despite its significant cuts, assumes U.S. troop levels will remain higher than they were before 2001. Figuring out just how much military force and spending is enough is going to remain a primary argument in Washington.
It's "preposterous" to worry that the U.S. can't afford to cut defense spending because of threats that might arise years down the road, says Jack Snyder, an international relations professor at Columbia University.
On the other hand, Snyder says, a good deal of the security the U.S. enjoys today is the byproduct of its military resolve.
U.S. strategy hasn't always been flawless, he says, but the country has made it clear it won't tolerate aggression across internationally recognized borders — and has had the wherewithal to back that policy up.
"War is less likely and the U.S. is certainly more secure now than it has been in a long, long time," Snyder says. "But some of the reasons for the decline of war have to do with the power of the United States and the other liberal advanced democracies."
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US general: Taliban use of child suicide bombers 'utterly despicable'
Msnbc.com
By msnbc.com staff and news services
15/02/2012
General John R. Allen, commander of international forces in Afghanistan, condemned the Taliban's use of children as suicide bombers, after two 10-year-olds were arrested with explosive vests for the second time.
The commander of the International Security Assistance Force, said in a statement emailed to reporters on Tuesday that the "cold tactic" was "utterly despicable." ISAF also issued a statement expressing deep regret over the deaths of several young Afghans in an air attack in Kapisa province last week. The AFP news agency reported Monday that the two children were arrested last week.
A Kandahar province spokesman, Zalmai Ayubi, said they and three other militants were "planning an attack on Afghan and international forces in Kandahar." Ayubi said they were found with two vests full of explosives.
AFP said the 10-year-olds were also found with explosive vests and arrested in August last year. They and 18 other children detained at that time subsequently received a pardon from Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
"The cold tactic of using any human being -- especially children -- to conduct suicide attacks is utterly despicable, and I denounce these tactics," Allen said in the statement.
"In now promoting child-suicide attacks, the insurgency have forfeited any remaining support they may have had with the people of Afghanistan," he added. "We stand side by side with the Afghan people to do everything we can to eliminate suicide bombers of any age from the cities, towns and villages throughout the country."
Reuters reported Monday that international forces had found the bodies of dead children in Giawa, Kapisa province. Afghan government officials showed gruesome photographs of eight dead boys, and said seven of them had been aged between six and 14, while one had been around 18 years old.
They were bombed twice while herding sheep in heavy snow and lighting a fire to keep warm, they said.
"My command's mission is to protect the civilian people of Afghanistan," Allen said in the other statement. "I take very seriously the loss of every Afghan life. We will continue to do all we can to ensure the safety of the Afghan population."
Boy told he would be 'safe' AFP reported that two 10-year-olds had gone to Pakistan after they were released following their first arrest. There they were trained how to carry out suicide atacks, then sent back to Afghanistan.
A statement from Kandahar officials sent to AFP contained quoted attributed to the two boys, named as Azizullah and Nasibullah.
Azizullah was quoted as saying militants had told him he "would be safe after conducting a suicide attack."
He added that he had also been told that when "Americans fire at you ... they will not be able to hit you."
Nasibullah described his instructions from the Taliban in the statement.
"The Taliban forced me to fire a Kalashnikov ... I was scared at first. They also taught me how to blow my vest, they showed me how to press the button in my hand," he said.
"They then brought me to the city, asked me to sit on the side of the road and wait for foreign forces to come ... I was there when two police came and arrested me."
Reuters contributed to this report.
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