Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Perils of US leaving Afghanistan early

All of the problems today in the Afghan Security Forces—including Taliban infiltrators—will be aggravated by a rapid American drawdown. That will make it impossible to secure even our most basic interests and will likely consign Afghanistan to another civil war. We saw how the last such conflict played out in the 1990s with the rise of the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Afghans Don't Hate America

They also don't want a return of the Taliban, despite the recent protests over the burning of Qurans.
By MAX BOOT
February 28, 2012, 9:49 P.M. ET
The Wall Street Journal

Violent Afghan protests over the burning of Qurans have strengthened the hand of those in Washington who argue for a faster reduction of U.S. troops. Especially galling was an incident of violence within Afghanistan's Interior Ministry, in which a disaffected driver shot and killed two American advisers.

Many Americans seem to be saying that if the Afghan people don't want us there, why should we stay? That's dubious logic because we are not in Afghanistan as a favor to the Afghan people. We are there to protect our own self-interest in not having their territory once again become a haven for al Qaeda.

It's also a fallacy to assume that most Afghans are anti-American. The protests, which tapered off Tuesday, have involved a few thousand people out of a population of 30 million. The attacks on Americans have been carried out by a handful of assailants. President Hamid Karzai has accepted President Obama's apology over the Quran-burning incident, condemned the violence and called for restraint. His security forces have policed the protests and suffered heavier casualties than our own.

While no doubt most people in Afghanistan are outraged over the desecration of their holy book, they are not anti-American. The most recent survey of Afghan views, conducted by ABC/BBC/ARD in November 2010, found that 62% of Afghans support the U.S. military presence while only 11% support the Taliban. That's considerably higher than the share of Americans who back the mission—35%. Another poll, conducted by the Asia Foundation last year, found that only 21% of Afghans blame foreign troops for the war waged by the Taliban and other insurgents. Most Afghans think the Taliban are fighting to gain power, make money, or for other selfish motives.

One can always question opinion polls in a country where illiteracy and insecurity are rampant. But Afghans also demonstrate with their actions where their sympathies lie. More than 350,000 Afghan men have joined the security forces and more would sign up if there were money to pay them. Estimates of the insurgency's strength are generally under 30,000 men. That's far below the number of mujahedeen—an estimated 100,000 out of a smaller population—who took up arms against the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

There is considerable resentment of the United States in Afghanistan, as you would expect from any proud people who are compelled to deal with a foreign military presence. But the biggest reason Afghans are wary is because the NATO mission has not delivered what they most want—freedom from fear. In the Asia Foundation poll, 46% said the country was moving in the right direction but pervasive insecurity was their greatest concern.

The U.S. and its allies have been taking important steps to address insecurity, especially in Kandahar and Helmand provinces where most surge troops have gone. Commanders had hoped to pivot the focus of operations this year to eastern Afghanistan, where insecurity continues to lap at the outskirts of Kabul. But that plan has been put in serious jeopardy by President Obama's decision to bring home 32,000 troops by September.

Further troops cuts are rumored for announcement in May—as are cuts in the Afghan Security Forces. The U.S. is pushing to reduce the size of the Afghan army and police to just 230,000 by 2014 from 352,000 today to save a few billion dollars out of a federal budget of nearly $4 trillion.

Contrary to popular impression, the Afghan Security Forces are not a hotbed of anti-Americanism. Major Fernando Lujan, a Dari-speaking Special Forces officer, spent 14 months in Afghanistan, mostly embedded as the lone American in Afghan units, and came away impressed by their fighting spirit.

What the Afghan forces lack is logistics, equipment and intelligence. Most have to drive over IED-strewn roads in unarmored pickup trucks. The support they need to fight effectively is provided by NATO units, but Afghan fighting quality will suffer if we start withdrawing. So will their morale, because they'll feel abandoned to face an insurgency that retains Pakistan support.

The woes of the Afghan forces will surely multiply if, as currently envisioned, 120,000 troops and cops are demobilized with little prospect of a civilian job. Many could join the insurgency or the drug traffickers simply to make a living. This could be the reverse of the surge in Iraq, when 100,000 formerly hostile Sunnis joined with coalition forces to fight insurgents.

All of the problems today in the Afghan Security Forces—including Taliban infiltrators—will be aggravated by a rapid American drawdown. That will make it impossible to secure even our most basic interests and will likely consign Afghanistan to another civil war. We saw how the last such conflict played out in the 1990s with the rise of the Taliban and al Qaeda. Why risk a repeat?

Mr. Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of "Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present," due out next January.

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Afghans again face mass evictions from Pakistan and the plight of Afghan diaspora

See also IRIN's in-depth report From pillar to post: the plight of Afghans living abroad

Bracing for mass evictions from Pakistan
By Fazel Ahmad Yalghuz
IRIN Asia
February 26, 2012

JALALABAD - The Afghan government and international aid workers are bracing for an imminent deportation from Pakistan of thousands of Afghan migrants and unregistered refugees - a move they warn could be destabilizing for the fragile country.

Pakistani authorities issued warnings to thousands of families in underdeveloped and largely ungoverned areas along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan that their homes would be bulldozed and they would be expelled on 5 January 2012, said Ghulam Haidar Faqirzai, director of the Afghan Department of Refugees and Repatriation (DoRR) for Nangarhar Province, which borders Pakistan.

“It didn’t happen. But we are expecting it any day,” he told IRIN.

He said 6,000 families had been issued eviction notices, though aid agencies believe the number to be closer to 2,500. The main target is Bacha Mena, a village in the Landi Kotal area of Pakistan’s Khyber Agency, just along the border with Afghanistan.

“The Pakistani authorities have given those families notice that they have to move out,” confirmed Ilija Torodovic, head of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Jalalabad, about 80km from the Pakistani border. “That possibility is very high.”

Some observers say Pakistan is trying to clear all Afghans (whether registered or not) from the border’s dangerous tribal areas - home to Pakistani insurgents who are fighting the Pakistani military - because it suspects they are spying for Afghanistan or getting involved in “terrorism”. At times, military operations are used as a pretext for asking Afghans to leave the area, aid workers said.

The situation along the border is especially tense due to the recent killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers by NATO and Pakistan’s subsequent closure of the border to NATO supplies.

“They have already started this [clearance] process,” said Majroom, Jalalabad field coordinator with NGO International Rescue Committee (IRC).

Radio announcements in Landi Kotal, for example, have warned that all Afghans must go, he said.

Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesperson Abdul Basit said he was not aware of any evictions. But another Pakistani official told IRIN the deportations were “exceptional cases” - limited to Afghans involved in criminal behaviour, including highway robberies.

“We are not very strict on [the refugees] because we know the situation in Afghanistan is not very encouraging. So we will not force them [to return].” But, he said, “naturally, every state looks after their interests first... If some people or refugees are making problems in some areas... naturally you have the right to make them go back.”

Contingency plans

Faqirzai warned their eviction would create a “humanitarian tragedy” because of the government’s inability to absorb returnees. “We want to alleviate the burden [on Pakistan],” Faqirzai said, “but it should be done gradually, not all at once.”

He said residents who had Proof of Residence (PoR) cards, giving registered refugees the right to live in Pakistan until at least the end of 2012, were among those who were issued eviction notices, but UNHCR said it had no such evidence.

Aid agencies have created a contingency plan with an expectation that 10-15,000 unregistered refugees and/or migrants may be forced to return to Afghanistan in the coming months. Some expect that any registered refugees in Landi Kotal will be moved to other Pakistani locations outside of the tribal areas.

NGOs and UN agencies have mobilized to respond to expected needs in the case of a mass deportation: shelter, food, household items, winter clothes, potable water, hygiene and sanitation, education, health services and land for resettlement.

DoRR and UNHCR are closely monitoring the situation along the border and the Afghan government is increasing staffing levels at the DoRR office in Nangarhar from 28 to 38, in anticipation of an influx of returnees.

There are 1.7 million registered refugees in Pakistan and another 1-1.3 million (some estimates are as high as 2 million) unregistered Afghans living there.

Pakistan has been threatening to kick out unregistered Afghans for years, but an ongoing military operation in the region; deteriorating relationships between Pakistan and both Afghanistan and the USA; and an internal struggle between the civilian government and the military in Pakistan have observers worried that a mass eviction could now become reality. And besides, there is a precedent.

It has happened before

Last year, at the height of winter, 1,700 families - nearly 11,400 people - watched as Pakistani authorities bulldozed homes in Landi Kotal, where some of them had lived for more than three decades.

“People didn’t even have time to gather their belongings,” said Rahim Gul Amin, emergency focal point in the country’s eastern region for the NGO Norwegian Refugee Council.

They were then forced across the border. Those who managed to rescue some of their belongings had them taken from them on their way home, or were forced to pay bribes, Faqirzai and aid workers said.

According to UNHCR, evicted Afghans said some people were killed by the bulldozers, but the Pakistani government denies this.

“Disaster”

A repeat could be an indication of a shift in Pakistani policy - towards a more consistent attempt at sending unregistered Afghans back home.

Inter Press Service reported on 22 February that the home department of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, along the border, recently proposed deporting the estimated 400,000 illegal residents residing in the province, if the central government gave a green light.

If evictions become the norm, aid workers and government officials say they are in for “disaster”.

“We experienced these Landi Kotal evictees,” the repatriation department’s Faqirzai said. “Believe me, at that time… we had no idea how to manage that. It was only 1,700 families... Imagine if we have people in millions. We don’t have the absorption capacity; we don’t have employment.”

The government repatriation department, which relies on UNHCR for vehicles, fuel, salary top-ups, and even phone cards, can barely pay its staff to monitor the returnees, let alone help them. It has no budget for development programmes and without UNHCR’s support - to the tune of $80,000 per month - “we would halt our activities,” Faqirzai said.

Unregistered evictees would not qualify for UNHCR’s cash assistance for registered returnees. They could thus end up joining the 60 percent of returnees who, according to UNHCR, fail to re-integrate.

Many returnees end up living in informal settlements or begging on the street. Aid workers say young, unemployed, badly integrated youth are easy targets for Taliban recruiters. For Candace Rondeaux, senior analyst with the International Crisis Group in Afghanistan, the implications of a mass return in a short period of time would be “enormous”.

“As the pressure increases, as the competition increases between Afghan elites, political elites, all over the country, with the withdrawal of NATO forces, an influx of under-educated - if educated - poor, malnourished Pashtuns is not going to help to stabilize Afghanistan anytime soon.”

Yet both the government and UNHCR expect an increase this year in the number of returns - “both forced and voluntary” - after years of declining numbers of returnees.

“I’m not confident or optimistic about the improvement of relations between the Pakistani government and the Afghan refugees,” Faqirzai said. “I think it is going to deteriorate.”

Afghanistan 's brain drain

Asylum Concerns Haunt Western Exchange Programs For Afghan Students
By Malali Bashir
February 27, 2012
Radio Free Europe/Radio Libery

Since the ouster of the Taliban in 2001 and the establishment of the elected government of Hamid Karzai,

One of the projects that foreign governments have funded since the Taliban was ousted and a UN-backed government established in Kabul is an Afghan student exchange, with the aim of brightening that country's future and increasing cross-border understanding across borders.

But such exchanges have been troubled by concerns that too many of the visitors bother returning to help rebuild Afghan society.

The fact is that only a few Afghan universities provide master's-level studies -- and those are just in literature. So there is an acute need for a wider range of fields for higher studies for Afghan students to choose.

To fill the gap, many countries invite Afghan students to attend university in the West. The United States and Britain have some of the most prestigious scholarships -- Fulbright and Chevening, respectively. Apart from government-funded programs, private and nonprofit projects also provide Afghans with educational opportunities around the world.

Afghan students are provided scholarships and fellowships for their higher aptitude and capability in return for a promise that they will return to Afghanistan after their study programs are over to help rebuild their country. To ensure this -- taking Afghan family and social structure into account -- restrictions are imposed such as a ban on taking family members as dependents along during their studies. The rule doesn't apply to students from countries whose governments pay half of the scholarships provided by foreign programs.

But despite the rule, many Afghan students never come back; they vanish before or soon after the completion of their study-abroad programs. Perceptions of a deteriorating security situation, news of the looming exit of NATO troops, and the woeful state of the critical infrastructure mean Afghan young people might also lose hope for a better future in Afghanistan.

For some Afghans, becoming a scholarship grantee has been like getting a free ticket to jump from the United States to seek asylum in Canada. Harris Najib is a Fulbright alumnus who works as a case manager with a nonprofit in Calgary, Canada. He says he didn't return to Afghanistan because of political instability.

He says Afghan students abroad "have now had the experience of engaging in dialogue without the fear of being silenced, shunned, or ridiculed," adding candidly, "A grim political environment in Afghanistan and the possibility of a Taliban takeover diminish the appetite for returning and contributing to the process of rebuilding Afghanistan."

Some criticize the U.S. State Department for not following up with employment opportunities in Afghanistan so the students gain confidence through a financially secure future there.

Ateeq Nosher, a Harvard University alumnus who lives in Kabul and works as managing director at Apex-2 Consulting, says "the job opportunities for those who come from the U.S. and Canada or other Western countries are relatively higher than those for students produced locally or in neighboring countries."

Najib adds: "Many Afghan students who have come to study in the U.S. post-Taliban have a decent amount of professional experience working for the UN or other international agencies back home. They can therefore compete for jobs with their North American or European peers within certain sectors. And, if they can find a job in Europe or North America and are able to guarantee a better future for themselves and their families, some would rather not return to Afghanistan, and wait out the current political uncertainty."

Apart from concerns over security and employment opportunities, other issues face graduates returning from their Western studies on a daily basis in Afghanistan.

"The well-educated segment of the population gets disappointed when they see weak people leading them," Nosher says. "They feel they aren't contributing to policies because [at the] end of the day, those policies are influenced by political appointees."

Students seeking asylum obviously think of their individual benefits hindering the opportunities for the rest of the batches to come.

Although there are no numbers available on students not returning to Afghanistan after going to Western countries as exchange students, one program appears to have gotten fed up with such students using their scholarship programs to seek asylum. Last year, the United States suspended its highly regarded YES youth-exchange program. Begun in 2004, YES invited hundreds of Afghan students to the U.S., but around half those students fled to Canada to claim asylum. NPR recently quoted embassy officials saying they want to restart the YES program, but only if they can ensure that students won't jump the program for asylum purposes.

The Safe Third Country Agreement between Canada and the United States -- part of the U.S.-Canada Smart Border Action Plan -- aims to prevent people from filing for asylum in a country other than the one they initially entered, potentially stemming the flow unless a family member there has agreed to sponsor them.

Apart from the no-dependents rule for students, mature applicants are considered more committed to the programs and thus reliable. Dr. Maria Beebe of Afghan eQuality Alliances at Washington State University told blogger Bob McCarty about having a more selective criteria to ensure the return of Afghan students:

"So, for example, we can say only directors and assistant director levels would be considered. At that level, we will also get the older (more mature) students who have children and will have more compelling reasons to go back to Afghanistan."

Detractors might argue that such an approach contradicts the aim of providing an equal opportunity to all talented Afghans -- and particularly lets down Afghan young people, its potential future leaders -- in higher education. On the other hand, the no-dependents rule becomes irrelevant if mature single students enter into relationships with non-Afghans and decide to remain with their partners abroad.

"History of Women in Afghanistan"

A History of Women in Afghanistan: Then and Now
By Mohadesa Najmi
February 26, 2012
Tolo News

It may be surprising to know that women in Afghanistan participated socially, politically and economically in the life of their societies before the Taliban came into power.

In 1880 a woman called Malalai from a small village played a great role in the battle of Maiwand. She declared at the top of her lungs: "Young Love, if you do not fall in the battle of Maiwand, by God someone is saving you as a token of shame." This not only revitalised the Afghan fighters who had lost morale fighting the British in the second-Anglo war, but sent her down in history as Afghanistan's very own Joan of Arc.

How did a woman like Malalai die on the battlefield as one of Afghanistan's greatest heroine but today women in Afghanistan face difficulty leaving their home without a male escort? Interestingly enough, women have played a huge role in the history of Afghanistan. In 1964, women helped draft the Constitution and there were at least three women legislators in Parliament by the 1970's. Women fulfilled roles as teachers, government workers, medical doctors, lawyers, judges, journalists, writers and poets up until the early 1990s. Moreover, women had constituted 40% of the doctors in Kabul; 70% of school teachers; 60% of Kabul University professors and 50% of the University students. It was not unusual for men and women to casually mingle at movie theatres and on university campuses. This is a far cry from little girls heading to schools today fearing an acid attack. Or 15-year-old Sahar Gul being kept in a basement for six months, tortured with hot iron rods, her fingernails ripped out, all for resisting prostitution.

One particularly interesting segment in the history of Afghan women is during the 1960. The government oversaw various rural development programmes where female nurses were sent in Jeeps to remote areas and villages to inoculate residents from diseases such as cholera. The impossibility of this scheme today is almost too painful to consider. If it were to be pursued by the government now, the men in rural areas would scoff at the idea of their women travelling freely, entering the homes of male strangers, and in some cases, having to touch a strange man in order to treat him. Security concerns alone make such an effort impossible as government nurses (as well as UN and NGO medical workers) are regular targets for insurgent groups. Who cares if she is trying to save lives? She is a woman!

Girl Scouts is yet another tragic memory in Afghanistan's history. Students from elementary and middle schools emulated their counterparts in the USA learning about nature trails, camping and public safety. Little girls were encouraged to expand their skills and venture into new areas of study. Imagine a 'Girl Scouts' scheme taking place in parts of Afghanistan today; the brutish Taliban would cower at the thought of girls engaging in extracurricular activities that would broaden their intellect, never mind being in education in the first place. This delightful scheme disappeared entirely in the 1970s and is showing no signs of return.

Everything changed for women when the Taliban rose to power in early 1995 and set up a radical Islamic state in Afghanistan in 1996. We know that women and girls were systematically discriminated against and marginalised; their human rights utterly violated. This resulted in deteriorating economic and social conditions of women in all areas of the country. They were severely restricted in their access to education, healthcare and employment.

Women who had led fruitful lives fulfilling roles as doctors and teachers, were now finding themselves destitute - some resorting to begging on the streets or even prostitution. In May 2001, a decree issued by the Taliban banned women from driving cars and women were continuously beaten and harassed for appearing in public. As little as an inch of foot or hand on display, or even the wrong coloured socks, would warrant an attack from the Taliban who patrolled the streets. My auntie once told me of a time she had been wearing white coloured socks outside. The Taliban who had stopped her beat her with end of an AK47 and told her to go home to change into black coloured socks that were less visible to the eye.

The struggle continues for women in Afghanistan today. The country has a 14 per cent female literacy rate; contrast this with a 99 per cent female literacy rate in the UK and USA. It is nothing short an abomination. This is almost unsurprising when 80 per cent of females lack access to an education centre.

The Karzai government issued a law in 2009 that legalised rape within marriage as well as denying the right of women to "leave their homes except for legitimate purposes" or "working or receiving an education without their husbands permission."

The law also diminishes the right of mothers to be children's guardians in the event of divorce and makes impossible for wives to inherit their houses and land from their husbands. How can women be expected to rise socially, politically or economically under such circumstances?

Or even more fundamentally, how is a woman to feel an equal when she is subject to rape by her own husband? These conditions are somewhat redolent of the abhorrent 'Jim Crow' laws in the US in the 1880s that restricted African Americans in every aspect of their lives.

Women face further adversity at the prospect of childbirth with a woman dying every 27 minutes due to pregnancy-related complications in Afghanistan. There are on average 1,600 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. But in the remote mountainous province of Badakhshan the rate is 6,500 per 100,000 - the highest recorded rate of maternal mortality in the world. Thus, it may not be an exaggeration to declare Afghanistan the worst place in the world to give birth. I will go on: 17 per cent of women have reported sexual violence, as many as 80 per cent of marriages are forced, and 8 million women and girls aged between 15 and 40 are suffering from depression.

The question that remains is: what hope is there for women in Afghanistan and has there been any progress that bequeaths hope for the future?

In 1977, Meena Keshwar laid the foundations for RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan which launched a bilingual magazine titled Woman's Message (Payam-e-Zan) in 1981 and organised events in the city of Kabul for several years to mark International Women's Day. In August 2002, Khatol Mohammadzai became the first female general to serve in the Afghan National Army. And from 2005 until early 2007, Malalai Joya served as a female parliamentarian in the National Assembly of Afghanistan, substantiating the fact that women can serve in positions of authority.

A bodybuilding club for women was even inaugurated in 2005 along with a female boxing federation by Afghanistan's National Olympic Committee. In the 2004 summer Olympics in Athens, female athletes Friba Razayee and Robina Muqim Yaar represented Afghanistan for the first time in the country's history.

Even more promisingly, Afghanistan's Ministry of Education declared that more than 5.4 million children have been enrolled in schools, 35 per cent of them girls, by April 2008. This was however followed in November by an acid attack on school girls in Kandahar with over a dozen injured and left with permanent facial scares. Nonetheless, significant achievements were made in several political aspects: the government appointed its first female provincial governor Habibi Sorabi in 2005 and Azra Jafari became the country's first female mayor in 2009.

So what do all these achievements mean for the women of Afghanistan who are suffering under an extremely patriarchal society? Do they diminish the years of turmoil and subjugation? Certainly not. In fact, as Malalai Joya stated: "To all intents and purposes, the position of women is the same now as it was under the Taliban and in some respects the situation is far worse." However, history has proven that the female population was integral in shaping its course: women were needed, they were appreciated, and they were the heart and soul of Afghanistan. To understand their position now, we must look to then: if women could once constitute a meaningful fraction of society, they will again.

Saturday, February 25, 2012

"Secret cable warned about Pakistani havens"

Secret U.S. cable warned about Pakistani havens
By Greg Jaffe and Greg Miller
February 25, 2012
The Washington Post

The U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan sent a top-secret cable to Washington last month warning that the persistence of enemy havens in Pakistan was placing the success of the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan in jeopardy, U.S. officials said.

The cable, written by Ryan C. Crocker, amounted to an admission that years of U.S. efforts to curtail insurgent activity in Pakistan by the lethal Haqqani network, a key Taliban ally, were failing. Because of the intended secrecy of that message, Crocker sent it through CIA channels rather than the usual State Department ones.

The cable, which was described by several officials familiar with its contents, could be used as ammunition by senior military officials who favor more aggressive action by the United States against the Haqqani havens in Pakistan. It also could buttress calls from senior military officials for a more gradual withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan as the 2014 deadline for ending combat operations approaches.

These military officials have maintained for months that the strategy of targeting raids against Taliban leadership and building local Afghan governance is showing impressive results. But they warn that worsening conditions in Pakistan and the ability of insurgent groups to find haven there necessitates a larger American force than many in the Obama administration are advocating.

The United States is on course to reduce the size of its force in Afghanistan to about 68,000 troops by the end of this summer and shift from combat to more of an advisory role to Afghan forces by the middle of next year.

The coming drawdowns will put heavy pressure on the Afghan government in the east, where U.S. and Afghan forces have struggled to curb violence, in part because insurgents can flee across the border to Pakistan, U.S. officials said. The American frustration with insurgent sanctuaries in Pakistan has long been a source of tension in the brittle relations between the two countries.

“The sanctuaries are a deal-killer for the [Afghan war] strategy,” said a senior defense official who is familiar with the ongoing debate and who, like several officials in this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations.

In past years, U.S. military officials have argued that the best defense against insurgent sanctuaries in Pakistan was a stronger Afghan army and government. But with U.S. drawdowns looming, the need to directly address the sanctuaries seems more urgent.

The Haqqani network is responsible for some of the larger and more dramatic attacks on Kabul, including one on the U.S. Embassy last year, U.S. officials said.

The group’s patriarch, Jalaluddin Haqqani, was a major mujaheddin fighter in the CIA-backed effort to expel the Soviets from Afghanistan in the 1980s. He has relinquished control to his son, Sirajuddin, who carries a $5 million U.S. bounty on his head and runs day-to-day operations from the network’s Pakistani base in Miran Shah.

The location has given the Haqqani leadership a measure of protection. The CIA has repeatedly refrained from launching missiles at known Haqqani targets, including a prominent religious school the network uses as a base of operations, out of concern for civilian casualties and the backlash that could ensue.

A stark message

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul declined to comment on Crocker’s cable. “As a policy, we don’t comment as to the existence or substance of top-secret cables,” an embassy spokesperson said.

The cable has drawn attention in Washington because of its stark message and because American ambassadors rarely argue that the U.S. government must take more forceful action in another country. Officials familiar with the cable declined to name its primary recipient.

Crocker previously served as U.S. ambassador to Pakistan during the George W. Bush administration and was brought out of retirement by President Obama. Crocker also built close ties to the military and to David H. Petraeus, now CIA director, when Crocker was the ambassador to Iraq and Petraeus was the top general there.

As commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Petraeus frequently voiced deep concern about the Haqqani group’s resilience.

The CIA has carried out dozens of drone strikes against Haqqani targets in Pakistan in recent years, while U.S. forces on the Afghan side of the border have killed or captured Haqqani fighters at a rapid pace — only to see the flow of militants subside temporarily and then resume.

“There’s no debate about the importance of going after Haqqani . . . and Taliban militants who launch attacks into Afghanistan,” one U.S. official said. “Support for this is universal.”

Repeated vows to escalate the U.S. campaign against the Haqqani network have produced seemingly fleeting results. A CIA drone strike in October was described at the time by Obama administration officials as the opening salvo in a more aggressive assault against the group’s leadership in Pakistan. The missile attack killed Janbaz Zadran, described by CIA analysts as the main organizer of attacks against coalition targets in Kabul and southeast Afghanistan.

But the timing of Crocker’s cable — sent more than two months after that CIA strike — suggests that U.S. officials in Kabul have yet to see a shift in momentum or measurable impact. The U.S. efforts have been hampered by the group’s populated sanctuary, its close ties to Pakistan’s intelligence service, and diplomatic ruptures that caused pauses in the CIA drone campaign.

Unusual mode of delivery

The somewhat unusual mode of transmission for Crocker’s cable suggests that its contents were particularly sensitive, U.S. officials said.

American ambassadors typically send messages to Washington through State Department communications networks. But U.S. officials said cables containing references to intelligence sources or highly classified threat data can be sent across CIA networks, which are more secure. The CIA declined to comment on the cable.

Some current and former U.S. officials have questioned whether the Haqqani network presents an existential threat to the Afghan government.

The Haqqani network’s area of operation in Afghanistan is limited primarily to a handful of provinces in the east, along the border with Pakistan. Some U.S. officials have said the Afghan government’s corruption and its inability to provide services to its people pose a greater threat to the success of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan than the Haqqani network or even the Taliban.

Network seen as a proxy

CIA strikes in Pakistan were suspended for weeks last year after the arrest of an agency contractor on charges of killing two Pakistani men in Lahore and, later, after the U.S. strafing of a Pakistani border post in November that left two dozen of the country’s soldiers dead.

Pakistan has been unwilling to use its military against the Haqqani network, which is seen by many as a Pakistani proxy that is careful to avoid provoking its host, instead directing its attacks against American, Indian and Afghan targets.

Though secret, Crocker’s cable was the latest expression of American exasperation with the situation.

In September, Adm. Mike Mullen, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, vented publicly, testifying before Congress that the Haqqani network was a “veritable arm” of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

U.S. officials subsequently said Mullen’s characterization overstated the relationship, but many remain convinced that the network couldn’t operate without tacit support from Pakistan.

White House plan to apologize to Pakistan about Salala shooting put on hold because of uproar over burned Korans incident

US plans to apologize to pakistan put on hold
February 25, 2012
ANI

Islamabad: The United States' plans to apologise to Pakistan for the November NATO air strikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in the Salala area of Mohmand Agency, have been hindered by riots in Afghanistan over the burning of copies of the Quran at a NATO base on Monday night.

The New York Times quoted a Defence Department official as saying that under a carefully coordinated plan, the military had planned for General Martin E Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to make a formal apology via telephone to Pakistan's Army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, on Thursday.

However, the plan was marred by this week's Afghan riots, and reports suggest that a senior Pakistani official said his government wanted the American apology to be delayed until at least mid-March, when the Parliament in that country is due to hold a special sitting to debate Islamabad's revised policy toward America.

According to reports, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was supposed to talk about the issue during her meeting with her Pakistani counterpart Hina Rabbani Khar, but it was marred by the explosion of violent rioting in Afghanistan.

The US refusal to aplogise over the deadly attack had outraged Pakistanis and threatened their decade-long partnership in the war against terror.

Clashes between Afghan troops and protesters angry over the burning of Muslim holy books at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan had left at least seven people dead and dozens wounded as anger spread despite U.S. apologies over what it said was a mistake.

Wednesday's demonstrations across four eastern provinces showed the amount of anger and frustration the Afghans have over the foreign forces' intrusion in their country and insulting their culture. (ANI)

Thursday, February 23, 2012

"Forgotten Afghans of Pakistan"

Khan, a freelance journalist based in Islamabad, makes a strong argument.

The Forgotten Afghans of PakistanBy Saad Khan
February 23, 2012
The Huffington Post

A little over 1.7 million Afghan refugees live in Pakistan. That is the official figure from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. A statistic that is only half true. According to Pakistani government's counts, 2.15 million registered Afghan refugees are living in the country. It is possible that an equally high number of unregistered Afghans live in Pakistan. These refugees, who make up to 2% of Pakistan's and 10% of Afghanistan's populations, are a forgotten people. They deserve a second thought during heated debates on the future of the Af-Pak region.

The refugees, who first arrived in 1979 with the Soviet invasion, have only grown in numbers. The second wave came when the Russians left in 1989. The Afghan civil war added hundreds of thousands to this number. And the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 triggered another wave of asylum seekers. This makes Pakistan the most hospitable country in the world for those fleeing wars, diseases and hunger.

Unlike common perceptions, not all of the refugees are Pashtuns. There are Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras along with the Pashtuns who call Pakistan their temporary abode. Many of them have acquired Pakistani citizenship through unfair means. Some of them have struck gold as drug dealers, smugglers, rug sellers and restaurateurs. Others are languishing in the refugee camps set up in the 1980s.

One does not need to venture outside of Islamabad to meet them. There are thousands of Afghans living here. The Hazars and Tajiks are mostly well-off, living in mansions or cozy apartments. Some Pashtuns have also made it big while others barely scrape by. The poorest of them live in squatter settlements at the fringes of the Pakistani capital. They work as petty laborers, drug peddlers and scavengers.

Azmat, a scrawny 50-year old from Jalalabad, works as a ranch hand at the farmhouse of an influential federal minister. The estate, which is one of the many illegal constructions sprung up in recent years, employs many from his country. "There are no jobs in Afghanistan. At least we get to eat here," he told me.

Afghanistan has one of the world's highest unemployment rates. Although there has been a construction boom in Kabul, Afghan hinterland is as destitute as it was ten years ago. The conditions are particularly worse for the Pashtuns, who, despite having the majority, are not given enough share in government jobs. They are treated with suspicion in the private sector where many associate them with the Taliban.

What about the Tajiks and Hazaras? Their native regions in Afghanistan are not as restive and have seen development. Why, then, are they still staying put in their Pakistani homes? "Security and luxury," told Ali, a Tajik carpet seller who runs a booming business in Islamabad. He has built a home back in Feyzabad but stays in Islamabad. "This is our home now. We can't think of going anywhere else."

They may not be going anywhere but they are straining the already thin resources of Pakistan. And some of them are involved in criminal activities. Many Pakistanis blame Afghans for introducing drugs and arms. "They were the ones who brought heroin and Kalashnikov here," said Huma, a home maker from Islamabad whose house was recently robbed by what appeared to be Afghans. Pakistanis also question the integrity of those refugees who have made their lives here but still hate the country.

"This is particularly true of Hazaras and Tajiks who curse Pakistan while having homes and businesses here," said Khawar, a university student.

At least they are contributing to the national economy. There are hundreds of thousands of others, mostly Pashtun, who still live in refugee camps. They are clothed and fed by the Pakistani government, and the UNCHR, which has been doing that for the last 33 years. True that the Americans helped the refugees during the Afghan Jihad but their enthusiasm fizzled out soon afterwards. It was rekindled after 9/11 but was short lived.

Afghan refugees are in a conundrum. They cannot shun their roots. Many vote in Afghan elections while staying in Pakistan (the country hosts thousands of polling booths). They visit their homeland but never stay there for long. They have effectively become dual citizens. Should Pakistan grant them citizenship or is the Afghan government, with financial help from the U.S., ready to welcome them back?

One thing is clear though. The Afghan refugees can become an excellent bargaining chip for Pakistan. The resources spent on their welfare overshadow the aid Pakistan received during these years. They are not a responsibility of Pakistan in the first place. Perhaps it is time for Afghanistan and the U.S. to acknowledge this fact.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

"Afghans blame Pakistan, and want Western forces to stay on"

Afghans blame Pakistan, and want Western forces to stay on

Yalda Hakim
October 10, 2011
Sydney Morning Herald

"Every Muslim knows fighting infidels is a duty. If you become a martyr, you'll go [to] paradise," says Qari Ramazon, the man responsible for the attack on Kabul's Serena Hotel in 2008, which killed six people. When Ramazon looks you in the eye and says he'd be happy if the West faced more terrorist attacks, you start to wonder if the past 10 years in Afghanistan have made any real progress.

After gaining rare access to one of Afghanistan's most notorious prisons, Pul-e-Charkri in Kabul, I asked him why his group remain intent on killing. "Afghans and Pakistanis are against the US and NATO. It's my duty to fight them. I can afford to put explosives on my body and lose my life," Ramazon told me.

I travelled to Afghanistan to interview the man in charge of negotiating peace with the Taliban, former president Burhanuddin Rabbani. But within 36 hours of my arrival, I was attending his funeral. He was killed by an assassin who had hidden a bomb in his turban. This is life for ordinary Afghans, who live every day fearing another leader will be targeted or more innocent civilians killed in this seemingly endless war.

Mourners gathered at a hilltop cemetery overlooking Kabul as Rabbani was laid to rest. They were angry. Angry at Pakistan. Angry at its intelligence agency, the ISI. Most Afghans I spoke to accused Pakistan of harbouring the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Pakistan has of course been quick to reject these accusations, but from the country's opposition leader to police chiefs and ordinary civilians, Afghans continue to blame their hostile nuclear neighbour for their woes. "Osama bin Laden was found at the heart of Pakistan's military establishment. To think al-Qaeda and the Taliban aren't based there is wrong," said police chief Esmatullah Alizai.

The death of Rabbani has dealt a serious blow to any negotiations with the Taliban. Rabbani, an elder statesman respected by both sides of Afghan politics, gave the body legitimacy. An ethnic Tajik and once leader of the Northern Alliance, the 70-year-old was also able to protect President Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun, from rival camps within his government.

Pressure is now mounting on the country's embattled leader to not only appease various factions but to find a consensus on the peace process. For many, that process is now dead in the water.

The powerful governor of the northern province of Balkh, Mohammad Atta Noor, has warned that if Karzai doesn't take swift action against the Taliban, he will rearm and regroup the Northern Alliance to take on the task.

But who is the enemy? Who will they fight? The war tactic has changed. Taliban fighters seem to have moved off the battlefield and are focusing on more targeted attacks. This year, they've managed to successfully assassinate four key Karzai allies. And the security situation continues to worsen, with violence increasing by nearly 40 per cent over last year.

The capital is tense. A few weeks ago the Taliban mounted an attack on the US embassy and NATO headquarters. Central Kabul is supposedly protected by a "Ring of Steel", fortified checkpoints which are designed to stop attacks on key government buildings and the residences of officials such as Rabbani. But twice it has failed miserably.

Now, with peace talks in disarray and America's influence waning before its troops withdraw in 2014, the future appears bleak for Afghans. After 10 years, many feel very little has been done to eliminate terrorism from the country and region. Afghans fear their country may spiral back into civil war as violent factions battle it out - a recipe for creating another terrorist haven.

At a time of persistent violence, many I spoke to said the West needs to reconsider the timetable for withdrawal. "The world must not repeat its mistakes," said Atta.

"The world must not leave Afghanistan to deal with drugs, smugglers and terrorists. And if the international community doesn't understand this, and Afghanistan has to deal with terrorism on its own, these problems will reach the Western world's most beautiful cities."

Yalda Hakim is a presenter of the SBS international current affairs program Dateline. Her report from Afghanistan will be broadcast on SBS1 at 1pm today and afterwards at www.sbs.com.au/dateline.

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Don't assume Indian businessmen will save Afghanistan LOL

Nor will the fabulous potential of Afghanistan's mining sector save the country as long as the government is rife with corruption. Kudos to McClatchy for digging up, if you'll pardon the expression, the details of this story.

Firm alleges problems with major Afghan mining contract
By Jon Stephenson and Ali Safi
February 18, 2012
McClatchy Newspapers

KABUL — An Afghan-American company that failed to win a multibillion-dollar contract to develop one of Afghanistan's most lucrative mines alleges that the bidding process was riddled with irregularities and that the winning bidders may not be able to meet production targets.

The claims, which were backed by a former senior Afghan mining official, suggest that a potential key source of revenue for the Afghan government — which will be saddled with massive bills after U.S. forces withdraw from the country — could be in jeopardy.

The Afghan-American firm, Acatco, was one of about two dozen bidders that competed for the right to extract minerals from the Hajigak iron ore mine in Afghanistan's central Bamiyan province. Industry experts have called Hajigak the jewel of Afghanistan's mining sector.

Contracts for developing four sections of Hajigak were awarded in November — three to a consortium of Indian firms led by the state-owned Steel Authority of India, or SAIL, and one to Kilo Goldmines, a Canadian firm. But Acatco said that these companies had failed to demonstrate they had the funds to carry out the project.

"This is against the spirit and the letter of the tender documents," Acatco president Nasir Shansab wrote last month to Afghanistan's minister of mines, Wahidullah Shahrani.

He added that "those bids should have been disqualified."

Acatco last week asked Afghanistan's parliamentary complaints commission to investigate the Hajigak contracts, citing illegality and possible corruption in the bidding process. The commission has scheduled a hearing for Saturday and summoned Shahrani, but a spokesman for the minister told McClatchy that Shahrani was departing on an overseas trip and wouldn't appear at the hearing.

A former Afghan deputy minister of mines, Mohammad Akram Ghiasi, who resigned two years ago after accusing Shahrani of illegal and unprofessional conduct, told McClatchy in an interview,

"If I was still deputy minister of mines, I would not have declared SAIL and Kilo as the winning bidders."

According to company officials, Acatco, based in Herndon, Va., was the only firm among the six that were short-listed in the bidding that had secured the funding to develop Hajigak. Shansab said the company had $1.2 billion in guaranteed funds. By contrast, he quoted numerous international media reports that said the Indian consortium would struggle to raise money for the project.

SteelGuru, an Indian publication, quoted SAIL chairman C.S. Verma in a March 2011 story as saying that because of Afghanistan's high level of risk, "banks and financial institutions will not take the risk to such an exposure. The consortium will not be in a position to raise money on its own, either."
Shansab also claimed that the royalties his firm had offered the Afghan government — $800 million a year for the first five years of operation, and a total of $20 billion over 20 years — were substantially higher than those offered by the winning firms.

An internal Ministry of Mines evaluation of the bids that McClatchy obtained appeared to confirm this. The document shows that Kilo would pay from 3.5 percent to 7.5 percent of the per-ton price of iron, while SAIL would pay 5 percent of the per-ton price of steel and 6 percent of the per-ton price of iron, minus the cost of transportation to customers.

Acatco was offering to pay 20 percent of the per-ton price of steel.
Shansab also claimed that Acatco was the only bidder with a clear start date for production of steel from the mine, as the tender documents required. SAIL's production would start in eight to 12 years and Kilo, which planned to produce iron, had made no commitment to produce steel, Shansab said. Acatco said it would have begun steel production by July 2015.

Afghanistan's mineral wealth has long been seen as a potential source of income that could sustain the troubled nation after U.S.-led international forces withdraw in 2014. Afghanistan has massive bills to pay -— particularly the costs of 300,000 soldiers and police that U.S.-led forces are training —- but some U.S. experts believe that the country's mineral sector could generate as much as $1 trillion in revenue.

The awarding of the contracts to a state-led Indian consortium was widely seen in Kabul as a guarantee that India, the economic power in South Asia, would remain committed to Afghanistan after international forces withdraw.

Shansab said he had written three letters to Shahrani, the mines minister, detailing Acatco's concerns about the Hajigak bidding process but hadn't received a reply.
He also wrote an email Feb. 9 to J. Alexander Thier, a senior official who works on Afghanistan and Pakistan at the U.S. Agency for International Development, saying: "This is also an important example of how the natural resources of the poverty-stricken Afghan people should not be squandered — not just for the sake of the people of Afghanistan but also for U.S. policy in view of post-2014 Afghanistan."
Thier and other U.S. officials in Kabul and Washington didn't respond to McClatchy's requests for comment. A spokesman for Shahrani said the minister was not immediately available for an interview.

Ghiasi, the former deputy mines minister, said the contracts had been decided "without any transparency."

"We know that one of the ways to rescue Afghanistan and the Afghan people from poverty is to give mining contracts to foreign companies," Ghiasi said. "But it must be based on transparency."

Al Qaeda in Afghanistan 2012

Al Qaeda 'operates in Afghanistan under the flag of the Islamic Emirate': Taliban spokesman
By Bill Roggio
February 18, 2012
Long War Journal

A Taliban spokesman who identified himself as an "Authorized Correspondent by the Media Committee of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan" said that the Taliban will not renounce al Qaeda and that the terror group operates under the command of the "Military Command of the Islamic Emirate."

The Taliban official, Abdullah al Wazir, made the statement yesterday in response to a posting at Shumukh al Islam, a jihadist Internet forum linked to al Qaeda. Wazir was replying to a question from a forum member who thought "that by agreeing to negotiations with the United States, the Afghan Taliban has taken the 'first step' to abandon al Qaeda," said the SITE Intelligence Group, which translated the statement.

"They [al Qaeda] are among the first groups and banners that pledged allegiance to the Emir of the Believers [Mullah Omar, the leader of the Afghan Taliban], and they operate in Afghanistan under the flag of the Islamic Emirate," Wazir said.

"They are an example of discipline and accuracy in the execution of missions and operations entrusted to them by the Military Command of the Islamic Emirate," Wazir continued, calling al Qaeda "lions in war."

Wazir said he was an "Authorized Correspondent by the Media Committee of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan." SITE described Wazir as "the "Afghan Taliban's correspondent on jihadist forums."

A US intelligence official who follows the Taliban said that Wazir is a member of the Haqqani Network, the powerful Taliban sub-group that operates in eastern Afghanistan and in Pakistan's tribal areas. The Haqqanis are closely tied to al Qaeda; Siraj Haqqani, the network's operational commander, has a seat on al Qaeda's council, and he and five other members of the network have been added to the US's list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists for their close ties to al Qaeda.

The Haqqanis routinely conduct join operations with al Qaeda in eastern Afghanistan, and provide shelter, support, and training facilities to leaders and operatives in Pakistan's Taliban-controlled tribal agency of North Waziristan.
[...]



Read more: http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2012/02/al_qaeda_operates_in.php#ixzz1mpITvoeT

Gold war in Pakistan

Gold war in Pakistan highlights investment risks
by Chris Allbritton, Reuters, February 17, 2012

Friday, February 17, 2012

In Islamabad "Angry Karzai confronts Pakistan's leaders over Taliban"

Angry Karzai confronts Pakistan's leaders over Taliban
By Saeed Shah
McClatchy Newspapers [via Miami Herald]
February 17, 2012

ISLAMABAD — An angry Afghan President Hamid Karzai confronted the Pakistani leadership Thursday, demanding that it produce Taliban officials for peace talks and underscoring the distrust between Kabul and Islamabad, which stands in the way of a deal to end the decade-long Afghan conflict.

As Karzai's frustration with Pakistan, which he accuses of harboring the Taliban, boiled over, the mercurial Afghan leader's language and tone flared to such an extent that the Pakistani prime minister halted a key meeting of the full delegations of the two countries, according to officials on both sides, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

After a break, top officials reconvened for a smaller meeting, including Karzai, a rocky start to his two-day visit to Islamabad.

The nascent Afghan peace talks depend on the neighbors being able to cooperate, but Karzai has long demanded that Pakistan bring the leadership of the Taliban to the negotiating table, including their chief, Mullah Mohammad Omar.

According to one official who was privy to the discussions Thursday, Karzai bluntly demanded that Pakistan produce Taliban leaders to negotiate with him during his visit, an aggressive stance that shocked the Pakistani side.

The Afghan side's main meeting, which went on for around three hours, was with the combined Pakistani civilian and military leadership. The Pakistani prime minister, foreign minister, army chief and head of the military's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate spy agency were present.

At one point, apparently directing his remarks to Pakistan's foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, Karzai asked: "Would you be willing to stop girls studying in schools and university in Pakistan?"

The Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan in the 1990s, imposed an extremist interpretation of Islam, stopping girls' education and banning women from working. Kabul and its Western allies believe that Mullah Omar and other Taliban leaders have an officially sanctioned haven in Pakistan, giving Islamabad decisive leverage over any negotiations.

Islamabad has denied those charges, and Khar, speaking to a small group of reporters after the meetings, called the accusations "ridiculous."

"We don't have Mullah Omar to bring," Khar said. "That's the crazy perception about Pakistan."

She described the discussions with the Afghan delegation as "hard" and "serious," declining to go into details. Pakistan has said it will back Kabul's peace efforts but has never spelled out what it's capable of delivering. Conversely, Pakistan says that it's unclear what Karzai is demanding of it.

In congressional testimony U.S. intelligence officials pessimistic about state of Afghan War

U.S. intelligence officials offer grim words on Afghanistan
By Richard Leiby and Karen DeYoung
February 17, 2012
The Los Angles Times

WASHINGTON - Senior U.S. intelligence officials offered a bleak view of the war in Afghanistan in testimony to Congress on Thursday, an assessment they acknowledged was more pessimistic than that of the military commanders in charge.

“I would like to begin with current military operations in Afghanistan, where we assess that endemic corruption and persistent qualitative deficiencies in the army and police forces undermine efforts to extend effective governance and security,” Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the Senate Armed Services Committee at its annual worldwide threat hearing.

The Afghan army remains reliant on U.S. and international forces for logistics, intelligence and transport, he said. And “despite successful coalition targeting, the Taliban remains resilient and able to replace leadership losses while also competing to provide governance at the local level. From its Pakistani safe havens, the Taliban leadership remains confident of eventual victory.”

Burgess testified alongside James Clapper, director of national intelligence, who said that the Taliban lost ground in the last year, “but that was mainly in places where the International Security Assistance Forces, or ISAF, were concentrated, and Taliban senior leaders continued to enjoy safe haven in Pakistan.” Clapper was asked by committee chairman Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) about reports in the Los Angeles Times and elsewhere describing a recent National Intelligence Estimate on Afghanistan that questioned whether the Afghan government would survive as the U.S. steadily pulls out its troops and reduces military and civilian assistance.

The gloomy findings prompted a sharp one-page dissent by Marine Corps Gen. John Allen, the commander of Western forces in the war, and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. The comment was also signed by Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis, commander of U.S. Central Command, and Adm. James Stavridis, supreme allied commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

“Without going into the specifics of classified National Intelligence Estimates, I can certainly confirm that they took issue with the NIE on three counts, having to do with the assumptions that were made about force structure -- didn't feel that we gave sufficient weight to Pakistan and its impact as a safe haven, and generally felt that the NIE was pessimistic,” Clapper said.

Levin asked, “Pessimistic about that or about other matters as well?”

Clapper replied, “Just generally it was pessimistic” about the situation in Afghanistan and the prospects for a U.S. drawdown in 2014.

Clapper, who has served nearly half a century around U.S. intelligence, argued that it was only natural for intelligence analysts to see things differently than ground commanders in a war.

“If you'll forgive a little history, sir,” he said, “I served as an analyst briefer for Gen. [William] Westmoreland in Vietnam in 1966. I kind of lost my professional innocence a little bit then when I found out that operational commanders sometimes don't agree with their view of the success of their campaign as compared to and contrasted with that perspective displayed by intelligence.

"Fast-forward about 25 years or so and I served as the chief of Air Force intelligence during Desert Storm," he said. "Gen. Schwarzkopf protested long and loud all during the war and after the war about the accuracy of the intelligence. In fact, it didn't comport with his view.”

“Classically, intelligence is supposedly in the portion of the glass that's half empty, and operational commanders and policymakers, for that matter, are often in the portion of the glass that's half full," he said. "Probably the truth is somewhere at the water line. So I don't find it a bad thing. In fact, I think it's healthy that there is contrast between what the operational commanders believe and what the intelligence community assesses.”

Pakistan's role in Afghan peace process - more on trilateral meeting in Islamabad

Regional Leaders Consider Paths for an Afghan Peace
By Declan Walsh (Islamabad) and Alissa J. Rubin (Kabul)
February 17, 2012
The New York Times

ISLAMABAD - The prospect of talks with the Taliban inched closer on Thursday when the leaders of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran met to explore ways of pushing the nascent peace process forward.

The two-day trilateral meeting hosted by the Pakistani president, Asif Ali Zardari, comes as his Afghan counterpart, Hamid Karzai, claims to have opened direct discussions with the Taliban for the first time in the 11-year-old insurgency.

In an interview published in The Wall Street Journal on Thursday, President Karzai said the talks had taken place over the past month thanks to an American-sponsored initiative anchored in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar.

The Taliban, who frequently deride Mr. Karzai as an “American puppet,” denied any such talks had taken place. “The Islamic Emirates have never talked with Kabul’s powerless administration,” said a Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, in an e-mail statement.

Such conflicting statements have become common in a nervy process driven by rumors and speculation and which, at least until now, had all the clarity of a hall of mirrors.

The current talks in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, are significant because all players agree that Pakistan will play a crucial role in determining the success of any talks, largely because the Taliban leaders — and many fighters — are believed to be sheltering in Pakistan’s lawless western region.

Last month Pakistan permitting Taliban representatives, many of whom are believed to be based in or around the cities of Karachi and Quetta, to travel to Qatar to meet with American representatives.

Yet the extent and nature of any Pakistani role in peace talks remain deeply contentious, marred by deep-rooted suspicion among Afghan, Western and even Taliban officials after decades of Pakistani meddling in Afghan affairs.

In Kabul, Western and Afghan officials suggested that Pakistan was using the trilateral meetings to provide a counterweight to American efforts to open a door to negotiations with the Taliban.

The officials speculate that Pakistan may try to set up a meeting between senior Taliban commanders and Mr. Karzai in Pakistan to prove their sincerity in supporting peace and to demonstrate their influence with the Taliban.

Pakistani civilian leaders insist that they are acting in good faith and have thrown their weight behind an “Afghan-led” peace process. “We will not block any process leading towards reconciliation,” the foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, told a small group of reporters late Thursday, referring to the American initiative in Qatar.

“We don’t have a formula for peace talks; in fact I don’t think anyone does yet,” a senior Foreign Ministry official added. “But one thing is clear: It will have to be the Afghans themselves who come up with it.”

Pakistani officials emphasize that they are keen to prove their good faith to their Afghan counterparts. On a recent visit to Kabul, Ms. Khar visited Afghan leaders from ethnic groups that have traditionally been hostile toward Pakistan. Her message, the official said, was the same to each: “Whatever you decide, we will be supportive of you.”

On Thursday, Mr. Zardari told Mr. Karzai that he would extend “full cooperation” to investigators looking into the death of Burhanuddin Rabbani, Mr. Karzai’s main peace negotiator, who was killed in a suicide bombing last year. At the time, many Afghan officials accused Pakistan of orchestrating the assassination.

Pakistan could also leverage its presence in the peace process through its close ally Saudi Arabia, which recently offered to host a second strand of the peace talks in its capital, Riyadh.

A former Obama administration official said the Saudis had proposed the role, expressing unhappiness that Qatar had taken the lead.

On Thursday, Mr. Zardari also held a meeting with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, during which he reiterated his commitment for the “expeditious implementation” of a long-delayed gas pipeline between the two countries, Mr. Zardari’s spokesman said.

That statement is likely to discomfit Washington, which has for years trenchantly opposed the gas project, despite energy shortages in Pakistan. Iran and Pakistan also plan to build a major cross-border electricity transmission line, and to raise the level of bilateral trade to $5 billion a year, Mr. Zardari’s spokesman added.

Officials said a summit meeting involving all three presidents, scheduled to take place on Friday, would also focus on other mutual areas of interest, like border controls, economic development and efforts to tackle drug smuggling.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

State of negotiations with Afghan Taliban: TIME analysis

I've omitted several passages from Tony Karon's analysis that includes data/observations that have have been treated more fully in recent news reports and other analyses; e.g., the wide divergence in current views on how well NATO kinetic operations have succeeded against the Afghan Taliban.

Also, as earlier reports I've featured on this blog underscore, there are questions about whether Karzai's recent claim that he's been involved with three-way negotiations with the Taliban is true, yet Karon accepts the claim as factual. But he also brings out some important points about NATO/US led negotiations with the Taliban -- and how many years NATO has been focusing on a negotiated settlement with the Taliban.

All this provides more insight into Hamid Karzai's many outbursts and seemingly irrational actions since the NDS caught the British regime attempting to set up secret military training camps in Afghanistan for 'good' Taliban. Years before the general public in NATO countries learned the truth, Karzai knew that NATO had been trying to restore the Taliban to power in Afghanistan in a desperate attempt to cover up the fact that the real war was always in Pakistan. That this is one of the greatest military scandals in the modern era -- shrug; move along folks, nothing to see here.

Talks with the Taliban Are Inevitable, But Who Will Be at the Table?
by Tony Karon
February 16, 2012
TIME/Global Spin blog

The fact that Afghan President Hamid Karzai has told the Wall Street Journal he’s held three-way negotiations with the U.S. and the Taliban should come as no surprise: the U.S. has said that within two years it will end its already decade-long military entanglement in Afghanistan’s civil war, and the Taliban is anything but defeated. Indeed, militarily, the U.S. has been spinning its wheels in Afghanistan for years, now, it’s a long-established conventional wisdom that Washington’s best hopes for leaving behind even a modicum of stability require a political settlement with the insurgents.

The question being fought out on the ground for the past four years has simply been on what terms a negotiated settlement would be forged, and who would be at the table.

Where once the U.S. had insisted on the Taliban laying down arms and embracing the constitution that brought Karzai to power as preconditions for talking to the insurgents, it has come around to accepting those erstwhile preconditions as the desired outcomes of such talks.

Now, with the diplomatic pace quickened by the U.S. withdrawal deadline, Karzai — who wields limited leverage of his own — is making sure he’s not sidelined by talks between Western powers and the Taliban, which had reportedly begun some time ago at an exploratory level, mediated by Qatar.

The optimistic spin on Karzai’s announcement highlights the fact that the Taliban is is now talking with Karzai, whom it had previously dismissed as a “puppet” of the U.S.

The Taliban, of course, denied talking to Karzai, though they have publicly confirmed their talks with Washington. Even if the Taliban had agreed to include Karzai in talks, though, there remains considerable grounds for skepticism that it would accept the Afghan constitution drawn up under Western tutelage after the U.S. invasion (and therefore the legitimacy of Karzai’s government).

It’s not clear just how committed the Taliban leadership is to these conversations, and there remains considerable opposition within the movement to seeking a political settlement right now — for the simple fact that many in the Taliban believe they’re actually winning the war.

And as is the case of any insurgent army facing a foreign expeditionary force, the Taliban knows time is on its side.
[...]
The U.S. invasion tipped the balance against the Taliban, but it soon bounced back, with support and sanctuary provided by Pakistan, unwilling to reconcile itself to an Indian-allied government taking root on its western flank. The hubris of the Bush Administration sustained an unfortunate illusion that Pakistan shared U.S. objectives in Afghanistan; having abandoned that illusion, the Obama Administration nonetheless faces the challenge of accommodating Pakistan’s interest in negotiating a peace agreement.

Pakistan has far more leverage over the Taliban than any other player, and it has previously made clear — by, for example, arresting Taliban leaders holding talks with Karzai and the U.S. independent of Pakistan’s okay — that it will not allow the negotiation of any agreement to which it is not (at least tacitly) a party.

In the game of musical chairs over the negotiations, Karzai has kept his options open, withdrawing from talks with the Taliban late last year and vowing to negotiate only with Pakistan.
[...]
Meanwhile, spring is just weeks away, and with it another fighting season. That’s a metaphorical table at which Karzai holds no significant cards, while the Taliban believes that as long as it enjoys Pakistan’s patronage, its hand is sufficient to prompt the U.S. to fold first.

"Afghanistan to be cleared of landmines in a decade"

Few reports in recent years underscore as this one does the mind-boggling problems Afghanistan inherited from the war against Russian invasion.

Afghanistan to be cleared of landmines in a decade
By Khwaja Basir Ahmad
February 16, 2012
Pajhwok Afghan News

KABUL - The casualties caused by landmines have declined by 75 percent over the past 10 years and the figure will come down to zero after a decade, a demining organisation said on Tuesday.

Mine Action Coordination Centre of Afghanistan (MACCA) Director Mohammad Siddique Rashid told Pajhwok Afghan News 169 civilians were killed or wounded in mine explosions every month in 2011.

But the monthly toll fell to 42 in 2012, showing a reduction of 75 percent, he said. Barring Daikaundi province, eastern and southern parts of the country are the worst-hit by mines.

Over the past 22 years, more than 20,000 kilometres square area has been cleared of mines and unexploded ordnance but a 6,000-km area is yet to be demined. More than a million mines and warheads have been recovered and defused, he added.

Of the Afghan 34,000 villages, 1,815 faced the danger of mines, the official said, adding eight million females and 12 million males had been educated by MACCA on the risks associated with mines and unexploded materials.

Forty-three major projects, including water dams in Kunar, Laghman and Takhar provinces and a railway line from Mazar-i-Sharif to Kabul, are currently threatened by landmines.

“If donors support demining projects, the threat will be eliminated and no one will suffer casualties as a result of explosions in 10 years from now,” Rashid said.

According to Afghan Technical Consultants (ATC) Director Kifayatullah Balagh, more than 100,000 metres square of land has been cleared of unexploded ordnance in the Qasaba area on the outskirts of Kabul since September 2011.

The US-backed organisation is working in 13 central and eastern provinces of the country. Maj. Gen. Walter D. Givhan, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Department of State’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, says Washington will continue to assist Afghanistan with demining.

Operations by more than 40 demining organisations in the country are being monitored by MACCA.

First official confirmation from Pakistan of its control of Afghan Taliban

See also Pakistan's premier arrives in Qatar amid secret US-Taliban talks, Feb 7, 2012 (Press TV Iran) and Pak denies Gilani meeting with Taliban in Qatar Feb 9, 2012 (World News) LOL

Gilani confirms sending Taliban to Qatar
By Hakim Basharat
February 16, 2012
Pajhwok Afghan News

KABUL - Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani on Thursday confirmed for the first time sending a high-level Taliban delegation to Qatar for possible peace talks with US officials, an official said.

Gilani said this at a meeting with President Hamid Karzai, who arrived in Islamabad on the eve of a trilateral summit. Karzai, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari and his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will meet on Friday.

The Karzai-Gilani meeting was also attended by Pakistan Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar, Interior Minister Rahman Malik, Army Chief Ashfaq Pervaiz Kayani and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Director General Gen. Shuja Pasha.

A spokesman for Karzai, Aimal Faizi, told Pajhwok Afghan News the president was assisted by his Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul, Afghan Ambassador to Pakistan Omar Daudzai and other-high ranking officials.

Faizi said Pakistan, for the first time, confirmed sending a Taliban delegation for talks to Qatar. Gilani stopped short of giving further details in this regard, but said his country supported an Afghan-led reconciliation programme, according to Faizi.

Gilani told Karzai the Pakistani government had arrested two suspects in connection with the assassination of High Peace Council chief, Prof. Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was killed in a suicide attack on his Kabul residence on Sept. 20.

Kabul alleges the attack was planned in Pakistan, asking Islamabad to thoroughly investigate the incident. Karzai praised Pakistani leadership for cooperating with the investigation of Rabbani’s killing.

Gilani also sought Afghanistan’s support for a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan. He urged Karzai to ensure Afghan soil was not used against Pakistan.

Last week, reports said Afghan security forces killed two Pakistani nationals after kidnapping them from Balochistan province. However, the governor of southern Kandahar province said the deceased were Afghans, who wanted to plant roadside bombs.

But Gilani said the Afghan post in the border region was located inside Pakistan and should be removed.

Karzai assured Kabul’s support for the gas pipeline project and said Afghan soil would never be used against Pakistan at any cost, Faizi continued. Karzai promised a probe into the location of the Afghan security post.

The visiting leader asked the Pakistani government to allow hundreds of stranded Afghanistan-bound containers laden with textbooks to proceed from the Karachi port to the landlocked country. Gilani assured early release of the containers.

Karzai also called for the removal of hurdles to implementation of the recently-concluded transit trade agreement and resolving problems being faced by Afghan traders in Pakistan.

Accompanied by his delegation, Karzai later went into talks with Pakistani officials behind closed doors. He was assisted by Rassoul and National Security Advisor Dr. Rangin Dadfar Spanta.

Although details of the meeting were not released, an Afghan official privy to the talks told Pajhwok Afghan News on condition of anonymity the opening of a Taliban office in Qatar came under discussion.

Later, Karzai held an inform meeting with his Pakistani counterpart, Asif Ali Zardari, and Jamaat-i-Islami chief Qazi Hussain Ahmad. Ways and means of bringing durable stability to Afghanistan figured prominently at the talks.

Russia "kind of starting anew" in Afghanistan by implementing reconstruction projects

Moscow hopes its Afghan rebuild to usher in stability
By Amie Ferris-Rotman
February 16, 2012
Reuters

KABUL - Russia hopes to embark on a series of ambitious construction projects in Afghanistan aimed at reinforcing fragile stability in the country where Soviet troops fought a disastrous, decade-long war, its envoy to Kabul said Thursday.

Though not connected by land, Moscow sees war-ravaged Afghanistan as a neighbor and is concerned by what it describes as the two-pronged threat of drugs and terrorism which reach Russia through ex-Soviet Central Asian countries.

Andrey Avetisyan said Russia had limited involvement in Afghan reconstruction over the last decade "because it was all about fighting, and since we are not fighting, we didn't see much place for our activity."

But that approach has changed. "Now, we're trying to kind of start anew," he told Reuters in the glistening rebuilt embassy, a third of its Soviet size during the war, whose end 23 years ago Wednesday was marked by Afghans and Russians.

Russia hopes to begin with reconstructing around 150 Soviet-era projects, from Afghanistan's most important stretch of highway, the congested and aging Salang tunnel, to a Kabul bread factory that once fed the entire Afghan security forces.

For these, many of which were built by Soviets before they invaded in 1979, the same technology, documentation and even the same engineers still exist, meaning the Russians are in prime position to take over the work, Avetisyan said.

Moscow then aims to delve into new ventures, involving oil extraction, hydroelectric projects, housing and possibly even build the country's first railway network.

The Asian Development Bank a year ago estimated Afghanistan's infrastructure requirements at more than $4 billion.

Avetisyan declined to put a price tag on the Russian projects, but said a meeting in two weeks in Moscow, with Afghan Finance Minister Omar Zakhilwal, should shed more light on the exact proposals and what will be agreed upon.

Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom, oil major Rosneft, state railway firm Russian Railways, second-biggest oil producer LUKOIL and state power holding company Inter RAO, as well as others, were interested in concrete projects in Afghanistan, he said.

"We're not going to tell the Afghans how to live, which life to live -- we stopped doing this 25 years ago," said Avetisyan, who worked for the Soviet government in Kabul, becoming fluent in Afghanistan's two main languages, Dari and Pashto.

"We just want to have a friendly, independent Afghanistan as our neighbor... Economic development should go first, because there cannot be security without (this). The roots of insecurity are in the problems for people to find jobs, have a home."

"PAST TEN YEARS ALMOST WASTED"

Escalating violence across Afghanistan in the 11th year of an increasingly unpopular war has sent tremors of worry across Russia, which borders mainly Muslim former Soviet republics in Central Asia, and which is battling a growing Islamist insurgency in its own volatile North Caucasus.

The flow of Afghan heroin, branded a threat to national security by the Kremlin, has also set off alarm bells in a country which health officials warn is the world's top user of heroin, spurring a crippling HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Underscoring those fears is the looming deadline of end-2014 for NATO to train a 350,000-strong force of Afghan police and soldiers who will take over all security responsibilities from foreign combat troops, who will also leave by that time.

Avetisyan said Washington was at risk of repeating the errant ways of its Cold War foe in approaching Afghanistan. "They (the U.S.) came 10 years ago, thought they could fix it very quickly, and then leave. Exactly the same mistake that the Soviet army made," he said of its dispirited 1989 exit from a war that took 15,000 Soviet lives.

After the Soviets rushed out, 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.

Avetisyan lamented the slow economic development over the last decade, echoing the discontent of many ordinary Afghans who accuse the U.S. force in their country of not building enough.

"The past ten years were almost wasted in this sense," he said.

"... Why have the Americans achieved so little in terms of economic development? Because it is not in their plans and it still is not, I am afraid."

(Editing by Nick Macfie)

Present state of how Obama and NATO regimes are spinning the present state of Afghan War

This Reuters report is a collector's item, so well does it convey how the Obama administration and the most influential NATO leaders want to see the war. Naturally, the report was scooped up by Pakistan's English-language Dawn newspaper.

Afghan peace push brings rare chance, risks, for U.S.Reuters
by Missy Ryan
February 16, 2012
Reuters

* Taliban to open office in Qatar where talks to start
* Plan may move senior prisoners from Guantanamo to Qatar
* Initial discussions have proceeded fitfully

WASHINGTON - If all goes as hoped, U.S. and Qatari negotiators will meet soon to nail down final details for transferring Taliban prisoners from Guantanamo prison - a momentous step for President Barack Obama, the Afghan war and perhaps U.S. foreign policy as well.

Should U.S., Afghan and Qatari officials reach agreement, the Obama administration's careful diplomatic choreography then calls for the Afghan Taliban to open an office in Qatar to conduct peace talks with the Western-backed Afghan government.

The Taliban would be expected to make a statement condemning international terrorism.

And at some point - exactly when is unclear - the United States would start sending the first of five senior Taliban members it has held for a decade to Qatar.

On the way to the first-ever peace negotiations to end the long and bloody Afghan war, much could go wrong - indeed much already has. The peace talks have been beset by fits and starts, and U-turns, and there is a good chance that even these initial good-faith measures won't ultimately come off.

But Obama's peace gambit, which he hopes to unveil at a NATO summit in May, has the potential to be a significant development for U.S. foreign policy. For the first time in a generation, diplomats will be seeking to broker a major settlement with an enemy U.S. troops are fighting on the battlefield.

The talks, with the United States playing the role of mediator, offer a hope, however slim, for Afghanistan to decide its own destiny after nearly 40 years of conflict.

Obama's turn to diplomacy was born out of necessity and the realization that the Taliban were not going to go away.

"Two years ago the hope at the Pentagon was that we were going to defeat these guys so seriously they would no longer be a military force. No one expects that to happen anymore," said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA and White House official who chaired Obama's 2009 review of Afghan policy.

U.S. officials, in preliminary internal discussions, have also been exploring what structure possible negotiations might take, what demands might be made of the Taliban and what sort of power-sharing scenarios might be considered if a real peace accord can be reached in Afghanistan.

The talks would take place at least in part in Qatar, and might include the senior Taliban prisoners whose transfer from Guantanamo Bay is a key confidence-building measure on the part of the Obama adminsitration. [ID:nL1E7NS15Z]

Facing pushback from lawmakers who fear Taliban detainees will join the insurgency, the Obama administration has stressed it has not yet made a final decision to transfer the prisoners. Officials are already bracing themselves for the torrent of bipartisan attacks sure to come from Capitol Hill if and when they begin the notification process for moving detainees.

TALIBAN'S TRUE INTENTIONS MURKY

While the Afghan peace attempt echoes similar U.S. efforts in the past, U.S. officials dislike the comparison with Vietnam, where the 1973 Paris Peace Accords that were supposed to end the war - but didn't - were seen as a cover for the U.S. departure and abandonment of an ally, South Vietnam.

Today's initiative contrasts with U.S. reluctance in more recent years to engage directly with other adversaries - Iran, the Islamist Palestinian group Hamas, or Lebanon's Hezbollah.

Michael O'Hanlon, an expert on U.S. foreign policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said a long period followed the Korean and Vietnam wars in which Washington did less direct engagement with its enemies. That reluctance became more stark after the Sept. 11 attacks, when the George W. Bush administration cast efforts to defend against security threats as a battle between good and evil.

While that period appears to be coming to an end - and the Afghan Taliban, unlike Hamas and Hezbollah, was never designated as a terrorist group - the idea remains controversial.

As a candidate, Obama was widely criticized for suggesting he would meet with leaders of rogue nations like Iran without precondition.

As president, he has shown himself to be determined to wind down the costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he is moving to withdraw most U.S. combat troops by the end of 2014.

Obama "recognizes that wars, and in particular counterinsurgencies, end when enemies talk to each other," said Caroline Wadhams, a security expert with the Center for American Progress, a think tank seen as close to the White House.

Yet critics of Obama's bid for a negotiated settlement contend the push for peace comes far too late, as a decisive troop drawdown plan dilutes remaining U.S. leverage.

READING THE TEA LEAVES

To keep their initiative on track, U.S. officials must grapple not only with hostility in Congress and what they describe as Afghan President Hamid Karzai's erratic stance toward initial U.S. efforts. They must also confront the legacy of unanswered Taliban advances in the past.

Michael Semple, a former U.N. official with over two decades of experience in Afghanistan, said that since the Taliban government was toppled in 2001, the group has approached Afghan and Western officials repeatedly to indicate an interest in surrender, negotiations or reentry into the political process.

The first meeting took place in early December 2001 just north of Kandahar, the seat of Taliban power, between senior Taliban officials and Karzai, only then emerging as Afghanistan's interim leader.

As a significant political force in Afghanistan's long civil conflict, Semple said, the Taliban leadership "expected to be insiders in the process."

That overture fell flat - as did ones by Taliban leaders who endorsed the pursuit of negotiations when they gathered in Pakistan in 2002 and again in 2004.

Western officials, seeing a marginal military threat from the Taliban, expressed little interest. Karzai allies, eager to solidify their own growing political power, discouraged the Americans from accepting Taliban suggestions.

While the Taliban slowly regained its military power over the years, various individuals affiliated with militant leadership approached Afghan or U.S. officials, including Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, the Taliban's last foreign minister, and Tayeb Agha, a close aide to Taliban leader Mullah Omar who is now the chief interlocutor in U.S. discussions.

Some Taliban representatives were kept waiting. Some ended up in prison. Over time, militants' grew deeply suspicious of Western and Afghan government statements on the talks - a major handicap to the U.S. peace efforts today.

Veteran U.S. diplomat Ronald Neumann, who was U.S. ambassador in Kabul from 2005 to 2007, says he cannot recall a serious discussion with senior Bush administration officials during his tenure in Kabul about initiating peace negotiations.

"A harsh judgment is required for the way this was handled," said Semple, a long-time advocate of peace talks who is now a fellow at Harvard University. "When people start to add up cost of war in Afghanistan over the last decade, they will ask how on earth the new Afghan leadership and U.S. officials failed to take advantage of these early overtures by the Taliban."

Even a year after peace talks became the centerpiece of U.S. political strategy for the war, the motives of a fundamentalist group whose rule of Afghanistan was known for its brutality and repression remain uncertain.

While the Taliban has long refused to engage with the Karzai government, U.S. officials believe a set of influential Taliban 'pragmatists' is ready to make a deal. Whether they can bring more strident members along is a different question.

"The fear of civil war and the fear of losing control are two important motivations for the Taliban to now be engaging," said Alex Strick van Linschoten, a Taliban expert.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle U.S. negotiators face is timing - whether they can establish a sustainable peace process before the bulk of Western forces go home, leaving a highly vulnerable Afghan government standing largely on its own.

Even if the Obama administration manages to get political negotiations going, progress in hammering out a sustainable power-sharing arrangement is likely to be slow at best.

"As an Arab friend used to say about another topic: 'You can wait for this sitting down,'" Neumann said.

(Additional reporting by Andrew Quinn; Editing by Warren Strobel and Anthony Boadle)

Nepotism in Afghanistan

From February 16 report filed by Matthew Rosenberg for New York Times,
After Scuffle at Afghan Embassy [in Washington], a Spotlight on Connections
[A] rampant problem for Afghanistan: nepotism that runs up and down the government, from teaching appointments in rural schools to posts at the country’s well-appointed embassies in Western capitals, like the Afghan mission in the Kalorama neighborhood of Washington.

The perception that the best jobs — as well as the most lucrative business deals — go to those with the best connections has sharply undermined popular support for the Afghan government.
Of course this problem is rampant in the least 'developed' countries but it's especially cancerous in a war-torn country.

US Special Forces to take on training of ANA

Special Forces in Afghanistan: not just taking out terrorists anymore
By Anna Mulrin
February 16, 2012
Christian Science Monitor

As conventional forces withdraw from Afghanistan, US Special Forces will take the lead in training Afghan soldiers and police – a task that takes Special Forces back to their roots.

(Washington) From the rescue of hostages held by pirates to the SEAL Team 6 strike on Osama bin Laden's compound, the formerly secretive world of Special Forces is increasingly front and center in US operations throughout the globe.

Now these troops are about to take over more responsibilities in America's longest-running war, too.

With US force levels in Afghanistan scheduled to drop from some 90,000 currently to 68,000 troops by October, Special Operations Forces (SOF) will take on an increasingly pivotal role in the country, senior military officials say.

IN PICTURES: Special Forces around the world

In many ways, the transition will be a familiar one for SOF, returning it to its roots. Long before their secret raids became so public, SOF troops were primarily tasked with coordinating with indigenous forces of America's allies. They are now poised to do the same in Afghanistan, eventually taking over US operations there after conventional forces leave.

Specifically, they will likely stay on the ground in Afghanistan well into 2015, senior military officials say. Under current agreements, conventional US forces are scheduled to depart by 2014.

"I have no doubt that Special Operations will be the last to leave Afghanistan," said Adm. William McRaven, commander of US Special Operations Forces Command, during a conference in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 7.

The Pentagon's emphasis on the role of Special Operations capabilities has been growing steadily for the past decade.

The ranks of SOF troops grew from 33,000 before the 9/11 attacks to 66,000 today. Those figures are expected to increase to 70,000 in the next few years, according to the Feb. 14 Pentagon budget.

These forces currently operate in some 70 countries around the globe. Admiral McRaven is reportedly lobbying to gain greater autonomy in determining precisely where to deploy these forces, according to the New York Times. This in turn would allow SOF to react quickly and expand into new regions. Critics point out that this also has the potential to stretch these in-demand forces thin.

Indeed, in the months to come, US Special Forces will be asked to bear an increasingly heavy load, including taking the lead in training Afghan soldiers and police – widely agreed to be America's exit strategy in the country. Their goal will be to speed this process, senior military officials say – a process which is generally agreed to be lagging.

Such a boost in speed is essential, according to a January assessment by the director of national intelligence (DNI). "In terms of security, we judge that the Afghan police and Army will continue to depend on ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] support," James Clapper, the DNI, noted in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee this month.

The effort to take off Afghan security forces' "training wheels," as US troops like to say, has been partly impeded by the capabilities of US forces themselves.

"The Afghans, if they see Americans moving forward, may have a tendency to step back," Michael Sheehan, assistant secretary of Defense for Special Operations, told a Washington audience. "In my view that's got to be the most important aspect of the transition – having US forces take a step back and the Afghan security forces take a step forward."

That's where SOF comes in.

"The Special Forces operator understands that environment – he understands that advisory role," said Mr. Sheehan. "And that SOF operator is going to have to try to push his Afghan counterpart to the front of this struggle, and it's going to be a long one that's not going to go away anytime soon."

Some critics say the Obama administration is moving too fast to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said US forces could step back to an advisory role in 2013, a year earlier than planned.

But waiting "doesn't get us anywhere," Sheehan said. "Now is as good a time as ever to push the Afghans out in front."

In the months to come, the expanded SOF role will require some reorganization of the "three tribes" of SOF operations, McRaven said.

These tribes include the forces working with NATO on provincial security-response teams, those conducting "stability operations" in Afghan villages, and those conducting strikes on terrorist cells.

In the beginning, as Special Operations troops take more responsibility, they will then "integrate" conventional forces into their operations, McRaven said.

"With each cut in the conventional forces, you're going to have to basically fold smaller and smaller conventional elements into Special Forces," says Anthony Cordesman, a defense analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

In the process, he adds, "Special Forces will gradually take over."

This will require SOF troops to "not just be able to deal with the worst parts of enemy networks," he says, but also to return to their traditional core mission of supporting foreign armies. Today, some 3,000 additional SOF troops also operate in more than 75 countries.

"It's really an incredibly demanding mission at a time when everybody else is going to be cutting down," Dr. Cordesman says. "And it's going to get more demanding as US and allied forces ramp down, and as aid groups are pulled out of the country."