Sunday, April 15, 2012
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Vladimir Putin voices strong support for NATO in Afghanistan
Putin to NATO: Yankees, Please Stay in Afghanistan
Russia Watch blog, Voice of America
April 14, 2012
God bless the American soldiers in Afghanistan.
This message of good cheer came from an unexpected corner this week: Russia Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, addressing the entire Duma in Moscow.
First, he set the deputies up by denouncing NATO as “a relic of the Cold War.”
Applause, applause.
Then, before the clapping could fade, he quickly added that, sometimes, just sometimes, NATO plays a “stabilizing role in world affairs, such as in Afghanistan.”
“We understand what is happening in Afghanistan – right?” Russia’s educator-in-chief lectured the Duma. “We are interested in things there being under control, right? And we do not want our soldiers to fight on the Tajik-Afghan border, right?”
“It’s in our national interests to help maintain stability in Afghanistan,” he continued. “Well, NATO and the Western community are present there. God bless them! Let them do their work.”
As Vladimir Putin embarks on his second decade running Russia, as he approaches his 60th birthday, the long serving KGB officer is not going soft on the USA.
Instead, he is living out the Biblical admonition: “As you sow, so shall you reap.”
For years, Putin has fanned anti-NATO sentiment. As recently as two months ago, he was using it to rally voters around his candidacy for president. Over the last 15 years, Russian TV viewers have consumed hundreds of hours of anti-NATO “documentaries,” each complete with spooky music and a kooky story line.
No matter that the Central European plain has been wiped largely clean of American battle tanks. Of the 12,500 American tanks in Western Europe in 1982, about 5 percent, or 684 remain today – slightly more than the number maintained by Spain. No matter only 2 percent of American respondents to a recent opinion poll singled out Russia as the primary military threat to the United States.
For Russian politicians, hammering on and on about the NATO threat is cost free and far safer than to talk of the geostrategic threat that dares not speak its name in Moscow: the 3 million active duty and reservists of China’s People’s Liberation Army.
But now, as Putin acknowledges, Russia needs NATO in Afghanistan.
Unmoved, Eduard Limonov, a radical poet, led his Other Russia group to the Stalin-era high-rise that houses Russia’s Foreign Ministry. There, they set off orange flares and held up a banner reading: “Foreign Ministry: Traitors’ Den.”
Dmitry Rogozin, deputy prime minister in charge of defense industries, has had the hardest job. As Russia’s ambassador to NATO for four years until last December, he specialized in publicly lampooning NATO.
Now he is tweeting overtime, defending the Ulyanovsk deal – and his own nationalist credentials.
“There is no NATO base in Ulyanovsk,” he tweeted. “There is none, and there won’t be any. Those who spread the ‘news’ about NATO bases in Russia are either saboteurs or idiots. Consider this as an official statement.”
In another tweet, he said the cargo jets would carry nonlethal cargo, like “NATO toilet paper.”
In response, protesters last week delivered rolls of toilet paper to government offices.
In Ulyanovsk, Sergei Morozov, the governor, is billing the project as a boost for regional development. He says Volga-Dnepr Airlines, a Russian cargo company based in Ulyanovsk, will profit handsomely from NATO contracts. (The Moscow Times estimates that NATO will try to move out of Afghanistan 70,000 vehicles and 120,000 containers.)
The governor says the deal will pay for upgrading the international airport’s rundown terminal and its 5-kilometer air strip, the world’s third longest public access runway.
Then he holds out this juicy teaser: for each takeoff or landing of an Antonov An-124, the airport would receive a $5,000 fee.
Mmm, yum-yum, presumably salivate the international jet set of Ulyanovsk, a depressed industrial city with population of 615,000.
Once again, the communists are unmoved. Many of them are pensioners who have been unable to afford an airplane ticket since the collapse of communism 20 years ago. At a recent protest, they waved signs referring to their Governor: “Morozov — Doorman for NATO.”
And on the Russian internet, conspiracy videos are going viral.
The spectacular, fatal explosions at Ulyanovsk’s military arsenal in 2009? Obviously steps to clear the way for NATO.
Just a coincidence that NATO chose Ulyanovsk, a city endowed with a rare railroad bridge over the Volga? How naïve! NATO troops will roll east and west, jumping out of railway containers and sowing chaos, from Central Russia to Siberia, just like the Czechoslovak Legionnaires did in 1918-1919.
Maybe it is time for the Kremlin to talk straight to the Russian public.
From Cold War levels, 95 percent of American battle tanks in Western Europe have gone home.
Only 2 percent of Americans now see Russia as the primary military enemy.
If you take away the assets, if you take away the intent, all you have left is the hysteria.
Russia Watch blog, Voice of America
April 14, 2012
God bless the American soldiers in Afghanistan.
This message of good cheer came from an unexpected corner this week: Russia Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, addressing the entire Duma in Moscow.
First, he set the deputies up by denouncing NATO as “a relic of the Cold War.”
Applause, applause.
Then, before the clapping could fade, he quickly added that, sometimes, just sometimes, NATO plays a “stabilizing role in world affairs, such as in Afghanistan.”
“We understand what is happening in Afghanistan – right?” Russia’s educator-in-chief lectured the Duma. “We are interested in things there being under control, right? And we do not want our soldiers to fight on the Tajik-Afghan border, right?”
“It’s in our national interests to help maintain stability in Afghanistan,” he continued. “Well, NATO and the Western community are present there. God bless them! Let them do their work.”
As Vladimir Putin embarks on his second decade running Russia, as he approaches his 60th birthday, the long serving KGB officer is not going soft on the USA.
Instead, he is living out the Biblical admonition: “As you sow, so shall you reap.”
For years, Putin has fanned anti-NATO sentiment. As recently as two months ago, he was using it to rally voters around his candidacy for president. Over the last 15 years, Russian TV viewers have consumed hundreds of hours of anti-NATO “documentaries,” each complete with spooky music and a kooky story line.
No matter that the Central European plain has been wiped largely clean of American battle tanks. Of the 12,500 American tanks in Western Europe in 1982, about 5 percent, or 684 remain today – slightly more than the number maintained by Spain. No matter only 2 percent of American respondents to a recent opinion poll singled out Russia as the primary military threat to the United States.
For Russian politicians, hammering on and on about the NATO threat is cost free and far safer than to talk of the geostrategic threat that dares not speak its name in Moscow: the 3 million active duty and reservists of China’s People’s Liberation Army.
But now, as Putin acknowledges, Russia needs NATO in Afghanistan.
Unmoved, Eduard Limonov, a radical poet, led his Other Russia group to the Stalin-era high-rise that houses Russia’s Foreign Ministry. There, they set off orange flares and held up a banner reading: “Foreign Ministry: Traitors’ Den.”
Dmitry Rogozin, deputy prime minister in charge of defense industries, has had the hardest job. As Russia’s ambassador to NATO for four years until last December, he specialized in publicly lampooning NATO.
Now he is tweeting overtime, defending the Ulyanovsk deal – and his own nationalist credentials.
“There is no NATO base in Ulyanovsk,” he tweeted. “There is none, and there won’t be any. Those who spread the ‘news’ about NATO bases in Russia are either saboteurs or idiots. Consider this as an official statement.”
In another tweet, he said the cargo jets would carry nonlethal cargo, like “NATO toilet paper.”
In response, protesters last week delivered rolls of toilet paper to government offices.
In Ulyanovsk, Sergei Morozov, the governor, is billing the project as a boost for regional development. He says Volga-Dnepr Airlines, a Russian cargo company based in Ulyanovsk, will profit handsomely from NATO contracts. (The Moscow Times estimates that NATO will try to move out of Afghanistan 70,000 vehicles and 120,000 containers.)
The governor says the deal will pay for upgrading the international airport’s rundown terminal and its 5-kilometer air strip, the world’s third longest public access runway.
Then he holds out this juicy teaser: for each takeoff or landing of an Antonov An-124, the airport would receive a $5,000 fee.
Mmm, yum-yum, presumably salivate the international jet set of Ulyanovsk, a depressed industrial city with population of 615,000.
Once again, the communists are unmoved. Many of them are pensioners who have been unable to afford an airplane ticket since the collapse of communism 20 years ago. At a recent protest, they waved signs referring to their Governor: “Morozov — Doorman for NATO.”
And on the Russian internet, conspiracy videos are going viral.
The spectacular, fatal explosions at Ulyanovsk’s military arsenal in 2009? Obviously steps to clear the way for NATO.
Just a coincidence that NATO chose Ulyanovsk, a city endowed with a rare railroad bridge over the Volga? How naïve! NATO troops will roll east and west, jumping out of railway containers and sowing chaos, from Central Russia to Siberia, just like the Czechoslovak Legionnaires did in 1918-1919.
Maybe it is time for the Kremlin to talk straight to the Russian public.
From Cold War levels, 95 percent of American battle tanks in Western Europe have gone home.
Only 2 percent of Americans now see Russia as the primary military enemy.
If you take away the assets, if you take away the intent, all you have left is the hysteria.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Taliban and Afghanistan's opium/poppy growing industry
See also Poppy farming days numbered in Southern Helmand
In Poppy War, Taliban Aim to Protect a Cash Crop
By Taimoor Shah and Alissa J. Rubin
Published: April 11, 2012
The New York Times
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — So focused are the Taliban on securing this year’s opium poppy crop — and the support of the farmers tending it — that in the early days of their spring offensive in the south, they are targeting not only the officials trying to eradicate the plants, but also the tractors they use.
This year, the poppy fields that are so beautiful right now, carpeted with lithe red blossoms, are also sown with land mines — the product of the increased cooperation between poppy farmers and the militants they see as protectors of their economic interests, government officials say.
“This year there is more poppy cultivation in Helmand, especially in places where people have confiscated the government lands and in places that were desert,” said Daoud Ahmadi, the spokesman for the governor in Helmand Province. “The reason is that the Taliban promised and persuaded farmers to grow poppy and told them they would protect them.”
One suicide attack this week in Helmand Province, the poppy-growing capital not just of Afghanistan but of the world, was indicative of the far larger fight being taken up to control the crop across the southern opium belt, say government officials and the people who live there.
The multifaceted attack included a team of three suicide bombers, wearing police uniforms, who entered the Musa Qala district police headquarters intent on killing the police chief, who has been aggressive in his poppy-eradication efforts. Four officers died, and the chief was injured.
In the bazaar outside, other Taliban fighters strategically positioned two motorcycles loaded with explosives as close as possible to the tractors used in the anti-poppy campaign, said Niamatullah Khan, the Musa Qala district governor. A third explosives-laden motorcycle detonated elsewhere in the bazaar, killing three more police officers.
In Helmand, the government has embraced eradication as part of a comprehensive program to discourage farmers from growing poppies and to subsidize alternative crops. The program has been most successful in the Helmand River valley, and the Musa Qala district is far from the heart of the effort.
The program has been met with hostility by many local residents who say they are reduced to poverty without the income from the poppy crop. A study by the sociologist David Mansfeld, a researcher for Tufts University, noted that families who grow poppies eat meat more frequently and are more likely to be able to afford to marry off their children — weddings often come with crippling costs in Afghanistan, where relatives far and near must be hosted and fed.
“No one wants to see his poppy field destroyed. A farmer is even ready to fight for his poppy field,” said a merchant in Musa Qala who asked not to be named because the subject was so delicate. “If a son of a farmer is in the government and wants to destroy his father’s poppy field, the father would be happy if his son is killed by Taliban.”
Complicating matters is the hold that poppy profits have on government officials. Local farmers say that eradication is selective, meaning that officials often exempt the fields of relatives or of people who bribe them sufficiently.
In Musa Qala, the police chief — who is known locally only as Koka — has a reputation as a ruthless fighter against the Taliban. He has made it a cause to destroy their poppy fields, but not necessarily those of others, like the policemen who work for him, said several local residents.
While only a small part of the total income from poppies goes to the Taliban — roughly 10 percent, according to estimates by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime — but that adds up to a lot in a $4 billion-plus harvest.
“The police chief made a plan to eradicate the poppy fields of Taliban commanders first and then kill the poppy fields of those who are sympathetic with the Taliban, like landlords who help Taliban or those farmers whose sons or relatives are with Taliban,” the merchant said. “This decision really infuriated Taliban commanders, and by any means the Taliban wanted to kill Koka, so that’s why yesterday they made a big effort. You cannot imagine how lucky he was to survive.”
Mr. Khan, the district governor, described a chaotic scene: after the suicide bombers made their way into the police headquarters — their initial attacks muffled by silencers on their pistols — the chief burst out of his office. But then he hesitated, evidently confused by the attackers’ police uniforms.
One of the chief’s officers shouted, “They are not the real police,” Mr. Khan said. The chief pulled out his pistol and shot one of the attackers; as he did, the man’s suicide vest exploded, wounding the other two bombers and the chief himself. The chief was taken to a NATO hospital, local government officials said.
Mr. Ahmadi, the spokesman in the Helmand Province governor’s office, said the police chief did not give preferential treatment to some farmers while going after the Taliban, but he admitted that the government had found such a pattern in Marja, in central Helmand, with members of the police and the local council being allowed to grow poppies. That has since changed, he said.
He said that the militant leadership known as the Quetta Shura, in need of cash, had instructed the Taliban to plant poppies.
“The only means of income they are relying on now is the poppy in Afghanistan, especially in Helmand Province, so that’s why they are planting mines in poppy fields, staging direct attacks, ambushing the eradication campaign and sometimes engaging in prolonged firefights,” Mr. Ahmadi said.
The intense resistance to eradication means that there will be a substantial poppy harvest in Helmand and that the campaign may create dangerous resentment, Mr. Ahmadi said.
“I do not think it will be possible for the eradication campaign to destroy all the poppy fields in Helmand,” he said. “And any person whose fields are destroyed, he is becoming Taliban.”
In Poppy War, Taliban Aim to Protect a Cash Crop
By Taimoor Shah and Alissa J. Rubin
Published: April 11, 2012
The New York Times
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — So focused are the Taliban on securing this year’s opium poppy crop — and the support of the farmers tending it — that in the early days of their spring offensive in the south, they are targeting not only the officials trying to eradicate the plants, but also the tractors they use.
This year, the poppy fields that are so beautiful right now, carpeted with lithe red blossoms, are also sown with land mines — the product of the increased cooperation between poppy farmers and the militants they see as protectors of their economic interests, government officials say.
“This year there is more poppy cultivation in Helmand, especially in places where people have confiscated the government lands and in places that were desert,” said Daoud Ahmadi, the spokesman for the governor in Helmand Province. “The reason is that the Taliban promised and persuaded farmers to grow poppy and told them they would protect them.”
One suicide attack this week in Helmand Province, the poppy-growing capital not just of Afghanistan but of the world, was indicative of the far larger fight being taken up to control the crop across the southern opium belt, say government officials and the people who live there.
The multifaceted attack included a team of three suicide bombers, wearing police uniforms, who entered the Musa Qala district police headquarters intent on killing the police chief, who has been aggressive in his poppy-eradication efforts. Four officers died, and the chief was injured.
In the bazaar outside, other Taliban fighters strategically positioned two motorcycles loaded with explosives as close as possible to the tractors used in the anti-poppy campaign, said Niamatullah Khan, the Musa Qala district governor. A third explosives-laden motorcycle detonated elsewhere in the bazaar, killing three more police officers.
In Helmand, the government has embraced eradication as part of a comprehensive program to discourage farmers from growing poppies and to subsidize alternative crops. The program has been most successful in the Helmand River valley, and the Musa Qala district is far from the heart of the effort.
The program has been met with hostility by many local residents who say they are reduced to poverty without the income from the poppy crop. A study by the sociologist David Mansfeld, a researcher for Tufts University, noted that families who grow poppies eat meat more frequently and are more likely to be able to afford to marry off their children — weddings often come with crippling costs in Afghanistan, where relatives far and near must be hosted and fed.
“No one wants to see his poppy field destroyed. A farmer is even ready to fight for his poppy field,” said a merchant in Musa Qala who asked not to be named because the subject was so delicate. “If a son of a farmer is in the government and wants to destroy his father’s poppy field, the father would be happy if his son is killed by Taliban.”
Complicating matters is the hold that poppy profits have on government officials. Local farmers say that eradication is selective, meaning that officials often exempt the fields of relatives or of people who bribe them sufficiently.
In Musa Qala, the police chief — who is known locally only as Koka — has a reputation as a ruthless fighter against the Taliban. He has made it a cause to destroy their poppy fields, but not necessarily those of others, like the policemen who work for him, said several local residents.
While only a small part of the total income from poppies goes to the Taliban — roughly 10 percent, according to estimates by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime — but that adds up to a lot in a $4 billion-plus harvest.
“The police chief made a plan to eradicate the poppy fields of Taliban commanders first and then kill the poppy fields of those who are sympathetic with the Taliban, like landlords who help Taliban or those farmers whose sons or relatives are with Taliban,” the merchant said. “This decision really infuriated Taliban commanders, and by any means the Taliban wanted to kill Koka, so that’s why yesterday they made a big effort. You cannot imagine how lucky he was to survive.”
Mr. Khan, the district governor, described a chaotic scene: after the suicide bombers made their way into the police headquarters — their initial attacks muffled by silencers on their pistols — the chief burst out of his office. But then he hesitated, evidently confused by the attackers’ police uniforms.
One of the chief’s officers shouted, “They are not the real police,” Mr. Khan said. The chief pulled out his pistol and shot one of the attackers; as he did, the man’s suicide vest exploded, wounding the other two bombers and the chief himself. The chief was taken to a NATO hospital, local government officials said.
Mr. Ahmadi, the spokesman in the Helmand Province governor’s office, said the police chief did not give preferential treatment to some farmers while going after the Taliban, but he admitted that the government had found such a pattern in Marja, in central Helmand, with members of the police and the local council being allowed to grow poppies. That has since changed, he said.
He said that the militant leadership known as the Quetta Shura, in need of cash, had instructed the Taliban to plant poppies.
“The only means of income they are relying on now is the poppy in Afghanistan, especially in Helmand Province, so that’s why they are planting mines in poppy fields, staging direct attacks, ambushing the eradication campaign and sometimes engaging in prolonged firefights,” Mr. Ahmadi said.
The intense resistance to eradication means that there will be a substantial poppy harvest in Helmand and that the campaign may create dangerous resentment, Mr. Ahmadi said.
“I do not think it will be possible for the eradication campaign to destroy all the poppy fields in Helmand,” he said. “And any person whose fields are destroyed, he is becoming Taliban.”
Monday, April 9, 2012
Wall Street Journal and New York Times reports on U.S.-Afghan MOU re night raids
U.S., Afghanistan Agree on Night Raids
By Dion Nissenbaum
Updated April 8, 2012, 10:16 a.m. ET
The Wall Street Journal
KABUL—Afghanistan and the U.S. on Sunday signed a deal that would give the Afghan government greater oversight of controversial night raids, setting the stage for sealing a long-term bilateral partnership agreement next month.
In addition, Afghan forces will take the lead in all such raids, according to an Afghan official, and the agreement states that U.S. Special Operations forces should aim to no longer enter Afghan homes during them.
President Hamid Karzai has long called for an end to U.S. Special Operations Forces night raids, a tactic that the coalition says is critical in the fight against the Taliban.
The agreement, signed Sunday by U.S. Marine Gen. John Allen, the coalition forces commander, and Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak, gives the Afghan government broad new judicial powers to regulate the operations.
Under the deal, officials said, a special committee of Afghans will have the power to reject requests for most Special Operations raids before they proceed. In limited circumstances, according to Afghan officials, the courts will be asked to approve operations within 72 hours after a raid.
"It's a great day," U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said after Sunday's ceremony. "We clearly have some critical momentum. Now the hard stuff is behind us."
The night-raids agreement was signed after the negotiators ironed out a last-minute dispute over the interrogation of detainees.
Alongside the issue of the Bagram detention facility, resolved last month, the night raids were the main stumbling block to the partnership agreement that the U.S. and Afghanistan hope to conclude by next month's North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Chicago.
The partnership agreement will outline what presence the U.S. will maintain in Afghanistan after most foreign forces leave in 2014.
Though Sunday's agreement states that American Special Operations forces should aim to no longer enter Afghan homes during the operations, Afghan forces currently are too few to ensure that no U.S. forces enter homes. The intent is to reach the point where Americans are no longer searching Afghan homes, according to Afghan officials.
The very act of entering Afghan households is often taken as a sign of disrespect and dishonor in the conservative culture that prides itself on privacy, especially for women and children.
The agreement states that Afghan forces are now to take the lead in all such raids. "From this hour on, they are 100% Afghan-led," said an Afghan official. Presently, he said, about 75% of the operations are led by Afghans, and 40% are conducted without coalition support.
The U.S. military will still play a major role in the operations by providing intelligence, helicopter airlift to the raids and other critical elements.In the final round of talks, Americans had wanted to retain the authority to question detainees after the operations. But Afghan negotiators resisted the idea.
The final deal, according to Afghan officials, prevents U.S. forces from directly interrogating Afghan detainees. Instead they will be questioned by Afghan interrogators in cooperation with U.S. forces.
American forces will retain the ability to hold on to any non-Afghans caught in the raids.
*********************
Deal Reached on Contested Afghan Night Raids
By Alissa J. Rubin
Published: April 8, 2012
The New York Times
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan and the United States signed an agreement on Sunday on night military raids that would hand responsibility for carrying out the operations to Afghan forces but allow continued American involvement.
The agreement clears the way for the two countries to move ahead with a more comprehensive long-term partnership agreement, Afghan and American officials. The signing of a memorandum of understanding on the night raids between Abdul Rahim Wardak, the Afghan minister of defense, and General John R. Allen, the American commander, was hailed by the men as an indication of both Afghanistan’s sovereignty and the growing abilities of its special operation forces.
“This is an important step in strengthening the sovereignty of Afghanistan,” Mr. Wardak said, adding that it was “a national goal” and “a wish of the Afghan people” that raids be conducted and controlled by Afghans.
General Allen said the signing meant that the two countries were “ready to look forward to a successful summit in Chicago in the wake of the signing of the strategic partnership agreement.”
The strategic partnership agreement commits the United States to another decade of involvement in the country in areas like economic development and education. The meeting in Chicago is a NATO summit at which countries involved in the war are expected to commit to continuing financial contributions to Afghanistan as well as committing to train and equip the forces.
The deal on night raids was the second of two contentious issues that the two countries resolved to solve ahead of work on the broader pact. The other issue involved the handover to the Afghans of the main United States detention facility in Parwan. That memorandum of understanding was signed on March 8.
President Hamid Karzai has long been at odds with the American military over the raids, which the Americans have described as a crucial tool in the fight against insurgents. The raids until recently were primarily conducted by American special operations forces. Afghan families, however, have objected strenuously to the raids which they say violate cultural norms, humiliate them and expose their women to the eyes of strangers.
Mr. Karzai, who renewed calls for an end to the raids after an American soldier was charged with 17 counts of murder in the shootings of Afghan civilians on March 11, has insisted that control over the raids is a matter of sovereignty.
“This is what the president has wanted for years,” a presidential spokesman, Aimal Faizi, said of the agreement.
Plans to complete the deal were expected earlier this week, but a last-minute glitch over how long the Americans could hold detainees for questioning after the completion of a raid tied up the final agreement. The impasse was broken over the last two days.
------
By Dion Nissenbaum
Updated April 8, 2012, 10:16 a.m. ET
The Wall Street Journal
KABUL—Afghanistan and the U.S. on Sunday signed a deal that would give the Afghan government greater oversight of controversial night raids, setting the stage for sealing a long-term bilateral partnership agreement next month.
In addition, Afghan forces will take the lead in all such raids, according to an Afghan official, and the agreement states that U.S. Special Operations forces should aim to no longer enter Afghan homes during them.
President Hamid Karzai has long called for an end to U.S. Special Operations Forces night raids, a tactic that the coalition says is critical in the fight against the Taliban.
The agreement, signed Sunday by U.S. Marine Gen. John Allen, the coalition forces commander, and Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak, gives the Afghan government broad new judicial powers to regulate the operations.
Under the deal, officials said, a special committee of Afghans will have the power to reject requests for most Special Operations raids before they proceed. In limited circumstances, according to Afghan officials, the courts will be asked to approve operations within 72 hours after a raid.
"It's a great day," U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said after Sunday's ceremony. "We clearly have some critical momentum. Now the hard stuff is behind us."
The night-raids agreement was signed after the negotiators ironed out a last-minute dispute over the interrogation of detainees.
Alongside the issue of the Bagram detention facility, resolved last month, the night raids were the main stumbling block to the partnership agreement that the U.S. and Afghanistan hope to conclude by next month's North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Chicago.
The partnership agreement will outline what presence the U.S. will maintain in Afghanistan after most foreign forces leave in 2014.
Though Sunday's agreement states that American Special Operations forces should aim to no longer enter Afghan homes during the operations, Afghan forces currently are too few to ensure that no U.S. forces enter homes. The intent is to reach the point where Americans are no longer searching Afghan homes, according to Afghan officials.
The very act of entering Afghan households is often taken as a sign of disrespect and dishonor in the conservative culture that prides itself on privacy, especially for women and children.
The agreement states that Afghan forces are now to take the lead in all such raids. "From this hour on, they are 100% Afghan-led," said an Afghan official. Presently, he said, about 75% of the operations are led by Afghans, and 40% are conducted without coalition support.
The U.S. military will still play a major role in the operations by providing intelligence, helicopter airlift to the raids and other critical elements.In the final round of talks, Americans had wanted to retain the authority to question detainees after the operations. But Afghan negotiators resisted the idea.
The final deal, according to Afghan officials, prevents U.S. forces from directly interrogating Afghan detainees. Instead they will be questioned by Afghan interrogators in cooperation with U.S. forces.
American forces will retain the ability to hold on to any non-Afghans caught in the raids.
*********************
Deal Reached on Contested Afghan Night Raids
By Alissa J. Rubin
Published: April 8, 2012
The New York Times
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan and the United States signed an agreement on Sunday on night military raids that would hand responsibility for carrying out the operations to Afghan forces but allow continued American involvement.
The agreement clears the way for the two countries to move ahead with a more comprehensive long-term partnership agreement, Afghan and American officials. The signing of a memorandum of understanding on the night raids between Abdul Rahim Wardak, the Afghan minister of defense, and General John R. Allen, the American commander, was hailed by the men as an indication of both Afghanistan’s sovereignty and the growing abilities of its special operation forces.
“This is an important step in strengthening the sovereignty of Afghanistan,” Mr. Wardak said, adding that it was “a national goal” and “a wish of the Afghan people” that raids be conducted and controlled by Afghans.
General Allen said the signing meant that the two countries were “ready to look forward to a successful summit in Chicago in the wake of the signing of the strategic partnership agreement.”
The strategic partnership agreement commits the United States to another decade of involvement in the country in areas like economic development and education. The meeting in Chicago is a NATO summit at which countries involved in the war are expected to commit to continuing financial contributions to Afghanistan as well as committing to train and equip the forces.
The deal on night raids was the second of two contentious issues that the two countries resolved to solve ahead of work on the broader pact. The other issue involved the handover to the Afghans of the main United States detention facility in Parwan. That memorandum of understanding was signed on March 8.
President Hamid Karzai has long been at odds with the American military over the raids, which the Americans have described as a crucial tool in the fight against insurgents. The raids until recently were primarily conducted by American special operations forces. Afghan families, however, have objected strenuously to the raids which they say violate cultural norms, humiliate them and expose their women to the eyes of strangers.
Mr. Karzai, who renewed calls for an end to the raids after an American soldier was charged with 17 counts of murder in the shootings of Afghan civilians on March 11, has insisted that control over the raids is a matter of sovereignty.
“This is what the president has wanted for years,” a presidential spokesman, Aimal Faizi, said of the agreement.
Plans to complete the deal were expected earlier this week, but a last-minute glitch over how long the Americans could hold detainees for questioning after the completion of a raid tied up the final agreement. The impasse was broken over the last two days.
------
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hafiz Saeed able to maintain high profile again in Pakistan
'We do jihad,' says Lashkar-e-Taiba emir Hafiz Saeed
By Bill Roggio
April 7, 2012
The Long War Journal
During a Friday sermon in Lahore, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, the emir of the al Qaeda-linked Lashkar-e-Taiba who is wanted by the US and protected by Pakistan, called on Muslims to wage jihad against America. Saeed's speech took place the same day a Pakistani intelligence official claimed that Saeed was involved in a de-radicalization program.
Saeed called on Pakistanis and Muslims to join with the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a front for the Lashkar-e-Taiba, to fight the US to preserve Pakistan and Islam, AFP reported. Saeed gave the speech at the Jamia Markaz al-Qadsia, a mosque run by the Lashkar-e-Taiba. A collection box for donations for jihad was placed at the exits of the mosque. He was accompanied by armed guards who were "carrying weapons with silencers," the news agency reported.
"Come to us," Saeed said, calling on Muslims to join Lashkar-e-Taiba. "We will teach you the meaning of jihad.... The time to fight has come."
"This is the same jihad which caused the USSR to break [in Afghanistan] and now America is failing because of it. Analysts and journalists don't realise why America is failing, the only reason is jihad," he continued. According to the AFP report, he also accused the Western press of being biased against Muslims and jihad.
Saeed said the US targets Lashkar-e-Taiba/Jamaat-ud-Dawa because the group wages jihad and because the US fears Saeed. The US put out a $10 million bounty for information leading to Saeed's arrest and prosecution just days ago.
"There are many parties in Pakistan, but America has only sent a message to Jamaat-ud-Dawa, because we do jihad," Saeed said. "They [US] are even scared of my name."
Saeed also implied that his terror organization is involved in attacking US forces in Afghanistan.
"America should leave Pakistan and Afghanistan peacefully. Then, we will not come to you with guns but will instead invite you to Islam," he said. The Lashkar-e-Taiba is known to send fighters in Afghanistan to attack NATO and Afghan forces. In 2010, the US military noted that Lashkar-e-Taiba was working with the Taliban in Nangarhar province.
Saeed's inflammatory sermon was delivered the same day a Pakistani intelligence official and a police official both claimed that Saeed was involved with "de-radicalization and rehabilitation of former jihadis" in Pakistan's Punjab province.
"Jamaat-ud-Dawa were consulted, and they approved the de-radicalization plan. They assured us of their intellectual input and resource materials. They also offered teachers," a Punjab police official told Reuters.
Saeed's terror organization has been directly linked to numerous terror attacks in South Asia, including the November 2008 terror assault on the Indian city of Mumbai that resulted in the deaths of 165 people. The US and Indian governments have accused Saeed and other Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives and leaders of plotting, financing, and executing the Mumbai attack. A former adviser to President Obama on Afghanistan and Pakistan recently stated that evidence seized at Osama bin Laden's compound linked the slain al Qaeda emir to the Mumbai attack and Saeed. [See LWJ report, Osama bin Laden helped plan Mumbai attacks.]
Saeed, who formed the Lashkar-e-Taiba at the behest of Abdullah Azzam, bin Laden's mentor and co-founder of al Qaeda, praised bin Laden after US Navy SEALs killed the al Qaeda emir at a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in May 2011.
"Osama bin Laden was a great person who awakened the Muslim world..... Martyrdoms are not losses, but are a matter of pride for Muslims," Saeed proclaimed.
"Osama bin Laden has rendered great sacrifices for Islam and Muslims, and these will always be remembered," Saeed continued, as his followers chanted "Down with America" and "Down with Obama."
The Pakistani government has protected Saeed, despite his complicity in terror attacks. Saeed is favored not only by Pakistan's military and Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, which provides Lashkar-e-Taiba with direct support, but also by a wide swath of Pakistani civil society. The Pakistani government has refused to arrest Saeed and has claimed the US and India have not provided evidence linking him to terror attacks.
For more information on Hafiz Saeed, the Lashkar-e-Taiba, and its links to al Qaeda and other terror groups, see LWJ report, US offers $10 million bounty for capture of Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed.
By Bill Roggio
April 7, 2012
The Long War Journal
During a Friday sermon in Lahore, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, the emir of the al Qaeda-linked Lashkar-e-Taiba who is wanted by the US and protected by Pakistan, called on Muslims to wage jihad against America. Saeed's speech took place the same day a Pakistani intelligence official claimed that Saeed was involved in a de-radicalization program.
Saeed called on Pakistanis and Muslims to join with the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a front for the Lashkar-e-Taiba, to fight the US to preserve Pakistan and Islam, AFP reported. Saeed gave the speech at the Jamia Markaz al-Qadsia, a mosque run by the Lashkar-e-Taiba. A collection box for donations for jihad was placed at the exits of the mosque. He was accompanied by armed guards who were "carrying weapons with silencers," the news agency reported.
"Come to us," Saeed said, calling on Muslims to join Lashkar-e-Taiba. "We will teach you the meaning of jihad.... The time to fight has come."
"This is the same jihad which caused the USSR to break [in Afghanistan] and now America is failing because of it. Analysts and journalists don't realise why America is failing, the only reason is jihad," he continued. According to the AFP report, he also accused the Western press of being biased against Muslims and jihad.
Saeed said the US targets Lashkar-e-Taiba/Jamaat-ud-Dawa because the group wages jihad and because the US fears Saeed. The US put out a $10 million bounty for information leading to Saeed's arrest and prosecution just days ago.
"There are many parties in Pakistan, but America has only sent a message to Jamaat-ud-Dawa, because we do jihad," Saeed said. "They [US] are even scared of my name."
Saeed also implied that his terror organization is involved in attacking US forces in Afghanistan.
"America should leave Pakistan and Afghanistan peacefully. Then, we will not come to you with guns but will instead invite you to Islam," he said. The Lashkar-e-Taiba is known to send fighters in Afghanistan to attack NATO and Afghan forces. In 2010, the US military noted that Lashkar-e-Taiba was working with the Taliban in Nangarhar province.
Saeed's inflammatory sermon was delivered the same day a Pakistani intelligence official and a police official both claimed that Saeed was involved with "de-radicalization and rehabilitation of former jihadis" in Pakistan's Punjab province.
"Jamaat-ud-Dawa were consulted, and they approved the de-radicalization plan. They assured us of their intellectual input and resource materials. They also offered teachers," a Punjab police official told Reuters.
Saeed's terror organization has been directly linked to numerous terror attacks in South Asia, including the November 2008 terror assault on the Indian city of Mumbai that resulted in the deaths of 165 people. The US and Indian governments have accused Saeed and other Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives and leaders of plotting, financing, and executing the Mumbai attack. A former adviser to President Obama on Afghanistan and Pakistan recently stated that evidence seized at Osama bin Laden's compound linked the slain al Qaeda emir to the Mumbai attack and Saeed. [See LWJ report, Osama bin Laden helped plan Mumbai attacks.]
Saeed, who formed the Lashkar-e-Taiba at the behest of Abdullah Azzam, bin Laden's mentor and co-founder of al Qaeda, praised bin Laden after US Navy SEALs killed the al Qaeda emir at a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in May 2011.
"Osama bin Laden was a great person who awakened the Muslim world..... Martyrdoms are not losses, but are a matter of pride for Muslims," Saeed proclaimed.
"Osama bin Laden has rendered great sacrifices for Islam and Muslims, and these will always be remembered," Saeed continued, as his followers chanted "Down with America" and "Down with Obama."
The Pakistani government has protected Saeed, despite his complicity in terror attacks. Saeed is favored not only by Pakistan's military and Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, which provides Lashkar-e-Taiba with direct support, but also by a wide swath of Pakistani civil society. The Pakistani government has refused to arrest Saeed and has claimed the US and India have not provided evidence linking him to terror attacks.
For more information on Hafiz Saeed, the Lashkar-e-Taiba, and its links to al Qaeda and other terror groups, see LWJ report, US offers $10 million bounty for capture of Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed.
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Lt.Gen. Mohammed Zahir-ul-Islam, new ISI chief
"It is generally believed by well-informed sources that the terrorist attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul and the 26/11 strikes in Mumbai had the signature of Lt.Gen. Nadeem Taj, the predecessor of Pasha as the ISI Chief. If Pasha and Zahir-ul-Islam had wanted they could have called off the terrorist strikes in Mumbai, but they didn’t. "
A LOW PROFILE OFFICER TO HEAD ISI
by
B.RAMAN
Lt.Gen. Mohammed Zahir-ul-Islam, a low profile officer of the Pakistan Army, has been chosen by President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani as the new chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to succeed Lt.Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha on March 19.
2. Has appointment, which was announced by Gilani on March 9, was made out of a short list of three Lts.Gen recommended by Gen.Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, Chief of the Army Staff (COAS). The names were reportedly discussed by Zardari and Gilani with Kayani last week and Zahir-ul-Islam was chosen. His appointment was the outcome of a consensus between the political and military leadership and could contribute to a lowering of the present high trust deficit between the two.
3.Zahir-ul-Islam, who is reported to have done one training course in the US as a middle level officer, has had the least exposure to the US as a senior Army officer. At the same time, of all the senior officers, he was the least suspected of having had any role in facilitating the clandestine stay of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad from 2005 till his death at the hands of the US Special Forces on May 2,2011.During this period, he was the GOC of Murree, then Deputy Director-General in charge of Counter-Intelligence in the ISI from September 2008 to October 2010, when he was posted as the Corps Commander of Karachi, the post that he now holds.
4. The civilian leadership has no reason to distrust him because he was not considered a protégé of Pervez Musharraf and his name had not figured in the suspicions of the leadership of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) relating to the failure of the Musharraf regime to protect Benazir Bhutto.If at all, he is a protégé of Kayani under whom he earned his promotion as Lt.Gen.
5.All indications are that the civilian leadership is keen to mend fences with the US. Zahir-ul-Islam could be the right man for the job because he was never very close to the US and, at the same time, was never suspected by the US of being mixed up with the jihadi terrorists.
6. As the Deputy DG, Counter-Intelligence, his job in the ISI was to keep a surveillance on the activities of foreign diplomats in Pakistan---particularly Indian and US diplomats--- and to prevent the infiltration of the Armed Forces by extremist organisations such as the Hizbut Tehrir. He was also handling internal security situations like those in Balochistan and Karachi. While there was considerable ham-handedness in Balochistan, he avoided strong-arm methods in Karachi as the Deputy DG of the ISI and subsequently as the Karachi Corps Commander. He was not very effective in dealing with the situations either in Balochistan or in Karachi.
7.At Karachi, he won high praise from the Chinese for the smooth way he assisted the medical relief team of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), which was deputed to Sindh for flood relief work.
8.Like many senior officers of the Pakistan Army, Zahir-ul-Islam comes from a family which has contributed many officers to the Army. His father is a retired Colonel of the Army and three of his brothers had also joined the Army. His sister is married to an Army officer.
9. The 26/11 terrorist strikes in Mumbai by the ISI-sponsored Lashkar-e-Toiba took place seven weeks after Pasha had taken over as the DG of the ISI and Zahir-ul-Islam as his No.2.
It is generally believed by well-informed sources that the terrorist attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul and the 26/11 strikes in Mumbai had the signature of Lt.Gen.Nadeem Taj, the predecessor of Pasha as the ISI Chief. If Pasha and Zahir-ul-Islam had wanted they could have called off the terrorist strikes in Mumbai, but they didn’t. ( 10-3-12)
A LOW PROFILE OFFICER TO HEAD ISI
by
B.RAMAN
Lt.Gen. Mohammed Zahir-ul-Islam, a low profile officer of the Pakistan Army, has been chosen by President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani as the new chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to succeed Lt.Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha on March 19.
2. Has appointment, which was announced by Gilani on March 9, was made out of a short list of three Lts.Gen recommended by Gen.Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, Chief of the Army Staff (COAS). The names were reportedly discussed by Zardari and Gilani with Kayani last week and Zahir-ul-Islam was chosen. His appointment was the outcome of a consensus between the political and military leadership and could contribute to a lowering of the present high trust deficit between the two.
3.Zahir-ul-Islam, who is reported to have done one training course in the US as a middle level officer, has had the least exposure to the US as a senior Army officer. At the same time, of all the senior officers, he was the least suspected of having had any role in facilitating the clandestine stay of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad from 2005 till his death at the hands of the US Special Forces on May 2,2011.During this period, he was the GOC of Murree, then Deputy Director-General in charge of Counter-Intelligence in the ISI from September 2008 to October 2010, when he was posted as the Corps Commander of Karachi, the post that he now holds.
4. The civilian leadership has no reason to distrust him because he was not considered a protégé of Pervez Musharraf and his name had not figured in the suspicions of the leadership of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) relating to the failure of the Musharraf regime to protect Benazir Bhutto.If at all, he is a protégé of Kayani under whom he earned his promotion as Lt.Gen.
5.All indications are that the civilian leadership is keen to mend fences with the US. Zahir-ul-Islam could be the right man for the job because he was never very close to the US and, at the same time, was never suspected by the US of being mixed up with the jihadi terrorists.
6. As the Deputy DG, Counter-Intelligence, his job in the ISI was to keep a surveillance on the activities of foreign diplomats in Pakistan---particularly Indian and US diplomats--- and to prevent the infiltration of the Armed Forces by extremist organisations such as the Hizbut Tehrir. He was also handling internal security situations like those in Balochistan and Karachi. While there was considerable ham-handedness in Balochistan, he avoided strong-arm methods in Karachi as the Deputy DG of the ISI and subsequently as the Karachi Corps Commander. He was not very effective in dealing with the situations either in Balochistan or in Karachi.
7.At Karachi, he won high praise from the Chinese for the smooth way he assisted the medical relief team of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), which was deputed to Sindh for flood relief work.
8.Like many senior officers of the Pakistan Army, Zahir-ul-Islam comes from a family which has contributed many officers to the Army. His father is a retired Colonel of the Army and three of his brothers had also joined the Army. His sister is married to an Army officer.
9. The 26/11 terrorist strikes in Mumbai by the ISI-sponsored Lashkar-e-Toiba took place seven weeks after Pasha had taken over as the DG of the ISI and Zahir-ul-Islam as his No.2.
It is generally believed by well-informed sources that the terrorist attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul and the 26/11 strikes in Mumbai had the signature of Lt.Gen.Nadeem Taj, the predecessor of Pasha as the ISI Chief. If Pasha and Zahir-ul-Islam had wanted they could have called off the terrorist strikes in Mumbai, but they didn’t. ( 10-3-12)
Iran's struggle to interdict opium smuggling
The claim by the United Nations that Iran interdicted 89 percent of the world's seized opium, presumably in 2011, is an eyebrow raiser, but the report is still a window on a topic that receives very little discussion in the press
West indifference made Iran flag bearer in anti-narcotics bids: General
Iran Press TV
Head of the Anti-narcotics Division of Iran’s Police Force General Ali Moayedi criticized the Western governments for their inaction in the fight against banned drugs on Thursday, saying, “The countries advocating human rights, especially the Western countries, are indifferent [even] to the wellbeing of their own citizens” and take no measures to reduce the harms that they are subjected to.
General Moayedi further pointed to the successful experiences of the Islamic Republic in the campaign against illegal drugs, saying other countries are now asking for Iran’s aid in their counternarcotics bids.
According to the UN Drug Report 2011, Iran, which shares a 936-kilometer border with Afghanistan and a 909-kilometer border with Pakistan, has intercepted 89 percent of all the opium seized worldwide.
The Iranian government has set up static defenses such as manpower and electronic equipment along its border to maintain more control on the area.
Within a span of thirty years, more than 3700 Iranian police officers have been killed and tens of thousands more injured in counternarcotics operations, mostly on Afghan and Pakistan borders.
West indifference made Iran flag bearer in anti-narcotics bids: General
Iran Press TV
Head of the Anti-narcotics Division of Iran’s Police Force General Ali Moayedi criticized the Western governments for their inaction in the fight against banned drugs on Thursday, saying, “The countries advocating human rights, especially the Western countries, are indifferent [even] to the wellbeing of their own citizens” and take no measures to reduce the harms that they are subjected to.
General Moayedi further pointed to the successful experiences of the Islamic Republic in the campaign against illegal drugs, saying other countries are now asking for Iran’s aid in their counternarcotics bids.
According to the UN Drug Report 2011, Iran, which shares a 936-kilometer border with Afghanistan and a 909-kilometer border with Pakistan, has intercepted 89 percent of all the opium seized worldwide.
The Iranian government has set up static defenses such as manpower and electronic equipment along its border to maintain more control on the area.
Within a span of thirty years, more than 3700 Iranian police officers have been killed and tens of thousands more injured in counternarcotics operations, mostly on Afghan and Pakistan borders.
Anatomy of war plan collapse: Karzai used burned Korans incident to play hardball with White House
Talks Bog Down On US-Afghan Agreement
by The Associated Press [via NPR]
Associated Press Writer Rahim Faiez in Kabul contributed to this report
March 5, 2012, 02:59 pm ET
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Negotiations over a long-term U.S. military presence in Afghanistan have bogged down over issues of detainees, night raids and quarrels within the Afghan president's inner circle, throwing the whole deal into question.
The arrangement would formalize a U.S. role after NATO's planned pullout in 2014. The deadlock reflects growing hostility on the part of the Afghan leadership and increasing exasperation in Washington.
Trust has eroded in recent days with anti-American protests over Quran burnings at a U.S. base, a rising number of U.S. troops gunned down by Afghan security forces and election-year demands to bring the troops home.
Karzai met Monday evening with U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker, but a Karzai spokesman did not return phone calls requesting details about their talks. Karzai has scheduled a news conference on Tuesday; it is unclear whether he will discuss the negotiations.
U.S. Embassy spokesman Gavin Sundwall would not disclose any information about the meeting.
Earlier, Sundwall said that despite the dragging negotiations, the U.S. was committed to a strategic partnership with the Afghan people. However, he also said it was more important to get the right agreement than to get an agreement.
The pact is expected to provide for several thousand U.S. troops to stay and train Afghan forces and help with counterterrorism operations. It aims to outline the legal status of those forces, their operating rules and where they will be based. The agreement, which was supposed to be completed before the next NATO summit in May in Chicago, also is seen as means of assuring the Afghan people that the U.S. does not plan to abandon the country, even as it withdraws its combat forces.
NATO's nighttime raids targeting insurgents are an especially touchy matter.
As part of the agreement, Karzai has said that Afghans should be the only ones conducting the night raids, because the invasion of privacy from troops entering a family's home is compounded when the soldiers are Westerners. He has also complained that too many raids have resulted in the detention of non-insurgents or civilian deaths. NATO argues that no shots are fired in more than 85 percent of the raids.
An even thornier issue is detentions. Karzai is demanding that the United States transfer control of its main prison in the country — the Parwan Detention Facility, which adjoins Bagram Air Field in eastern Afghanistan — to Afghan control. Karzai thinks having the United States running prisons in his country is an affront to Afghan sovereignty. First he demanded that the prison be handed over by early February, then extended the deadline to this Friday.
The Obama administration has said that the Afghan judicial system is not yet capable of taking over responsibility for dangerous battlefield detainees. The U.S. is willing to work with the Karzai government to complete a transition of detention operations "in a manner that is safe and orderly and in accordance with our international legal obligations," Sundwall said.
Afghan officials say privately that a U.S. proposal to hand over the facility in six months would be acceptable to some members of the Karzai government, but the president had not embraced the idea.
Karzai tried to bolster his argument by citing the incident on Feb. 20, when Qurans and other Islamic texts from a library at the Parwan Detention Facility were burned. He said that if Afghans had been running the prison, Muslim holy books would never had been sent to a garbage burn pit.
The incident, which Afghans viewed as evidence that foreign forces disregard their culture and Islamic faith, prompted six days of anti-American protests across the nation. During the demonstrations, 30 people died, including six U.S. troops who were killed when Afghan security forces turned their guns on the Americans.
On Monday, the Taliban took responsibility for a suicide bombing outside Bagram that killed two people, saying it was revenge for the Quran burnings.
In other violence Monday, the Interior Ministry said one civilian was killed and 11 people wounded when a man blew himself up at a police checkpoint in Jalalabad in the east.
Karzai has been stubborn about his demands — apparently so much so that he is losing the backing of some of his own top aides.
An Afghan government official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive negotiations, said that more than two months ago National Security Adviser Rangin Dadfar Spanta submitted his resignation after disagreements erupted between him and Karzai over the strategic partnership document.
Spanta, who is heading the talks, wants Karzai to compromise on night raids and detentions.
Karzai did not accept Spanta's resignation, but kept the letter.
Spanta was on a trip to China and not available to comment, but Moradian said the resignation threat was part of an effort to pressure Karzai into a compromise.
"There is a possibility that if that tactic didn't work he would resign," said Moradian, assistant professor of political science at American University in Kabul.
Moradian, who was the chief policy adviser to Spanta when he was foreign minister, said he thinks Washington is considering waiting to negotiate the deal with Karzai's successor. Karzai is set to leave office after his second term ends in 2014.
___
by The Associated Press [via NPR]
Associated Press Writer Rahim Faiez in Kabul contributed to this report
March 5, 2012, 02:59 pm ET
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Negotiations over a long-term U.S. military presence in Afghanistan have bogged down over issues of detainees, night raids and quarrels within the Afghan president's inner circle, throwing the whole deal into question.
The arrangement would formalize a U.S. role after NATO's planned pullout in 2014. The deadlock reflects growing hostility on the part of the Afghan leadership and increasing exasperation in Washington.
Trust has eroded in recent days with anti-American protests over Quran burnings at a U.S. base, a rising number of U.S. troops gunned down by Afghan security forces and election-year demands to bring the troops home.
Karzai met Monday evening with U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker, but a Karzai spokesman did not return phone calls requesting details about their talks. Karzai has scheduled a news conference on Tuesday; it is unclear whether he will discuss the negotiations.
U.S. Embassy spokesman Gavin Sundwall would not disclose any information about the meeting.
Earlier, Sundwall said that despite the dragging negotiations, the U.S. was committed to a strategic partnership with the Afghan people. However, he also said it was more important to get the right agreement than to get an agreement.
The pact is expected to provide for several thousand U.S. troops to stay and train Afghan forces and help with counterterrorism operations. It aims to outline the legal status of those forces, their operating rules and where they will be based. The agreement, which was supposed to be completed before the next NATO summit in May in Chicago, also is seen as means of assuring the Afghan people that the U.S. does not plan to abandon the country, even as it withdraws its combat forces.
NATO's nighttime raids targeting insurgents are an especially touchy matter.
As part of the agreement, Karzai has said that Afghans should be the only ones conducting the night raids, because the invasion of privacy from troops entering a family's home is compounded when the soldiers are Westerners. He has also complained that too many raids have resulted in the detention of non-insurgents or civilian deaths. NATO argues that no shots are fired in more than 85 percent of the raids.
An even thornier issue is detentions. Karzai is demanding that the United States transfer control of its main prison in the country — the Parwan Detention Facility, which adjoins Bagram Air Field in eastern Afghanistan — to Afghan control. Karzai thinks having the United States running prisons in his country is an affront to Afghan sovereignty. First he demanded that the prison be handed over by early February, then extended the deadline to this Friday.
The Obama administration has said that the Afghan judicial system is not yet capable of taking over responsibility for dangerous battlefield detainees. The U.S. is willing to work with the Karzai government to complete a transition of detention operations "in a manner that is safe and orderly and in accordance with our international legal obligations," Sundwall said.
Afghan officials say privately that a U.S. proposal to hand over the facility in six months would be acceptable to some members of the Karzai government, but the president had not embraced the idea.
Karzai tried to bolster his argument by citing the incident on Feb. 20, when Qurans and other Islamic texts from a library at the Parwan Detention Facility were burned. He said that if Afghans had been running the prison, Muslim holy books would never had been sent to a garbage burn pit.
The incident, which Afghans viewed as evidence that foreign forces disregard their culture and Islamic faith, prompted six days of anti-American protests across the nation. During the demonstrations, 30 people died, including six U.S. troops who were killed when Afghan security forces turned their guns on the Americans.
On Monday, the Taliban took responsibility for a suicide bombing outside Bagram that killed two people, saying it was revenge for the Quran burnings.
In other violence Monday, the Interior Ministry said one civilian was killed and 11 people wounded when a man blew himself up at a police checkpoint in Jalalabad in the east.
Karzai has been stubborn about his demands — apparently so much so that he is losing the backing of some of his own top aides.
An Afghan government official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive negotiations, said that more than two months ago National Security Adviser Rangin Dadfar Spanta submitted his resignation after disagreements erupted between him and Karzai over the strategic partnership document.
Spanta, who is heading the talks, wants Karzai to compromise on night raids and detentions.
Karzai did not accept Spanta's resignation, but kept the letter.
Spanta was on a trip to China and not available to comment, but Moradian said the resignation threat was part of an effort to pressure Karzai into a compromise.
"There is a possibility that if that tactic didn't work he would resign," said Moradian, assistant professor of political science at American University in Kabul.
Moradian, who was the chief policy adviser to Spanta when he was foreign minister, said he thinks Washington is considering waiting to negotiate the deal with Karzai's successor. Karzai is set to leave office after his second term ends in 2014.
___
China goes after oil in Afghanistan
Khaama Press: China's CNPC wins first Afghan oil extraction contract.
Friday, April 6, 2012
How many al Qaeda fighters are in Afghanistan?
Long War Journal's Bill Roggio finds NATO's arithmetic off. From a September 2011 report with links to other reports on the topic.
Thursday, April 5, 2012
UN report on opium hoarding by Afghans gives insight into level of fear about NATO pullout
Afghans store opium as hedge against uncertain future: U.N.
By Jack Kimball
Thu Apr 5, 2012 10:01pm IST
Reuters
(KABUL) - Opium is emerging as a new gold standard in Afghanistan, where traders and farmers are hoarding the drug as a source of ready cash t o hedge against the risk of a power vacuum when foreign troops leave, the country's U.N. drugs tsar said.
Fear is mounting amongst Afghans and foreign governments alike that the planned pullout of most NATO combat troops by the end of 2014 and Afghan national elections in the same year could see the country engulfed in more conflict.
"You see suddenly people are rushing to opium and cannabis as in the euro zone we were rushing to the Swiss franc before the euro," Jean-Luc Lemahieu, head of the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime in Afghanistan, told Reuters in an interview.
"It is hedging for a very insecure future indeed, it's basically an economic reflex, understandable by itself, toward a very insecure question mark, what will I be, where will I be, how will I be and my family too," he said.
Afghanistan supplies about 90 percent of the world's opium, from which heroin is made. Corruption also infects many aspects of life and the buoyant drug trade flourishes.
The poppy economy in Afghanistan, which provides an income for insurgents, grew significantly in 2011 with soaring prices and expanded cultivation, according to a U.N. report.
In 2011, the farm-gate value of opium production more than doubled from the year previously to $1.4 billion and now accounts for 15 percent of the economy, the UNODC said.
Despite a recovery in the poppy crop after an outbreak of disease in 2010, opium prices remain high even as supplies increase without a rise in demand because Afghans throughout the drug supply chain fret over future stability, Lemahieu said.
"A lot of people were buying the opium and the cannabis as a kind of gold standard, as a kind of security, financial guarantee for a very insecure future," Lemahieu said.
"Wall Street principles are being applied by the Kandahar farmers every day," he said of one of Afghanistan's top poppy producing provinces.
With foreign combat forces leaving by end-2014, and with much of their cash and air power expected to go with them, the Afghan government will need more help fighting poppy cultivation, experts say.
Afghanistan holds national elections in 2014 but President Hamid Karzai is barred from standing again, upping the stakes for political elites vying for power in a society riven by ethnic divisions and myriad feuds.
That uncertainty will help fuel an expected increase in opium production over the coming years as people seeking to influence politics scramble for more cash to fund patronage networks, Lemahieu said.
"The unclear political transition post 2014 is a major driver for an increase of the informal, illicit economy, in which the narco industry forms an essential part," he said.
"That insecurity, that instability, that uneasiness with this big question mark post 2014 is driving so many people towards making sure that they have the war chests filled, because we just don't know what the future is to bring."
(Editing by Alison Williams)
By Jack Kimball
Thu Apr 5, 2012 10:01pm IST
Reuters
(KABUL) - Opium is emerging as a new gold standard in Afghanistan, where traders and farmers are hoarding the drug as a source of ready cash t o hedge against the risk of a power vacuum when foreign troops leave, the country's U.N. drugs tsar said.
Fear is mounting amongst Afghans and foreign governments alike that the planned pullout of most NATO combat troops by the end of 2014 and Afghan national elections in the same year could see the country engulfed in more conflict.
"You see suddenly people are rushing to opium and cannabis as in the euro zone we were rushing to the Swiss franc before the euro," Jean-Luc Lemahieu, head of the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime in Afghanistan, told Reuters in an interview.
"It is hedging for a very insecure future indeed, it's basically an economic reflex, understandable by itself, toward a very insecure question mark, what will I be, where will I be, how will I be and my family too," he said.
Afghanistan supplies about 90 percent of the world's opium, from which heroin is made. Corruption also infects many aspects of life and the buoyant drug trade flourishes.
The poppy economy in Afghanistan, which provides an income for insurgents, grew significantly in 2011 with soaring prices and expanded cultivation, according to a U.N. report.
In 2011, the farm-gate value of opium production more than doubled from the year previously to $1.4 billion and now accounts for 15 percent of the economy, the UNODC said.
Despite a recovery in the poppy crop after an outbreak of disease in 2010, opium prices remain high even as supplies increase without a rise in demand because Afghans throughout the drug supply chain fret over future stability, Lemahieu said.
"A lot of people were buying the opium and the cannabis as a kind of gold standard, as a kind of security, financial guarantee for a very insecure future," Lemahieu said.
"Wall Street principles are being applied by the Kandahar farmers every day," he said of one of Afghanistan's top poppy producing provinces.
With foreign combat forces leaving by end-2014, and with much of their cash and air power expected to go with them, the Afghan government will need more help fighting poppy cultivation, experts say.
Afghanistan holds national elections in 2014 but President Hamid Karzai is barred from standing again, upping the stakes for political elites vying for power in a society riven by ethnic divisions and myriad feuds.
That uncertainty will help fuel an expected increase in opium production over the coming years as people seeking to influence politics scramble for more cash to fund patronage networks, Lemahieu said.
"The unclear political transition post 2014 is a major driver for an increase of the informal, illicit economy, in which the narco industry forms an essential part," he said.
"That insecurity, that instability, that uneasiness with this big question mark post 2014 is driving so many people towards making sure that they have the war chests filled, because we just don't know what the future is to bring."
(Editing by Alison Williams)
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Amin Saikal projects consequences of early ISAF exit plan and analyzes three key factors in Afghan Taliban's staying power
This analysis was published five days before the Koran burning incident at Bagram Airfield, which touched off widespread rioting in Afghanistan and 'green on blue' murders in the ANSF.
A grim future for Afghanistan
Amin Saikal
February 15, 2012
ABC (Australia), The Drum Opinon
The United States has announced that it intends to withdraw most of its troops from Afghanistan a year earlier than it had originally declared. This is in sync with an earlier French pullout, but confusing for the Afghan government and music to the ears of the Taliban and their supporters.Meanwhile, a leaked secret NATO report has presented a very grim picture of the situation in Afghanistan. It clearly establishes the links between Pakistan's notorious military intelligence, the ISI, and points to the Taliban's growing strength and alludes to the militia's ability to regain power. The report makes very uncomfortable reading for the Karzai government and Washington. Yet these are not altogether new revelations.
It is a presidential election year in the US. President Barack Obama wishes to be seen as having fulfilled his pre-election promise to end America's involvement in the trillion-dollar wars of Iraq and Afghanistan. An indication of an early withdrawal from Afghanistan could also mean that Washington is preparing for a military showdown with Iran over the country's nuclear program, as the US remains conscious of not allowing too many American troops to become Iran's target in Afghanistan.
As for the NATO secret report, it essentially confirms what some Afghanistan specialists (including myself) have repeatedly been saying: Pakistan's notorious military intelligence service, ISI, continues to leverage the Taliban and their affiliates, the so-called Haqqani network, with a clear aim of securing a receptive government in Kabul in the wake of the US-led NATO troop withdrawal.
It also reinforces the view that the Taliban, as fractured as they may be, are doing a lot better than the Karzai government in winning over an increasing number of the Afghan people, especially among the ethnic Pashtuns, who form about 42 per cent of the Afghan population, with even some of the people within the Karzai government ready to jump ship. This is for a number of reasons. Chief among them are three.
First of all the Karzai government has remained extremely weak, dysfunctional, corrupt and untrustworthy. Most Afghans do not know what it precisely stands for: is it a perverted form of a politically pluralist Afghanistan with an Islamic face, with which most Afghans cannot identify, or a kind of tribalised authoritarian Muslim Afghanistan, with some distorted democratic trappings, which have proved to be very confusing to most Afghans?
As for the Taliban's stance, it is easily discernable by the mostly illiterate, conservative Muslim Afghan population: defence of Islam, country and honour.
Secondly, the US and its allies have pursued a strategy that has been inappropriate for Afghanistan's conditions. The shift from counter-terrorism to counter-insurgency under president Obama has been more in name than substance.
In the absence of a credible Afghan partner on the ground, no strategy can achieve its objectives. The US and its allies have certainly sunk a lot of money and energy into building the Afghan National Army and Police Force.
It all looks good in terms of numbers, but their ability to grow as coherent national forces able to take over security operations from foreign troops is highly doubtful. They remain very much captive of the dynamics of the mosaic nature of the Afghan society, with little or no identification with a central government for which they could fight.
Besides which, like the Karzai administration (if one can call it an administration), they are penetrated, at all levels, by the Taliban as well as an array of foreign intelligence services, most importantly the ISI.
Thirdly, there is no regional consensus on Afghanistan. The US and its allies have not given this a top priority, largely due to US-Iranian hostilities and an American inability to rein in the Pakistani military/ISI.
As long as these factors remain in place, the Taliban and their Pakistani backers have good reason to remain hopeful about their chances of succeeding in the end, but a Taliban takeover of power also carries the serious risk of non-Pashtun Afghan population clusters taking up arms once again to defend themselves, with Iran, India and Russia providing support. This would be a development that could plunge Afghanistan into a wider bloody conflict.
The Taliban and their Pakistani patrons are aware of this, and this is a challenge that they may try to address by enticing Karzai and some of his ministers, who are more keen to protect their interests than those of Afghanistan, to join them.In this, the 10,000-20,000 troops that the US may leave behind to man a few bases in Afghanistan for 'above the horizon' operations until 2024 may prove to be of little use in saving what Washington claims to be the momentum of stability in Afghanistan.
Amin Saikal is professor of Political Science and Director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (the Middle East and Central Asia) at the ANU. A new edition of his book Modern Afghanistan: A History of Struggle and Survival will be published in April. View his full profile here.
A grim future for Afghanistan
Amin Saikal
February 15, 2012
ABC (Australia), The Drum Opinon
The United States has announced that it intends to withdraw most of its troops from Afghanistan a year earlier than it had originally declared. This is in sync with an earlier French pullout, but confusing for the Afghan government and music to the ears of the Taliban and their supporters.Meanwhile, a leaked secret NATO report has presented a very grim picture of the situation in Afghanistan. It clearly establishes the links between Pakistan's notorious military intelligence, the ISI, and points to the Taliban's growing strength and alludes to the militia's ability to regain power. The report makes very uncomfortable reading for the Karzai government and Washington. Yet these are not altogether new revelations.
It is a presidential election year in the US. President Barack Obama wishes to be seen as having fulfilled his pre-election promise to end America's involvement in the trillion-dollar wars of Iraq and Afghanistan. An indication of an early withdrawal from Afghanistan could also mean that Washington is preparing for a military showdown with Iran over the country's nuclear program, as the US remains conscious of not allowing too many American troops to become Iran's target in Afghanistan.
As for the NATO secret report, it essentially confirms what some Afghanistan specialists (including myself) have repeatedly been saying: Pakistan's notorious military intelligence service, ISI, continues to leverage the Taliban and their affiliates, the so-called Haqqani network, with a clear aim of securing a receptive government in Kabul in the wake of the US-led NATO troop withdrawal.
It also reinforces the view that the Taliban, as fractured as they may be, are doing a lot better than the Karzai government in winning over an increasing number of the Afghan people, especially among the ethnic Pashtuns, who form about 42 per cent of the Afghan population, with even some of the people within the Karzai government ready to jump ship. This is for a number of reasons. Chief among them are three.
First of all the Karzai government has remained extremely weak, dysfunctional, corrupt and untrustworthy. Most Afghans do not know what it precisely stands for: is it a perverted form of a politically pluralist Afghanistan with an Islamic face, with which most Afghans cannot identify, or a kind of tribalised authoritarian Muslim Afghanistan, with some distorted democratic trappings, which have proved to be very confusing to most Afghans?
As for the Taliban's stance, it is easily discernable by the mostly illiterate, conservative Muslim Afghan population: defence of Islam, country and honour.
Secondly, the US and its allies have pursued a strategy that has been inappropriate for Afghanistan's conditions. The shift from counter-terrorism to counter-insurgency under president Obama has been more in name than substance.
In the absence of a credible Afghan partner on the ground, no strategy can achieve its objectives. The US and its allies have certainly sunk a lot of money and energy into building the Afghan National Army and Police Force.
It all looks good in terms of numbers, but their ability to grow as coherent national forces able to take over security operations from foreign troops is highly doubtful. They remain very much captive of the dynamics of the mosaic nature of the Afghan society, with little or no identification with a central government for which they could fight.
Besides which, like the Karzai administration (if one can call it an administration), they are penetrated, at all levels, by the Taliban as well as an array of foreign intelligence services, most importantly the ISI.
Thirdly, there is no regional consensus on Afghanistan. The US and its allies have not given this a top priority, largely due to US-Iranian hostilities and an American inability to rein in the Pakistani military/ISI.
As long as these factors remain in place, the Taliban and their Pakistani backers have good reason to remain hopeful about their chances of succeeding in the end, but a Taliban takeover of power also carries the serious risk of non-Pashtun Afghan population clusters taking up arms once again to defend themselves, with Iran, India and Russia providing support. This would be a development that could plunge Afghanistan into a wider bloody conflict.
The Taliban and their Pakistani patrons are aware of this, and this is a challenge that they may try to address by enticing Karzai and some of his ministers, who are more keen to protect their interests than those of Afghanistan, to join them.In this, the 10,000-20,000 troops that the US may leave behind to man a few bases in Afghanistan for 'above the horizon' operations until 2024 may prove to be of little use in saving what Washington claims to be the momentum of stability in Afghanistan.
Amin Saikal is professor of Political Science and Director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (the Middle East and Central Asia) at the ANU. A new edition of his book Modern Afghanistan: A History of Struggle and Survival will be published in April. View his full profile here.
U.S. still relying on Pakistan despite securing new supply exit routes from Afghanistan: the wages of a hasty retreat
The emphasis in the following report is mine.
U.S. Secures New Afghan Exit Routes
by Nathan Hodge
February 29, 2012
The Wall Street Journal
(WASHINGTON) The U.S. secured approval from several countries in Central Asia to move military cargo out of Afghanistan, the military's top logistics officer said, allowing for a withdrawal without relying mainly on Pakistan.Air Force Gen. William Fraser told lawmakers the U.S. had secured approval to move equipment through Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan and was exploring routes to move out armored vehicles as well as nonlethal supplies."We now have two-way approval to move equipment back out of Afghanistan," Gen. Fraser told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, referring to agreements to bring cargo both into Afghanistan and out through Central Asia. Russia and Uzbekistan also endorsed reverse transit routes, Gen. Fraser told lawmakers.
Military logistics in Afghanistan have been complicated in recent months by rocky relations between the U.S. and Pakistan. Planners were forced to reroute cargo into Afghanistan late last year when Pakistan closed border crossings to U.S. and allied supply convoys after a U.S. airstrike killed Pakistani troops.
Much of the traffic shifted to the so-called Northern Distribution Network, a system of overland supply lines that begins at Baltic and Black sea ports and winds across Central Asia. But that network primarily moves cargo in one direction, into Afghanistan. U.S. officials have sought to persuade countries in the region to reverse the route.
Gen. Fraser, who heads the arm of the military that oversees logistics, said that moving equipment out of landlocked Afghanistan is a daunting task, and that reopening overland supply lines across Pakistan would be crucial to withdrawal.
"We need the Pakistan [ground lines of communication] open, because of the large numbers that we're talking about that we need to bring out in a timely manner," he said.
U.K. defense officials are also pursuing new exit routes from Afghanistan. U.K. Defense Secretary Philip Hammond signed an agreement in Kazakhstan on Monday allowing overflight access to move military equipment to and from Afghanistan, and the U.K. and Kazakhstan agreed to start negotiations on overland transit.Mr. Hammond was also scheduled to hold a series of meetings on the subject in Uzbekistan, according to a statement from the defense ministry. U.K. officials are also visiting Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.
"It's vital that we secure the supply lines we need to get our equipment home as combat operations finish by the end of 2014," Mr. Hammond said in a statement. "We have a major logistical operation to undertake to get around 11,000 containers and around 3,000 armored vehicles back from Afghanistan and we will need to work with our partners in the region to do so."
******
U.S. Secures New Afghan Exit Routes
by Nathan Hodge
February 29, 2012
The Wall Street Journal
(WASHINGTON) The U.S. secured approval from several countries in Central Asia to move military cargo out of Afghanistan, the military's top logistics officer said, allowing for a withdrawal without relying mainly on Pakistan.Air Force Gen. William Fraser told lawmakers the U.S. had secured approval to move equipment through Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan and was exploring routes to move out armored vehicles as well as nonlethal supplies."We now have two-way approval to move equipment back out of Afghanistan," Gen. Fraser told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, referring to agreements to bring cargo both into Afghanistan and out through Central Asia. Russia and Uzbekistan also endorsed reverse transit routes, Gen. Fraser told lawmakers.
Military logistics in Afghanistan have been complicated in recent months by rocky relations between the U.S. and Pakistan. Planners were forced to reroute cargo into Afghanistan late last year when Pakistan closed border crossings to U.S. and allied supply convoys after a U.S. airstrike killed Pakistani troops.
Much of the traffic shifted to the so-called Northern Distribution Network, a system of overland supply lines that begins at Baltic and Black sea ports and winds across Central Asia. But that network primarily moves cargo in one direction, into Afghanistan. U.S. officials have sought to persuade countries in the region to reverse the route.
Gen. Fraser, who heads the arm of the military that oversees logistics, said that moving equipment out of landlocked Afghanistan is a daunting task, and that reopening overland supply lines across Pakistan would be crucial to withdrawal.
"We need the Pakistan [ground lines of communication] open, because of the large numbers that we're talking about that we need to bring out in a timely manner," he said.
U.K. defense officials are also pursuing new exit routes from Afghanistan. U.K. Defense Secretary Philip Hammond signed an agreement in Kazakhstan on Monday allowing overflight access to move military equipment to and from Afghanistan, and the U.K. and Kazakhstan agreed to start negotiations on overland transit.Mr. Hammond was also scheduled to hold a series of meetings on the subject in Uzbekistan, according to a statement from the defense ministry. U.K. officials are also visiting Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.
"It's vital that we secure the supply lines we need to get our equipment home as combat operations finish by the end of 2014," Mr. Hammond said in a statement. "We have a major logistical operation to undertake to get around 11,000 containers and around 3,000 armored vehicles back from Afghanistan and we will need to work with our partners in the region to do so."
******
More than a year ago White House and NATO held up plans to increase Afghan troops. The results today.
2011: Obama plans to begin a U.S. drawdown in July, and officials have said that training is on schedule to meet the current goal of 305,000 Afghan forces in the field by October.
2012: But Obama's funding request indicates that the decision has already been made. There will be no contingency for maintaining the ANSF at its full strength. In other words, Obama has decided that Afghanistan's security forces will be significantly reduced after 2014, regardless of the security situation and the status of Taliban reconciliation.
Two reports, published more than a year apart at Bloomberg and Long War Journal, point to the counterproductive U.S./NATO approach to their own war plan. Below are both reports. Note the discussion of the Pakistan factor in the Bloomberg report. As preface to the reports I'm posting two important commentaries about the funding of the ANSF that are in the comment section for the LWJ report:
The White House and NATO are holding up a decision on increasing the size of Afghan security forces because of their concerns over the cost and possible objections from Pakistan, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin said.
Levin said he urged President Barack Obama at a White House event yesterday to approve an increase in the goal for the number of Afghan soldiers and police officers to 378,000, beyond the current plan to field 305,000 by October. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen and Army General David Petraeus, the top commander in Afghanistan, have all recommended the increase, Levin said.
“I urged the president strongly and with very direct words that this needed to be done,” Levin told reporters at the Capitol in Washington today after returning from a week-long trip to Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen. The decision is necessary “to enhance the possibilities of success of our mission and to speed up the reduction of our forces,” he said.
The coalition fighting in Afghanistan, led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, aims to turn back the Taliban and build an Afghan army and police force to take over from the foreign troops. Obama plans to begin a U.S. drawdown in July, and officials have said that training is on schedule to meet the current goal of 305,000 Afghan forces in the field by October.
The Pakistan Factor
In addition to the concerns over cost, the U.S. may be considering objections from Pakistan to having so many Afghan troops across the border, Levin said. Such an objection would be “interesting,” considering that Pakistan has often blamed Afghanistan for not controlling the flow of fighters over its border.
“They can’t have it both ways,” Levin said. “If they want the Afghans to take greater responsibility on their side of the border to stop the flow, then they should not object to the Afghan security forces being enlarged.”
******
US funding request calls for reduction in Afghan security forces after 2014By CJ Radin
March 29, 2012 12:51 PM
President Obama has made a request for the "post-2014" funding of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). According to The Washington Post:
The US and the international community currently pay for the vast majority of ANSF expenses, with the US providing most of the funds.
The ANSF has been steadily growing in size and will reach its goal of 352,000 troops later this year. The plan is to maintain that size until the end of 2014. The post-2014 plan had not been decided. But questions as to whether the ANSF should be maintained in future at the 352,000-troop level (at a cost of $6 billion per year), or instead its size and cost should be cut, have been under consideration.
Discussions on this topic began last September, and a proposal was put forward at a NATO conference in February this year. Now, Obama is moving ahead with a formal request for funds. With the request, as reported in The Washington Post, it is apparent that the question of the future size of the ANSF has been answered:
The real decision made
One important point should to be noted. The budget "assumes successful reconciliation with the Taliban." That is a difficult assumption to make at this time.
In his testimony to Congress last week, General John Allen, commander of ISAF forces in Afghanistan, said the decision to reduce the size of the ANSF had not yet been made, and that the decision would be contingent upon the security situation having improved enough to justify the cut. One would assume that the best time to make that determination would be sometime in 2014 when the security situation, and the status of "Taliban reconciliation," would be clearer.
But Obama's funding request indicates that the decision has already been made. There will be no contingency for maintaining the ANSF at its full strength. In other words, Obama has decided that Afghanistan's security forces will be significantly reduced after 2014, regardless of the security situation and the status of Taliban reconciliation.
2012: But Obama's funding request indicates that the decision has already been made. There will be no contingency for maintaining the ANSF at its full strength. In other words, Obama has decided that Afghanistan's security forces will be significantly reduced after 2014, regardless of the security situation and the status of Taliban reconciliation.
Two reports, published more than a year apart at Bloomberg and Long War Journal, point to the counterproductive U.S./NATO approach to their own war plan. Below are both reports. Note the discussion of the Pakistan factor in the Bloomberg report. As preface to the reports I'm posting two important commentaries about the funding of the ANSF that are in the comment section for the LWJ report:
Posted by jean at March 30, 2012 12:34 PM ET:From Bloomberg report, January 25, 2011:
In terms of government spending 4 billion is not a huge amount; look at the aid provided to other countries.
It has been several years since my direct involvement with ANSF so my perspective is dated. The progress that has been achieved is not sustainable. The culture of corruption is deeply embedded in the current IRoG.
Afghan Engineering Departmant (AED) has built significant infrastructure for the ANA/ANP. However, can they maintain it? Camp Blessing in Kunar is not a good example. Blessing was a former ODA base that became Task force HQ. It was handed over to the ANA in 2010. We were forced to re-occupy within a year. The base was in complete disrepair and looted of all valuables. Not to mention the spread of AQ/TAB influence right to the front gate.
I had a great discussion with a Bundeswehr Colonel about police training. His contention was that we (ISAF) had already trained thousands of ANP officers in 2003-2008, but the ministries could not account for the money or what happened to the trained officers. He dealt with the same issues concerning fielding of equipment or actually the diversion of equipment, embezzlement of pay, and turnover/job abandonment. All the issues that we faced in RC east.
Posted by Neo at March 31, 2012 10:57 AM ET:
Insurance losses alone from 9/11 cost upward $32.5 billion. That doesn’t even start to include all of the other slightly less direct losses such as business & airline disruption, extra security costs. Mass casualty attacks are expensive. We can't affort to maintain our current level of expenditure fending them off but it will continue to be expensive even at a much lower level. An extra billion or two added to $4.1 billion to prop up the Afghan government isn’t out of proportion even if aid only buys you a few years. What ever doubts you have about the long term viability of the project, what is the use in projecting a short budget. If the Afghan army cannot sustain it’s current size than budget accordingly when faced with that dilemma.
On a side note: The Taliban isn’t going to negotiate a meaningful agreement with the Afghan government. Hard core Islamists don’t consider agreements with unworthy parties to be binding.
The White House and NATO are holding up a decision on increasing the size of Afghan security forces because of their concerns over the cost and possible objections from Pakistan, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin said.
Levin said he urged President Barack Obama at a White House event yesterday to approve an increase in the goal for the number of Afghan soldiers and police officers to 378,000, beyond the current plan to field 305,000 by October. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen and Army General David Petraeus, the top commander in Afghanistan, have all recommended the increase, Levin said.
“I urged the president strongly and with very direct words that this needed to be done,” Levin told reporters at the Capitol in Washington today after returning from a week-long trip to Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen. The decision is necessary “to enhance the possibilities of success of our mission and to speed up the reduction of our forces,” he said.
The coalition fighting in Afghanistan, led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, aims to turn back the Taliban and build an Afghan army and police force to take over from the foreign troops. Obama plans to begin a U.S. drawdown in July, and officials have said that training is on schedule to meet the current goal of 305,000 Afghan forces in the field by October.
The Pakistan Factor
In addition to the concerns over cost, the U.S. may be considering objections from Pakistan to having so many Afghan troops across the border, Levin said. Such an objection would be “interesting,” considering that Pakistan has often blamed Afghanistan for not controlling the flow of fighters over its border.
“They can’t have it both ways,” Levin said. “If they want the Afghans to take greater responsibility on their side of the border to stop the flow, then they should not object to the Afghan security forces being enlarged.”
******
US funding request calls for reduction in Afghan security forces after 2014By CJ Radin
March 29, 2012 12:51 PM
President Obama has made a request for the "post-2014" funding of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). According to The Washington Post:
The Obama administration has made an urgent appeal for international donors to pledge more money to pay for Afghanistan's security forces after the departure of U.S. and coalition combat troops at the end of 2014.The size of the ANSF
In formal diplomatic demarches sent to 64 countries this month, and in direct appeals by President Obama and top national security aides, the administration has outlined a $4.1 billion annual budget for the Afghan army and police, according to U.S. and foreign officials.
The US and the international community currently pay for the vast majority of ANSF expenses, with the US providing most of the funds.
The ANSF has been steadily growing in size and will reach its goal of 352,000 troops later this year. The plan is to maintain that size until the end of 2014. The post-2014 plan had not been decided. But questions as to whether the ANSF should be maintained in future at the 352,000-troop level (at a cost of $6 billion per year), or instead its size and cost should be cut, have been under consideration.
Discussions on this topic began last September, and a proposal was put forward at a NATO conference in February this year. Now, Obama is moving ahead with a formal request for funds. With the request, as reported in The Washington Post, it is apparent that the question of the future size of the ANSF has been answered:
The combined Afghan force is expected to reach a target strength of 352,000 in October.... The post-2014 budget ... anticipates additional savings from a reduction in the size of the force of up to one-third by 2017, a projection that assumes successful reconciliation with the Taliban.A budget of $4.1 billion per year dictates that the ANSF will be cut by one-third, from 352,000 to 230,000 troops, after 2014.
The real decision made
One important point should to be noted. The budget "assumes successful reconciliation with the Taliban." That is a difficult assumption to make at this time.
In his testimony to Congress last week, General John Allen, commander of ISAF forces in Afghanistan, said the decision to reduce the size of the ANSF had not yet been made, and that the decision would be contingent upon the security situation having improved enough to justify the cut. One would assume that the best time to make that determination would be sometime in 2014 when the security situation, and the status of "Taliban reconciliation," would be clearer.
But Obama's funding request indicates that the decision has already been made. There will be no contingency for maintaining the ANSF at its full strength. In other words, Obama has decided that Afghanistan's security forces will be significantly reduced after 2014, regardless of the security situation and the status of Taliban reconciliation.
Almost a year ago US-Afghan governments were close to signing strategic pact. What happened?
Meanwhile, Deputy Leader of the High Peace Council, Mr. Abdul Hakim Mujahid said, he suspected the Taliban had intensified their insurgency in response to the prospect of the pact. “They want to put pressure on the world community and Afghan government,” he said.
USA and Afghanistan close to signing strategic pact
Khaama Press
August 20, 2011
According to reports, America and Afghanistan are close to signing a strategic pact which would allow thousands of United States troops to remain in the country until at least 2024.
The reports further added, the agreement would allow not only military trainers to stay to build up the Afghan army and police, but also American special forces soldiers and air power to remain.
This comes as the prospect of such a deal has already been met with anger among Afghanistan’s neighbours including, publicly, Iran and, privately, Pakistan.
Meanwhile, a senior member of Afghan Peace Council said, it also risks being rejected by the Taliban and derailing any attempt to coax them to the negotiating table.
On the other hand, withdrawal of American troops has already begun following an agreement to hand over security for the country to Kabul by the end of 2014.
Foreign forces withdrawal from Afghanistan has also caused tensions among Afghans, wary of being abandoned are keen to lock America into a longer partnership after the deadline. Many analysts also believe the American military would like to retain a presence close to Pakistan, Iran and China.
But both Afghan and American officials said that they hoped to sign the pact before the Bonn Conference on Afghanistan in December.
Meanwhile, Barack Obama and Hamid Karzai agreed last week to escalate the negotiations and their national security advisers will meet in Washington in September.
Rangin Dadfar Spanta, Mr Karzai’s top security adviser quoted by The Daily Telegraph said, “remarkable progress” had been made. US officials have said they would be disappointed if a deal could not be reached by December and that the majority of small print had been agreed.
Dr. Spanta further added, a longer-term presence was crucial not only to build Afghan forces, but also to fight terrorism.
He said, “If the Americans provide us weapons and equipment, they need facilities to bring that equipment. If they train our police and soldiers, then those trainers will not be 10 or 20, they will be thousands.”
Dr. Spanta also said, “We know we will be confronted with international terrorists. 2014, is not the end of international terrorist networks and we have a common commitment to fight them. For this purpose also, the US needs facilities.”
Meanwhile, he predicted that Afghan forces would still need support from US fighter aircraft and helicopters. In the past, Washington officials have estimated a total of 25,000 troops may be needed.
Dr. Spanta said, “In the Afghan proposal we are talking about 10 years from 2014, but this is under discussion.”
He said, America would not be granted its own bases, and would be a guest on Afghan bases, he said. Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s neighboring countries; Pakistan and Iran were also deeply opposed to the deal.
In reaction to permanent US military bases in Afghanistan, Andrey Avetisyan, Russian ambassador to Kabul, said: “Afghanistan needs many other things apart from the permanent military presence of some countries. It needs economic help and it needs peace. Military bases are not a tool for peace.
Andrey said, “I don’t understand why such bases are needed. If the job is done, if terrorism is defeated and peace and stability is brought back, then why would you need bases?
Andrey further added, “If the job is not done, then several thousand troops, even special forces, will not be able to do the job that 150,000 troops couldn’t do. It is not possible.”
Meanwhile, Deputy Leader of the High Peace Council, Mr. Abdul Hakim Mujahid said, he suspected the Taliban had intensified their insurgency in response to the prospect of the pact. “They want to put pressure on the world community and Afghan government,” he said.
USA and Afghanistan close to signing strategic pact
Khaama Press
August 20, 2011
According to reports, America and Afghanistan are close to signing a strategic pact which would allow thousands of United States troops to remain in the country until at least 2024.
The reports further added, the agreement would allow not only military trainers to stay to build up the Afghan army and police, but also American special forces soldiers and air power to remain.
This comes as the prospect of such a deal has already been met with anger among Afghanistan’s neighbours including, publicly, Iran and, privately, Pakistan.
Meanwhile, a senior member of Afghan Peace Council said, it also risks being rejected by the Taliban and derailing any attempt to coax them to the negotiating table.
On the other hand, withdrawal of American troops has already begun following an agreement to hand over security for the country to Kabul by the end of 2014.
Foreign forces withdrawal from Afghanistan has also caused tensions among Afghans, wary of being abandoned are keen to lock America into a longer partnership after the deadline. Many analysts also believe the American military would like to retain a presence close to Pakistan, Iran and China.
But both Afghan and American officials said that they hoped to sign the pact before the Bonn Conference on Afghanistan in December.
Meanwhile, Barack Obama and Hamid Karzai agreed last week to escalate the negotiations and their national security advisers will meet in Washington in September.
Rangin Dadfar Spanta, Mr Karzai’s top security adviser quoted by The Daily Telegraph said, “remarkable progress” had been made. US officials have said they would be disappointed if a deal could not be reached by December and that the majority of small print had been agreed.
Dr. Spanta further added, a longer-term presence was crucial not only to build Afghan forces, but also to fight terrorism.
He said, “If the Americans provide us weapons and equipment, they need facilities to bring that equipment. If they train our police and soldiers, then those trainers will not be 10 or 20, they will be thousands.”
Dr. Spanta also said, “We know we will be confronted with international terrorists. 2014, is not the end of international terrorist networks and we have a common commitment to fight them. For this purpose also, the US needs facilities.”
Meanwhile, he predicted that Afghan forces would still need support from US fighter aircraft and helicopters. In the past, Washington officials have estimated a total of 25,000 troops may be needed.
Dr. Spanta said, “In the Afghan proposal we are talking about 10 years from 2014, but this is under discussion.”
He said, America would not be granted its own bases, and would be a guest on Afghan bases, he said. Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s neighboring countries; Pakistan and Iran were also deeply opposed to the deal.
In reaction to permanent US military bases in Afghanistan, Andrey Avetisyan, Russian ambassador to Kabul, said: “Afghanistan needs many other things apart from the permanent military presence of some countries. It needs economic help and it needs peace. Military bases are not a tool for peace.
Andrey said, “I don’t understand why such bases are needed. If the job is done, if terrorism is defeated and peace and stability is brought back, then why would you need bases?
Andrey further added, “If the job is not done, then several thousand troops, even special forces, will not be able to do the job that 150,000 troops couldn’t do. It is not possible.”
Meanwhile, Deputy Leader of the High Peace Council, Mr. Abdul Hakim Mujahid said, he suspected the Taliban had intensified their insurgency in response to the prospect of the pact. “They want to put pressure on the world community and Afghan government,” he said.
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Arguments for and against continuing the Afghan War
Two recent op-eds published in the British press -- one by Gideon Rachman for the Financial Times (The west has lost in Afghanistan), the other by Con Coughlin for the Telegraph (The West will pay a terrible price if we leave Afghanistan in the lurch) mirror the debate in the United States about whether the ISAF-led war is worth continuing and whether it can be won. Coughlin's highly emotional appeal is offset by Rachman's wry recitation of grim facts.
I think the best resolution to the debate is found outside the two views. The West can't wash its hands of the war but it can continue trying to do so in ways that only prolong the worst aspects of the war. The latest hastily improvised war 'plan' helps the very people the U.S. went into Afghanistan to fight, and exacerbates the very conditions in the Afghan government and society that the ISAF countries find most counterproductive to the war and stabilization efforts in the country.
So this is one person in the two-man canoe bailing water while the other scoops water from the lake and dumps it in the canoe. This is a comedy routine, not a war plan or even an exit plan.
The west has lost in Afghanistan
by Gideon Rachman
March 27, 2012
The Financial Times
Five years ago the Americans were refusing to speak to the Taliban. Now the Taliban are refusing to speak to the Americans. That is a measure of how the balance of power has shifted in Afghanistan. The western intervention there has failed. As Nato prepares to withdraw from the country in 2014, it is only the scale of the defeat that remains to be determined.
A senior Pakistani official comments sardonically: “I remember when the Americans used to say that the only good Taliban was a dead Taliban. Then they talked about separating the reconcilable from the irreconcilable. Now, they say, the Taliban are not our enemy.” In fact, Nato and Taliban forces are still enemies on the battlefield. But in a desperate effort to leave behind a stable Afghanistan, the US and its allies are also battling to include the Taliban in the political process. However, the Taliban are in no rush to negotiate – and recently broke off talks. With western troops on their way out, there is little pressure on them to compromise now.
Although it was the presence of al-Qaeda that led Nato into Afghanistan, the dreadful nature of the Taliban regime gave the fight an extra moral dimension. Visiting western politicians were always eager to visit a newly opened girls’ school – and to stress the progress for women’s rights.
The Americans insist that the Taliban’s participation in the political process is still dependent on them accepting the current Afghan constitution, which contains all sorts of protections for human rights, and commitments to gender equality. But Afghan reality never matched the words on the page. As one EU foreign minister says: “Three-quarters of the population can’t actually read the constitution, because they are illiterate.”
Even under the current government, the situation of Afghan women is pretty grim. Last week Human Rights Watch released a report highlighting the hundreds of women who are currently jailed in Afghanistan for “moral crimes”, such as resisting a forced marriage, or even complaining about rape. But there have been gains for women, too, particularly in schools and in the cities – and these are likely to be threatened as the Taliban regains influence. For Hillary Clinton, who has made the promotion of women’s rights a theme of her time at the US state department, this must be an especially bitter pill.
The reality, however, is that the killing of Osama bin Laden last year has given the US government all the “closure” it needs to justify a withdrawal from Afghanistan. Nato’s goals for the country are now minimal and focused entirely on security: Afghanistan must never again provide a haven for terrorists – and the country must not become a “failed state”.
Even these minimal goals may not be achieved. The focus of Nato’s efforts has been training and equipping the Afghan security forces, so that they can take over from western troops. But funding the Afghan military costs $8bn-$9bn a year. Will the west continue to be willing to plough that sort of money into Afghanistan – with so many competing claims on funds? If not, as Carl Bildt, the Swedish foreign minister put it at this weekend’s Brussels forum: “We will have given 100,000 people training and a gun, and then made them unemployed.”
Even if the Afghan military hangs together, Afghanistan is quite likely to descend into civil war. That, in turn, is likely to continue to further radicalise the Pakistani Taliban – because of the tribal, military and religious links on either side of the border.
When President Barack Obama came to power, he privately labelled Pakistan “the most frightening country in the world” – and insisted that the Afghan problem could not be separated from the fate of its much larger neighbour: hence the insistence on the ugly term “AfPak”. In the rush to get western troops out of Afghanistan, however, the Pakistani problem is in danger of being neglected.
That too is a mistake, because the situation in Pakistan is just as frightening as when Mr Obama took power. Mr Bildt, a recent visitor to the country, describes it as being in the grip of “hysterical anti-Americanism”. That mood will only be intensified by the news over the weekend that no US servicemen will face charges over the Nato air strike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers last November.
The idea that the US is plotting to seize Pakistan’s nuclear weapons has become an obsession, both for the Pakistani media and for much of the country’s ruling class. In response, Pakistan is cranking up the production of nuclear weapons and distributing them all over the country. Given the radicalisation of opinion in the country and the amount of fissile material it is producing, the American nightmare of “loose nukes” is looking uncomfortably realistic.
As a result, the US will remain deeply engaged in counter-terrorism in south Asia. But the drone strikes on jihadists in the tribal areas of Pakistan – which have been the source of America’s biggest successes – are a double-edged sword. They have devastated the leadership of al-Qaeda. But they have also fed the rampant anti-Americanism that can breed the next generation of terrorists.
As a top Pakistani official puts it: “The number three in al-Qaeda has been killed at least five times. But there is always a new number three. It is the mentality that gives rise to al-Qaeda that you need to defeat.” Unfortunately, that mentality is once again on the rise – in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.
****END****
The West will pay a terrible price if we leave Afghanistan in the lurch
By Con Coughlin
March 30, 2012
Telegraph
The regime in Kabul needs significant military and financial aid to hold off the Taliban after Nato's withdrawal.
As someone who has been an unapologetic defender of the military campaign in Afghanistan, I found visiting the British war cemetery in Kabul this week a deeply humbling experience.
Set into the crumbling, whitewashed walls is a poignant memorial to all our brave men and women who have lost their lives fighting for a cause few these days either comprehend or support. The plaque listing their names is next to a monument to the victims of another era of British military involvement in Afghanistan – those who perished in our two ill-fated military interventions in the 19th century.
There had been 150 neatly marked graves in the cemetery of those who fought in the campaigns of 1839-1842 and 1879-1881, but when British troops returned to Kabul in 2001, following the overthrow of the Taliban, they found the cemetery had been desecrated, the headstones vandalised – no doubt the doing of Taliban sympathisers. The headstones have since been lovingly restored.
But I am struck by this awful thought: unless there is a radical change in the way the conflict is going, the well-tended graveyard may once again end up being pulled apart by a resurgent Taliban.
When I entered the cemetery, the total number of British war dead in Afghanistan stood at 405; by the time I left an hour later, that had risen to 407. Two soldiers had been shot dead by an Afghan officer who had, apparently, taken exception to their refusal to grant him permission to enter the British base at Lashkar Gar because he did not have proper accreditation.
What is particularly depressing about this “green on blue” incident – in Nato-speak, the Afghans are “green” and Nato soldiers are “blue” – is that one of the main reasons we still have a division deployed to southern Afghanistan is to help transform the native security forces into a credible fighting unit. If our troops are to be withdrawn from harm’s way, then the Afghans need to reach a level of competence and effectiveness that enables them to take charge of their country’s security, rather than relying on a motley collection of foreign forces – there are currently 50 nations contributing to Nato’s mission – to do the job for them.
Why not let them sort out their own mess, I hear you cry? We have paid a high enough price for this benighted country, and all the thanks we get is Afghans turning their guns on our soldiers. If only it were that easy.
Politicians on both side of the Atlantic are determined that, at the very latest, all Nato combat operations will have ceased by the end of 2014. The only problem with this laudable plan is that, as things stand, there is no realistic prospect of the Afghans being in a position to take care of themselves in two years’ time.
For a start, their security and police forces, though vastly improved from the rabble inherited by Nato when it first deployed to the country in the summer of 2006, rely heavily on the backing of Western troops – primarily American and British – to conduct missions.
And it is likely that they are going to need our support well beyond the proposed withdrawal date. Afghan army recruits have proved themselves to be good fighters – which is hardly surprising in a country where random butchery is a national pastime. But sustaining a competent military operation requires more than good fighting qualities: logistics, intelligence and air support also have a crucial role to play.
If, however, the West’s support for Afghanistan after the 2014 withdrawal amounts to no more than running the equivalent of Sandhurst in Kabul, as outlined by Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, this week, then the country’s military will simply collapse, with all the implications that will have for their security and ours.
“It is wishful thinking to think the Afghans can stand on their own when we finish fighting in 2014,” a senior Nato official told me in Kabul. “They are going to need all kinds of help – helicopters, intelligence, training – if they are going to be able to stand up to the Taliban and their allies when we leave.”
There is certainly no suggestion that the Taliban and their al-Qaeda allies are on the point of renouncing their campaign of terror against the West and allowing Afghanistan to settle back into its former role as Central Asia’s main trading hub.
The almost daily attacks on Nato forces suggest the Taliban has no desire to commit to peace negotiations, while the recent spate of shootings by an al-Qaeda gunman in Toulouse has again highlighted the value of southern Afghanistan as a training centre for Islamist militants. Mohamed Merah, the 24-year-old Frenchman who killed seven people during a week-long shooting spree, visited Kandahar as recently as 2010, as part of his rite of passage from petty criminal to full-blown al-Qaeda terrorist.
Intelligence officials have told me that there are hundreds of al-Qaeda sympathisers in neighbouring Pakistan just waiting for the opportunity to return to Afghanistan and re-establish the training camps that were used to mastermind the September 11 attacks.
The other area where the West must demonstrate its commitment after 2014 is in its willingness to continue financing the Afghan government and military for at least another decade, until the country is able to develop its economy to the point where it can pay for itself. Compared to the tens of billions of dollars that have poured in during the past decade, the cost of post-2014 support is a relatively modest $4.3 billion.
But such is the general mood of apathy in the West that it is proving difficult even to raise this sum ahead of May’s Nato summit in Chicago, when the future of Western commitment will be discussed.
Sir William Patey, who retires as Britain’s ambassador to Kabul today , told me when I visited him at his office at the heavily fortified British Embassy that “we should get out now” if we were not prepared, at the very least, to fund the Afghans until 2024. Britain’s policy of withdrawing its troops and leaving the country in a stable state “is totally dependent on the international community to bankroll the Afghans for a number of years to come”, he said.
Certainly, if Afghanistan is allowed to revert to its former anarchy, then many more deluded young men like Mohamed Merah will be making their way to al-Qaeda training camps in the country.
And if that happens, then the sacrifices of the brave British men and women who are commemorated in the military cemetery in Kabul will have been in vain.
****END****
I think the best resolution to the debate is found outside the two views. The West can't wash its hands of the war but it can continue trying to do so in ways that only prolong the worst aspects of the war. The latest hastily improvised war 'plan' helps the very people the U.S. went into Afghanistan to fight, and exacerbates the very conditions in the Afghan government and society that the ISAF countries find most counterproductive to the war and stabilization efforts in the country.
So this is one person in the two-man canoe bailing water while the other scoops water from the lake and dumps it in the canoe. This is a comedy routine, not a war plan or even an exit plan.
The west has lost in Afghanistan
by Gideon Rachman
March 27, 2012
The Financial Times
Five years ago the Americans were refusing to speak to the Taliban. Now the Taliban are refusing to speak to the Americans. That is a measure of how the balance of power has shifted in Afghanistan. The western intervention there has failed. As Nato prepares to withdraw from the country in 2014, it is only the scale of the defeat that remains to be determined.
A senior Pakistani official comments sardonically: “I remember when the Americans used to say that the only good Taliban was a dead Taliban. Then they talked about separating the reconcilable from the irreconcilable. Now, they say, the Taliban are not our enemy.” In fact, Nato and Taliban forces are still enemies on the battlefield. But in a desperate effort to leave behind a stable Afghanistan, the US and its allies are also battling to include the Taliban in the political process. However, the Taliban are in no rush to negotiate – and recently broke off talks. With western troops on their way out, there is little pressure on them to compromise now.
Although it was the presence of al-Qaeda that led Nato into Afghanistan, the dreadful nature of the Taliban regime gave the fight an extra moral dimension. Visiting western politicians were always eager to visit a newly opened girls’ school – and to stress the progress for women’s rights.
The Americans insist that the Taliban’s participation in the political process is still dependent on them accepting the current Afghan constitution, which contains all sorts of protections for human rights, and commitments to gender equality. But Afghan reality never matched the words on the page. As one EU foreign minister says: “Three-quarters of the population can’t actually read the constitution, because they are illiterate.”
Even under the current government, the situation of Afghan women is pretty grim. Last week Human Rights Watch released a report highlighting the hundreds of women who are currently jailed in Afghanistan for “moral crimes”, such as resisting a forced marriage, or even complaining about rape. But there have been gains for women, too, particularly in schools and in the cities – and these are likely to be threatened as the Taliban regains influence. For Hillary Clinton, who has made the promotion of women’s rights a theme of her time at the US state department, this must be an especially bitter pill.
The reality, however, is that the killing of Osama bin Laden last year has given the US government all the “closure” it needs to justify a withdrawal from Afghanistan. Nato’s goals for the country are now minimal and focused entirely on security: Afghanistan must never again provide a haven for terrorists – and the country must not become a “failed state”.
Even these minimal goals may not be achieved. The focus of Nato’s efforts has been training and equipping the Afghan security forces, so that they can take over from western troops. But funding the Afghan military costs $8bn-$9bn a year. Will the west continue to be willing to plough that sort of money into Afghanistan – with so many competing claims on funds? If not, as Carl Bildt, the Swedish foreign minister put it at this weekend’s Brussels forum: “We will have given 100,000 people training and a gun, and then made them unemployed.”
Even if the Afghan military hangs together, Afghanistan is quite likely to descend into civil war. That, in turn, is likely to continue to further radicalise the Pakistani Taliban – because of the tribal, military and religious links on either side of the border.
When President Barack Obama came to power, he privately labelled Pakistan “the most frightening country in the world” – and insisted that the Afghan problem could not be separated from the fate of its much larger neighbour: hence the insistence on the ugly term “AfPak”. In the rush to get western troops out of Afghanistan, however, the Pakistani problem is in danger of being neglected.
That too is a mistake, because the situation in Pakistan is just as frightening as when Mr Obama took power. Mr Bildt, a recent visitor to the country, describes it as being in the grip of “hysterical anti-Americanism”. That mood will only be intensified by the news over the weekend that no US servicemen will face charges over the Nato air strike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers last November.
The idea that the US is plotting to seize Pakistan’s nuclear weapons has become an obsession, both for the Pakistani media and for much of the country’s ruling class. In response, Pakistan is cranking up the production of nuclear weapons and distributing them all over the country. Given the radicalisation of opinion in the country and the amount of fissile material it is producing, the American nightmare of “loose nukes” is looking uncomfortably realistic.
As a result, the US will remain deeply engaged in counter-terrorism in south Asia. But the drone strikes on jihadists in the tribal areas of Pakistan – which have been the source of America’s biggest successes – are a double-edged sword. They have devastated the leadership of al-Qaeda. But they have also fed the rampant anti-Americanism that can breed the next generation of terrorists.
As a top Pakistani official puts it: “The number three in al-Qaeda has been killed at least five times. But there is always a new number three. It is the mentality that gives rise to al-Qaeda that you need to defeat.” Unfortunately, that mentality is once again on the rise – in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.
****END****
The West will pay a terrible price if we leave Afghanistan in the lurch
By Con Coughlin
March 30, 2012
Telegraph
The regime in Kabul needs significant military and financial aid to hold off the Taliban after Nato's withdrawal.
As someone who has been an unapologetic defender of the military campaign in Afghanistan, I found visiting the British war cemetery in Kabul this week a deeply humbling experience.
Set into the crumbling, whitewashed walls is a poignant memorial to all our brave men and women who have lost their lives fighting for a cause few these days either comprehend or support. The plaque listing their names is next to a monument to the victims of another era of British military involvement in Afghanistan – those who perished in our two ill-fated military interventions in the 19th century.
There had been 150 neatly marked graves in the cemetery of those who fought in the campaigns of 1839-1842 and 1879-1881, but when British troops returned to Kabul in 2001, following the overthrow of the Taliban, they found the cemetery had been desecrated, the headstones vandalised – no doubt the doing of Taliban sympathisers. The headstones have since been lovingly restored.
But I am struck by this awful thought: unless there is a radical change in the way the conflict is going, the well-tended graveyard may once again end up being pulled apart by a resurgent Taliban.
When I entered the cemetery, the total number of British war dead in Afghanistan stood at 405; by the time I left an hour later, that had risen to 407. Two soldiers had been shot dead by an Afghan officer who had, apparently, taken exception to their refusal to grant him permission to enter the British base at Lashkar Gar because he did not have proper accreditation.
What is particularly depressing about this “green on blue” incident – in Nato-speak, the Afghans are “green” and Nato soldiers are “blue” – is that one of the main reasons we still have a division deployed to southern Afghanistan is to help transform the native security forces into a credible fighting unit. If our troops are to be withdrawn from harm’s way, then the Afghans need to reach a level of competence and effectiveness that enables them to take charge of their country’s security, rather than relying on a motley collection of foreign forces – there are currently 50 nations contributing to Nato’s mission – to do the job for them.
Why not let them sort out their own mess, I hear you cry? We have paid a high enough price for this benighted country, and all the thanks we get is Afghans turning their guns on our soldiers. If only it were that easy.
Politicians on both side of the Atlantic are determined that, at the very latest, all Nato combat operations will have ceased by the end of 2014. The only problem with this laudable plan is that, as things stand, there is no realistic prospect of the Afghans being in a position to take care of themselves in two years’ time.
For a start, their security and police forces, though vastly improved from the rabble inherited by Nato when it first deployed to the country in the summer of 2006, rely heavily on the backing of Western troops – primarily American and British – to conduct missions.
And it is likely that they are going to need our support well beyond the proposed withdrawal date. Afghan army recruits have proved themselves to be good fighters – which is hardly surprising in a country where random butchery is a national pastime. But sustaining a competent military operation requires more than good fighting qualities: logistics, intelligence and air support also have a crucial role to play.
If, however, the West’s support for Afghanistan after the 2014 withdrawal amounts to no more than running the equivalent of Sandhurst in Kabul, as outlined by Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, this week, then the country’s military will simply collapse, with all the implications that will have for their security and ours.
“It is wishful thinking to think the Afghans can stand on their own when we finish fighting in 2014,” a senior Nato official told me in Kabul. “They are going to need all kinds of help – helicopters, intelligence, training – if they are going to be able to stand up to the Taliban and their allies when we leave.”
There is certainly no suggestion that the Taliban and their al-Qaeda allies are on the point of renouncing their campaign of terror against the West and allowing Afghanistan to settle back into its former role as Central Asia’s main trading hub.
The almost daily attacks on Nato forces suggest the Taliban has no desire to commit to peace negotiations, while the recent spate of shootings by an al-Qaeda gunman in Toulouse has again highlighted the value of southern Afghanistan as a training centre for Islamist militants. Mohamed Merah, the 24-year-old Frenchman who killed seven people during a week-long shooting spree, visited Kandahar as recently as 2010, as part of his rite of passage from petty criminal to full-blown al-Qaeda terrorist.
Intelligence officials have told me that there are hundreds of al-Qaeda sympathisers in neighbouring Pakistan just waiting for the opportunity to return to Afghanistan and re-establish the training camps that were used to mastermind the September 11 attacks.
The other area where the West must demonstrate its commitment after 2014 is in its willingness to continue financing the Afghan government and military for at least another decade, until the country is able to develop its economy to the point where it can pay for itself. Compared to the tens of billions of dollars that have poured in during the past decade, the cost of post-2014 support is a relatively modest $4.3 billion.
But such is the general mood of apathy in the West that it is proving difficult even to raise this sum ahead of May’s Nato summit in Chicago, when the future of Western commitment will be discussed.
Sir William Patey, who retires as Britain’s ambassador to Kabul today , told me when I visited him at his office at the heavily fortified British Embassy that “we should get out now” if we were not prepared, at the very least, to fund the Afghans until 2024. Britain’s policy of withdrawing its troops and leaving the country in a stable state “is totally dependent on the international community to bankroll the Afghans for a number of years to come”, he said.
Certainly, if Afghanistan is allowed to revert to its former anarchy, then many more deluded young men like Mohamed Merah will be making their way to al-Qaeda training camps in the country.
And if that happens, then the sacrifices of the brave British men and women who are commemorated in the military cemetery in Kabul will have been in vain.
****END****
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
With Amrullah Saleh and his deputy gone from NDS, "western officials began to notice a deterioration in the security situation"
War in Afghanistan: Mission impossible?
By Kim Sengupta
March 28, 2012
The Independent
The threat of roadside bombs is constant, and the mortal danger posed by the local forces they are meant to be training is on the rise. Now a cache of explosive vests has been found hidden in the Ministry of Defence in Kabul
The discovery of a dozen suicide vests packed with explosives in Kabul was a matter of deep concern, a grim indication that the Taliban were intent on carrying out a massive attack. The added shockwaves came from the location: they were found in the country's Ministry of Defence, less than a mile from President Hamid Karzai's residence and the headquarters of Western forces.
Eighteen serving soldiers were arrested. They were planning, it is claimed, to blow up the building and everyone in it as well as buses full of government employees. Yesterday afternoon there were contradictory accounts of what had happened from different ministries, while commandos searched the premises after reports that two would-be bombers had escaped and were still hiding there.
The extraordinary events in the Afghan capital came 24 hours after two British servicemen were murdered by an Afghan soldier at Lashkar Gah, the British headquarters in Helmand, and an American soldier was shot dead by an Afghan policeman at a checkpoint in Paktika.So far this year, 16 Nato soldiers have been killed by their Afghan allies, second only to fatalities caused by improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the insurgents' weapon of choice.
According to Pentagon figures released last month, an estimated 80 Western service members have been killed by Afghans in uniform since 2007, with 75 per cent of the attacks in the past two years. The fear of an enemy within is particularly relevant at this time in the mission, with the West's exit strategy predicated on training Afghan forces to take over security and, after Nato ends is combat status, a small number carrying on acting as advisers.
With the West's rush for the exit from the war depending on building up the size of Afghan security forces, some Afghan officials say that corners were being cut when it came to security checks. "The foreigners just want the numbers keep going up so that they can say they have finished their job and it is time to go," said one official. "In such situations it is not surprising that some bad people are slipping through."
General John Allen, the American head of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan (Isaf ) insisted that these types of attacks are to be expected in this type of war. "We experienced these in Iraq. We experienced them in Vietnam. On any occasion where you're dealing with an insurgency and where you're also growing an indigenous force... the enemy's going to do all that they can to disrupt both the counterinsurgency operations and the developing nation's security forces."
Gen Allen acknowledged, however, that precautionary measures have had to be taken. "We have taken steps necessary on our side to protect ourselves with respect to, in fact, sleeping arrangements, internal defences associated with those small bases in which we operate, the posture of our forces, to have someone always overwatching our forces. On the Afghan side, they are doing the same thing. They're helping the troops to understand how to recognise radicalisation or the emergence of extremism in individuals who may in fact be suspect."
One force which was seen as keeping the Islamists at bay – especially from Kabul and other major cities – and out of the armed forces, was the Afghan intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security. However, its head, Amrullah Saleh, resigned two years ago in protest at what he claimed was President Karzai surrounding himself with Islamists. His deputy, Abdullah Laghmani, had been assassinated by a Taliban suicide bomber a few months previously. With the two men gone, western officials began to notice a deterioration in the security situation.
Taliban attacks in Kabul have increased since. But although the preparations for the bombing inside the Defence Ministry were obviously part of an organised operation, there is little hard evidence of systematic large-scale infiltration.
Afghan observers hold that most of the recent attacks by Afghan security forces on their western colleagues have been sparked by anger at the burning of Korans by US officials at Bagram air base and the massacre of 17 villagers by US sergeant Robert Bales.
Interventions by President Karzai, such as describing the US and British troops as "devils" and the Koran burning – a crass mistake but not something done out of malice – as "an act which can never be forgiven" have also been inflammatory in the febrile atmosphere.
Following the killing of five soldiers from the Grenadier Guards Battle Group in Nad-e-Ali by an Afghan they were training, called Asadullah, stricter vetting procedures were brought in including more thorough background checks and biometric testing. However, in August 2010 three more soldiers, from the Royal Gurkha Rifles, were killed in Nahr-e-Seraj by an Afghan soldier, Talib Hussein.
Haji Wassim Nasruddin, who once fought alongside the insurgents in Pashmul, near Kandahar, but gave up arms under a reconciliation programme, and now lives in Kandahar City, said: "We never organised our young men to join the police and army.
"We hated the police in particular, because they were corrupt. But because they were corrupt, they sometimes helped us and because they were afraid, they sometimes helped us. And, of course, if any of them attacked foreigners ,we would give them shelter and call them true Muslims."
Wahid Muzhda, a former Taliban foreign ministry official and now an analyst of the insurgency, agreed. "All these killings are not linked to the Taliban. The recent Koran burnings and the shooting of children are affecting the minds of the Afghan soldiers. They think: if the foreigners are coming here to defend Afghanistan, why are they killing children?
"But it is effective, trust is being undermined between the international forces and the Afghans. How can foreign soldiers mentor if they are worried about the Afghans they are teaching? It is not possible."
By Kim Sengupta
March 28, 2012
The Independent
The threat of roadside bombs is constant, and the mortal danger posed by the local forces they are meant to be training is on the rise. Now a cache of explosive vests has been found hidden in the Ministry of Defence in Kabul
The discovery of a dozen suicide vests packed with explosives in Kabul was a matter of deep concern, a grim indication that the Taliban were intent on carrying out a massive attack. The added shockwaves came from the location: they were found in the country's Ministry of Defence, less than a mile from President Hamid Karzai's residence and the headquarters of Western forces.
Eighteen serving soldiers were arrested. They were planning, it is claimed, to blow up the building and everyone in it as well as buses full of government employees. Yesterday afternoon there were contradictory accounts of what had happened from different ministries, while commandos searched the premises after reports that two would-be bombers had escaped and were still hiding there.
The extraordinary events in the Afghan capital came 24 hours after two British servicemen were murdered by an Afghan soldier at Lashkar Gah, the British headquarters in Helmand, and an American soldier was shot dead by an Afghan policeman at a checkpoint in Paktika.So far this year, 16 Nato soldiers have been killed by their Afghan allies, second only to fatalities caused by improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the insurgents' weapon of choice.
According to Pentagon figures released last month, an estimated 80 Western service members have been killed by Afghans in uniform since 2007, with 75 per cent of the attacks in the past two years. The fear of an enemy within is particularly relevant at this time in the mission, with the West's exit strategy predicated on training Afghan forces to take over security and, after Nato ends is combat status, a small number carrying on acting as advisers.
With the West's rush for the exit from the war depending on building up the size of Afghan security forces, some Afghan officials say that corners were being cut when it came to security checks. "The foreigners just want the numbers keep going up so that they can say they have finished their job and it is time to go," said one official. "In such situations it is not surprising that some bad people are slipping through."
General John Allen, the American head of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan (Isaf ) insisted that these types of attacks are to be expected in this type of war. "We experienced these in Iraq. We experienced them in Vietnam. On any occasion where you're dealing with an insurgency and where you're also growing an indigenous force... the enemy's going to do all that they can to disrupt both the counterinsurgency operations and the developing nation's security forces."
Gen Allen acknowledged, however, that precautionary measures have had to be taken. "We have taken steps necessary on our side to protect ourselves with respect to, in fact, sleeping arrangements, internal defences associated with those small bases in which we operate, the posture of our forces, to have someone always overwatching our forces. On the Afghan side, they are doing the same thing. They're helping the troops to understand how to recognise radicalisation or the emergence of extremism in individuals who may in fact be suspect."
One force which was seen as keeping the Islamists at bay – especially from Kabul and other major cities – and out of the armed forces, was the Afghan intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security. However, its head, Amrullah Saleh, resigned two years ago in protest at what he claimed was President Karzai surrounding himself with Islamists. His deputy, Abdullah Laghmani, had been assassinated by a Taliban suicide bomber a few months previously. With the two men gone, western officials began to notice a deterioration in the security situation.
Taliban attacks in Kabul have increased since. But although the preparations for the bombing inside the Defence Ministry were obviously part of an organised operation, there is little hard evidence of systematic large-scale infiltration.
Afghan observers hold that most of the recent attacks by Afghan security forces on their western colleagues have been sparked by anger at the burning of Korans by US officials at Bagram air base and the massacre of 17 villagers by US sergeant Robert Bales.
Interventions by President Karzai, such as describing the US and British troops as "devils" and the Koran burning – a crass mistake but not something done out of malice – as "an act which can never be forgiven" have also been inflammatory in the febrile atmosphere.
Following the killing of five soldiers from the Grenadier Guards Battle Group in Nad-e-Ali by an Afghan they were training, called Asadullah, stricter vetting procedures were brought in including more thorough background checks and biometric testing. However, in August 2010 three more soldiers, from the Royal Gurkha Rifles, were killed in Nahr-e-Seraj by an Afghan soldier, Talib Hussein.
Haji Wassim Nasruddin, who once fought alongside the insurgents in Pashmul, near Kandahar, but gave up arms under a reconciliation programme, and now lives in Kandahar City, said: "We never organised our young men to join the police and army.
"We hated the police in particular, because they were corrupt. But because they were corrupt, they sometimes helped us and because they were afraid, they sometimes helped us. And, of course, if any of them attacked foreigners ,we would give them shelter and call them true Muslims."
Wahid Muzhda, a former Taliban foreign ministry official and now an analyst of the insurgency, agreed. "All these killings are not linked to the Taliban. The recent Koran burnings and the shooting of children are affecting the minds of the Afghan soldiers. They think: if the foreigners are coming here to defend Afghanistan, why are they killing children?
"But it is effective, trust is being undermined between the international forces and the Afghans. How can foreign soldiers mentor if they are worried about the Afghans they are teaching? It is not possible."
Despite much progress for Afghan women their situation is still grim
Afghanistan’s War on Women Detailed in New Human Rights Watch Report
By Jesse Ellison
March 28, 2012
The Daily Beast
The plight of Afghanistan’s women was supposed to improve with the Taliban’s ouster, but a new Human Rights Watch report shows the injustice persists, detailing the cases of 60 women and girls in prison for ‘moral crimes’ like premarital sex and fleeing abusers.
When Heather Barr began interviewing female Afghan prisoners and detainees for a new Human Rights Watch report released Wednesday, one phrase stood out. “So many of them started out saying, ‘I fell in love with a boy,’” Barr told The Daily Beast from her home in Kabul. “They’re like teenage girls anywhere. But in Afghanistan, you end up in prison.”
At least, these ones did. The report, “I Had to Run Away: Women and Girls Imprisoned for ‘Moral Crimes’ in Afghanistan,” details the plight of nearly 60 Afghan women and girls—just a fraction of the estimated 400 overall—languishing in prisons and juvenile detention facilities for various “moral crimes,” including running away from impending forced marriages, fleeing abusers, and having premarital sex. In telling their specific stories of abuse and mistreatment, the report also examines a “twin injustice:” Where women may face vigorous prosecution and imprisonment for their so-called transgressions, their abusers and rapists rarely face any consequence at all, despite the fact that the Law on Elimination of Violence Against Women was ratified by President Hamid Karzai in 2009.
“Almost always, the story starts out with the girl or woman running away from some kind of abuse,” Barr says of the female prisoners she and her translators interviewed in six different facilities across the country. “So most of the women we interviewed are crime victims, but what you find is that none of the perpetrators of those crimes have been investigated, let alone prosecuted.”
According to a report released last fall by Oxfam International, some 87 percent of Afghan women have experienced intimate violence, whether in the form of forced marriage, or physical, sexual, or psychological abuse. Of the 42 married women Barr interviewed, 22 were arrested as a direct result of running away from abusive husbands or extended family members. But in interviews with prosecutors, Barr could find just one instance when a man had been arrested for perpetrating such abuse. A woman the report identifies as “Nilofar M.” (All the women’s names and identifying details were withheld by HRW in order to protect their safety.), was hospitalized after being stabbed repeatedly in the head, chest, and arms with a screwdriver. Her husband was arrested, but released after just a month. When asked why he had been released so quickly, the prosecutor told Barr that, “The way he beat her wasn’t bad enough to keep him in jail. She wasn’t near death, so he didn’t need to be in prison.”
Then the prosecutor drove the point home. “He was standing over me and he brandished his fist, and he said, ‘If I only punched you, should I be in prison?’” Barr recounted. “This is the mindset. This is the attitude.”
Indeed, while the number of women imprisoned for “moral crimes” may have increased in the last decade—according to the latest United Nations figures, some 600 women and more than 100 girls are currently serving sentences, more than Afghanistan’s total prison population before the U.S. invasion in 2001—efforts like the 2009 decree are still largely anathema to a culture and tradition that has long treated women as little more than property. A spate of recent cases made international headlines because of brutal details that underscored the ongoing contempt for women in the region.
“I don’t think there’s any excuse [for the West] to walk away. Because it’s life or death for women here.”
Earlier this year, a 15-year-old girl who had been sold into marriage was found locked in the basement bathroom of her in-laws’ home, where she had been denied food and water and had been tortured for ++refusing to go into prostitution. And in December, President Karzai pardoned a young woman who had spent two years in jail for adultery after being raped by her cousin’s husband. Her release was bittersweet; it was accompanied by concern for her safety and speculation that she would have little choice but to marry her rapist to avoid further shame for her family.
“Being pardoned doesn’t solve an injustice,” Barr says. “And for these women, just the fact of being arrested for a moral crime is very likely to create a situation where your family won’t take you back. One of the things that was the most heartbreaking [about these interviews] was how grateful some of these women and girls seemed to be for these prisons. One of the women said, ‘I chose this prison as my safe place.’”
But Barr says the new report is intended to not only shed light on the plight of these female prisoners, but also to open up a broader conversation about Afghan women in general. “It would be wrong to minimize the progress that has happened,” she says, citing decreased rates of child and maternal mortality, and the sky-rocketing numbers of female political participation and access to education since the days of Taliban rule. “On the other hand, the progress has been a lot less than women heard or expected in the optimistic days since the Taliban fell. And it’s really fragile.”
With international forces slated to depart Afghanistan in 2014, the progress made thus far seems especially precarious. In March, just two days before International Women’s Day, Karzai sent what many perceived as a particularly ominous message, defending a “code of conduct” issued by the government-supported Ulema Council, a body of religious leaders, on how women should act and behave. “Men are fundamental and women are secondary,” the statement said. It was later posted on the website of the presidential palace.
“The international community needs to look back at some of the things they said in 2001,” Barr says citing speeches made by then President George W. Bush, Cherie Blair, and others about the importance of liberating Afghan women. “Those were promises. I don’t think there’s any excuse to walk away. Because it’s life or death for women here.”
Jesse Ellison is a staff writer and articles editor at Newsweek and The Daily Beast, covering social justice and women’s issues. A Front Page Award winner, she has discussed gender equality on CNN, WNYC, and at Princeton University. Find her on Tumblr.
By Jesse Ellison
March 28, 2012
The Daily Beast
The plight of Afghanistan’s women was supposed to improve with the Taliban’s ouster, but a new Human Rights Watch report shows the injustice persists, detailing the cases of 60 women and girls in prison for ‘moral crimes’ like premarital sex and fleeing abusers.
When Heather Barr began interviewing female Afghan prisoners and detainees for a new Human Rights Watch report released Wednesday, one phrase stood out. “So many of them started out saying, ‘I fell in love with a boy,’” Barr told The Daily Beast from her home in Kabul. “They’re like teenage girls anywhere. But in Afghanistan, you end up in prison.”
At least, these ones did. The report, “I Had to Run Away: Women and Girls Imprisoned for ‘Moral Crimes’ in Afghanistan,” details the plight of nearly 60 Afghan women and girls—just a fraction of the estimated 400 overall—languishing in prisons and juvenile detention facilities for various “moral crimes,” including running away from impending forced marriages, fleeing abusers, and having premarital sex. In telling their specific stories of abuse and mistreatment, the report also examines a “twin injustice:” Where women may face vigorous prosecution and imprisonment for their so-called transgressions, their abusers and rapists rarely face any consequence at all, despite the fact that the Law on Elimination of Violence Against Women was ratified by President Hamid Karzai in 2009.
“Almost always, the story starts out with the girl or woman running away from some kind of abuse,” Barr says of the female prisoners she and her translators interviewed in six different facilities across the country. “So most of the women we interviewed are crime victims, but what you find is that none of the perpetrators of those crimes have been investigated, let alone prosecuted.”
According to a report released last fall by Oxfam International, some 87 percent of Afghan women have experienced intimate violence, whether in the form of forced marriage, or physical, sexual, or psychological abuse. Of the 42 married women Barr interviewed, 22 were arrested as a direct result of running away from abusive husbands or extended family members. But in interviews with prosecutors, Barr could find just one instance when a man had been arrested for perpetrating such abuse. A woman the report identifies as “Nilofar M.” (All the women’s names and identifying details were withheld by HRW in order to protect their safety.), was hospitalized after being stabbed repeatedly in the head, chest, and arms with a screwdriver. Her husband was arrested, but released after just a month. When asked why he had been released so quickly, the prosecutor told Barr that, “The way he beat her wasn’t bad enough to keep him in jail. She wasn’t near death, so he didn’t need to be in prison.”
Then the prosecutor drove the point home. “He was standing over me and he brandished his fist, and he said, ‘If I only punched you, should I be in prison?’” Barr recounted. “This is the mindset. This is the attitude.”
Indeed, while the number of women imprisoned for “moral crimes” may have increased in the last decade—according to the latest United Nations figures, some 600 women and more than 100 girls are currently serving sentences, more than Afghanistan’s total prison population before the U.S. invasion in 2001—efforts like the 2009 decree are still largely anathema to a culture and tradition that has long treated women as little more than property. A spate of recent cases made international headlines because of brutal details that underscored the ongoing contempt for women in the region.
“I don’t think there’s any excuse [for the West] to walk away. Because it’s life or death for women here.”
Earlier this year, a 15-year-old girl who had been sold into marriage was found locked in the basement bathroom of her in-laws’ home, where she had been denied food and water and had been tortured for ++refusing to go into prostitution. And in December, President Karzai pardoned a young woman who had spent two years in jail for adultery after being raped by her cousin’s husband. Her release was bittersweet; it was accompanied by concern for her safety and speculation that she would have little choice but to marry her rapist to avoid further shame for her family.
“Being pardoned doesn’t solve an injustice,” Barr says. “And for these women, just the fact of being arrested for a moral crime is very likely to create a situation where your family won’t take you back. One of the things that was the most heartbreaking [about these interviews] was how grateful some of these women and girls seemed to be for these prisons. One of the women said, ‘I chose this prison as my safe place.’”
But Barr says the new report is intended to not only shed light on the plight of these female prisoners, but also to open up a broader conversation about Afghan women in general. “It would be wrong to minimize the progress that has happened,” she says, citing decreased rates of child and maternal mortality, and the sky-rocketing numbers of female political participation and access to education since the days of Taliban rule. “On the other hand, the progress has been a lot less than women heard or expected in the optimistic days since the Taliban fell. And it’s really fragile.”
With international forces slated to depart Afghanistan in 2014, the progress made thus far seems especially precarious. In March, just two days before International Women’s Day, Karzai sent what many perceived as a particularly ominous message, defending a “code of conduct” issued by the government-supported Ulema Council, a body of religious leaders, on how women should act and behave. “Men are fundamental and women are secondary,” the statement said. It was later posted on the website of the presidential palace.
“The international community needs to look back at some of the things they said in 2001,” Barr says citing speeches made by then President George W. Bush, Cherie Blair, and others about the importance of liberating Afghan women. “Those were promises. I don’t think there’s any excuse to walk away. Because it’s life or death for women here.”
Jesse Ellison is a staff writer and articles editor at Newsweek and The Daily Beast, covering social justice and women’s issues. A Front Page Award winner, she has discussed gender equality on CNN, WNYC, and at Princeton University. Find her on Tumblr.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker on holding the line in Afghanistan
See the Long War Journal for more on Amb. Crocker's warnings.
Regarding Crocker's statement that Afghan women won't allow themselves to be put back in the burqa -- my understanding is that many of them have returned to wearing the burqa, even in the north, out of fear and because of intimidation and threats.
Interview: Amb. Ryan Crocker warns against war fatigue in AfghanistanBy Howard LaFranchi
March 27, 2012
Christian Science Monitor
Ryan Crocker, US ambassador to Afghanistan, sees progress amid an extended 'rough' patch in relations. He also cautions against quitting Afghanistan too soon, citing Al Qaeda. 'If we decide we're tired, ... they'll be back.'
Kabul - It’s not news to anyone that the United States and the international community have recently experienced some rough weeks in Afghanistan. But if there’s a silver lining to the clouds hanging over the American-led war effort here, it’s that the terrible recent events – the unintentional burning of Qurans by American forces and ensuing civil unrest, the revenge killings of US and other international forces by “friendly” Afghan soldiers, and the horrific murders of 17 Afghan villagers allegedly committed by a US Army sergeant – have provided a measure of Afghanistan’s progress, and of the importance of a continuing international commitment.
That’s the message of the US ambassador to Kabul, Ryan Crocker, who counters reports of doom for the US mission in Afghanistan with evidence of progress – even as he warns of the consequences for America’s national security of giving in to war fatigue and pulling out.
“We’ve had a rough fall, a rough winter – and we are having a rough spring,” acknowledges Ambassador Crocker, who then shifts focus to two signs of a stronger, more mature Afghanistan as revealed by the recent trial by fire.
First, the Afghan security forces that NATO and other international partners are training to take over command of the country’s security kept control of an explosive domestic climate after the Quran burnings, protecting both Afghans and foreign forces with minimal loss of life.
“It was Afghan security forces who stepped up. They protected Afghan lives, and they protected American lives [and] the lives of others from the international community,” he says, noting that 30 Afghans were reported to have died in the days of unrest.
“That’s not too darn bad given the volatility of the situation.”
Second, Crocker underscores the fact that, despite some turbulence, the US-Afghanistan negotiations toward reaching a Strategic Partnership Agreement – the framework that will determine the US military role in Afghanistan after 2014 – weathered the trying events and are moving forward.
“We’re making very significant headway” in negotiations, he says, “and we’re doing it under particularly difficult conditions.”
Crocker says such signposts of progress should encourage both the US and the international community to muster the “strategic patience” that will be necessary for sticking with a country that may seem to be progressing slowly – but which to abandon would be to open the way to potential recurrences of the 9/11 tragedy. The two countries have already settled the thorny issue of the conditions for handing over some 3,000 detainees in US custody to Afghan authority, while the question of night raids by foreign forces is still under discussion.
The night raids – troops entering sleeping villages to ferret out insurgents and suspected terrorists – are particularly unpopular among Afghans, and they raise the ire of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who considers them a stab at Afghan sovereignty. But US military commanders consider the tactic an essential tool in the anti-Taliban effort, and the US insists on the ability to rely on the raids in the counterterrorism efforts it wants to continue after the international combat role ends in December 2014.
Some US and international military officials hint that an accord on night raids is likely, perhaps by assuaging Mr. Karzai’s sovereignty concerns with a provision requiring a warrant from an Afghan judge. Crocker calls the Strategic Partnership Agreement, or SPA, “a powerful signal to the Taliban” that the international community will remain committed to Afghanistan into the future.
What the Taliban need to understand, he says, is that “this isn’t going to be about holding out until 2014. It’s you getting killed,” he says, “or dying of old age and your sons facing the prospect of having to fight a war.”
Others say the US SPA will be a reassuring sign to the international community and will help head off the “rush to the exits” that President Obama has warned against. The strategic partnership negotiations are just one example of what Crocker calls the “really really hard” process of helping a country like Afghanistan remake itself.
He might add expensive, too, although he notes that whatever financial commitment the US makes to Afghanistan in the years after the formal end of the combat mission will pale in comparison to the $12 billion a year the US now spends.
But if Americans are tempted by the siren of a complete pullout from Afghanistan, Crocker says they need to remember the 9/11 attacks and Al Qaeda’s command center that brought the US here in the first place.
“If we decide we’re tired they’ll be back,” he says, referring to Al Qaeda. “We know what they did once. They haven’t gotten any kinder or gentler in the decade.” Crocker – who has the “unique” perspective of having returned to Afghanistan after a first stint as ambassador in 2002 following the fall of the Taliban regime – says the country’s progress is impressive but not irreversible, and requires an international commitment to sustain it.
Continuing improvements in the Afghan National Army and national police are one element. The Afghan security forces, which are now the primary providers of security to about half the country, should be able to expand to providing “immediate security” to about 75 percent of Afghans by midsummer, Crocker says.
Other encouraging factors, he adds, are rising education rates, falling infant and maternal mortality rates in one of the world’s poorest countries, development of a professional class of young leaders, and prospects for impressive economic gains from unexploited natural resources. He also points to expanded women’s rights, which he cites as a key priority for the US.
Noting that some Afghan women have expressed fears of a rollback of women’s advances in the event of a weakened international commitment, Crocker says neither young Afghans nor the US are about to let that happen. “I know what my boss thinks about this,” says Crocker, referring to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s outspoken commitment to advancing Afghan women’s rights. But he also says the female university students he meets with here would never accept a reversion to the past.
“They’re not going to be put back in a burkha, believe me,” he says. Crocker offers a modest definition of the Afghanistan he believes should be the realistic goal of Afghans and the international community: “a basically secure, basically stable, basically democratic country that can look after its own interests.” And he says Afghanistan has the advantage of a “post-9/11, post-Taliban generation” that is better-educated, and that knows the promise of freedom and democratic governance.
“There’s never been a generation like that in Afghanistan,” he says. But he also warns that this new Afghanistan, which lives with the pull of old ways, has to know the world is not turning its back.
“If the Afghans think we’re done, that we’re pulling pitch,” he says, “they’ll revert to old tendencies.”
Regarding Crocker's statement that Afghan women won't allow themselves to be put back in the burqa -- my understanding is that many of them have returned to wearing the burqa, even in the north, out of fear and because of intimidation and threats.
Interview: Amb. Ryan Crocker warns against war fatigue in AfghanistanBy Howard LaFranchi
March 27, 2012
Christian Science Monitor
Ryan Crocker, US ambassador to Afghanistan, sees progress amid an extended 'rough' patch in relations. He also cautions against quitting Afghanistan too soon, citing Al Qaeda. 'If we decide we're tired, ... they'll be back.'
Kabul - It’s not news to anyone that the United States and the international community have recently experienced some rough weeks in Afghanistan. But if there’s a silver lining to the clouds hanging over the American-led war effort here, it’s that the terrible recent events – the unintentional burning of Qurans by American forces and ensuing civil unrest, the revenge killings of US and other international forces by “friendly” Afghan soldiers, and the horrific murders of 17 Afghan villagers allegedly committed by a US Army sergeant – have provided a measure of Afghanistan’s progress, and of the importance of a continuing international commitment.
That’s the message of the US ambassador to Kabul, Ryan Crocker, who counters reports of doom for the US mission in Afghanistan with evidence of progress – even as he warns of the consequences for America’s national security of giving in to war fatigue and pulling out.
“We’ve had a rough fall, a rough winter – and we are having a rough spring,” acknowledges Ambassador Crocker, who then shifts focus to two signs of a stronger, more mature Afghanistan as revealed by the recent trial by fire.
First, the Afghan security forces that NATO and other international partners are training to take over command of the country’s security kept control of an explosive domestic climate after the Quran burnings, protecting both Afghans and foreign forces with minimal loss of life.
“It was Afghan security forces who stepped up. They protected Afghan lives, and they protected American lives [and] the lives of others from the international community,” he says, noting that 30 Afghans were reported to have died in the days of unrest.
“That’s not too darn bad given the volatility of the situation.”
Second, Crocker underscores the fact that, despite some turbulence, the US-Afghanistan negotiations toward reaching a Strategic Partnership Agreement – the framework that will determine the US military role in Afghanistan after 2014 – weathered the trying events and are moving forward.
“We’re making very significant headway” in negotiations, he says, “and we’re doing it under particularly difficult conditions.”
Crocker says such signposts of progress should encourage both the US and the international community to muster the “strategic patience” that will be necessary for sticking with a country that may seem to be progressing slowly – but which to abandon would be to open the way to potential recurrences of the 9/11 tragedy. The two countries have already settled the thorny issue of the conditions for handing over some 3,000 detainees in US custody to Afghan authority, while the question of night raids by foreign forces is still under discussion.
The night raids – troops entering sleeping villages to ferret out insurgents and suspected terrorists – are particularly unpopular among Afghans, and they raise the ire of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who considers them a stab at Afghan sovereignty. But US military commanders consider the tactic an essential tool in the anti-Taliban effort, and the US insists on the ability to rely on the raids in the counterterrorism efforts it wants to continue after the international combat role ends in December 2014.
Some US and international military officials hint that an accord on night raids is likely, perhaps by assuaging Mr. Karzai’s sovereignty concerns with a provision requiring a warrant from an Afghan judge. Crocker calls the Strategic Partnership Agreement, or SPA, “a powerful signal to the Taliban” that the international community will remain committed to Afghanistan into the future.
What the Taliban need to understand, he says, is that “this isn’t going to be about holding out until 2014. It’s you getting killed,” he says, “or dying of old age and your sons facing the prospect of having to fight a war.”
Others say the US SPA will be a reassuring sign to the international community and will help head off the “rush to the exits” that President Obama has warned against. The strategic partnership negotiations are just one example of what Crocker calls the “really really hard” process of helping a country like Afghanistan remake itself.
He might add expensive, too, although he notes that whatever financial commitment the US makes to Afghanistan in the years after the formal end of the combat mission will pale in comparison to the $12 billion a year the US now spends.
But if Americans are tempted by the siren of a complete pullout from Afghanistan, Crocker says they need to remember the 9/11 attacks and Al Qaeda’s command center that brought the US here in the first place.
“If we decide we’re tired they’ll be back,” he says, referring to Al Qaeda. “We know what they did once. They haven’t gotten any kinder or gentler in the decade.” Crocker – who has the “unique” perspective of having returned to Afghanistan after a first stint as ambassador in 2002 following the fall of the Taliban regime – says the country’s progress is impressive but not irreversible, and requires an international commitment to sustain it.
Continuing improvements in the Afghan National Army and national police are one element. The Afghan security forces, which are now the primary providers of security to about half the country, should be able to expand to providing “immediate security” to about 75 percent of Afghans by midsummer, Crocker says.
Other encouraging factors, he adds, are rising education rates, falling infant and maternal mortality rates in one of the world’s poorest countries, development of a professional class of young leaders, and prospects for impressive economic gains from unexploited natural resources. He also points to expanded women’s rights, which he cites as a key priority for the US.
Noting that some Afghan women have expressed fears of a rollback of women’s advances in the event of a weakened international commitment, Crocker says neither young Afghans nor the US are about to let that happen. “I know what my boss thinks about this,” says Crocker, referring to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s outspoken commitment to advancing Afghan women’s rights. But he also says the female university students he meets with here would never accept a reversion to the past.
“They’re not going to be put back in a burkha, believe me,” he says. Crocker offers a modest definition of the Afghanistan he believes should be the realistic goal of Afghans and the international community: “a basically secure, basically stable, basically democratic country that can look after its own interests.” And he says Afghanistan has the advantage of a “post-9/11, post-Taliban generation” that is better-educated, and that knows the promise of freedom and democratic governance.
“There’s never been a generation like that in Afghanistan,” he says. But he also warns that this new Afghanistan, which lives with the pull of old ways, has to know the world is not turning its back.
“If the Afghans think we’re done, that we’re pulling pitch,” he says, “they’ll revert to old tendencies.”
"Speeding the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan a mistake, analysts say"
Speeding the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan a mistake, analysts say
by Sara A. Carter
March 27, 2012
Washington ExaminerThe American mission in Afghanistan, beset by a series of setbacks and tragedies, has reached perhaps the lowest level of support in the U.S., and in Afghanistan and Pakistan, since the war started after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The latest New York Times/CBS News poll, released Monday, found that a staggering 69 percent of Americans thought the country should not be at war in Afghanistan. Backing for the war plummeted among both Democrats and Republicans in recent months.
And leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan appear equally sick of the war. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, America's erstwhile ally, has been using increasingly incendiary language to describe American troops, calling them "demons" recently as he demanded an accelerated withdrawal after the killing of 17 Afghan civilians which has been charged to a U.S. Army sergeant. Those deaths were just the latest in a cycle of violence that grew worse when Americans at the base in Bagram accidently disposed of several Qurans. Killings of U.S. and NATO troops that had been occurring for years increased after the Quran burnings, with three more NATO troops slain Monday.
American relations have also reached a nadir with Pakistan, with the legislature of that country meeting this week to create a harsh list of demands to be met by the U.S. in order to maintain a military presence there.
But if "the bottom is out of the tub," as Abraham Lincoln said during the darkest days of the American Civil War as defeat and disaster accumulated around his government, there are important reasons to stick to an orderly timetable of withdrawal from Afghanistan, and to pursue the goals of making the country secure and the government stable, according to experts.
Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official who headed the Obama administration's Afghanistan-Pakistan review in 2010, concedes that the growing divide between U.S. and Afghan officials is jeopardizing chances to leave a functioning state and viable economy behind there when America completes its withdrawal.
"The nascent political process with the Taliban has been suspended and the gap between Obama and [President Hamid] Karzai is wider than ever," said Riedel, who is now a senior analyst with the Brookings Institution.
"But the stakes have not changed," he said. "If we give up in Afghanistan, the jihadists will win and gain a huge victory that will resonate around the Islamic world and especially next door in Pakistan."
There are roughly 90,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. The commander of the U.S.-led coalition, Gen. John Allen, told Congress late last week that he does not expect troops to be withdrawn more rapidly than announced targets to get the number down to 68,000 by 2014.
Allen said many of the problems festering between the U.S. and Afghanistan had their root in Pakistan, where insurgents are allowed to operate with impunity.
James Carafano, a senior analyst with the Heritage Foundation said a quick withdrawal from the region would compound the mistake of announcing a withdrawal date in the first place.
"Right now the two greatest impediments to progress are the Taliban and the strategy being followed by the U.S. president. Karzai is a distant third in the our list of problems," Carafano said.
Despite war fatigue, many military and intelligence officials, stress that Afghan security forces are improving -- but are not yet prepared to take complete control from NATO.
"It's a problem for the administration because the situation is so precarious," said a U.S. official who works closely with Afghan officials. "Pakistan U.S. relations are deteriorating. Pakistan seems to have the upper hand and President Obama wants this war over, particularly in an election year."
George Little, spokesman for Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, told The Washington Examiner that Panetta's most recent meeting with Karzai was "productive."
Little said the pair discussed how Afghanistan could eventually be secured entirely by Afghan forces.
"About 50 percent of the country's security is now under Afghan leadership, and we share the goal of increasing that percentage," Little added.
Staying the course and allowing Afghan security forces to grow in strength appears to be the best of the options still available, anaylsts said.
Arturo Munoz, a senior analyst at RAND Corp., said "I don't see a value in a speedy withdrawal. There is a lot of anxiety about the future of the country." Munoz, formerly with the CIA, said the Taliban would call a swift withdrawal "a victory against NATO, and it would give credence to Afghan allies who warned that we would desert them."
Sara A. Carter is The Washington Examiner's national security correspondent.
by Sara A. Carter
March 27, 2012
Washington ExaminerThe American mission in Afghanistan, beset by a series of setbacks and tragedies, has reached perhaps the lowest level of support in the U.S., and in Afghanistan and Pakistan, since the war started after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The latest New York Times/CBS News poll, released Monday, found that a staggering 69 percent of Americans thought the country should not be at war in Afghanistan. Backing for the war plummeted among both Democrats and Republicans in recent months.
And leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan appear equally sick of the war. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, America's erstwhile ally, has been using increasingly incendiary language to describe American troops, calling them "demons" recently as he demanded an accelerated withdrawal after the killing of 17 Afghan civilians which has been charged to a U.S. Army sergeant. Those deaths were just the latest in a cycle of violence that grew worse when Americans at the base in Bagram accidently disposed of several Qurans. Killings of U.S. and NATO troops that had been occurring for years increased after the Quran burnings, with three more NATO troops slain Monday.
American relations have also reached a nadir with Pakistan, with the legislature of that country meeting this week to create a harsh list of demands to be met by the U.S. in order to maintain a military presence there.
But if "the bottom is out of the tub," as Abraham Lincoln said during the darkest days of the American Civil War as defeat and disaster accumulated around his government, there are important reasons to stick to an orderly timetable of withdrawal from Afghanistan, and to pursue the goals of making the country secure and the government stable, according to experts.
Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official who headed the Obama administration's Afghanistan-Pakistan review in 2010, concedes that the growing divide between U.S. and Afghan officials is jeopardizing chances to leave a functioning state and viable economy behind there when America completes its withdrawal.
"The nascent political process with the Taliban has been suspended and the gap between Obama and [President Hamid] Karzai is wider than ever," said Riedel, who is now a senior analyst with the Brookings Institution.
"But the stakes have not changed," he said. "If we give up in Afghanistan, the jihadists will win and gain a huge victory that will resonate around the Islamic world and especially next door in Pakistan."
There are roughly 90,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. The commander of the U.S.-led coalition, Gen. John Allen, told Congress late last week that he does not expect troops to be withdrawn more rapidly than announced targets to get the number down to 68,000 by 2014.
Allen said many of the problems festering between the U.S. and Afghanistan had their root in Pakistan, where insurgents are allowed to operate with impunity.
James Carafano, a senior analyst with the Heritage Foundation said a quick withdrawal from the region would compound the mistake of announcing a withdrawal date in the first place.
"Right now the two greatest impediments to progress are the Taliban and the strategy being followed by the U.S. president. Karzai is a distant third in the our list of problems," Carafano said.
Despite war fatigue, many military and intelligence officials, stress that Afghan security forces are improving -- but are not yet prepared to take complete control from NATO.
"It's a problem for the administration because the situation is so precarious," said a U.S. official who works closely with Afghan officials. "Pakistan U.S. relations are deteriorating. Pakistan seems to have the upper hand and President Obama wants this war over, particularly in an election year."
George Little, spokesman for Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, told The Washington Examiner that Panetta's most recent meeting with Karzai was "productive."
Little said the pair discussed how Afghanistan could eventually be secured entirely by Afghan forces.
"About 50 percent of the country's security is now under Afghan leadership, and we share the goal of increasing that percentage," Little added.
Staying the course and allowing Afghan security forces to grow in strength appears to be the best of the options still available, anaylsts said.
Arturo Munoz, a senior analyst at RAND Corp., said "I don't see a value in a speedy withdrawal. There is a lot of anxiety about the future of the country." Munoz, formerly with the CIA, said the Taliban would call a swift withdrawal "a victory against NATO, and it would give credence to Afghan allies who warned that we would desert them."
Sara A. Carter is The Washington Examiner's national security correspondent.
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