U.S. Urges Afghanistan to Stay the Course With Peace Deal as Violence Resurges

Source: Breaking NewsCentral

May 17 2020

By Paul Glover

WASHINGTON — American officials scrambled on Friday to keep Afghanistan’s tenuous peace process from falling apart, blaming the Islamic State for horrific attacks that have recently killed dozens of people and further inflamed tensions between the Taliban and the government in Kabul.

Zalmay Khalilzad, the chief U.S. negotiator for Afghan reconciliation talks, acknowledged “challenges and difficulties” in moving ahead with plans to create a power-sharing government that were outlined more than two months ago with American support.

But he urged the Taliban and Afghan officials to resist returning to violence that could threaten efforts to strike a peace deal and to withdraw American troops after more than 18 years of war.

“A political solution, a peace agreement among Afghans, is the only realistic option at the present time,” Mr. Khalilzad told reporters during a State Department briefing.

“There are forces such as ISIS that doesn’t see peace in Afghanistan in its interests and are trying to increase violence, to undermine the prospect for peace,” Mr. Khalilzad said. “We’re urging both sides not to fall into that trap.”

Afghan officials have blamed the Taliban for both the hospital attack that killed at least 15 on Tuesday and a bombing, the same day and about 100 miles away, against a funeral procession of a police commander that killed at least 25. Taliban leaders have denied the shooting spree at the hospital, and the Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the funeral attack.

The violence, and the accusations arising from it, has pushed both the Taliban and Afghan government back into their respective corners.

President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan has vowed to resume military offensives against the Taliban, while the Taliban — who ramped up their attacks soon after signing the peace deal with the United States — have accused the Kabul government of falsely using the recent attacks as an excuse to abandon the peace agreement.

Mr. Khalilzad maintained that the Islamic State had targeted both the hospital and the funeral procession and said that he was eager to see any evidence that the Afghan government could provide that would indicate otherwise.

He acknowledged that the Taliban had not fully ended its attacks, including a truck bombing on Thursday that killed at least five people near a military court. But Mr. Khalilzad said the group had not explicitly violated an earlier agreement to ease hostilities that was a condition of opening direct peace talks with the government.

“We are saying that they are violating the spirit if not the letter, given that commitment that all sides will try to reduce violence,” Mr. Khalilzad said.

It is not clear when talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government might begin. They were initially scheduled for March, after the Taliban signed a preliminary agreement with Washington that focused largely on withdrawing American troops in exchange for assurances that Afghanistan would not be used as a launching pad for terrorist attacks against the United States.

The American military is still on track to draw down its forces in Afghanistan to roughly 8,600 troops, Jonathan Hoffman, a Pentagon spokesman, said Friday. That benchmark was outlined in the deal with the Taliban but was also a longtime goal for Gen. Austin S. Miller, the commander of the U.S.-led mission in Afghanistan. The current American troop number in the country is just under 12,000.

The surge in violence has called the peace deal into question — and with it, American credibility in Afghanistan, said Michael Rubin, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute policy center.

“No peace process can turn a blind eye to bombings at funerals, slaughters in maternity wards, or kidnappings for ransom,” Mr. Rubin wrote in an analysis this week.

After recent violence, is Afghanistan’s peace process dead?

Source: Brookings

May 15 2020

By Vanda Felbab-Brown

A set of brutal attacks in Afghanistan on May 12 has thrown the very idea of a peace process into question. Many are asking whether that process is dead before it ever got under way. Yet it was always unlikely that intra-Afghan negotiations among the Afghan government, powerbrokers, the Taliban, and perhaps — under the luckiest of circumstances — Afghan society would be a linear continuation of the U.S.-Taliban deal or significantly reduce violence.

This week’s violence may well be a much more accurate, if terrible, preview of what is to come: on-and-off negotiations, suspended for lengthy periods amidst protracted violence and devastating bloodshed well past the departure of U.S. forces from Afghanistan (scheduled to be completed by July 2021).

Nonetheless, the Afghan government and elites — as well as the international community, in spite of the U.S. military withdrawal — can still shape the country’s future. Even though they have not had success so far, they should continue to press for violence reduction on the battlefield, with a focus on minimizing the most brutal targeting of civilians.

BLOODSHED ACROSS THE COUNTRY

On the morning of May 12, three militants stormed a maternity ward in a Shia neighborhood of Kabul frequently targeted by the Islamic State in Khorasan (IS-KH). For four hours, they massacred women in labor, mothers with newborn infants in their arms, and medical personnel, killing at least 15, as male relatives outside wailed in anguish.

That same day, attackers targeted a funeral in Nangarhar, also a stronghold of IS-KH, where a suicide bomber slaughtered 25 and wounded 68.

Elsewhere in the country, the Taliban attacked military and police targets. The group had gone back to pounding Afghan security forces as soon as the ink of the U.S.-Taliban deal dried in early March. It has refused calls for a national ceasefire, in spite of the COVID-19 outbreak. It wants to negotiate from maximum battlefield strength and appease some of its middle-level commanders. It also fears its fighters would go soft during any lengthy ceasefire and be hard to remobilize.

With more than 100 dead on May 12, the Afghan government announced an end to “active defense” and promised an offensive against the Taliban. The government attributed the attacks to the Taliban, suggesting its units, such as the Haqqani group, joined forces with IS-KH. (The Taliban rejected responsibility for the Kabul and Nangarhar attacks, the latter claimed by an IS-KH affiliate.)

THE PEACE PROCESS AS IT WAS NOT GOING TO BE

Ghani’s announcement is a poignant coda to the optimistic version of intra-Afghan negotiations. That version envisioned that soon after the U.S.-Taliban deal, the Taliban would sit down with the Afghan government to negotiate while keeping violence low. The U.S.-Taliban deal stipulated that the Taliban would not conduct terrorist attacks against the U.S. homeland or assets, nor allow the territory it controls to be used for external terrorism — at least against the U.S. and allies.

In turn, the United States would withdraw its forces from Afghanistan by July 2021, with a 5,600-troop reduction by July 2020. The U.S. military apparently hoped that there was an unwritten understanding that the Taliban would maintain a large (perhaps 80%) reduction in violence during the U.S. withdrawal period and negotiations with the Afghan government. The Taliban claims there was no such an oral deal; and in any case, during the entire year and half of negotiations beforehand, the Taliban was absolutely clear that it had no intention of reducing violence while it negotiates. The group understands well that the stronger it is on the battlefield, the more powerful it will be at the negotiating table — even at the cost of diminished credibility with the international community and segments of the Afghan public.

Moreover, the Taliban assumed there was an unwritten prisoner exchange deal: The United States would force the Afghan government to rapidly release 5,000 Taliban prisoners, after which the Taliban would release over 1,000 prisoners. The Ghani government refused to do so, realizing that it would give up one of few chips it has with the U.S. (in recognizing his close and contested electoral victory) and with the Taliban. Prisoner releases have proceeded in dribs and drabs.

But it is not clear that any new anti-Taliban offensive will significantly alter the battlefield. For the past several years, Afghan security forces have mostly hunkered down in a static defensive mode — no way to win a counterinsurgency. Plagued by high soldier attrition, problematic logistics and support, and ethnic and political rifts, they regularly reach accommodation with local Taliban units, sometimes discharging ammunition in fake operations about which they warn the Taliban beforehand.

The only units that have mounted serious offensive operations against the Taliban have been the capable but overused Afghan special operations forces. By and large, it has been the Taliban that has dictated the battlefield’s intense operational tempo.

THE POTENTIAL, BUT UNLIKELY, GAME-CHANGERS

The larger questions are to what extent U.S. forces will come to the defense of Afghan forces and whether U.S. actions will motivate the Taliban to start attacking U.S. forces again. The U.S. military has already stated that it would continue to conduct airstrikes in defense of Afghan forces despite the resumption of offensive operations by the Afghan military. Will the Taliban simply accept U.S. air strikes — which have been the predominant reason it has not been able to hold onto provincial capitals it captured? Or, will it, despite the U.S.-Taliban deal, attack U.S. forces, perhaps using methods similar to those of pro-Iran militias in Iraq, such as lobbing missiles on U.S. bases from trucks parked nearby?

The Ghani government may well hope, as many Afghans still do, that such attacks on U.S. forces would reverse the U.S. decision to militarily withdraw. Many Afghan politicians cling to the misguided belief the United States defines Afghanistan as a geostrategic fulcrum of vital importance and thus the U.S. military will not depart. Many urban Afghans wish America will stay, fearing a withdrawal means more brutality a la May 12 and a return to the viciousness of the Taliban’s 1990s rule.

But any forthcoming Taliban attacks on the U.S. military may, in fact, motivate the Trump administration to withdraw from Afghanistan even faster.

NEGOTIATIONS OF A DIFFERENT SHAPE

Ultimately, neither the Taliban nor the Afghan government has the option not to negotiate, because neither has the capacity to decisively prevail on the battlefield. A de facto division of Afghanistan into a portion controlled by the Taliban and portions controlled by the Afghan government (plus affiliated or more independent powerbrokers) is certainly a possibility. However, such fragmentation is not a preferred outcome for anyone: It comes with many sources of instability. Even getting to such an arrangement would involve numerous, overlapping, and complex layers of negotiations.

The real question is: How much will the battlefield have changed by the time of the negotiations, possibly when the U.S. military presence in low or zero? The battlefield conditions will be affected by a) the Taliban’s choices (such as overusing its fighters as cannon fodder) and b) how much weaker Afghan security forces will have become. Certainly, the Afghan forces will be critically undermined if the United States starts implementing cuts of $1 billion of U.S. aid this year and another next year (as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced) out of frustration with the continued lack of a political deal between President Ghani and his chief electoral opponent Abdullah Abdullah. Afghan forces are fully financially dependent on the United States. Despite his pronouncements, Ghani has no way to offset such losses of U.S. aid, either through austerity or new aid from Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, China, or India.

Without payments, Afghan forces will fracture outright, possibly buckling altogether as they did when the Soviet Union stopped paying for them at the end of the Cold War. The Taliban may be banking on such an outcome. The longer the Ghani government waits to or is unable to negotiate, the weaker it will get — not just vis-à-vis the Taliban, but also vis-à-vis Afghan powerbrokers.

Meanwhile, the Taliban will try to strike a deal with a set of Afghan powerbrokers, many of whom are susceptible to its entreaties. The May 10 defection to the Taliban of General Abdul Jalil Bakhtawar — for years a dogged enemy of the Taliban, and whose son is the deputy governor of Farah province — is just one example of these dynamics.

Afghan politicians and powerbrokers are in constant negotiations with the Taliban, much as they are in negotiation with the Afghan government to milk out concessions and patronage. Incentives for making a deal with the Taliban include fear for their lives or the lives of their families (the apparent reason Bakhtawar switched sides) and being slighted by the Afghan government without prospect of getting back on the patronage gravy train. So before they would overtly and definitely switch to the Taliban, or attempt to declare a separate government with the Taliban, they would have to determine that the Ghani government was either close to falling, or that neither Ghani nor Abdullah could satisfy their demands for patronage resources. Most Afghan politicians with national-level power are not ready to make such a judgement. But choices of that sort are on the horizon.

Tragically, the negotiations are and likely will continue to be back-room deals, on-and-off amid the bloodshed. Starting formal Afghan government negotiations with the Taliban as soon as possible, even though they will drag on for months and years, is important to maximize the bargaining power of the Afghan government. It is vital that the Afghan elite, starting with Ghani and Abdullah but much beyond, for once comes together. They must, at least, face the Taliban in negotiations with a more unified front. Afghanistan is on the cusp of profound political and power redistribution change, and not all Afghan powerbrokers can assume that they will be able to strike a satisfactory bargain with the Taliban in a deal behind closed doors.

It is also crucial that the United States and the international community insist that the voices of Afghan society be heard. All Afghan actors must work to reduce violence against innocent civilians like that seen on May 12.

'Buy a mask or food?': South Asia's poor face stark choice

Source: Aljazeera

April 28 2020

Masks are mandatory in most public places in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka and advised by Afghanistan and Bangladesh.

Buy a mask and let his family go hungry, or buy food and go out into the crowded city without one - that is the stark choice facing Hayatullah Khan, an Afghan labourer whose daily earnings have fallen below $1.50 during the coronavirus pandemic.

Like many poor South Asians, Khan has no choice but to leave the house for work.

But even without the hit to his earnings from the coronavirus pandemic, he would have struggled to afford the mask authorities tell him he should wear.

"I have earned less than 100 afghani ($1.32) today. What am I going to do?" Khan told the Reuters news agency in the Afghan capital Kabul. "Should I buy a mask or food for my family?"

Afghan workers sit as most shops in Kabul are closed due to the coronavirus outbreak [Mohammad Ismail/Reuters]

New form of inequality

Wearing a mask in public is now compulsory in most places in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka and advised by Afghanistan and Bangladesh, resulting in soaring demand and prices.

With a basic disposable mask now costing up to $7 in some places, that has created a new form of inequality in cities where hundreds of millions live in cramped, unhygienic conditions.

Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director for Human Rights Watch, said coronavirus lockdown measures had disproportionately hurt marginalised communities.

"Certainly, the coronavirus itself does not distinguish between prince or pauper, race or religion," said Ganguly.

"But how it impacts individuals differs vastly depending on their access to food, shelter, health and other basic needs."

In India, business tycoon Anand Mahindra had to backtrack after tweeting an image of a woman and small child wearing leaves as makeshift masks with the words, "a reminder that nature provides us with all that we need".

He deleted the tweet saying it was "insensitive to the inequity of the situation" after others pointed out there was no evidence leaves provided protection from the virus.

In Sri Lanka, authorities have capped prices at 15 rupees (eight cents) for a disposable surgical-style mask, and 150 rupees for the closer-fitting ones sometimes called respirators.

Yet locals said it was difficult to find either at those prices, with pharmacies marking up costs.

"Earlier we bought surgical masks for 15 rupees, but now they are not available at that price, and some sell the same masks at 75 rupees," said Hashan, who lives in a slum in the capital Colombo.

"So most of the people in our area are wearing homemade masks now," he said, declining to give his full name as he was outside during the lockdown.

South Asia has been less hard-hit by the virus than many other parts of the world, with confirmed coronavirus deaths in India - a country of 1.3 billion - still below the 1,000 mark.

But Nipuna Kumbalathara, a spokesman for Oxfam in Asia, said cases like Hashan's highlighted the need for greater public investment.

"Clearly people who are struggling to put meals on their tables can't pay for their safety kits, testing or care," he said by email, urging governments to provide protective gear to poor and vulnerable people.

A homeless man and his son protecting themselves from the rain with a plastic sheet as they walk to a shelter in Kolkata during a nationwide lockdown [Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters]

DIY masks

The World Health Organization says masks only need to be worn by those who are sick and showing symptoms, and those caring for people suspected to have the disease.

Although many governments are mandating the use of masks to curb the spread of the virus as they relax lockdown measures, others have urged the public not to buy them while there are shortages to ensure adequate supplies for healthcare workers.

In India, the government has released a manual for DIY face-coverings, including ones using rubber bands.

Many South Asians have found stopgap ways to cover their faces - from the loose end of sarees and scarves to handkerchiefs and towels - used before the outbreak to block out the sun, dust and pollution.

Meanwhile, police teams, charities and women's self-help groups have been making millions of washable masks that they give to poor and rural communities free or at a low cost.

Saral Design Solutions, a Mumbai-based start-up that makes low-cost sanitary pads, has switched to manufacturing up to 70 three-ply disposable surgical masks a minute for less than 6 cents each.

But these are the exception - most have no choice but to pay over the odds for poor-quality masks that they are only rarely able to wash.

"I have been using this one for many days now," said autorickshaw driver Gul Pacha Pacha in Kabul, pointing to a dirty, worn disposable mask as middle-class Afghan men wearing gloves and proper face-coverings walked by.

"It is difficult to breathe with it on, so I only wear it when I have passengers."

Rohani, Putin, Erdogan to meet In Turkey on Apr. 4

https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/taliban-acquire-tech-weapons/2018/04/01/id/851876/

The American Experiment Has Failed in Afghanistan

https://www.opednews.com/articles/The-American-Experiment-Ha-by-Vijay-Prashad-Afghanistan-War_Al-Qaeda_American-Military_Grief-180302-951.html

Green Beret given extension on removal case; former CIA spook no Trump fan; ISIS hits Baghdad

Πηγή: FT
By Paul McLeary with Adam Rawnsley

Feb 29 2016

Clinton at war. Hillary Clinton has said that her 2002 vote that opened the door for war in Iraq was a “mistake,” and one that went a long way toward her losing her party’s nomination for president in 2008. Nonetheless, in 2011 Clinton was one of the strongest voices in the Obama administration pushing for U.S. intervention in Libya to overthrow strongman Muammar Qaddafi, urging the president to add American warplanes to the European force that backed the rebels with air power. Clinton even pushed “for a secret American program that supplied arms to rebel militias, an effort never before confirmed,” the New York Times reports in a major two-part look at her role in the war, and how it may offer a glimpse into her temperament when it comes to big foreign-policy decisions.


Back in 2011, Martland, along with fellow Green Beret Capt. Daniel Quinn, roughed up a local Afghan police commander in Kunduz after their superiors allegedly ignored reports that the police commander repeatedly raped a boy he kept chained to his bed. Quinn has since left the Army, but Martland is fighting to stay in despite the service’s attempts to discharge him. In October, then-Army Secretary John McHugh agreed to postpone Martland’s discharge until the soldier could file an appeal. Originally, the Army had until March 1 to decide whether he can remain in the service, but now he has until May 1 to plead his case, and remain on active duty.

Army spokesperson Lt. Col. Jennifer R. Johnson emailed SitRep that the “extension was granted to allow consideration of his application to correct his records by the Army Board for Correction of Military Records.” In English, this means that Martland’s attempts to have his record corrected over the Kunduz incident are essentially being given another hearing. Martland claims that despite the Afghan’s claims that he beat him up, all the U.S. soldiers did was roughly remove him from their shared base.

Attacks. The Islamic State conducted a series of spectacular attacks in Iraq on Sunday, killing dozens at a market in Baghdad and assaulting security forces on the edge of the city. The attacks show that despite being under increasing pressure by coalition aircraft and Iraqi forces, the terrorist group is still more than capable of reaching into the country’s capital city. Overall, six car bombs detonated in Abu Ghraib, and a double suicide bombing hit the Shiite district of Sadr City, killing at least 28 people.

The deluge. The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad dropped a pretty sobering warning on Sunday, saying the Mosul Dam in northern Iraq “faces a serious and unprecedented risk of catastrophic failure with little warning.” Stories about the dam have been circulating for some time, and earlier this month, FP’sKeith Johnson wrote up a bit about how the dam has “been considered a ticking time bomb. Constructed on top of gypsum, limestone, and other minerals that dissolve when in contact with water, the dam has been plagued by the threat of collapse since even before it began operations.”

But the war with the Islamic State has caused the Iraqi government to fall behind on the daily repairs the dam needs to function, putting the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis at serious risk. If the dam failed, the ISIS-held city of Mosul would face a wave of water almost 80 feet high within hours, while Baghdad itself — 400 miles downriver — would get hit with about 13 feet of water in the center of the city.

Before the court. It’s safe to say that the plan President Barack Obama recently unveiled to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and transfer dozens of detainees to the United States for eventual trial, didn’t find much support on Capitol Hill. But two cases coming before U.S. courts of men accused of supporting the Islamic State will be a real test for how terrorism cases are handled in domestic courts, the Wall Street Journalreports.

No order. Former CIA Director Michael Hayden said during an interview Friday that if Republican front-runner Donald Trump won the presidency, U.S. troops would and should reject some of the ideas the candidate has been trumpeting on the campaign trail. Appearing on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” Hayden said, “I would be incredibly concerned if a President Trump governed in a way that was consistent with the way that candidate Trump expressed during the campaign.” When Maher asked about Trump’s promise to go after the families of ISIS members, Hayden responded, “God, no! Let me give you a punchline: If he were to order that once in government, the American armed forces would refuse to act.” Asked how that was possible, Hayden explained, “you are not required, in fact you’re required to not follow an unlawful order.”

Here we go on another week of SitRep, and thanks for clicking on through. As always, if you have any thoughts, announcements, tips, or national security-related events to share, please pass them along to SitRep HQ! Best way is to send them to: paul.mcleary@foreignpolicy.com or on Twitter: @paulmclearyor @arawnsley.

Syria

The recently-inked cessation of hostilities in Syria has cut down dramatically on the fighting as its enters its third day, but rebels sent a letter to the United Nations Sunday alleging 26 violations of the agreement in areas. Rebels claim Russia has bombed rebel groups abiding by the truce in those 26 areas and used cluster munitions, killing civilians. Russia’s defense ministry has yet to comment on the allegations and the Syrian military denies the,

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signaled Israel’s approval of the ceasefire in Syria, telling reporters that an end to the bloodshed is welcome but laying down two red lines regarding Iran and its Lebanese terror group proxy, Hezbollah. Netanyahu stated that Israel would not tolerate shipments of “advanced weaponry” to Hezbollah or the establishment of a “second terror front on the Golan Heights” along the Syrian border with Israel. In the past, Israel has reportedly carried out airstrikes against illicit weapons shipments to Hezbollah originating in Syria and struck Hezbollah targets on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights.

Israel’s Channel 2 carried a report on Sunday claiming that Iran is pulling all 2,500 of its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps fighters from Syria and leaving behind a 750-strong advisory footprint. The report comes on the heels of a recent assessment by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry that Tehran “pulled a significant number of troops out” of Syria.

Iraq

Iraq’s Kurdistan Region Security Council is investigating reports that the Islamic State used chemical weapons near Sinjar on Thursday, Voice of America reports. Peshmerga troops there reported symptoms of nausea and vomiting following a rocket barrage from the Islamic State. Blood testing of peshmerga fighters in Iraq carried out by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has previously confirmed the use of chemical weapons by the Islamic State in Iraq.

Afghanistan

The Taliban have either captured, or are operating in, 10 of Helmand province’s 14 districts, and are knocking at the gates of the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah. And the Afghan official who is in charge of defending the province is the same man who handed over the area to the mujahideen in 1993, later fleeing the country and spending a decade in exile in Moscow.

Iran

Iranian arms researcher Galen Wright analyzed sensor footage released by Iran showing two drone strikes carried out by an Iranian Shahed-129 UAV in Syria, geolocating the strikes to the border between Idlib and Aleppo and Halasah village near Aleppo. The drone feed footage, released on Iranian television, shows a munition from an Iranian Shahed-129 hitting a handful of men in a field as well as a house in Halasah. The strikes would mark Iran’s entrance into the growing club of countries that have used armed drones in conflict alongside Iraq, Pakistan, and Nigeria just in the past year.

Europe

Latvia is asking for a troop commitment from NATO in order to hedge against growing Russian aggression in Eastern Europe and the Baltics, USA Todayreports. Latvian foreign minister Edgars Rinkevics said his country wants NATO “boots on the ground” there, along with the weaponry and equipment to go along with them. That might be a tall order for the Atlantic alliance, however, given the relatively tight defense budgets of NATO’s bigger powers. Latvia itself has increased defense spending as it worries about recent Russian mobilizations and exercises along its border with Russia.

JLENS

The world’s most troubled radar blimp just got more troubled. The Los Angeles Times reports that the annual report from the Defense Department’s office of Operational Test & Evaluation says that problems with the aerostat’s software “could result in some high priority radar targets not being processed and tracked.” The recently-disclosed problem comes on the heels of anearlier report showing that the radar system, designed to track incoming missiles, had trouble finding a gyrocopter flown by a Florida man onto the lawn of the U.S. Capitol building. JLENS captured the nation’s attention in October 2015 when it broke free from its tether and blew from Maryland into rural Pennsylvania, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake.

USAF

You can stop calling the Air Force’s new bomber the LRS-B (long range strike bomber) and start calling it the B-21. That’s the new name for the flying branch’s next generation stealth bomber, revealed alongside concept art for the plane on Friday by Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James. The bomber, a stealth flying wing design, looks much like its predecessor, the B-2 Spirit. Still missing, however, is a name for the B-21. Secretary James says she’s open to suggestions from airmen and women so send in your ideas.

Droneception

Israel’s Ynetnews.com flags a picture of what’s allegedly an Israeli Searcher drone flying over Syria. The drone is believed to be one of a number of Israeli Aircraft Industries Searcher UAVs which Israel sold to Russia as part of its program to kickstart a domestic drone industry of its own. At least one Russian-owned Israeli Searcher drone, re-dubbed “Forpost” by Russia, has crashed before when it was shot down over Ukraine in the spring of 2015.

'Black Widows' arrive in Afghanistan to give Taliban nightmares

Airmen assigned to the 455th Expeditionary Aircraft Maintenance Squadron, deployed from Hill Air Force Base, Utah, perform maintenance on an F-16 Fighting Falcon at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, on Oct. 30.

Πηγή: Airforce Times
By Jeff Schogol
9 Nov 2015

Airmen and F-16s with the 421st Fighter Squadron from Hill Air Force Base, Utah, have arrived in Afghanistan to make sure the Taliban have nowhere to hide, day or night.

Known as the “Black Widows,” the squadron traces its heritage to World War II. In June 1944, it received the P-61 “Black Widow,” the first U.S. aircraft designed as a night fighter, according to the squadron’s fact sheet.

Nowadays, the unit flies night-capable F16CMs, equipped with night vision goggles, the High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile targeting system and the Advanced Targeting Pod, all of which allow pilots to put bombs on target at night or any other time, a U.S. Air Forces Central Command news release says.

“It deploys worldwide to conduct Day and Night air superiority, precision strike, and Forward Air Controller sorties employing laser-guided and inertially-aided munitions during contingencies and combat,” the news release says.

The squadron arrived at Bagram Airfield on Oct. 28 for a six-month deployment, replacing airmen and F-16s with the 555th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron from Aviano Air Base, Italy, the news release says.

“We are incredibly excited to be here,” Lt. Col. Michael Meyer, 421st Expeditionary Fighter Squadron commander, said in the news release. “This is what we train for. We are here to support the ground commander’s intent, wherever and whenever they ask, save lives on the ground and help transition Afghanistan to a stable and self-sufficient government.”

This is the 15th time the squadron’s F-16s have deployed to the U.S. Central Command theater of responsibility since the 1990s — and the last time the Black Widows will send F-16s downrange before the 388th Fighter Wing begins transitioning to the F-35A Lightning II, Meyer said in the news release.

The Air Force hopes that the F-35 will be fully operational in 2021.

Germany builds new power grids worth $13m in Samangan

Πηγή: KP
Feb 1 2015

The Construction work of two new power grids worth $13 million and supported by the government of Germany kicked off in northern Samangan province of Afghanistan.

The two new power grids are being built in the towns of Aybak and Pir Naghchir ties of Samangan which would supply electricity for up to 9,000 households in Aybak and 1,500 households in the town of Pir Naghchir.

Deputy provincial governor Akhtar Mohammad Khairzada said ““Today we witness a very important moment for the development of Samangan. The power grid will supply more than 100,000 people with electricity.”

The German Development Commissioner in Afghanistan, Dr. Martin Schuldes, underlined that “In urban, suburban and rural centres, technically reliable access to a transmission and distribution network is essential for steady economic and social development.”

Once the municipal networks in Aybak and Pir Nagchir are operational, they will be run and maintained by the Samangan business unit of Afghanistan’s power supply company, Da Afghanistan Breshna Sherkat’s (DABS), according to a statement by Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH.

The statement further added upon completion of the project, households in both municipalities will be able to apply for a connection and get access to electricity from DABS.

The cost for the construction of the two grids and network investment will amount to AFN 743 million which is equivalent to $13 million and is financed by the German Government through the KfW Development Bank, the statement added.

The investment is part of Germany’s North Eastern Power System (NEPS) programme to support construction of a modern transmission and distribution infrastructure in the provinces of Balkh, Samangan and Baghlan. The energy sector and with it the improvement of the distribution infrastructure is a priority for Afghan-German Development Cooperation

According to GIZ, for the city of Aybak the construction measures include the installation of a feeder link from the existing substation into the city, the construction of a medium and low-voltage distribution network and installation of 85 pole-mounted transformers and three transformer substations in the municipal borders. To provide electricity
for the town of Pir Naghchir, a 40km long 20kV transmission line will be installed from the sub-station in Kholm to Pir Naghchir, as well as 40 transformers and 400 volt city grid distribution line covering as distance of 27 km.

At the opening ceremony, the deputy provincial governor Akhtar Mohammad Khairzada and Martin Schuldes were joined by the Director of DABS in Samangan, Engineer Mehrabuddin, Dr. Martin Knoll of the KfW Development Bank, Mr. Dirk Drewes from the German engineering firm Fichtner and representatives of the construction company TGEM.

Is Obama keeping our troops in Afghanistan to protect the opium trade?

Their real mission?

Πηγή: Examiner
By Dave Gibson
June 19 2013

In 2000, the Taliban banned opium production in Afghanistan, making it illegal to grow poppies. Any farmer caught cultivating the cash crop would be severely punished, usually by death. By the middle of 2001, there was basically no opium produced in Afghanistan, though that nation ordinarily led the world in production of the drug. However, since the start of the U.S. led invasion, the poppy fields began growing again and the opium trade is flourishing as never before.

The Taliban had relied on opium sales to finance their operations until July 2000. It was then that the regime's leader Mullah Mohammed Omar issued a ban on the drug trade, because he claimed that it conflicted with Islamic law. Less than a year later, a U.N. delegation visited the areas of the country where poppies were traditionally grown and found nothing.

The head of the U.N. Drug Control Programsaid: "There are no poppies. It's amazing." By January 2002, the U.S. military had the Taliban on the run and the poppy fields had returned in earnest. At the same time, the U.S. and NATO nations signed a worldwide ban on opium production.

The U.N. released a report on the return of the Afghan opium trade which noted: "Afghanistan has been the main source of illicit opium: 70 percent of global illicit opium production in 2000 and up to 90 percent of heroin in European drug markets originated from Afghanistan."

The report went on to say: "There are reliable indications that opium cultivation has resumed since October 2001 in some areas (such as the southern provinces Uruzgan, Helmand, Nangarhar, and Kandahar), following the effective implementation of the Taliban ban on cultivation in 2001, not only because of the breakdown in law and order, but also because the farmers are desperate to find a means of survival following the prolonged drought."

Despite the Bush administration claims at the time that the international drug trade helped finance terrorism, a blind-eye was turned to the activities of the Afghan warlords and the Pashtun mafia. The U.S. and our NATO partners ignored the re-introduction of the poppy crops and allowed opium production to flourish. In 2007, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime released a report which found that during 2006, opium production increased by 50 percent from the previous year.

Afghanistan produced a record of 6,700 metric tons in 2006, and was responsible for 92 percent of the world's opium production. This rise corresponded with the dramatic fall of Southeast Asia's opium production, which, in contrast only produced 370 metric tons that same year. In the past, it has been reported that the CIA is involved in Afghanistan's opium production, or at least in protecting it.

In March 2002, a U.S. foreign intelligence official speaking on the condition of anonymity, reminded a reporter with NewsMax.com of the CIA's record of involvement with the international drug trade.

The official said:

"The CIA did almost the identical thing during the Vietnam War, which had catastrophic consequences--the increase in the heroin trade in the USA beginning in the 1970's is directly attributable to the CIA. The CIA has been complicit in the global drug trade for years, so I guess they just want to carry on their favorite business.The sole reason why organized crime groups and terrorists have the power that they do is all because of drug trafficking. Like the old saying, 'those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.'"

The following is a listing of Afghanistan’s opium crop in metric tons, since 2001:

-2001...185mt

-2002...3,400mt

-2003...3,600mt

-2004...4,200mt

-2005...4,100mt

-2006...6,700mt

-2007...8,200mt

-2008...7,700mt

-2009…6,900mt

-2010…3,600mt

-2011...5,800mt

-2012..3,700mt

(Source: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Afghanistan Opium Survey Summary Findings)

Afghanistan’s 2010 crop was nearly cut in half from the previous year’s production due to a blight hitting the poppy fields. However, the reduced supply tripled the price of opium, earning the farmers $605 million last year, up 38 percent from 2009. The current high price is now convincing many of that country’s farmers to give up on growing traditional crops such as wheat, and enter opium production.

In addition to being the world’s number one opium supplier, Afghanistan is now the largest producer of hashish, producing between 1,500 and 3,500 tons annually.

While the U.S. government claims to be making strides in the eradication of Afghanistan’s opium fields, the United Nations reports that only 5,351 hectares of opium were eradicated in 2009, less than 4 percent of the amount planted. In 2010, the amount of land used for poppy cultivation was 123,000 hectares, with the amount reportedly eradicated, unchanged from 2009.

By the end of 2012, 154,000 hectares were being devoted to the poppy crop.

Though Afghanistan produces about 90 percent of the world's opium supply, a mere 2 percent of the drug is actually seized within that country’s borders.

Afghanistan could now be fairly described as a 'narco-state' and the role that the U.S. military has played in that nation's illicit evolution cannot be ignored.

In fact, a recent New York Times article stated:

“This country is on its way to becoming the world’s first true narco-state,” said one international law enforcement official, who did not want to be quoted criticizing the Afghan government. “The opium trade is a much bigger part of the economy already than narcotics ever were in Bolivia or Colombia.”

But Mirwais Yasini, a former head of counternarcotics for the Afghan government and now a prominent member of Parliament, said, “I wouldn’t go that far.”

“But if it goes on like this in the future, I am worried about that happening,” he said.

Mr. Yasini said eradication efforts had been countered by insecurity, compounded by corruption at local, provincial and national levels. “I don’t see anything tangible that has been done,” he said. “There is no meaningful crop substitution and no effective enforcement.”

The United Nations has estimated in the past that opium trafficking makes up 15 percent of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product, a figure that is expected to rise as international military and development spending declines with the NATO withdrawal at the end of 2014.

As of May 19, 2013, a total of 2,227 U.S. service members have been killed in Afghanistan.

Karzai Says He Was Assured C.I.A. Would Continue Delivering Bags of Cash

The Afghan leader Hamid Karzai told reporters Saturday that money delivered by the C.I.A. was “an easy source of petty cash.”

Πηγή: New York Times
By MATTHEW ROSENBERG
May 4 2013

KABUL, Afghanistan — The C.I.A.’s station chief here met with President Hamid Karzai on Saturday, and the Afghan leader said he had been assured that the agency would continue dropping off stacks of cash at his office despite a storm of criticism that has erupted since the payments were disclosed.

The C.I.A. money, Mr. Karzai told reporters, was “an easy source of petty cash,” and some of it was used to pay off members of the political elite, a group dominated by warlords.

The use of the C.I.A. cash for payoffs has prompted criticism from many Afghans and some American and European officials, who complain that the agency, in its quest to maintain access and influence at the presidential palace, financed what is essentially a presidential slush fund. The practice, the officials say, effectively undercut a pillar of the American war strategy: the building of a clean and credible Afghan government to wean popular support from the Taliban.

Instead, corruption at the highest levels seems to have only worsened. The International Monetary Fund recently warned diplomats in Kabul that the Afghan government faced a potentially severe budget shortfall partly because of the increasing theft of customs duties and officially abetted tax evasion.

On Saturday, Mr. Karzai sought to dampen the furor over the payments, describing them as one facet of the billions of dollars in aid Afghanistan receives each year. “This is nothing unusual,” he said.

He said the cash helped pay rent for various officials, treat wounded members of his presidential guard and even pay for scholarships. Mr. Karzai said that when he met with the C.I.A. station chief, “I told him because of all these rumors in the media, please do not cut all this money, because we really need it.”

“It has helped us a lot, it has solved lots of our problems,” he added.

The comments were his first in Kabul since The New York Times reported the payments last week, when he was traveling in Europe.

Yet Mr. Karzai, in offering his most detailed accounting to date of how the money had been used, probably raised as many questions as he answered.

Formal aid, for instance, is publicly accounted for and audited. The C.I.A.’s cash is not, though Mr. Karzai did say the Americans were given receipts for the money they dropped off at the presidential palace.

Asked why money that was used for what would appear to be justifiable governing and charitable expenses was handed over secretly by the C.I.A. and not routed publicly through the State Department, Mr. Karzai replied: “This is cash. It is the choice of the U.S. government.”

He added, “If tomorrow the State Department decides to give us such cash, I’d welcome that, too.”

Mr. Karzai declined to specify how much cash his office received each month, or how much it had been given by the C.I.A. so far. At his meeting with the station chief, it was made clear to him that “we are not allowed to disclose” the amount, he said.

Current and former Afghan officials who spoke before last week said the payments had totaled tens of millions of dollars since they began a decade ago.

The American Embassy in Kabul, which handles queries for the C.I.A., declined to comment.

But it was Mr. Karzai’s acknowledgment that some of the money had been given to “political elites” that was most likely to intensify concerns about the cash and how it is used.

In Afghanistan, the political elite includes many men more commonly described as warlords, people with ties to the opium trade and to organized crime, along with lawmakers and other senior officials. Many were the subjects of American-led investigations that yielded reams of intelligence and evidence but almost no significant prosecutions by the Afghan authorities.

Mr. Karzai did not address those concerns on Saturday. He instead emphasized that no one group or political faction was given special treatment.

“Yes, sometimes Afghanistan’s political elites have some needs, they have requested our help and we have helped them,” Mr. Karzai said. “But we have not spent it to strengthen a particular political movement. It’s not like that. It has been given to individuals.”

Mr. Karzai is not the first Afghan to receive money from the C.I.A., which paid warlords to fight the Taliban during the invasion in 2001 and has paid others to keep fighting.

But the payments to the president’s office appear to be on a vaster scale and to have had a wider impact, fueling the same patronage networks that American envoys, law enforcement agents and soldiers struggled unsuccessfully to dismantle.

Mr. Karzai is not believed to have personally profited. But the C.I.A. money has proved essential to his ability to govern, say current and former Afghan officials who had first described the payments. His administration is not centered on a political party or a particular ideology and instead draws strength largely from its ability to buy off warlords, lawmakers and other prominent — and potentially troublesome — Afghans.

The United States was not alone in keeping the Karzai administration awash in cash. Iran, too, made regular cash payments to the presidential palace, though Mr. Karzai said that it cut off the money after Afghanistan began negotiating a strategic partnership deal with Washington.

The British intelligence agency MI6 has given small amounts for special projects, he said, but only a fraction of what the Americans and Iranians gave.

Asked if any other countries were dropping off stacks of cash at the palace, Mr. Karzai said: “No, none. And even if they were, we wouldn’t let you know. We wouldn’t tell you that.”

News of the payments dominated the Afghan media over the past week, with lawmakers calling for an inquiry and some suggesting that taking the cash was potentially treasonous. And there have been jokes, of course. At the palace on Saturday, Afghan reporters laughed at the “C.I.A. burgers” they were served for lunch after the news conference.

Members of Congress have also raised questions about the payments. Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, wrote to President Obama last week expressing concern that they appeared to “indicate an incoherent U.S. policy toward Afghanistan,” and asking for an explanation.

“The alleged arrangements make accountability impossible and promote corruption at the top levels of the Afghan government, as well as break trust with the American taxpayer,” Mr. Corker wrote.

With Bags of Cash, C.I.A. Seeks Influence in Afghanistan

Off-the-books cash delivered directly to President Karzai's office shows payments on a vast scale.

Πηγή: New York Times
By MATTHEW ROSENBERG
April 29 2013

KABUL, Afghanistan — For more than a decade, wads of American dollars packed into suitcases, backpacks and, on occasion, plastic shopping bags have been dropped off every month or so at the offices of Afghanistan’s president — courtesy of the Central Intelligence Agency.

All told, tens of millions of dollars have flowed from the C.I.A. to the office of President Hamid Karzai, according to current and former advisers to the Afghan leader.

“We called it ‘ghost money,’ ” said Khalil Roman, who served as Mr. Karzai’s deputy chief of staff from 2002 until 2005. “It came in secret, and it left in secret.”

The C.I.A., which declined to comment for this article, has long been known to support some relatives and close aides of Mr. Karzai. But the new accounts of off-the-books cash delivered directly to his office show payments on a vaster scale, and with a far greater impact on everyday governing.

Moreover, there is little evidence that the payments bought the influence the C.I.A. sought. Instead, some American officials said, the cash has fueled corruption and empowered warlords, undermining Washington’s exit strategy from Afghanistan.

“The biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan,” one American official said, “was the United States.”

The United States was not alone in delivering cash to the president. Mr. Karzai acknowledged a few years ago that Iran regularly gave bags of cash to one of his top aides.

At the time, in 2010, American officials jumped on the payments as evidence of an aggressive Iranian campaignt o buy influence and poison Afghanistan’s relations with the United States. What they did not say was that the C.I.A. was also plying the presidential palace with cash — and unlike the Iranians, it still is.

American and Afghan officials familiar with the payments said the agency’s main goal in providing the cash has been to maintain access to Mr. Karzai and his inner circle and to guarantee the agency’s influence at the presidential palace, which wields tremendous power in Afghanistan’s highly centralized government. The officials spoke about the money only on the condition of anonymity.

It is not clear that the United States is getting what it pays for. Mr. Karzai’s willingness to defy the United States — and the Iranians, for that matter — on an array of issues seems to have only grown as the cash has piled up. Instead of securing his good graces, the payments may well illustrate the opposite: Mr. Karzai is seemingly unable to be bought.

Over Iran’s objections, he signed a strategic partnership deal with the United States last year, directly leading the Iranians to halt their payments, two senior Afghan officials said. Now, Mr. Karzai is seeking control over the Afghan militias raised by the C.I.A. to target operatives of Al Qaeda and insurgent commanders, potentially upending a critical part of the Obama administration’s plans for fighting militants as conventional military forces pull back this year.

But the C.I.A. has continued to pay, believing it needs Mr. Karzai’s ear to run its clandestine war against Al Qaeda and its allies, according to American and Afghan officials.

Like the Iranian cash, much of the C.I.A.’s money goes to paying off warlords and politicians, many of whom have ties to the drug trade and, in some cases, the Taliban. The result, American and Afghan officials said, is that the agency has greased the wheels of the same patronage networks that American diplomats and law enforcement agents have struggled unsuccessfully to dismantle, leaving the government in the grips of what are basically organized crime syndicates.

The cash does not appear to be subject to the oversight and restrictions placed on official American aid to the country or even the C.I.A.’s formal assistance programs, like financing Afghan intelligence agencies. And while there is no evidence that Mr. Karzai has personally taken any of the money — Afghan officials say the cash is handled by his National Security Council — the payments do in some cases work directly at odds with the aims of other parts of the American government in Afghanistan, even if they do not appear to violate American law.

Handing out cash has been standard procedure for the C.I.A. in Afghanistan since the start of the war. During the 2001 invasion, agency cash bought the services of numerous warlords, including Muhammad Qasim Fahim, the current first vice president.

“We paid them to overthrow the Taliban,” the American official said.

The C.I.A. then kept paying the Afghans to keep fighting. For instance, Mr. Karzai’s half brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, was paid by the C.I.A. to run the Kandahar Strike Force, a militia used by the agency to combat militants, until his assassination in 2011.

A number of senior officials on the Afghan National Security Council are also individually on the agency’s payroll, Afghan officials said.

While intelligence agencies often pay foreign officials to provide information, dropping off bags of cash at a foreign leader’s office to curry favor is a more unusual arrangement.

Afghan officials said the practice grew out of the unique circumstances in Afghanistan, where the United States built the government that Mr. Karzai runs. To accomplish that task, it had to bring to heel many of the warlords the C.I.A. had paid during and after the 2001 invasion.

By late 2002, Mr. Karzai and his aides were pressing for the payments to be routed through the president’s office, allowing him to buy the warlords’ loyalty, a former adviser to Mr. Karzai said.

Then, in December 2002, Iranians showed up at the palace in a sport utility vehicle packed with cash, the former adviser said.

The C.I.A. began dropping off cash at the palace the following month, and the sums grew from there, Afghan officials said.

Payments ordinarily range from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, the officials said, though none could provide exact figures. The money is used to cover a slew of off-the-books expenses, like paying off lawmakers or underwriting delicate diplomatic trips or informal negotiations.

Much of it also still goes to keeping old warlords in line. One is Abdul Rashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek whose militia served as a C.I.A. proxy force in 2001. He receives nearly $100,000 a month from the palace, two Afghan officials said. Other officials said the amount was significantly lower.

Mr. Dostum, who declined requests for comment, had previously said he was given $80,000 a month to serve as Mr. Karzai’s emissary in northern Afghanistan. “I asked for a year up front in cash so that I could build my dream house,” he was quoted as saying in a 2009 interview with Time magazine.

Some of the cash also probably ends up in the pockets of the Karzai aides who handle it, Afghan and Western officials said, though they would not identify any by name.

That is not a significant concern for the C.I.A., said American officials familiar with the agency’s operations. “They’ll work with criminals if they think they have to,” one American former official said.

Interestingly, the cash from Tehran appears to have been handled with greater transparency than the dollars from the C.I.A., Afghan officials said. The Iranian payments were routed through Mr. Karzai’s chief of staff. Some of the money was deposited in an account in the president’s name at a state-run bank, and some was kept at the palace. The sum delivered would then be announced at the next cabinet meeting. The Iranians gave $3 million to well over $10 million a year, Afghan officials said.

When word of the Iranian cash leaked out in October 2010, Mr. Karzai told reporters that he was grateful for it. He then added: “The United States is doing the same thing. They are providing cash to some of our offices.”

At the time, Mr. Karzai’s aides said he was referring to the billions in formal aid the United States gives. But the former adviser said in a recent interview that the president was in fact referring to the C.I.A.’s bags of cash.

No one mentions the agency’s money at cabinet meetings. It is handled by a small clique at the National Security Council, including its administrative chief, Mohammed Zia Salehi, Afghan officials said.

Mr. Salehi, though, is better known for being arrested in 2010 in connection with a sprawling, American-led investigation that tied together Afghan cash smuggling, Taliban finances and the opium trade. Mr. Karzai had him released within hours, and the C.I.A. then helped persuade the Obama administration to back off its anticorruption push, American officials said.

After his release, Mr. Salehi jokingly came up with a motto that succinctly summed up America’s conflicting priorities. He was, he began telling colleagues, “an enemy of the F.B.I., and a hero to the C.I.A.”

Blackwater still making major deals with U.S. in Afghanistan

U.S. soldiers west of Kabul, Afghanistan.

Πηγή: Salon
By NATASHA LENNARD
Dec 5 2012

Blackwater, which now goes by the name “Academi” to sound less like an army of pillaging mercenaries, is still making major no-bid deals with the U.S. military in Afghanistan. Wired’s Spencer Ackerman reported Wednesday that Blackwater will play “landlord” to U.S. Special Operations Forces in the country.

Thanks to a no-bid deal worth $22 million, U.S. Special Ops have moved to a new Blackwater-owned and operated base — Camp Integrity. “It’s highly unusual for U.S. military forces to take up official residence on a privately owned facility, ” reported Ackerman, noting, “According to Lt. Col. Tom Bryant, the spokesman for Special Operations Joint Task Force-Afghanistan, it’s only supposed to be temporary, as the command plans to move to Bagram Air Field by summer 2013. But Camp Integrity is already shaping up to be a crucial location for an Afghanistan war that’s rapidly changing.”

The use of Camp Integrity reportedly arose from the simple fact of overcrowding as the U.S. consolidated its Special Operations into one force. Academi offered a home for the force that could not be accommodated by existing military facilities. But as Ackerman noted, “Academi’s old incarnation, Blackwater, had deep ties to the secretive U.S. special operations community. Founder Erik Prince was a Navy SEAL, and the firm aided the Joint Special Operations Command with counterterrorism targeting and ‘snatch and grab‘ operations in Pakistan.”

Despite the rationale of expediency, it may come as a surprise to Blackwater (by any other name) critics that the contractor continues to make major deals with the U.S. military in Afghanistan, despite its record of murdering Afghan civilians. But as Ackerman pointed out, the notorious security firm now hosts “the heart of the enduring commando mission in the U.S.’ longest war.”

Last month Ackerman reported that Academi will also play a major role in the Pentagon’s plan to expand its global spy network to an unprecedented size. Academi is among six firms hired to train DIA spies in self-defense.

Narco-State Run Kabul Bank Is One Major Ponzi Scheme, Surprised?!

Πηγή: StratRisks
Nov 30 2012

COMPLEX scheming by the authorities and shareholders of Kabul Bank to siphon hundreds of millions of dollars from savings accounts caused its collapse in 2010 and nearly took the Afghan financial system down with it, according to a report on Wednesday.

Weak regulatory oversight missed the early warning signs, the report found, and there was “inappropriate political interference” during the investigations into the bank’s fiasco.

The review by Independent Joint Anti-Corruption Monitoring and Evaluation Committee said a number of shareholders, administrators, employees, and others participated in a complex scheme to divert depositor funds beginning in 2006.

They led “a sophisticated operation of fraudulent lending and embezzlement through a loan book scheme” resulting in the loss of $935m funded mostly from customer’s deposits, the report said.

It detailed for the first time how the funds were misappropriated. Tactics included unjustifiable disbursements, fake capital injections, salaries paid to non-existent employees, payment for fake assets and political contributions.

Kabul Bank was the biggest bank in Afghanistan at the time of its collapse, with a 34% stake in the country’s banking sector. More than 1-million people were depositing their money. The failure and government bail-out amounts to 5% of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product.

The report found that more than 92% of Kabul Bank’s loan book — approximately $861m — was fraudulently disbursed to 12 individuals and seven companies. One set of books was allegedly prepared for regulators while another kept track of the real distribution of the money.

The bank officials also used fake stamps, forged documents and statements, some of which were provided by fake accounting firms, the report said.

The bank was effectively running a ponzi scheme, MEC co-chairman Drago Kos said.

At least $900m — which includes a large chunk of $861m bad debt — was siphoned from Kabul Bank through wire transfer that went to the accounts of parties or businesses related to the suspects and shareholders, Mr Kos said.

According to the report, the pilots were paid $320,000 in salaries between March 2008 and November 2010 under the heading “Pilots of Cash Delivery”.

The inquiry also found evidence that regulatory bodies “who should have been completely independent” were “deferring questions to the political authorities”, Mr Kos said.

The committee’s report criticised the Afghan Attorney General’s office for delaying the start of the formal investigation for more than a year, saying “political decisions were made by high-ranking officials” in office, including who to indict and what the indictment should state.

There was no evidence of Afghan President Hamid Karzai being directly involved. The brother of Vice-President Marshal Fahim benefited due to one of Mr Karzai’s decisions, an official said on condition of anonymity.

Mr Fahim’s brother was one of two “politically exposed” shareholders in the Kabul Bank, the official said, the other being Mr Karzai’s half-brother.

Like several others, they paid for their shares in the company with unsecured loans from the bank itself, according to the report.

Missions in Afghanistan, Kosovo and Allied Defense Capabilities top NATO DMs meeting

Πηγή: Diplonews
Oct 9 2012

Missions in Afghanistan, Kosovo and improving defence capabilities top the agenda of a two-day NATO defence ministerial meeting which starts on Tuesday (9 October) at Alliance headquarters.

On Afghanistan, Defence Ministers are expected to discuss the progress made in the mission with ISAF partners on Wednesday, 10 October .

The ministers are expected to endorse the first phase of planning for NATO’s post-2014 training, advice and assistance mission to the Afghan forces. They are to approve the broad framework for the mission, which will serve as guidance for military experts as they take the planning process ahead. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has set a goal to reach agreement on a detailed outline of the mission by early next year and to finalise the operational plan well before the end of 2013.

Plans to hand over full responsibility for security to the Afghans by the end of 2014 remain on course. "Our strategy is to build up the capacity of the Afghan security forces and gradually hand over to them lead responsibility for the security across the country," the Secretary General said ahead of the ministerial. The timeline is to complete this transition by the end of 2014 . At that time, the current ISAF combat mission will end. From 2015 it will be followed by the NATO-led training, assist and advice mission.

The first working session on Tuesday, 9 October will focus on improving defence capabilities. The Secretary General has highlighted the need for NATO member states to make sure they have the right forces, structures and capabilities in place to make sure they can meet the security challenges of the 21st century. The ministers are expected to keep up the momentum on Smart Defence, finding more ways to become more efficient in defence spending with multinational projects. Allies have already started to implement a list of multinational projects which were approved at the Chicago Summit. The projects give Allies more access to crucial capabilities covering areas such as clearing roadside bombs, sharing smart munitions and pooling maritime patrol aircraft.

Ministers will also review NATO’s mission in Kosovo.

HACKED STRATFOR EMAILS: DEA Told To Back Off From The Brother Of Afghan President Hamid Karzai

Ahmed Wali Karzai

Πηγή: Business Insider
By Michael Kelley
Sept 19 2012

Newly released internal emails from the U.S. private security firm Stratfor state that in 2007 the Bush Administration and CIA ordered the Drug Enforcement Agency to back off a major drug trafficking investigation of Afghan President Hamid Karzai's half brother.

Ahmed Wali Karzai was an influential power broker in Afghanistan before he was assassinated in July 2011.

In June 6, 2007 email, titled "RE: Humint - Afghanistan - Karzai (Strictly Protect - Confidential," Stratfor vice president of intelligence Fred Burton wrote:

The brother of President Karzai of Afghanistan is under investigation by DEA as a major narcotics trafficker. For political reasons, DEA has been told to backoff [sic] by the White House and CIA. DEA is seeing a direct nexus between terrorism and narcotics in Afghanistan with narcotics sales being used to fund jihadist operations.

After a Stratfor analyst asks "how close is karzai to this brother?" Burton replies:

Was described to me as close. Karzai will end up being another Noreiga.
Off the record --
DEA will proceed and take 'em (both?) down anyway, once this White House disappears.
As I've said before, every country we have touched, turns to shit.

The crackdown on narcotics in Afghanistan has not yet occurred as opium production rose by about 61 percent from 2010 to 2011 and continued to rise in 2012 as U.S. troops have patrolled the poppy fields during this time.

WikiLeaks has published 2,694 out of what it says is a cache of 5 million internal Stratfor emails (dated between July 2004 and December 2011) obtained by the hacker collective Anonymous around Christmas.

UPDATE: As redditor WhoShotJR notes, current and former American officials told the New York Times in 2009 that Ahmed Karzai received regular payments from the CIA since 2001.

Controversial plan to split up Afghanistan

President Hamid Karzai, above, would be a figurehead under plans by MP

Πηγή: The Independent
By BRIAN BRADY and JONATHAN OWEN
Sept 9 2012

Afghanistan could be carved into eight separate "kingdoms" – with some of them potentially ruled by the Taliban – according to a controversial plan under discussion in London and Washington.

Code-named "Plan C", the radical blueprint for the future of Afghanistan sets out reforms that would relegate President Hamid Karzai to a figurehead role.

Devised by the Conservative MP and Foreign Office aide Tobias Ellwood, it warns that the country faces a "bleak" future when it is left to fend for itself. Mr Ellwood claims that a "regionalised" state under a powerful new prime minister would tackle the weak government, tribal disputes and corruption which many fear could plunge Afghanistan into chaos when the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) withdraws at the end of 2014.

Senior government sources confirmed that Plan C – Finding a political solution to Afghanistan had been presented to the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, and discussed with officials at the White House. Mr Ellwood, a former captain in the Royal Green Jackets, has also discussed the plan with Pakistani government officials in London.

But experts criticised the attempt to "impose" a democratic system on Afghanistan, and insisted that coalition leaders should be concentrating on a military exit strategy that would enable them to withdraw their forces by the 2014 deadline.

Wazhma Frogh, executive director of Afghanistan's Research Institute for Women, Peace and Security, said: "Who is the British MP sitting in London and deciding for Afghanistan? It should be us, the people of this country, deciding if we want to divide into states or collapse as a nation. I am surprised to see an MP of a democratic country creating the future and showing solutions for a country in which he doesn't have to live and where his children will not have to live."

Mr Ellwood, who now works as a parliamentary aide to the Foreign Office minister David Lidington, claimed a political settlement – even one that includes the Taliban – was necessary to guarantee Afghanistan's long-term stability.

"Isaf may be confident that its revised security strategy is finally working, but the insurgent threat will not be removed by force alone," he said in the report, seen by The Independent on Sunday. "The Taliban will not enter into a meaningful dialogue if there is no feasible political strategy within which they can participate... An alternative solution [offers] a less centralised political structure that better reflects the ethnic make-up of the country, the already established economic hubs and the regional interest of the Taliban, who might then be encouraged towards a political settlement."

The plan divides Afghanistan into eight zones, based around the "economic hubs" of Kabul, Kandahar, Herat, Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz, Jalalabad, Khost and Bamyan. The areas would be administered by a council representing different ethnic groups and overseen by one or more foreign countries. Mr Ellwood also claims that creating a post of prime minister, with many of the "disproportionate" powers currently held by the President, would help allay concerns over the man who has been in charge of the country for almost eight years.

But Thomas Ruttig, co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, said: "Splitting the country into such regions will result in the empowerment of what we have started calling 'local (or regional) power brokers' and what was known as 'warlords' before, whose misrule between 1992 and 1996 caused the rise of the Taliban in the first place."

U.S. troops tried to burn 500 copies of Koran, investigation says

Crowds of Afghans protest reports of burning of Koran while U.S. officials step up outreach and apologize.

Πηγή: Washington Post
By Craig Whitlock
August 27 2012

U.S. troops tried to burn about 500 copies of the Koran as part of a badly bungled security sweep at an Afghan prison in February, despite repeated warnings from Afghan soldiers that they were making a colossal mistake, according to a U.S. military investigative report released Monday.

The number of copies of the Muslim holy book that were taken to the incinerator at Bagram air base was far greater than U.S. military officials earlier acknowledged in their accounts of an act of desecration that triggered riots across Afghanistan. The incident is also thought to have played at least a partial role in an ensuing increase in attacks against NATO troops by Afghan soldiers and police.

Despite demands from Afghan officials that the American troops be placed on trial over the Koran burnings, U.S. military officials decided against filing criminal charges. Instead, the Army announced that it had taken less-serious disciplinary action against six soldiers for what they described as unintentional — if costly — mistakes.

The investigation, however, cited evidence of a jarring lack of religious awareness and cultural training among the U.S. troops. The report said that before their deployment to Afghanistan, the troops were exposed only to about an hour-long PowerPoint presentation about Islam. Although they were generally aware that the Koran was a holy text, the report said, they were ignorant of the extreme cultural offense their mishandling of it could cause.

The Army did not release the names of the six soldiers because they received only unspecified administrative punishments and did not face criminal charges. A Navy sailor also was investigated, but officials said disciplinary measures were dropped in that case.

Meanwhile, in another case of offensive behavior in the war zone, the Marine Corps said Monday that it disciplined — but stopped short of filing criminal charges against — three noncommissioned officers for their involvement in an incident last year in which Marines videotaped themselves urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters.

The video became international news after it was posted anonymously to a Web site in January, becoming the latest strain on relations between Afghan civilians and the NATO-led military coalition that has occupied the country for the past decade. The short clip depicts four Marines in combat gear laughing as they relieved themselves over three prostrate bodies.

After a lengthy investigation, the Marine Corps said it determined that the video was recorded in July 2011 by members of the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment while they were deployed to the village of Sandala in Helmand province.

Three Marines pleaded guilty Monday to violations of military regulations but were spared more-serious charges that could have resulted in a court-martial. Because the cases did not go to trial, the Marines Corps declined to identify the three or to disclose the nature of their punishments.

Disciplinary measures are pending against other Marines involved in the case, said Col. Sean D. Gibson, a spokesman for the Quantico-based Marine Corps Combat Development Command. He declined to say how many other Marines might be implicated.

The Army’s investigation of the burning of the Korans documented a series of blunders by U.S. troops and military police officers who — unable to speak local languages — mistakenly assumed that they were disposing of radical literature found in the library of the Parwan detention center, located at the edge of Bagram air base.

Acting on suspicions that prisoners were passing illicit notes in the margins of library books, U.S. troops asked an Afghan translator to take a look. The translator concluded, erroneously, that the majority of the library’s holdings were extremist in nature, according to the investigative report.

Prison guards boxed up almost 2,000 of the suspicious books. Of those, 474 were Korans and 1,100 were unobjectionable religious tracts. The remainder were secular volumes, the investigation found.

When Afghan soldiers and guards at the prison learned of the plan to burn the books, they objected loudly. But U.S. troops, responding to miscommunicated orders as well as suspicions about their Afghan allies, transported the materials to a burn pit at Bagram air base.

Most of the texts were rescued at the last minute by Afghan workers at the base, who quickly shut off the incinerator and doused the flames after realizing that the daily trash pile contained Muslim holy books. The military said, however, that “up to 100” Korans and other religious texts were burned.

Afterward, the Afghans so distrusted Americans to properly handle the saved Korans that they hid them under rugs, in closets and even in kitchen microwaves.

The investigating officer, Army Brig. Gen. Bryan G. Watson, said in the report that he found no evidence of “malicious intent to disrespect the Koran or defame the faith of Islam” on the part of the U.S. troops.

“Ultimately, this tragic incident resulted from a lack of cross-talk between leaders and commands, a lack of senior leader involvement [and] distrust among our US Service Members and our partners,” he concluded.