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.

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

'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.

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.

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. construction projects in Afghanistan challenged by inspector general’s report

Πηγή: Washington Post
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
July 29 2012

A U.S. initiative to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on construction projects in Afghanistan, originally pitched as a vital tool in the military campaign against the Taliban, is running so far behind schedule that it will not yield benefits until most U.S. combat forces have departed the country, according to a government inspection report to be released Monday.

The report, by the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, also concludes that the Afghan government will not have the money or skill to maintain many of the projects, creating an “expectations gap” among the population that could harm overall stabilization efforts.

The study calls into question a fundamental premise of the U.S. strategy to counter the Taliban insurgency — that expensive new roads and power plants can be funded and constructed quickly enough to help turn the tide of war — and it poses a sobering, counterintuitive question for policymakers in Washington: whether the massive influx of American spending in Afghanistan is actually making problems worse.

Many U.S. military commanders, diplomats and reconstruction experts have long believed that large infrastructure projects were essential to fixing Iraq and Afghanistan. Now-retired Gen. David H. Petraeus, the former top commander in both wars who is now director of the CIA, used to say that cash was one of his most important weapons.

But the latest report adds new weight to the argument — voiced by independent development specialists and even a few government officials — that the United States attempted to build too much in a country with limited means to assume responsibility for those projects. All U.S. combat forces are expected to be withdrawn from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

Until now, most critiques have asserted only that the massive U.S. foreign assistance program has led to waste and fueled corruption. The new report goes further by suggesting that some projects may ultimately prove detrimental.

In a written response to the report, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul said it was “speculative” for the inspector general to conclude that some of the projects would have adverse effects. The top Pentagon official responsible for Afghanistan called the report premature and insisted that the announcement of the projects, even though they have not been completed, has generated goodwill and excitement among the Afghan people.

The inspector general’s examination focuses on the Afghan Infrastructure Fund, which was authorized by Congress in 2010 in part to prevent the Defense Department from dipping into a discretionary account for military commanders to bankroll large projects. The infrastructure fund was supposed to allow the Defense and State departments to collaboratively plan and pool money for large infrastructure improvements aimed at supporting the U.S. counter­insurgency campaign.

Since then, Congress has poured $800 million into the fund and the State Department has committed about $1 billion of its funds to related infrastructure programs.

Among the projects criticized by the inspector general is a plan to use costly diesel generators to provide electricity to residents of Kandahar, the country’s second-largest city, until the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers install a new hydropower turbine at a dam in the violence-plagued hills of neighboring Helmand province. Purchasing diesel to run the generators, which produce about 25 megawatts of electricity each — enough to power about 2,500 Afghan homes or small businesses — is projected to cost U.S. taxpayers about $220 million through 2013.

Senior U.S. commanders argued that increasing electricity through the “Kandahar Bridging Solution” would be an important part of the overall American military effort to beat back the Taliban in Kandahar province. Those commanders asserted that more power to operate lights, television sets and fans would please residents and lead many of them to throw their support behind the Afghan government.

But other civilian and military officials have questioned that logic. When U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Kenneth Dahl was the deputy commander of U.S. forces in Kandahar last year, he said he could not find any evidence that the additional electricity was yielding greater employment, stability or support for the government. “This is a bridge to nowhere,” he declared to his staff in 2011.

Back then, Dahl also noticed a disturbing disparity: The installation of the turbine at the dam, which will not occur for at least two more years, will produce significantly less power than the city receives from the generators. Since the Afghan government will not have the financial ability to buy diesel for the generators, that means the city’s power supply will inevitably ebb once the turbine is operational and U.S. funding for diesel ends.

That gap was seized upon by the inspector general. “While the Kandahar Bridging Solution may achieve some immediate [counter­insurgency] benefits because — as stated by USAID officials — ‘people like having their lights on,’ the U.S. government may be building an expectations gap that cannot be met in a timely manner,” the report states.

The inspector general’s report also questions whether a new $23 million road in Helmand province will have adverse effects because the Afghan government has not compensated landowners for the destruction of their property. In addition, the report reveals that four electricity projects — costing a total of more than $300 million from the infrastructure fund — have not yet been awarded to contractors, despite claims from the military and USAID that they will have important counterinsurgency benefits.

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), a frequent critic of Afghan reconstruction efforts, said the report raises fundamental questions about the strategic rationale of U.S. development programs in the war-torn nation. “There’s no data that shows these major projects have changed the security environment in the country,” she said. “We cannot just throw money at a country like this and expect it to have a good ending.”

In its response to the report, the U.S. Embassy defended the importance of large-scale development initiatives. “These critical infrastructure projects have signaled to Afghan populations the U.S. government’s long term commitment to Afghanistan.”

Although the United States has spent almost $90 billion on Afghan reconstruction and development over the past decade, such examinations traditionally had not been conducted by the special inspector general’s office, which was more interested in contracting waste and fraud. This report was approved by a new inspector, former federal prosecutor John F. Sopko, who took charge of the office this month. He has vowed to scrutinize how projects are conceptualized and designed, not just how they are implemented.

America's war in Afghanistan: murdered civilians, mistreated veterans

US Army Specialist Jared Richardson gets his hair cut near Joint Base Lewis-McChord, as Brigadier General Carsten Jacobson, Isaf spokesman, gives a TV press conference about Sunday's shootings of 16 civilians in Kandahar, Afghanistan

Πηγή: The Guardian

By Ammy Goodman

March 15 2012

We may never know what drove a US Army staff sergeant to head out into the Afghan night and allegedly murder at least 16 civilians in their homes, among them nine children and three women. The massacre near Belambai, in Kandahar, Afghanistan, has shocked the world and intensified the calls for an end to the longest war in US history.

The attack has been called tragic, which it surely is. But when Afghans attack US forces, they are called "terrorists". That is, perhaps, the inconsistency at the core of US policy – that democracy can be delivered through the barrel of a gun; that terrorism can be fought by terrorizing a nation.

"I did it," the alleged mass murderer said, as he returned to the forward operating base outside Kandahar, that southern city called the "heartland of the Taliban". He is reported to have left the base at 3am and walked to three nearby homes, methodically killing those inside. One farmer, Abdul Samad, was away at the time. His wife, four sons and four daughters were killed. Some of the victims had been stabbed, some set on fire. Samad told the New York Times:

"Our government told us to come back to the village, and then they let the Americans kill us."

The massacre follows massive protests against the US military's burning of copies of the Qur'an, which followed the video showing US Marines urinating on the corpses of Afghans. Two years earlier, the notorious "kill team" of US soldiers that murdered Afghan civilians for sport, posing for gruesome photos with the corpses and cutting off fingers and other body parts as trophies, also was based near Kandahar.

In response, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta rolled out a string of cliches, reminding us that "war is hell". Panetta visited Camp Leatherneck in Helmand province, near Kandahar, this week on a previously scheduled trip, which, coincidentally, occurred days after the massacre. The 200 marines invited to hear him speak were forced to leave their weapons outside the tent. NBC News reported that such instructions were "highly unusual", as marines are said to always have weapons on hand in a war zone. Earlier, upon his arrival, a stolen truck raced across the landing strip toward his plane, and the driver leapt out of the cab, on fire, in an apparent attack.

The violence doesn't happen just in the war zone. Back in the US, the wounds of war are manifesting in increasingly cruel ways.

The 38-year-old staff sergeant who allegedly committed the massacre was from Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM), a sprawling military facility near Tacoma, Washington, which has been described by Stars and Stripes newspaper as "the most troubled base in the military" and, more recently, as "on the brink". 2011 marked a record for soldier suicides there. The base also was the home for the "kill team".

The Seattle Times reported earlier this month that 285 patients at JBLM's Madigan Army Medical Center had their post-traumatic stress disorder(PTSD) diagnoses inexplicably reversed by a forensic psychiatric screening team. The reversals are now under investigation due to concerns they were partly motivated by a desire to avoid paying those who qualify for medical benefits.

Kevin Baker was also a staff sergeant in the US Army, stationed at Fort Lewis. After two deployments to Iraq, he refused a third after being denied a PTSD diagnosis. He began organizing to bring the troops home. He told me:

"If a soldier is wounded on a battlefield in combat, and they're bleeding to death, and an officer orders that person to not receive medical attention, costing that service member their life, that officer would be found guilty of dereliction of duty and possibly murder. But when that happens in the US, when that happens for soldiers that are going to seek help, and officers are ordering not a clear diagnosis for PTSD and essentially denying them that metaphoric tourniquet, real psychological help, and the soldier ends up suffering internally to the point of taking their own life or somebody else's life, then these officers and this military and the Pentagon has to be held responsible for these atrocities."

While too late to save Abdul Samad's family, Baker's group, March Forward! – along with Iraq Veterans Against the War's "Operation Recovery", which seeks to ban the deployment of troops already suffering from PTSD – may well help end the disastrous, terrorizing occupation of Afghanistan.

Afghan Taliban threaten to behead U.S. soldiers

Afghan protesters shout anti-U.S. slogans during a demonstration in Jalalabad province, against Sunday's shooting of at least 16 villagers by a U.S. Army staff sergeant in the volatile Afghan province of Kandahar, March 13, 2012. The shootings triggered a protest by around 2,000 students in the eastern city of Jalalabad, the first since Sunday's attack, who called for the U.S. soldier to be prosecuted by Afghan authorities in Kandahar.

Πηγή: Reuters
By Rob Taylor and Mirwais Harooni
March 12 2012

Suspected insurgents fired on an Afghan government delegation on Tuesday investigating the massacre of 16 civilians by a U.S. soldier, officials said, hours after the Taliban threatened to behead American troops to avenge the killings.

Two of President Hamid Karzai's brothers, Shah Wali Karzai and Addul Qayum Karzai, were with senior defense, intelligence and interior ministry officials travelling to the scene of the massacre in Najiban and Alekozai villages, in Kandahar's Panjwai district, when insurgents opened fire.

Karzai's brothers were unharmed in the brief gunbattle during meetings at a village mosque, but a soldier and a civilian were wounded. The area is a Taliban stronghold and a supply route.

"The Islamic Emirate once again warns the American animals that the mujahideen will avenge them, and with the help of Allah will kill and behead your sadistic murderous soldiers," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement, using the term with which the Islamist group describes itself.

As the first protest broke out in Jalalabad city over the weekend shootings, the Taliban said Afghan government demands for an open trial of the U.S. Army staff sergeant being held for the slayings would not blunt civilian hostility towards Western combat troops.

The unnamed U.S. soldier - said to have only recently arrived in the country - is accused of walking off his base in Kandahar province in the middle of the night and gunning down at least 16 villagers, mostly women and children.

A U.S. official said the accused soldier had suffered a traumatic brain injury while on a previous deployment in Iraq.

The shootings, which came just weeks after deadly protests across the country over the inadvertent burning of Korans by U.S. soldiers, triggered a protest by around 2,000 students in the eastern city of Jalalabad.

The demonstrators chanted "Death to America" and demanded Afghan President Hamid Karzai reject plans to sign a strategic pact with Washington that would allow U.S. advisers and possibly special forces to remain in the country beyond the planned withdrawal in 2014.

U.S. President Barack Obama, speaking after a phone call with Karzai - who is said to be furious over the latest deaths - said the shootings had only increased his determination to get American troops out of Afghanistan.

However, Obama cautioned there should not be a "rush to the exits" for U.S. forces who have been fighting in Afghanistan since late 2001 and that the drawdown set for the end of 2014 should be done in a responsible way.

The soldier, from a conventional unit, was based at a joint U.S.-Afghan base used by elite U.S. troops under a so-called village support programme hailed by NATO as a possible model for U.S. involvement in the country after the 2014 drawdown.

Such bases provide support to local Afghan security units and provide a source of security advice and training, as well as anti-insurgent backup and intelligence.

"CAN NO LONGER BE CALLED ROGUE"

A spokesman for Kandahar governor Tooryalai Wisa said that tribal elders in the area of the massacre would urge against protests and work to dampen public anger if the investigation process was transparent.

"They are supporting the government and will accept any conclusion by the investigators. Today we have meetings with people in the area and all will become clear," spokesman Ahmad Jawid Faisal said.

NATO officials said it was too early to tell if the U.S. soldier would be tried in the United States or Afghanistan if investigators were to find enough evidence to charge him, but he would be under U.S. laws and procedures under an agreement between U.S. and Afghan officials.

Typically, once the initial investigation is completed, prosecutors decide if they have enough evidence to file charges and then could move to an Article 32 or court martial hearing.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Monday that the death penalty could be sought in the U.S. military justice system against the soldier, but portrayed the shooting as an isolated event that would not alter withdrawal plans.

While Afghan MPs in parliament called for a trial under Afghan law, Karzai's office was understood to accept that a trial in a U.S. court would be acceptable provided the process was transparent and open to media.

Analysts said the incident would complicate U.S. efforts to reach agreement with the Afghan government on a post-2014 security pact before a May summit in the U.S. city of Chicago on the future size and funding of Afghan security forces.

Thomas Ruttig of the Afghanistan Analysts Network said that despite NATO and White House references to the killings as the work of a "rogue" soldier, other similar events had happened before, including a "kill team" apprehended in Kandahar in 2010.

"In the stress of an environment of escalated violence - by both sides, but particularly after Obama's troop surge in early 2009, it looks as if most soldiers simply see Afghanistan as a whole as ‘enemy territory' and every Afghan as a potential terrorist. This can no longer be called ‘rogue'," Ruttig said.

NATO's top commander in Afghanistan, Marine General John Allen, has promised a rapid investigation of the massacre, while security was being reviewed at NATO bases across the country.

Afghan Government Joins US, Taliban Peace Talks, WSJ Reports

Πηγή: Tolonews
Feb 16 2012

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said that his government, the Taliban and the US have entered three-way peace talks, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The Journal on Thursday quoted Karzai as saying that the Taliban are "definitively" interested in peace settlement to end the 10-year war in the country. He declined to provide more details about the location or the nature of the talks, saying it could jeopardise the process.

"People in Afghanistan want peace, including the Taliban," the Journal quoted Karzai as saying in an interview. "They are also people like we all are. They have families, they have relatives, they have children, they are suffering a tough time."

President Karzai recently expressed concern that Afghanistan was being sidelined during talks between the US and the Taliban. However, he told the Journal during the interview conducted at the Arg Palace on Wednesday: "There have been contacts between the US government and the Taliban, there have been contacts between the Afghan government and the Taliban, and there have been some contacts that we have made, all of us together, including the Taliban."

The Taliban has repeatedly said that it will not negotiate with the "puppet" government of Hamid Karzai. However, Mr Karzai rejected these statements and said his representatives have met with "the most senior members" of the Taliban.

Talks between the US and the Taliban resulted in an agreement to open a Taliban representative office in Qatar. Kabul has been keep informed about developments. It was recently reported that the Afghan government started secret talks with the Taliban in Saudi Arabia. The Taliban denied this.

In a recent exclusive interview with TOLOnews, President Karzai's National Security Advisor, Rangin Dadfar Spanta, said that Taliban are unpopular faces in Afghanistan, and that anyone who called Taliban leaders "heroes" was a traitor and an enemy of Afghanistan.

He also said that if the Afghan government tried to bring the Taliban into power, he would be ashamed to be a part of it.

Afghan chief Karzai arises as obstacle to U.S. talks with Taliban

Afghan President Hamid Karzai attends the opening session of the parliament last month in Kabul.

Πηγή: LAtimes
By Laura King
Feb 7 2012

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly tried to thwart the most focused U.S. effort yet to bring the insurgents to the bargaining table, observers say.

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan—

On the face of it, President Hamid Karzai has every motive to do all he can to bring about talks with the Taliban. Instead, the Afghan leader is emerging as a prime impediment to urgent U.S. efforts to jump-start negotiations with the insurgents.

Since the start of his second term in office, Karzai has repeatedly declared that his top priority is finding a political settlement to the bloody Afghan conflict and bringing the "disaffected brothers" back into the social and political fold.

Karzai's self-interest is at stake. NATO's military clock is ticking down, accelerated by the United States' recently announced push to wind down its combat role next year. And without Western backing, the Afghan leader is well aware that his own survival — political, and perhaps literal — could be in doubt.

Yet Karzai has repeatedly tried to thwart the most focused American effort yet to bring the insurgents to the bargaining table, launching a series of actions that appear to be almost deliberate provocations aimed at the United States, diplomats, analysts and observers say.

Before the Taliban movement last month announced its intention to open an office in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar to facilitate an "understanding" with the U.S.-led coalition, Karzai had worked assiduously behind the scenes to scuttle any such contacts. He loudly objected to the prospective locale, and recalledAfghanistan's ambassador to Qatar, complaining that his administration had been left out of the loop in key discussions.

Under heavy U.S. pressure, Karzai grudgingly agreed to the Qatar arrangement. But within weeks, presidential aides disclosed that the Afghan leader was seeking to set up parallel meetings with the insurgents, in Saudi Arabia. The Taliban issued an unusually specific denial that it intended to talk in Saudi Arabia with the Karzai government, which it routinely mocks as a "puppet regime."

Last week, Karzai enlisted the support of visiting Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar, who declared at a news conference that Pakistan would support an Afghan-led peace process, an implicit warning against too much U.S. control over the direction of the prospective talks in Qatar.

The moves leave the United States and its allies in the awkward position of publicly proclaiming that any peace process must be "Afghan-owned" and "Afghan-led," even as the Karzai administration is dismissed by the Taliban as irrelevant and continues to be a problematic partner to the West.

Many observers see the Afghan leader's role as a potential spoiler as far outweighing any other influence he wields.

"I think President Karzai is completely cut off from the process," said Haroun Mir, an analyst at theAfghanistan Center for Research and Policy Studies.

Part of the president's aggrieved stance regarding contacts in Qatar can be traced to the spectacular failure of more than a year of high-profile efforts on his own part to open a channel to the insurgents.

In 2010, Karzai set up a body known as the High Peace Council and declared it the clearinghouse for any contacts with the Taliban. In September last year, an assassin posing as a Taliban peace envoy killed the council's head, former President Burhanuddin Rabbani, with a bomb hidden in his turban.

In the wake of that debacle, Karzai found himself under fire from political rivals who had all along objected to any rapprochement with the insurgents, particularly stalwarts of the staunchly anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, dominated by ethnic Tajiks.

Even while the North Atlantic Treaty Organization force tries to present at least the appearance of unity among the Afghan government and its Western allies, the mercurial president tends to react sharply to any perceived heavy-handedness on the part of the U.S.-led coalition, particularly when actions by the NATO force result in Afghan deaths.

The United Nations said Saturday that civilian deaths last year hit a record high for the 10-year war. Although most of the fatalities were blamed on insurgents, Karzai has repeatedly said the Western military must be held to a higher standard.

The president does not hesitate to push back against his Western patrons. Late last year, Karzai publicly laid down seemingly untenable conditions for a long-term American presence in Afghanistan, including an end to the U.S.-led nighttime raids that have decimated the Taliban field command structure, and a demand that American troops be subject to Afghan law in the event of alleged wrongdoing, a deal-breaker in efforts to strike a similar accord in Iraq.

Last month, the president railed against foreign efforts to turn Afghanistan into a laboratory for what he called "political experimentation," while some of his aides sought to stoke fear that the West might agree to an effective partitioning of the country to placate the Taliban. U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker was forced to deny the existence of any such plan.

More recently, Karzai set a deadline of this week for turning over suspected insurgents captured by the U.S.-led military coalition to Afghan authorities, and the transfer of the main U.S.-overseen detention center to full Afghan control. Although the transfer of control had been envisioned for sometime this year, the president's timeline appeared to catch the Americans by surprise, and rights groups said detainees might be subject to abuse in Afghan hands.

In the eyes of many Western diplomats, Karzai's greatest contribution to the peace process would be an indirect one: cleaning up endemic corruption within his government. The Taliban movement has long capitalized on his failure to do so.

The insurgents firmly believe that an image of incorruptibility is one of their greatest assets in the struggle for public support, according to a classified military report leaked last week, which was based on interviews with thousands of captured Taliban fighters. Popular anger against the Karzai government, the thinking goes, will help the Taliban move to the political forefront once the West has pulled out.

Another crucial factor is the stance that Pakistan will take on any peace talks. Because most of the movement's leadership is based on its soil, the Islamabad government could block Taliban representatives from leaving the country, or arrest senior Taliban figures seeking to negotiate with the West. That happened in 2010, when Pakistan detained top Taliban military commander Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who was said to have been making peace overtures at the time.

In the face of considerable mutual mistrust, the Taliban and U.S. officials have both indicated that any talks in Qatar are likely to be preceded by reciprocal confidence-building steps, including a prisoner exchange and perhaps some limited truces in parts of the country, but Karzai has made it clear that he expects to sign off personally on any such measures.

The insurgency, meanwhile, is giving little sign it will dial back the fighting even once any talks are underway. Asked about American plans to move next year from a combat role to a training and advisory one, Taliban spokesman Qari Yousaf Ahmadi was uncompromising.

"As long as they are here," he said, "our jihad goes on."

3,021 Civilians Killed in Afghanistan in 2011

Πηγή: TOLOnews
Feb 5 2012

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

The deaths in 2011 compared with 2,790 in 2010 and 2,412 in 2009 showed that most of the deaths were caused by insurgents, the report found.
It was the fifth straight year that the toll has risen, with a total of 11,864 civilian lives claimed by the conflict since 2007.
Taliban-led insurgents caused 77 percent of the deaths last year, up to 14 percent from 2010, while Nato-led and Afghan government forces were responsible for killing 410 civilians -14 percent of the total, it added.

Afghanistan: 'This terrible war could have ended in a month’

Sandy Gall, pictured in Afghanistan with Taliban fighters

Πηγή: The Telegraph
By Neil Tweedie
Feb 3 2012

As his new book about the Taliban is released, former newsreader Sandy Gall on why it has all gone wrong in Afghanistan.

Even at the age of 84, Sandy Gall is a newsman. While most of the world sleeps, he is catching up on events, waking at 5am to listen to the BBC World Service. His home, a converted oast-house in deepest Kent, is crammed with books on recent and not-so-recent history. His mind, too, is crammed, with the results of a varied life in journalism, memories he shares in that clipped, slightly nasal voice, tinged with the merest hint of Scots; the one we knew so well, sandwiched between the bongs of ITN’s News at Ten.

“I started doing the 6 o’clock bulletin, I think,” he says. “It was 1968, and I’d been with ITN since 1963. I wasn’t very good, certainly in the early days – there was criticism of me doing it from within the network. My editor, who was a personal friend, said to somebody, 'Don’t make up your mind just yet, give him six months.’ ” They gave him rather longer than that in the end – 27 years, it turned out – until 1990.

Gall, though, was always more than a presenter. An experienced foreign correspondent – he spent a decade with Reuters before joining ITN in 1963 – the tea planter’s son never lost his hunger for adventure. During the Eighties, he made repeated visits to Afghanistan, trekking through mountainous territory to reach the mujahideen guerillas fighting against Soviet occupation.

The place has never left him. He has been returning ever since to chronicle the woes of a country that staggers from war to war; oppressed from within by the fundamentalism of the Taliban and the corruption of the Kabul elite, and from without by foreign powers who, as ever, use it as an arena for their rivalries.

Gall’s new book, War Against the Taliban, is an account of the latest phase in Afghanistan’s tortured recent history, starting with the eviction of the Taliban regime by the United States and its allies in the wake of the September 11 attacks, the botched hunt for Osama bin Laden that followed, and the subsequent counter-insurgency campaign waged by Nato against a resurgent Taliban from the middle of the decade onwards.

“I saw all these coffins going through Wootton Bassett and thought, 'How did we get into this mess?’ After 9/11, we started with the highest hopes for Afghanistan. Here was a chance to rebuild after what had been a terrible time for its people.”

There is plenty of criticism for those foolish enough to underestimate the perils of involvement in a country that has, over the centuries, eaten invading armies for breakfast. Not least the British, who in Helmand province rediscovered the kind of desperate frontier fighting (remember those lonely little “platoon houses”?) not witnessed since the early days of Empire.

Now, despite a vast expenditure of blood and treasure, the war is drawing to a predictably messy conclusion. The Obama administration is engaged in an unseemly race with the government of Hamid Karzai to conclude a peace settlement with the Taliban, and the British, always hanging on to American coat-tails, must get out as best they can. What went wrong?

“I think it was because Iraq took all the resources,” says Gall. “It was a complete disaster as far as Afghanistan went. There was also a lack of knowledge. Countries said they would do different things: Blair put his hands up for narcotics, the Germans put their hands up for policing – it was all very hotch-potch.

“The aim was reconstruction and development but nobody really had any idea just how tricky it would be, partly because they didn’t realise there had been this return of the Taliban. The other reason was the Karzai government: if there had been a really good leader, maybe it would have been different.”

There is another factor: the politics of the Indian sub-continent. The war in Afghanistan, says Gall, has to be seen in the context of Pakistan’s search for security in the face of its vastly more powerful antagonist, India. Pakistan’s Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has been playing a double game for years, posing as an ally of Western intelligence agencies while providing succour to the Taliban. The aim: a friendly client state on Pakistan’s western border, free of Indian influence.

“The Taliban wouldn’t have lasted 10 minutes without Pakistan,” says Gall. “If they didn’t have safe havens in Pakistan, where would they go with their wounded? Where would their families go? One (Pakistani) MP recently said to the head of the ISI, 'You could end this war in a month if you wanted to’. I’m sure that is true. Pakistan kept this war going.”

A Nato report leaked this week confirms Pakistani complicity in aiding the Taliban. The Americans, says Gall, are now finally aware of the full extent of their supposed ally’s duplicity.

“It all came from the fact that bin Laden had been hiding in Abbottabad. That was a big shock to us and a big shock to a lot of Americans, because obviously the Pakistanis must have known. There are no two ways about it. Kayani (head of the Pakistani army) must have known, and the ISI must have known. My view is that the Americans now have to be very tough with the Pakistanis and say, 'This is just not good enough, we’re not going to accept this.’”

But time is on the side of Pakistan, isn’t it? The Taliban are biding their time, aren’t they? “They may say, 'Yes, we’re going to be much more moderate’ and so on, but in practice – we’ll see. The Taliban have been assassinating a lot of people for months now. I suppose this is really the ISI. They are preparing the ground. That’s quite clear to most Afghans.

“In the north they will not acquiesce in a Taliban takeover, so there may well be civil war and partition. Kabul is part of the north, really. The population is Persian speaking, not Pashtun, and they will not welcome anything that looks like a Taliban government. Civil war is the worst possible thing you could have.”

So more war then? What then was the value of a conflict that has claimed the lives of almost 400 British soldiers?

“There have been good things. Girls’ education has started up again, and education on the whole has been pretty successful. Kabul has been prosperous. OK, there’s a lot of poor people around, but Afghanistan today is a much more successful country than it was when the Taliban were driven out. The Taliban did nothing. But I think they have learnt a lot, too. They now realise that brutality has its own disadvantages.”

Gall believes journalists should avoid becoming too entangled personally in stories but he allowed himself that luxury in Afghanistan. In 1983, he created Sandy Gall’s Afghanistan Appeal to provide help for those maimed by war. His whole family help out, and two of his daughters have worked in Afganistan, one as a journalist. Gall travels to the country almost every year, and will be there again this year. Why does it draw him back?

“It’s going back in time; it’s like a medieval country in some ways. You walk past farmers threshing on the side of the road and they say, 'Oh! You must come and have a cup of tea’. So they down tools and take you into their home. The hospitality is amazing. It’s a culture of hospitality.”

Taliban in 'trust-building' process with US in Qatar

Πηγή: Nation
By AFP
Jan 29 2012

KABUL // Taliban negotiators have begun holding preliminary talks with US officials in Qatar on plans for peace negotiations aimed at ending the decade-long war in Afghanistan, a former Taliban official said yesterday.

"The actual peace talks have not yet begun - they are in the process of trust-building and obviously this will take some time," Mawlavi Qalamuddin said.

Mr Qalamuddin, who once led the Taliban's religious police when they were in power, is now a member of the High Peace Council appointed by the government of President Hamid Karzai. The Taliban, ousted from power by a US-led invasion after the September 11 attacks, announced earlier this month that they planned to set up a political office in Qatar ahead of talks with Washington.

Mr Qalamuddin said the delegation already in the Gulf state included Mohammad Tayeb Agha, a close ally and secretary of the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, and Shahabuddin Delawar, the Taliban's former ambassador to Riyadh.

With them were Sher Mohammad Abaas Stanikzai, the former deputy foreign minister in the Taliban government, and Aziz-Ul Rahman, a former Taliban diplomat in Dubai, said Mr Qalamuddin.

"At the moment, the delegation is holding preliminary talks. It's in its very early phases. You need to build some trust before starting talks."

One of the trust-building measures demanded by the Taliban is the release of five of its members from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, while Washington wants the insurgents to renounce violence.

Mr Qalamuddin said the Taliban delegation "obviously" went to Qatar from Pakistan, indicating that Afghanistan's southern neighbour - accused by Kabul of blocking past attempts at peace talks - could be getting on board.

Another sign of a thaw between the two countries came with the announcement yesterday that the Pakistani Foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, will visit Kabul on Wednesday.

The Afghan foreign ministry spokesman, Janan Mosazai, said the visit would mark a "new phase" in cooperation between the two countries, adding that Mr Khar would hold talks with the Afghan foreign minister, Zulmai Rasoul, and President Hamid Karzai.

Mr Khar's visit comes after Pakistan made overtures to Afghanistan to resume talks over the Taliban which broke down following the assassination of Kabul's chief peace envoy, Burhanuddin Rabbani, in September, officials said.

Mr Karzai accused Pakistan of responsibility for the murder and last month said Islamabad was sabotaging all attempts at negotiations with the Taliban.

The president was initially wary of being sidelined in the Qatar talks, and Washington dispatched its special envoy, Marc Grossman, to Kabul last week to assure him of a central role for his government in any major negotiations.

US to probe video of troops urinating on Taliban corpses

Πηγή: France 24
By Reuters
Jan 12 2012




US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Thursday condemned as "utterly deplorable" a video that appears to show US troops urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan and promised an investigation into the incident.

REUTERS - U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Thursday condemned a video that apparently shows U.S. Marines urinating on the corpses of Afghan men, promising to punish those involved.

"I have seen the footage, and I find the behavior depicted in it utterly deplorable," Panetta said in a statement, saying he had ordered the Marine Corps and the commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan to investigate the incident.

"Those found to have engaged in such conduct will be held accountable to the fullest extent," he said.

The video that surfaced a day earlier appeared to show American forces urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban fighters could aggravate anti-American sentiment in Afghanistan as the Obama administration hopes to end a decade-long war.

The video, posted on YouTube and other websites, shows four men in camouflage Marine combat uniforms urinating on three corpses. One of them jokes: "Have a nice day, buddy." Another makes a lewd joke.

The video comes at a sensitive moment for the Obama administration, which is about to launch a flurry of diplomatic efforts it hopes will kindle peace negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

How the video will affect that initiative is unclear.

A senior member of Afghanistan's High Peace Council said it would undermine the peace efforts, but a Taliban spokesman said it was accustomed to such "brutality" and suggested the video would not affect existing discussions.

The U.S. Marine Corps has said it will investigate. The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan described the acts depicted in the video as "disrespectful" and "inexplicable".

Exclusive: Afghanistan sets ground rules for Taliban talks

An Afghan policeman keeps watch near the house of the head of Afghanistan's High Peace Council Burhanuddin Rabbani, after a blast in Kabul September 20, 2011.

Πηγή: Reuters
By Sanjeev Miglani and Hamid Shalizi

Dec 26 2011

Afghanistan will accept a Taliban office in Qatar to help peace talks but no foreign power can get involved in the process without its consent, the government's peace council said, as efforts gather pace to find a solution to the 10-year war.

Afghanistan's High Peace Council, in a note to foreign missions, has set out ground rules for engaging the Taliban after Kabul grew concerned that the United States and Qatar, helped by Germany, had secretly agreed with the Taliban to open an office in the Qatari capital, Doha.

It said that negotiations with the Taliban could only begin after they stopped violence against civilians, cut ties to al Qaeda, and accepted the Afghan constitution which guarantees civil rights and liberties, including rights for women.

The council, according to a copy of the 11-point note made available to Reuters, also said any peace process with the Taliban would have to have the support of Pakistan since members of the insurgent group were based there.

"The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is in agreement regarding the opening of an office for the armed opposition, but only to move forward the peace process and conduct negotiations," the council said.

The government would prefer such an office in either Saudi Arabia or Turkey, both of which it is close to, but was not averse to Doha as long as the authority of the Afghan state was not eroded and the office was only established for talks, officials said.

"We are saying Saudi or Turkey are preferable, we are not saying it has to be there only. The only condition is it should be in an Islamic country," said a government official.

President Hamid Karzai's administration recalled its ambassador from Doha last week, apparently angry that it had been kept in the dark about the latest round of negotiations with the insurgent group.

Officials said Kabul was also deeply concerned about reports that the United States was considering the transfer of a small number of Afghan prisoners from Guantanamo Bay military prison to Doha as a prelude to the talks.

"We are a sovereign country, we have laws. How can you transfer our prisoners from one country to another. Already it's a violation to have them in Guantanamo Bay," the official said.

The Afghan government wanted the prisoners to be returned to its custody, the official said.

Reuters reported this month that the United States was considering the transfer of an unspecified number of Taliban prisoners from Guantanamo Bay into Afghan government custody as part of accelerating, high-stakes diplomacy.

"We have no problem with this. In fact we have been demanding this for a while. These are Afghan prisoners," said the official, who declined to be identified.

The tension between the Karzai administration and the United States over engaging the Taliban underscores the challenges of seeking a political settlement as the West prepares to withdraw most combat troops from the country by 2014.

Efforts to engage the insurgent group have faced a string of setbacks, the most recent being the assassination of the head of the peace council and former president, Burhanuddin Rabbani, in September at the hands of a suicide bomber who pretended to be a Taliban emissary.

HARDENING OF POSITIONS

It led to a hardening of positions with Karzai saying the government could not talk to suicide bombers and that there should be an address for the Taliban so that negotiators know they are talking to the right representatives.

"We are committed to the reconciliation process, the experience of the last 10 years shows no military solution is possible. Talking to the armed opposition is the key in this regard," said presidential spokesman Aimal Faizi.

The peace council, laying down the markers for engagement with the Taliban, said well known figures from both the Taliban and the government had to be involved in talks.

It said that "before any negotiations can take place, violence against Afghan people must stop and that the armed opposition must cut ties to al Qaeda and other terrorist groups."

It also said that the Taliban must accept the constitution and honor the gains made in the last 10 years since they were ousted from power, conditions that the Taliban have shown no sign of accepting.

The Taliban do not accept the constitution and have vowed to carry on fighting until all foreign troops have left the country.

The peace council said Pakistani support was necessary for talks to take place, another condition that makes the task harder because of fraught ties between the United States and Pakistan which fears it is being shut out of the process.

Opening a Taliban office in a third country itself is seen as a way to create distance from Pakistan which has longstanding ties to the insurgent group.

But the government official said he did not think the peace council had laid down such tough conditions that the talks would fail even before they started.

"We don't think it's a deal breaker. We are quite optimistic," he said.

Militants Turn to Death Squads in Afghanistan

An Afghan shopkeeper with an American soldier recently in the Sabari district, where militants have been intimidating residents.

Πηγή: New York Times
By RAY RIVERA, SHARIFULLAH SAHAK and ERIC SCHMITT

Nov 28 2011

SABARI, Afghanistan — As targeted killings have risen sharply across Afghanistan, American and Afghan officials believe that many are the work of counterintelligence units of the Haqqani militant network and Al Qaeda, charged with killing suspected informants and terrorizing the populace on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Military intelligence officials say that the units essentially act as death squads and that one of them, a large group known as the Khurasan that operates primarily in Pakistan’s tribal areas, has been responsible for at least 250 assassinations and public executions.

Another group, whose name is not known, works mainly in Afghanistan and may be responsible for at least 20 killings in Khost Province over the summer alone, including a mass beheading that came to light only after a video was found in the possession of a captured insurgent. The video shows 10 headless bodies evenly spaced along a paved road, while their heads sit nearby in a semicircle, their faces clearly visible.

It is another indication that the Haqqanis, a mostly Pakistan-based faction, remain the most dangerous part of an insurgency that makes full use of a porous and often ill-defined border, as the NATO strike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers over the weekend showed.

Though the circumstances of that strike remain murky, it has now further upset relations between Pakistan and the United States, even as it once again demonstrated how havens inside Pakistan remained a critical part of the insurgent strategy.

The Americans have geared their offensive around bloodying the insurgents as they enter Afghanistan. But the new wave of assassinations shows that, even as NATO portrays the insurgents as a weakening force, the Haqqanis can still assert their influence, not only with headline-grabbing bombings but also through intimidation and by controlling perceptions.

One chilling case attributed to the second death squad came after American forces captured the senior Afghanistan-based leader for the Haqqanis, Hajji Mali Khan, and killed his top deputy this summer. Just days later, the bodies of two men accused of helping the Americans turned up near the village where Mr. Khan was captured. Scalding iron rods had been shoved through their legs. One victim had been disemboweled, and both had been shot through the head and crushed by boulders. Fear shot through the entire village.

“You could hardly recognize them,” said a witness who viewed the bodies.

Across Afghanistan, assassinations have jumped 61 percent, to 131 reported killings, through the first nine months of this year, compared with the same period in 2010, according to NATO statistics. United Nations officials say they began noticing a sharp increase in 2010, with 462 assassinations according to their records, double the number from the previous year. The figures may not include many killings in remote areas, like the mass beheading, because fearful villagers never reported them.

American intelligence officials say the Afghanistan-based group and the Khurasan seem to operate in much the same manner. The Khurasan is believed to have formed in early 2009 in the North Waziristan area of Pakistan, the Haqqanis’ headquarters, in response to intensified drone attacks by the United States. The group is said to wear black clothing with green armbands bearing its full name, Itihad al-Mujahedeen Khurasan, and works closely with Al Qaeda in the region. Estimates of its size range from 100 to 2,000 members.

During his interrogation, Mr. Khan suggested that other weapons were involved in the battle for influence, as well. According to four officials familiar with the questioning, the Haqqani leader told his interrogators that the Taliban had been approaching Afghan government and military officials throughout the summer, persuading them to sign a five-page document secretly pledging their loyalty to the Taliban leadership. Mr. Khan boasted that he had signed up 20 officials himself.

“They tell the officials that the Taliban is going to be back in power within 20 days of NATO leaving, so if they want to live, they’ll sign,” said one of the American officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the classified interrogations. Officials say they have found no confirmation of such oaths, however.

In places like Sabari, a rural district in Khost that sits about a dozen miles from the Pakistan border, the targeted killings are producing their intended effect. After a daylight execution of three men in a bazaar in the village of Maktab about four months ago, shop owners were so traumatized that they never reported the killings to the authorities.

Often, the victims may have had little more than passing encounters with coalition forces, or no involvement at all, according to officials, witnesses, and friends and relatives of victims.

American and Afghan officials learned about the killings only later when a video of the episode was found on a captured insurgent’s cellphone. Even then, American officials who showed the video to a New York Times reporter could cite the place where the killings had taken place but believed that they had occurred in October, about three months after witnesses say the actual episode happened.

The video showed a number of gunmen shooting to death two men as shop owners scrambled for cover. The militants then shot a third man as he sat in a white plastic chair in front of his shop. As the man fell backward, one of the gunmen shot him 10 more times in the face and chest.

“Whoever tries to help the Americans and spies for them will face this,” one of the men shouted after the killings, according to a witness, Ahmadullah, 25, a shop owner who like many Afghans goes by one name.

Ahmadullah said no one dared report it, even the men’s families, who carried the bodies away. “We just had to watch and stand quiet and watch what was happening to these poor people,” he said.

“I knew those men,” he added. “One was just a shop owner, the other two were laborers. They were innocent.”

An American military official who saw the video said he was not surprised that local villagers failed to report the episode.

“People in Sabari are living in abject terror, 24 hours a day,” he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss the death squad. “When we conduct a raid on a Haqqani leader,” he said, a group of about 15 death-squad members “go in and massacre people.”

Last month, insurgents killed another man in the bazaar, about two days after a night raid in the village by Afghan and American troops. This time the victim was a visiting merchant from Khost City named Nasib, who was pulled out of his car as his 5-year-old son watched from the passenger seat. His abductors dragged him to the bazaar and killed him in broad daylight.

Yet when asked about the killings, the district governor and the local police chief in Sabari said they knew nothing about them. “I totally deny such reports,” said Dawlat Khan Qayoumi, the district governor. “I can tell you in the last five months we have not seen any such incidents.”

Questions also surround the videotaped beheadings. Muhammad Zarin, the commander of a special undercover police unit that has been investigating the death squads, would say only that the men were from Khost and were killed about three months ago in the Mangal area in the province’s mountainous Musa Khel district, where Mr. Khan was active. Neither NATO nor the United Nations, both of which track assassinations, had any record of the mass beheadings, of the Maktab Bazaar killings or of the two men killed after Mr. Khan’s capture, reflecting the intense secrecy with which villagers have guarded the deaths.

After an earlier raid that failed to capture Mr. Khan in the Musa Khel area, coalition forces got a report that three village elders had been kidnapped and three teenagers had been beheaded. “When we went up to investigate, we could never get any bodies or any proof,” said Col. Christopher R. Toner, commander of the First Infantry Division’s Third Brigade Combat Team, based in Khost and Paktia Provinces. “But there was enough going around that I suspect it was true.”

Public health officials likewise say they hear of dozens of such killings but are seldom able to confirm them. “People don’t bring the bodies in to the hospital for fear of the Taliban,” said Dr. Fazal Mohammad Mangal of the Khost provincial hospital.

Zabit Amen Jan, a former Musa Khel resident, has lost four brothers to insurgents, including two students in their 20s whose bullet-ridden bodies were found in June. A hand-scrawled letter found on one of the bodies said the men had ignored repeated warnings to stop working with the coalition forces. “There was no other way except doing this,” the letter said.

Mr. Jan said his younger brothers had no connection to the coalition and were killed only because he and another brother had been involved in politics.

“People used to come to our district for picnics because our area is full of mountains and covered with pine and walnut trees,” he said. “Now people are fleeing to Khost City or Kabul or Pakistan, because there are so many killings and they know the government can’t protect them.”