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Blast Kills 2 NATO Soldiers in Afghanistan
VOA News September 8, 2011
The international military coalition in Afghanistan says two of its service members have died following the blast from an improvised explosive device in the southern part of the country.
NATO said in a statement that the two were killed Thursday, but did not provide any other details or nationalities.
According to the independent online site iCasualties.org that monitors the number of coalition deaths, a total of 421 members of the coalition have died so far this year in Afghanistan.
Also Thursday, Afghan officials say a roadside bomb killed a Turkish engineer working on a project in Herat province.
Another roadside bomb killed five Afghan soldiers in the eastern province of Khost on Wednesday.
Senior police officer shot dead in E. Afghanistan
JALALABAD, Afghanistan, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- A senior police officer was shot and killed by armed militants in Afghanistan's Nangarhar province with Jalalabad as its capital 120 km east of capital city of Kabul, an official said on Thursday.
"Unknown armed men broke in the house of a high-ranking police officer named Sayed Hakim spreading bullets and killing him on the shot in Bati Kot district on Wednesday night," administrative chief of Bati Kot district Esrarullah Qari Zada told Xinhua on Thursday morning.
He said the police official Hakim, who was serving as head of intelligence department of police in neighboring Pachir Wa Agam district, was visiting his family in Bati Kot district when the militants attacked his house and killed him.
In the meantime, Taliban insurgents claimed responsibility for the incident.
Zabihullah Mujahid, the purported spokesman of Taliban in talks with local media via cell phone from undisclosed location said the insurgents group killed Hakim for serving the government.
The Taliban-led insurgency has been rampant since the militant group announced to launch spring offensive from May 1 against Afghan and NATO-led troops stationed in Afghanistan.
The militant group also warned people against supporting government and foreign troops.
Separately, Afghan and NATO-led forces detained several suspected insurgents in an operation to capture a Taliban facilitator in Jalalabad city Wednesday night, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement on Thursday.
"The facilitator is responsible for supplying weapons and planning attacks against Afghan forces," the statement said, adding "One of the suspected insurgents was shot and wounded during the operation. After receiving medical treatment for non- life threatening wounds, he was detained by security forces for further questioning,"
The new Mullah Omar?
By Omar Samad Wednesday, September 7, 2011 - Foreign Policy
In a lengthy message on the occasion of the Eid al-Fitr holiday released last week under Mullah Mohammad Omar's name, the fugitive Taliban leader used a mix of "jihad-light" bravado and toned-down political rhetoric to express his group's position on key issues, as part of a push to influence public opinion that has garnered a variety of reactions from different Western and South Asian quarters.
Yet despite the hype among AfPak watchers, the message is more a reflection of an emerging dual-track strategy that promotes Omar as a credible interlocutor while masking his flaws, and is directly tied to the NATO decision to end its military engagement in Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
The new narrative, most certainly inspired by the various covert layers of mentoring (including non-Afghan) enjoyed by Mullah Omar's Quetta Shura, not only provides insight into Mullah Omar's public-relations strategy, but also aims to deflect attention from Taliban weaknesses, all while trying to bolster the group's possible future negotiating position. One specific objective is to force a full U.S. disengagement from Afghanistan by disrupting the establishment of a limited multi-year U.S. military presence in Afghanistan after the current 2104 drawdown date -- a subject of the "strategic partnership" talks now underway between Kabul and Washington.
By claiming that "the Afghan nation is not ready to accept establishment of American permanent bases," Mullah Omar conveyed a key demand at a crucial time when several regional countries, including Pakistan, Iran and Russia, have publicly expressed varying degrees of skepticism about the U.S.-Afghan talks (with China preferring to express its concerns through diplomatic channels).
Afghan diplomats believe that if and when the two sides reach an agreement on "strategic partnership," the deal would limit the use of Afghan bases by the United States to counter-terrorism support, and would call for international funding of Afghan security and development priorities, so avoiding the impression of American power projection in the region.
Afghan president Hamid Karzai, feeling the heat from different quarters, insists that the agreement should "serve Afghanistan's national interests," while a close advisor to President Hamid Karzai said publicly last week that most Afghans support an enduring U.S. military presence in the country, but warned that "some in the Afghan Government are trying to sabotage it."
Acknowledging, but not owning, secret talks (reportedly broken up by insider leaks by Afghan officials unhappy with being kept in the dark) held between American emissaries and the Taliban reported to have taken place earlier this year under German and Qatari auspices, Mullah Omar stressed that the meetings solely addressed the release of prisoners. He rejected the notion of "comprehensive negotiations," unless his group's agenda is taken into account. Omar also called for the immediate and full withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan as a pre-condition for a settlement. The American side, unsurprisingly, promptly dismissed the pre-condition of withdrawal for peace talks.
As a sign of the shifting winds, Mullah Omar carefully avoided giving any overt sign of association with al-Qaeda and transnational jihadism in his Eid message. As a possible sign of growing rifts developing between pragmatists and dogmatists within the Taliban conglomerate, he also informed his followers that "the jihadic chiefs nominated by us in all parts of the country are your Sharia-based leaders," and gives an explicit order, "you should obey them." This is an indication that regional Taliban emissaries appointed by the Quetta Shura are facing insubordination challenges on the ground.
This may also be an attempt to give the impression that he is distancing his faction from the more lethal Haqqani network, known to have strong ties to al-Qaeda and openly operating from bases in Pakistan's tribal regions in Waziristan. Yet Omar fails to explain how he intends to rein in the various international jihadist outfits based in Pakistan and active across Afghanistan, given the outfits' 15-year links with his organization and the fragmented nature of the insurgency.
While Mullah Omar's message calls on ground forces to extend their sphere of influence to new areas (the central highlands being a new target for instability), it also provides a glimpse of the internal schisms and compliance challenges felt by the Pakistan-based leadership of the Taliban. Cracks are appearing in the façade of Taliban unity as more runaway militias, some led by foreign fighters, are resorting to assassinations, extortion and civilian abuse. Compliance with the orders and rules of conduct set by the "Leader of the Faithful" Mullah Omar appears to be weakening across the country. Local people in a village in Helmand province recently beat to death two Taliban fighters in reprisal for the killing of an innocent local elder. This type of reaction by desperate civilians is likely to increase over time.
For most Afghans though, the biggest concern remains Taliban ties to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), long accused of interference in Afghan affairs through different proxies. It is difficult to imagine a change in the widespread Afghan mistrust towards Pakistan's ruling apparatus as long as the ISI continues to provide sanctuary and logistical support to militants, and exercise command-and-control authority through rogue elements over key militant networks.
It is also inconceivable that terms such as "change in the status quo" and "gunboat diplomacy" both used in Mullah Omar's Eid message, and unheard of from a former village mullah, would come from his personal lexicon (especially considering that Omar was born in a landlocked country!), pointing to his continued mentoring by non-Afghans.
Pakistani author Ahmed Rashid has called the Eid message a "forward-looking political message," while British special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan Mark Sedwill tweeted that the letter marks a "a shift of tone"; but for most Afghans, angered by domestic inertia and tired of unabated violence (Taliban and affiliated networks are alleged to be responsible for approximately 80% of all civilian deaths, according to the United Nations), actions speak louder than words.
Despite attempts at selling his strategy to Afghan and Western audiences, and contrary to previous Taliban pronouncements calling for the re-establishment of the Islamic Emirate, the Taliban leader admitted for the first time in his message that his group does not seek to "monopolize power." Instead, he calls for the establishment of a "real" Islamic government based on Islamic interests, going as far as accepting a role for other ethnic groups -- a novel idea shunned during the regime's power-grab in 1996.
For Mullah Omar's vision of an Islamic government to become reality, though, either the current Afghan Constitution (which guarantees basic human and democratic rights) would have to be scrapped, or the current system modified through top-down Taliban-style implementation of shariah. However, such concepts do not seem acceptable to most poverty-stricken Afghans and a devout but forward-looking population, the majority of whom, including women, are under 30 years of age. And such radical social re-engineering could further weaken the Afghan government's hold on power, paving the way for further civil strife.
Public opinion polls taken in the country since 2005 show that support for the Taliban and their style of governance garners no more than 10 percent approval at the most. This is why the Taliban and the networks that support them are opting for a more moderate tone. Some analysts view this change as progress, but it may not amount to much in the long term, as long as the use of violence against not only foreign forces but also Afghans is justified as "jihad."
Finally, in an era of mass protests against dictatorships in various parts of the Islamic world, and Twitter and Facebook generational activism, Mullah Omar seems uneasy about his group's oppressive reputation. He uses a misplaced anti-colonial narrative to target dissatisfied Afghans and skeptical Muslim masses to change existing perceptions of the Taliban, and solicits financial and moral support for his increasingly less popular fight.
Fully aware that his association with al-Qaeda is now seen as a liability, Omar blames the U.S. and NATO presence as the main cause of conflict in Afghanistan. However, he fails to appreciate the non-violent nature of most mass protests in the Muslim world and also fails to mention that prior to the September 11 terrorist attacks, his forces and those of allied foreign jihadists, including al-Qaeda, were actively promoting warfare, mass murder and oppression in Afghanistan, long before Western forces appeared on the scene.
While trying to stay a step ahead of his political adversaries, the Taliban leader and his resourceful mentors are trying to enter the world of realpolitik, by boasting about their military-political prowess on one hand, and showing a pragmatic face on the other. Perceptions of the Taliban may differ across the various time-zones of the world, but in war-torn Afghanistan, realities inked on the pages of history have a powerful voice of their own.
Given the Afghan experiences of the last three decades, it will take a lot more than just an adjustment in tone and rhetoric on the part of Mullah Omar to move the so-called reconciliation process forward, and end the current round of conflict in Afghanistan.
Omar Samad is the former ambassador of Afghanistan to France (2009-2011) and Canada (2004-2009) and former spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2001-2004).
Kabul To Jalalabad: A Postcard From The Road
by Nishant Dahiya NPR
The road from Kabul to Jalalabad that NPR Morning Edition host Renee Montagne and I took earlier this week passes through some spectacular scenery — the road carves its way through the Kabul Gorge, between craggy, rock cliffs on one side and the Kabul River on the other –- often, a dizzying 1,000 feet below.
The three-hour journey can often stretch into a multi-hour ordeal if there is an accident along the way, which there very often is. The road has been much improved in the past few years but that has only encouraged local drivers to drive faster and take more risks on the narrow, single-lane highway. Carcasses of cars litter the valley below.
The Taliban often attack oil tankers, trucks carrying goods, and police checkpoints along the road, especially in a mountainous section called the Tanqi Valley.
The mountains and the road gradually open up into the town of Jalalabad, which sits on the Grand Trunk Road. This is a historic route stretching from Kolkata in Eastern India, via Pakistan, all the way to Kabul, and it has carried tradesmen, goods, ideas and invaders back and forth for centuries.
Our route was no different than the one Osama bin Laden took from Kabul to Jalalabad in the weeks after the U.S. invasion in 2001, and just before the fall of Kabul.
Unlike us, from Jalalabad, bin Laden proceeded toward the White Mountains and the al-Qaida redoubt of Tora Bora — a complex of caves built into the mountains by the wealthy Saudi in the 1980s, when he was part of the Mujahedeen fighting the Soviet troops.
A few weeks after hiding in Tora Bora, in December 2001, bin Laden managed to slip into Pakistan, while under sustained U.S. aerial bombardment. It took nearly ten years for the U.S. to find and kill bin Laden.
The Navy SEAL raid that killed him on the morning of May 2nd was launched from the airbase just outside Jalalabad. And today, though bin Laden might be dead, the same airbase in this Eastern city is a testament to the continuing U.S. fight against the Taliban and in its efforts to kill al Qaeda leaders.
During the course of the three days we spent in Jalalabad, the full range of the American arsenal in use against the Taliban and al Qaeda was in full view: Predator drones, Blackhawk and Chinook helicopters, Apache gunships and, C-130 transport planes rumbled in and out round the clock.
By some accounts Jalalabad is where the vast majority of the Predator drones used to attack militants in the tribal region of Pakistan are now launched from. Conveniently, the city sits only a 40-minute drive from Pakistan and its tribal regions.
Nishant Dahiya is a producer for NPR. He took this trip as part of a story he worked on with Morning Edition's Renee Montagne. That story aired this morning and we've included audio of it at the top of this post.
7 insurgents killed, 32 detained in E. Afghanistan
KABUL, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- Seven insurgents were killed and 32 detained during 10 separate operations launched by the Afghan and NATO-led forces in eastern Afghan provinces, said a statement issued by the U.S. military here on Thursday.
"Ten Afghan and Coalition force operations in Regional Command- East (RC-East) resulted 7 enemies killed, the detention of 32 suspected individuals and a weapons cache turned in over the past 24 hours throughout the region," said the statement by the U.S. forces with NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) .
A concerned local Afghan civilian turned over a weapons cache that included 11 60mm mortar rounds, two anti-tank mines, a jug of homemade explosives, a bag of improvised explosive device (IED) components, four hand grenades, two 82mm recoilless rifle rounds, two bolt actions rifles as well as two shotguns and on heavy machine gun barrel, according to the statement.
It also confirmed a drone with the military alliance crashed in Sar Rowzah district of Afghanistan's eastern Paktika province over the same period of time.
"The unmanned aerial vehicle was recovered and there was no enemy activity in the area prior to the crash," it said, adding operations in RC-East are still ongoing.
NATO and Afghan officials often use the word insurgents referring for Taliban or the main anti-government militants in insurgency-hit country. However, the insurgent group have yet to make comments.
Militancy has been rampant since May this year when Taliban militants announced to launch spring offensive in the war-battered Afghanistan.
Pakistani Police Detain Dozens After Suicide Bombings
VOA News September 8, 2011
Police say they have detained some 170 suspects in connection with Wednesday's suicide bombings that killed 28 people in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta.
Senior police official Hamid Shakil told VOA on Thursday that many of those being questioned are Afghan refugees.
Two suicide bombers attacked the home of Farrukh Shehzad, the deputy head of Baluchistan province's paramilitary Frontier Corps, on Wednesday. Police say one of the assailants was carrying an identity card indicating he was from Afghanistan's Kunduz province.
The Pakistani Taliban said it carried out the attack in retaliation for the recent arrest of an al-Qaida leader.
Shehzad was wounded and his wife was killed in the attack. Several of his security guards and at least two children were also among the dead. More than 80 other people were wounded in the two blasts.
Pakistani Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told news agencies the militant group carried out the attack “in revenge for the arrests of our brothers in Quetta.”
On Monday, Pakistan's military announced that the Frontier Corps had helped arrest senior al-Qaida leader Younis al-Mauritani and two other al-Qaida operatives in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province.
Mauritani was believed to have been tasked by al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden with targeting economic interests in the United States, Europe and Australia.
Pakistan's military did not say when the arrests were made but said the operation was “planned and conducted with technical assistance of U.S. intelligence agencies.”
The White House on Monday praised the operation as an example of the longstanding partnership between the U.S. and Pakistan in fighting terrorism.
The United States strongly condemned Wednesday's suicide bombings, calling them “horrific.”
Kazakhstan Cites Terror-Suspect Links To Afghanistan, Pakistan
September 8, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
A spokesman for a Kazakh provincial court says the questioning of some of the 22 suspects being held on terrorism charges has revealed that they received funding from Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Boranbai Galiev, the press secretary for the Atyrau Provincial Court, said one of the suspects had been in constant contact with Afghanistan and Pakistan through the Internet.
Atyrau, in western Kazakhstan, has seen several terrorist attacks and security operations since May, including the country's first suicide bomber.
Galiev said money for the group was deposited in a Kazakhstan bank.
compiled from local and regional agency reports
Afghans: Still hoping 'peace and stability come'
NBC News By Atia Abawi, NBC News Correspondent 07/09/2011
KABUL - Outside the walls of Kabul University, students, professors and passersby go about their day in the capital of Afghanistan. Many are unaware that in a few days it will be the 10th anniversary of one of America’s darkest days.
There is no question that the Sept. 11 attacks changed America and the world. Perhaps no one saw more change than the millions of Afghans who lived under the oppressive Taliban regime that hosted the al-Qaida leaders responsible for the horrific attacks – and as a result have been subjected to 10 years of war.
NBC News’ producer Akbar Shinwari, photojournalist Tony Zumbado and I spoke to a variety of Afghans on the dusty but paved road outside Kabul University to get their perspective on how life has changed – for better or worse – since the attacks of 9/11 and the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. ‘The Russians did more work for the country’ First we spotted a young man wearing a black suit waiting for his ride.
Naweed Omar, a 23-year-old psychology student at the university, told us that many Afghans were very excited when America and the NATO coalition came to help –they thought their lives would finally improve.
But after 10 years that excitement has turned to hopelessness and resentment.
“If we compare America’s arrival to the arrival of the Russians, the Russians did more work for the country,” Omar said comparing the building and infrastructure the Soviets provided Afghanistan in the 1980s to what Afghanistan has seen since 2001.
“Just look at it, Russia was one country that did so much work and now you have 40 countries who have done nothing,” he added. Ziarmal Safi, a 25-year-old English literature student, agreed that the international community could have done more in the last decade, but he also believes that the Afghans still need outside help.
“Afghans, they do not have the capacity to take [on] the security or to ensure the security all over in Afghanistan,” he said, “I don’t want America to leave, but I want America to concentrate a little bit more.”
Safi said that the Americans have spent lots of money in Afghanistan but that his own government and the American government have squandered that money by not implementing a system of accountability.
“They’re supporting [the] Afghan government and [the] Afghan people. They give them money, but they don’t ask them where did they spent all this money.”
Women’s rights have changed – for the better But money and security hasn’t been the only issue. Human rights and women’s rights were in the forefront when the war began, but those issues have been almost forgotten as the focus has turned to talks of Taliban reconciliation and international withdrawal.
Many Afghan women have stories of banishment and humiliation before 2001. During the Taliban regime, women were restricted from working, receiving an education or even leaving their house without being escorted by a male relative.
“When the Taliban were here we always say it was really the dark, dark condition here. Even the people of Afghanistan couldn’t believe that they are human,” Yalda Mojadidi, a 23-year-old psychology student at Kabul University, told me.
Mojadidi said that with the arrival of the Americans and the international community, much has changed in her life and the lives of women throughout the country – she was finally allowed to go to school again.
“[There] is lots of changes for us,” she said in English, “Especially for women. They can go to university, college, school, anywhere and they can work as well.”
Edrees Bahadur, a 21-year-old economics major, agreed with Yalda. He said that Sept. 11 changed Afghanistan for the better by bringing attention to the country’s dire situation.
“America with its alliance came to Afghanistan and Afghanistan [gained] an independent government – so that caused Afghanistan to improve and to strengthen their capacities,” he said.
But Bahadur and Mojadidi warn that their country still needs the help of the international community.
“My hope for Afghanistan is that peace and stability [will] come,” Mojadidi said. “The foreigners should not go from Afghanistan, they should stay here. If they go back, I think that the situation [of] 10 years before – it will come again.”
Some still long for the good old days But there are still some who welcomed the days of the Taliban and a strict Islamic government.
Those people – usually men – tell stories of not worrying about air assaults and criminal gangs in the Taliban days.
“During the Taliban time, if you had a sack full of money on your back and you put that on the road and left it there, nobody would touch it – nobody had the courage to touch it,” 40-year-old teacher Haji Shadeem of Paktika province told us.
Shadeem believes his country has spiraled out of control.
“Everyone [now] has worries that they will be killed on any day. They are waiting for their death. And we don’t know from which side,” he said, fearing both the insurgency and NATO forces.
Many Afghans Shrug at 'This Event Foreigners Call 9/11'
Wall Street Journal By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV SEPTEMBER 8, 2011
KABUL - The Sept. 11 attacks that triggered the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan also uprooted 16-year-old Abdul Ghattar from his village in war-torn Helmand province, bringing him to a desolate refugee camp on the edge of Kabul.
Yet Mr. Ghattar stared blankly when asked whether he knew about al Qaeda's strike on the U.S., launched a decade ago from Afghan soil.
"Never heard of it," he shrugged as he lined up for water at the camp's well, which serves thousands of fellow refugees. "I have no idea why the Americans are in my country."
In a nearby tent that is the camp's school, his teacher, 22-year-old Mullah Said Nabi Agha, didn't fare much better. He said he has never seen the iconic image of the Twin Towers burning. He was vaguely aware that some kind of explosion had occurred in America.
"I was a child when it happened, and now I am an adult, and the Americans are still here," Mr. Agha said. "I think the Americans did it themselves, so they could invade Afghanistan."
The teacher's view is by no means rare here. The events of Sept. 11, 2001, of course, are known to educated Afghans, and to many residents of big cities. But that isn't always the case elsewhere in a predominantly rural country where 42% of the population is under the age of 14, and 72% of adults are illiterate. With few villages reached by television or electricity, news here is largely spread by word of mouth.
Such opinions highlight a contrast between American and Afghan perspectives on the longest foreign war in U.S. history, one that killed thousands of Afghans and, at the latest count, claimed the lives of 1,760 U.S. troops.
They also explain the Taliban's ability to rally popular support—in part by seizing the narrative to portray the war not as one triggered by America's need for self-defense, but as one of colonial aggression by infidels lusting for Afghanistan's riches.
"The Islamic Emirate wages a lawful struggle for the defense of its religion, country and soil," the Taliban's leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, told Afghans last month on the occasion of the Islamic Eid al-Fitr holiday.
According to a survey of 15- to 30-year-old men in the two southern provinces where President Barack Obama sent the bulk of American surge troops, 92% of respondents said they didn't know about "this event which the foreigners call 9/11" after being read a three-paragraph description of the attacks.
"Nobody explained to them the 9/11 story—and it's hard to win the hearts and minds of the fighting-age males in Helmand if they don't even know why the foreigners are here," says Norine MacDonald, president of the International Council on Security and Development, the think tank that carried out the survey of 1,000 Afghan men in eight districts of Kandahar and Helmand. "There is a vacuum—and it's being filled by al Qaeda and Taliban propaganda claiming that we are here to destroy Islam."
Some Afghans who do know about the events of 2001 often subscribe to conspiracy theories, imported from Pakistan and Iran, that have long lost currency even in the Middle East.
Maulvi Abdulaziz Mujahed, an imam at Kabul's Takbir mosque who served as chairman of the Kabul provincial council in 2008 to 2009, said in a recent interview that the Sept. 11 attacks were a Jewish conspiracy, a view he says was reinforced by his 2009 visit to New York's Ground Zero.
"I saw the photos of all those who have been killed in the attacks, and I saw people bring flowers for their loved ones. But I couldn't find a single Jew among them," Mr. Mujahed said. "The superpowers wanted a good pretext to invade Afghanistan, and these attacks provided it."
Abdul Hakim Mujahid, the deputy chairman of the Afghan government's High Peace Council, a body created to negotiate a peaceful solution to the war, was in New York when the two jets struck the Twin Towers—in his capacity as the Taliban regime's semi-official envoy to the U.S. and the United Nations.
While Mr. Mujahid says he was saddened by the attacks, he says he still doesn't believe al Qaeda was responsible for "the unfortunate incident."
"After 9/11, the whole world rushed to Afghanistan, and the people of Afghanistan were under the illusion that everything would be changed: The roads would be paved black, the houses would be painted white, the infrastructure rebuilt and the industries established," he says. "But gradually these expectations have come down, and now have reached the point of zero. The people are asking: When will the foreigners finally leave?"
Not every Afghan subscribes to the conspiracy theories or wants the Americans to leave. At the campus of Kabul University, where young women and men mix in a setting unimaginable under Taliban rule, students said in interviews they were fully aware of the Sept. 11 attacks and saw the U.S. invasion as bringing benefits to Afghanistan. Many of them were ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks from the country's north—ethnic minorities discriminated against under the rule of the Taliban.
"Under the Taliban, Afghanistan was a terrorist haven, nobody could leave their house, and I wouldn't have been able to attend university," says Nasser Hasrab, a 20-year-old literature student from the northern Faryab province. "After the Soviets left we had a civil war, and I am afraid that if the Americans leave, the same would happen again."
Across town in the Herat restaurant—once the favorite hangout of Taliban leaders and al Qaeda militants—owner Abdulazim Niyazi, dressed in a Polo shirt and clutching a Samsung cellphone, pondered the momentous change of the past decade.
Because TV was banned under the Taliban, there was no particular celebration or commotion in the restaurant on Sept. 11, 2001, he said. Since then, Mr. Niyazi complained, boomtown Kabul has been swamped with corruption, prostitution and vice. More importantly, his business has soured.
"Under the Taliban, we were the only place," he said. "Now, Kabul is filled with restaurants." —Habib Khan Totakhil contributed to this article.
U.S. envoy says Pakistan should get behind Afghan peace talks
USA TODAY By Jim Michaels 07/09/2011
Pakistan is reluctant to allow senior Taliban leaders to travel to Afghanistan for reconciliation talks, raising concerns that Pakistan is not helping enough to resolve the conflict.
"Those who are willing to talk should be given the opportunity," Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, told USA TODAY in a phone interview. "Those who are determined to fight should have actions taken against them that should prevent them from doing so."
Afghan officials have been meeting with Taliban representatives to find a political solution to the conflict. The United States has said that it supports the Afghan initiative but that it is too early to report progress in the talks.
"You can't kill your way out of an insurgency," Crocker said. "There's got to be a political settlement at some point."
Analysts say Pakistan is attempting to play both sides in the conflict, hedging its bets in the event the Taliban remains after the United States leaves the region. The United States plans to withdraw its forces by the end of 2014.
"The Pakistanis still see the Taliban as their best leverage in Afghanistan," said Lisa Curtis, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a think tank. "They're on the fence right now."
Elements of the Pakistani government, such as its intelligence services, backed the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 1996. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has accused the Pakistanis of aiding the Taliban insurgency today. Several militant groups in Pakistan provide weapons and fighters to the Taliban.
The U.S.-Pakistani relationship worsened after the United States launched a raid into Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden. The Pakistanis were not told of the plan before the raid.
Crocker acknowledged Pakistan may be concerned that the United States may abandon the region, leaving Pakistan with a need to have a relationship with the Taliban. He said facilitating peace talks with the Taliban is "in their interests as well as Afghanistan's."
"It's not like they're not cooperating at all," Crocker said of Pakistan.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Pakistan's recent arrest of a senior al-Qaeda leader and two associates in Quetta indicates cooperation.
"I think that's a good sign," Panetta said.
The Pakistani Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Afghanistan's government says it will negotiate with Taliban leaders willing to put down their arms and back the constitution, including respect for women's rights.
Though talks at the national level have not led to a breakthrough, the Afghan government is increasing efforts to reintegrate insurgent fighters into their home villages.
About 2,400 fighters have completed a reintegration program that provides jobs, training and security to former insurgents, according to the coalition command in Afghanistan. An additional 3,000 are waiting to go through the program. Crocker is hopeful these local efforts will weaken the insurgency.
"It's kind of hard to make an insurgency if your gun-toting insurgents have gone into another line of work," Crocker said. "It would certainly diminish the significance of the fat cats who sit in (Pakistan's) Quetta or North Waziristan."
Battle for Afghanistan's Gambir Jungle: 1st Platoon's 'last stand'
By the end of Day 1 of Operation Hammer Down, 1st Platoon needed help. But when reinforcements arrived, they found they had more than enough of their own troubles.
By Anna Mulrine, Staff writer / September 8, 2011 The Christian Science Monitor
Kunar, Afghanistan - Operation Hammer Down had begun in the hours before midnight of June 24 as an operation to flush insurgents out of terrorist training camps in the remote valleys of eastern Afghanistan. Now, in the full light of Sunday, June 25, it was clear that B Company's 1st Platoon was, in the words of one soldier, being "rocked."
From a ridge some 500 yards away, the soldiers from B Company's 3rd Platoon, also a part of Operation Hammer Down, could see the battle raging between the 1st and the Taliban.
It was clear the enemy were experienced fighters. "They were using our tactics against us, basically," says Staff Sgt. Christopher Panter of the 3rd. "And they know our rules of engagement probably better than we do."
When US aircraft sped down the valley in an effort to fire on enemy positions, "You'd see a lot of females getting up on the buildings, waving fighters in to hide them," Panter says. "It's hard to see that. You can watch eight fighters pile into a building, but you know there are women and children in there so you can't do anything about it."
As the 3rd watched from a distance, 1st Platoon soldiers who could were rallying to a safe house they had established, creating a strong point for the unit in a nearby mud-walled house called a kulat. It was "a 'last stand' kind of thing," as one soldier describes it.
From then on, says Sgt. Elwyn Lovelace of the 1st, "We just kind of focused on keeping ourselves alive."
Meanwhile, in the gulch, injured Staff Sgt. Nigel Kelly and the soldiers of the 1st working to save him remained vulnerable, with Taliban fighters all around. "At one point when we were down in there we could hear them above us," says Spc. Derrick Dickerson. "All they had to do was lean over and spray, and we'd be done."
Kelly urged the soldiers to just leave him behind. "He told us that while we were playing dead. He told us that it wasn't worth us getting hurt," says Dickerson.
Dickerson and the others did not heed his suggestion. Slowly, as darkness fell, he and the other soldiers pulled Kelly up the gulch and to the rooftop of the kulat that had become the strong point in hopes of having him airlifted to safety.
A medevac chopper, under cover of night, came at last. For five minutes, it hovered above Kelly and the other soldiers. "But it wouldn't land," Dickerson says. The area was too dangerous. "Once it left, probably about 10 minutes after that, [Kelly] died."
Barring the 'back door'
By that night, senior commanders overseeing Operation Hammer Down had made a decision. They would not pull the plug. Instead, the 1st Platoon would hold the strong point and wait to be relieved by a new unit: Havoc Company.
Just as the soldiers of the 1st had done the night before, Havoc Company was to land on a 10,000-foot ridgeline and move some 4,000 feet down the mountain before sunrise. But by the early hours of Sunday, June 26, it was clear to commanders that Havoc would be forced to dig in and fight its own battle.
First, Havoc's Chinook crashed, and medics began calling for an alarming number of casualty evacuations, says Pfc. John Litwinczuk. Of the 57 troops from Havoc Company on the mission, 13 were injured during the hard landing and flown out in the hours before dawn.
Then, at first light, the 44 US soldiers left felt the brunt of the insurgents' first salvo. A rocket-propelled grenade hit with "a big huge boom," Litwinczuk recalls. His intuition told him there was some strategy to the enemy barrages. "I think they were trying to gauge where we were and where our guns were – because the next attack was huge."
Havoc Company, commanders were rapidly realizing, had been dropped in the middle of a key insurgent transit route. "We knew it was a route," says Lt. Col. Colin Tuley, commander of the 2nd Battalion. "But we didn't know it was the route."
As night fell, intercepted radio intelligence backed up that assessment. The chatter indicated that insurgents were getting reinforcements from a neighboring province and were planning to attack again at daybreak.
Havoc soldiers were ordered to fortify their fighting positions.
This was not an easy proposition, as they dug into the stone-cold ridge where snow had only recently receded. "That ground was rock hard," says Litwinczuk. "Me and my buddy went around grabbing up big rocks. We built a three-foot-high wall, and we put tree [limbs] around," he says. "Those trees saved our lives."
As the temperature dropped, soldiers stripped the helicopter for anything that would keep them warm. They tore the lining from the ceiling of the downed Chinook and wrapped themselves in it. Troops who brought extra socks used them on their hands and arms. Others wrapped bandages around their necks to keep out the cold. Everyone dispensed with modesty to sleep as close together as possible.
"We were spooning," Litwinczuk adds. "Everyone was spooning."
As the soldiers of Havoc Company sought what rest they could, a fresh plan was taking shape. A new unit would come to the aid of the stricken 1st Platoon – if it could arrive before daybreak.
Afghan Concerns Over U.S. Staying Power
The Huffington Post By Jayshree Bajoria Senior Staff Writer, Council on Foreign Relations 07/09/2011
As the timeline for the drawdown of U.S. and international troops from Afghanistan approaches, the United States and Afghanistan are working to finalize a long-term security arrangement that would secure a limited U.S. troop presence in the country beyond 2014. But the United States and Afghanistan disagree on several points, starting with how binding the agreement should be. Taj Ayubi, a minister-counselor to Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai, says as U.S. public opinion for the war in Afghanistan wanes amid an economic downturn and rising unemployment, Afghans grow increasingly concerned about Washington's long-term commitment to the country. Ayubi, who accused some in the Afghan government of sabotaging the strategic pact under discussion with Washington in a speech he delivered at the Marine Corps University in Quantico, says the majority of Afghans support a U.S. military base in the country post-2014.
There is a lot of distrust in the U.S.-Afghan relationship, and corruption looms large as a concern among lawmakers in Congress. Where do you think this relationship stands at present, and what can the two sides do to improve it?
Both sides are trying very hard to mend relations. Actually, the relations are not bad; it's just that in the last few years we were not able to coordinate as much as we should have. We have come to a stage where the transition of authority is taking place, so we are rushing into things. That's why there are little aberrations occurring in our relations.
What is Afghanistan doing to mend relations?
The Afghan government and the United States have assigned their national security advisors to continue talks and come up with some solutions. Perhaps in the next two to three months, we'll have some definite answers to those questions.
What steps is the Afghan government taking to tackle corruption?
The Afghan government has assigned two anti-corruption organizations: the major crimes task force and the attorney general's office. So, there are a number of commissions and organizations that are going to go into that. At least twenty to thirty corrupt officials and judges and some governors [have been] arrested.
Do you have any concerns on the prosecution of the war and how it's faring?
We always have concerns. But from a tactical point of view, we have made many inroads; we have weakened the main body of the enemy. They have been reduced in many parts. For instance, at one time you could not drive from Lashkar Gah to Kandahar [both in southern Afghanistan and approximately 87 miles apart]. Now, you can do that and with a lot of comfort. That means the [insurgents] have been reduced. They cannot hold any place; they cannot take any place. They have to just suffice by hitting soft targets.They have even attacked civilians at places of worship.
What concerns does the Afghan government have with how Pakistan is tackling terrorism? And what do you see as their role in the reconciliation talks with the Taliban?
Pakistan is going to be a very, very important factor in the talks regarding reconciliation; Afghanistan understands that, and Pakistan also understands that. The United States and our other partners [also understand]. Pakistan has to be on board on these talks, and together we can gradually come to some type of understanding.
A recent report by the Associated Press accuses the Afghan government of scuttling the U.S.-Taliban talks due to fears of President Karzai's authority being undermined by a Washington-brokered deal. Clearly there seems to be a lot of confusion regarding the reconciliation talks and between the different parties involved.
The talks have just begun in the last three months. There have been talks between some Afghan sources and some Taliban sources. If we have to make peace, it has to come from a position of strength, which means that the United States should be strong in Afghanistan. The United States can be strong only when [Afghanistan] signs a strategic partnership with the United States. Also, the Afghan people want basing rights for the United States. Once that happens, and people see that the United States is here to stay in Afghanistan, much of this confusion will just fizzle out.
What is the status of negotiations for the strategic partnership agreement? Are there sticking points between the two parties?
We had the initial agreement from the United States in 2004, and both sides have expressed a desire to renew that. The Afghans have been asking for a binding relationship with the United States. The United States has been a little wary about that. Perhaps it has to go through a lot of political [troubles] in Washington. So, they're not as prepared for that yet. Also, the Afghans have to prepare politically for such a big agreement with the United States, especially for basing rights.
Is there enough support for a U.S. military base inside Afghanistan beyond 2014?
I'll tell you with confidence, 85 percent support the United States to stay in Afghanistan long term.
The Afghan government has expressed displeasure over the night raids conducted by U.S. forces. Is that something you are addressing with the United States in the strategic partnership agreement?
Yes, with the transition processes going on right now between Afghanistan, NATO, and the United States, those issues will also be addressed. [The Afghan government wants] more Afghans at the forefront [of the night raids], and the foreign troops would be behind them. [Foreign troops] are not going to go directly and blast Afghan doors and do all those things at night.
Given the economic realities in the United States, are there concerns in the Afghan government and among the public that the United States might abandon them following the withdrawal in 2014?
Yes, there is concern and fear in the Afghan public. In the last three months, since the talks about the strategic partnership have been delayed a bit, so many businesses and people have just put a hold on their businesses and there is a little slump in real estate sales in Afghanistan. Once those [strategic partnership agreement] issues are resolved, things will pick up again. I don't think that people have too many concerns that the United States will abandon them, because the United States has been giving assurances, over and over again.
Are there specific issues within the agreement that they don't agree on?
Yes, for instance [Afghans think] that it should be binding, and also that it should be ratified by the Senate of the United States. I think the U.S. government has to do some political work. Afghans have to do the same.
This interview first appeared on CFR.org.
In Afghanistan's Panjshir, disquiet over Taliban reconciliation
By Sanjeev Miglani and Hamid Shalizi
DALASANG, Afghanistan (Reuters) - At the entrance to Afghanistan's magnificent Panjshir Valley, an 84-year-old supporter of resistance hero Ahmad Shah Massoud said his village was fully armed to fight a resurgent Taliban to the end.
Like the Russians before them, the Pashtun Taliban have failed to penetrate Panjshir fortified by jagged cliffs and plunging valleys, coming as far as neighboring Nuristan province as they extend their control in the north and east of the country.
But as the beleaguered government and its Western backers reach out to the Taliban to explore prospects of a political settlement of the 10-year war, the sense of disquiet grows in the Tajik-dominated Panjshir region.
"We are all armed, we will not sit quiet. If the Taliban come, we will fight them everywhere," said Mullah Mohammad, pointing to his village in the valley floor by the side of the rushing waters of the Panjshir river.
It is from here that Massoud, or the Lion of Panjshir, fought the Taliban at the head of the Northern Alliance representing Afghanistan's ethnic minorities, until his assassination two days before the Sept 11, 2001, attacks.
Soon after, U.S.-led coalition forces teamed up with the warlords of the Northern Alliance to drive the Taliban out of power from Kabul, and since then many have gone into government.
Ten years on, the cult of Massoud grows across Afghanistan but especially in his mountain redoubt where the gates to the valley have been draped in black in memory of the fallen leader, killed when two men posing as reporters set off a bomb hidden in a video camera.
It is not clear how much of Massoud's old alliance still holds and whether the former regional backers such as Iran, India and Russia, who have deep concerns over reconciliation with the Taliban, are involved with the old leadership.
"Some remnants of the Northern Alliance have been openly skeptical and even hostile to the idea of a negotiated settlement with the Taliban," said Joshua Foust, an expert on Afghanistan at the American Security Project in Washington.
"Rumors have been flying fast and furiously the last two years or so that the Northern Alliance are rebuilding their militias."
FRITTERING AWAY GAINS
At Massoud's white stone monument on the top of a hill surrounded by barren mountains, a trickle of visitors, some from as far as the southern province of Kandahar, sit in silent prayer.
Afghan police patrol the narrow, winding road leading to the monument and the checkpoints and the mud houses are emblazoned with portraits of the legendary fighter.
For his supporters, it would have been a different Afghanistan had he lived and the gains that they made for the country are being frittered away by the administration of President Hamid Karzai.
"Afghanistan was delivered to Karzai because of the resistance fighters. The foreign forces only gave air support. But they have wasted the victory," said Ahmad Wali Masoud, a former Afghan ambassador to Britain who heads the Massoud Foundation in honor of his brother.
Massoud's assassination, which many believe was the work of al Qaeda as a gift to the Taliban, has itself not been investigated properly, Wali Masoud said.
He said British investigating agencies had informed him that 22 different terrorist groups across the world had collaborated in the plot.
"But it was never investigated properly. This government has not even set up an inquiry," he said, adding the role of some of Afghanistan's neighbors should also be probed. He declined to name them.
Ten years later, Afghanistan remains a deeply divided society and the administration risks accentuating the divides further by pursuing a deal with the Taliban without spelling out parameters, said Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister and close associate of Massoud.
"We support reconciliation, but it has to be done in a transparent manner," he said.
"We want peace, but peace with dignity. There was also peace in Afghanistan during the Taliban in the 1990s, but it was peace of the graveyard. Is that what we want?"
(Editing by Nick Macfie)
Female Militia Chief Keeps Peace in Helmand District
Veteran fighter has years of experience leading men into combat, besides being a mother of nine.
IWPR By Gol Ahmad Ehsan 7 Sep 11
Afghanistan - It is obvious how much respect Abedo, a paramilitary commander in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand region, commands. Walking through the bazaar in Marja district, laughing and joking, the diminutive figure is greeted by tradesmen and shopkeepers, some of whom step forward to kiss the commander’s hands.
What makes 70-year-old Abedo an exceptional warrior by Afghan standards is that she is a woman. She set aside the traditional roles assigned to women in Pashtun society, and pursued a long career as a muhajedin fighter.
Dressed in male attire and with a yellow Helmand cap on her head, she now controls security in her home areas, leading a force of 30 paramilitaries.
The mother of nine recalled how her military career began shortly after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. She fought side by side with her mujahedin husband until he was killed in battle eight years later.
“My husband was martyred during the early years of jihad and although it was difficult for me, I continued fighting,” she said.
After his death, she changed from female clothing and dressed like an Afghan man, and went on to command a 200-strong band of mujahedin. Although she escaped serious injury, she says she killed and wounded many enemies.
“There were many battles at that time and we would fight for several days without stopping,” she said. “My men would be martyred and many enemies would also be killed. Those are the demands of war.”
She says the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 was the high point in her life.
“When the Russians left Afghanistan, I couldn’t sit still, I was so happy,” she said. Laughing at the memory, Abedo said, “Being a leader and commander was enjoyable, especially when I gave orders to my mujahedin and they obeyed me. We’d attack the enemy and I would feel I was greatly honoured.”
Feeling that right had been done, she laid down her arms and tried to build a normal life with her four sons and five daughters.
“I waged jihad to satisfy God,” Abedo said. “I didn’t pursue jihad as some others did, to obtain positions and property in this world. Those who misuse the name of jihad took advantage of it to loot and steal from people. Their efforts have been futile – they will receive nothing in the next world.”
After years living in relative peace, Abedo was moved to take up arms once more when her business was threatened by conflict between the government forces of post-2001 Afghanistan and their Taleban opponents.
“The police would tell me not to sell to the Taleban, and the Taleban would tell me not to sell to the police,” she said. “Finally, the Taleban torched my shop.”
Refusing to be cowed, she called up ten young men from her village, formed them into a paramilitary unit, and was contracted by the government to maintain stability in the area.
“I will fight against anyone who wants to disrupt the security of my village and district,” she said.
Her stance naturally soured relations with local Taleban leaders, so she now takes precautions to avoid ambush – varying her movements, visiting the district centre only occasionally to attend council meetings, and living away from her own home.
Local officials are impressed with their ally.
“Besides being a very brave woman, Abedo has a very sound understanding of the tactics of war,” Baz Gol, who is in overall command of pro-government militias operating in Marja district. “In addition, the people very much support her. She works with us to in ensuring security and we are happy with her achievements.”
Abedo insists she has always prized her independence, so although she currently works with the Kabul government, she has no political or factional alliances.
“During the jihad, weapons and ammunitions were brought in from Pakistan independently, in my name, and I would give them to the mujahedin here. I was independent then and I am now,” she added.
Her record and current position means that Abedo is held in high esteem by members of her tribe and village.
“Abedo is a brave, unique and gracious woman,” said Nek Mohammad, a resident of Marja. “She should be counted as a hero of Afghan history. “During the jihad era, we witnessed some male mujahedin commanders signing deals with the Russians to stop fighting. Abedo fought bravely until the last moment, when the Russians left the country.”
Mohammad Sadeq, a resident of Lashkar Gah, recalled Abedo’s influence in the mujahedin war against the Soviets.
“I wanted to go to Marja district, but the mujahedin were in control of the area. There were checkpoints everywhere,” he said. “I knew Abedo and got a signed and stamped letter from her ordering the mujahedin not to touch me. I went on my journey with some trepidation, and when the mujahedin stopped me and started interrogating me, I showed them the letter. They said they would have killed me if I hadn’t had the letter, because I had come from the town and looked like a spy to them – but no one could ignore Abedo’s orders.”
Abedo said her militia members are registered and trained by the authorities, receiving 110 US dollars a month, and abiding strictly by official rules of engagement.
One of her men, Mirza, said, “Abedo is a woman who knows more than many men. If we face a problem, we act on to her advice and perform well because of it.”
Asked what she would do if her soldiers misbehaved, Abedo said, “I don’t allow my militia to do that. I don’t even want children complaining about them.”
Familiar with a wide range of weapons, she said her long experience gave her an edge over many others, even in the Afghan security forces.
“Modern-day youngsters in the police and army don’t have experience, and it’s easy for them to get killed in combat because they don’t know how to fight,” she said dismissively.
She has even greater contempt for cowardice, saying, “Those who are afraid of war cause others to be defeated. And liars, too, are marked for defeat. I hate them both.”
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
VOA News September 8, 2011
The international military coalition in Afghanistan says two of its service members have died following the blast from an improvised explosive device in the southern part of the country.
NATO said in a statement that the two were killed Thursday, but did not provide any other details or nationalities.
According to the independent online site iCasualties.org that monitors the number of coalition deaths, a total of 421 members of the coalition have died so far this year in Afghanistan.
Also Thursday, Afghan officials say a roadside bomb killed a Turkish engineer working on a project in Herat province.
Another roadside bomb killed five Afghan soldiers in the eastern province of Khost on Wednesday.
Senior police officer shot dead in E. Afghanistan
JALALABAD, Afghanistan, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- A senior police officer was shot and killed by armed militants in Afghanistan's Nangarhar province with Jalalabad as its capital 120 km east of capital city of Kabul, an official said on Thursday.
"Unknown armed men broke in the house of a high-ranking police officer named Sayed Hakim spreading bullets and killing him on the shot in Bati Kot district on Wednesday night," administrative chief of Bati Kot district Esrarullah Qari Zada told Xinhua on Thursday morning.
He said the police official Hakim, who was serving as head of intelligence department of police in neighboring Pachir Wa Agam district, was visiting his family in Bati Kot district when the militants attacked his house and killed him.
In the meantime, Taliban insurgents claimed responsibility for the incident.
Zabihullah Mujahid, the purported spokesman of Taliban in talks with local media via cell phone from undisclosed location said the insurgents group killed Hakim for serving the government.
The Taliban-led insurgency has been rampant since the militant group announced to launch spring offensive from May 1 against Afghan and NATO-led troops stationed in Afghanistan.
The militant group also warned people against supporting government and foreign troops.
Separately, Afghan and NATO-led forces detained several suspected insurgents in an operation to capture a Taliban facilitator in Jalalabad city Wednesday night, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement on Thursday.
"The facilitator is responsible for supplying weapons and planning attacks against Afghan forces," the statement said, adding "One of the suspected insurgents was shot and wounded during the operation. After receiving medical treatment for non- life threatening wounds, he was detained by security forces for further questioning,"
The new Mullah Omar?
By Omar Samad Wednesday, September 7, 2011 - Foreign Policy
In a lengthy message on the occasion of the Eid al-Fitr holiday released last week under Mullah Mohammad Omar's name, the fugitive Taliban leader used a mix of "jihad-light" bravado and toned-down political rhetoric to express his group's position on key issues, as part of a push to influence public opinion that has garnered a variety of reactions from different Western and South Asian quarters.
Yet despite the hype among AfPak watchers, the message is more a reflection of an emerging dual-track strategy that promotes Omar as a credible interlocutor while masking his flaws, and is directly tied to the NATO decision to end its military engagement in Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
The new narrative, most certainly inspired by the various covert layers of mentoring (including non-Afghan) enjoyed by Mullah Omar's Quetta Shura, not only provides insight into Mullah Omar's public-relations strategy, but also aims to deflect attention from Taliban weaknesses, all while trying to bolster the group's possible future negotiating position. One specific objective is to force a full U.S. disengagement from Afghanistan by disrupting the establishment of a limited multi-year U.S. military presence in Afghanistan after the current 2104 drawdown date -- a subject of the "strategic partnership" talks now underway between Kabul and Washington.
By claiming that "the Afghan nation is not ready to accept establishment of American permanent bases," Mullah Omar conveyed a key demand at a crucial time when several regional countries, including Pakistan, Iran and Russia, have publicly expressed varying degrees of skepticism about the U.S.-Afghan talks (with China preferring to express its concerns through diplomatic channels).
Afghan diplomats believe that if and when the two sides reach an agreement on "strategic partnership," the deal would limit the use of Afghan bases by the United States to counter-terrorism support, and would call for international funding of Afghan security and development priorities, so avoiding the impression of American power projection in the region.
Afghan president Hamid Karzai, feeling the heat from different quarters, insists that the agreement should "serve Afghanistan's national interests," while a close advisor to President Hamid Karzai said publicly last week that most Afghans support an enduring U.S. military presence in the country, but warned that "some in the Afghan Government are trying to sabotage it."
Acknowledging, but not owning, secret talks (reportedly broken up by insider leaks by Afghan officials unhappy with being kept in the dark) held between American emissaries and the Taliban reported to have taken place earlier this year under German and Qatari auspices, Mullah Omar stressed that the meetings solely addressed the release of prisoners. He rejected the notion of "comprehensive negotiations," unless his group's agenda is taken into account. Omar also called for the immediate and full withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan as a pre-condition for a settlement. The American side, unsurprisingly, promptly dismissed the pre-condition of withdrawal for peace talks.
As a sign of the shifting winds, Mullah Omar carefully avoided giving any overt sign of association with al-Qaeda and transnational jihadism in his Eid message. As a possible sign of growing rifts developing between pragmatists and dogmatists within the Taliban conglomerate, he also informed his followers that "the jihadic chiefs nominated by us in all parts of the country are your Sharia-based leaders," and gives an explicit order, "you should obey them." This is an indication that regional Taliban emissaries appointed by the Quetta Shura are facing insubordination challenges on the ground.
This may also be an attempt to give the impression that he is distancing his faction from the more lethal Haqqani network, known to have strong ties to al-Qaeda and openly operating from bases in Pakistan's tribal regions in Waziristan. Yet Omar fails to explain how he intends to rein in the various international jihadist outfits based in Pakistan and active across Afghanistan, given the outfits' 15-year links with his organization and the fragmented nature of the insurgency.
While Mullah Omar's message calls on ground forces to extend their sphere of influence to new areas (the central highlands being a new target for instability), it also provides a glimpse of the internal schisms and compliance challenges felt by the Pakistan-based leadership of the Taliban. Cracks are appearing in the façade of Taliban unity as more runaway militias, some led by foreign fighters, are resorting to assassinations, extortion and civilian abuse. Compliance with the orders and rules of conduct set by the "Leader of the Faithful" Mullah Omar appears to be weakening across the country. Local people in a village in Helmand province recently beat to death two Taliban fighters in reprisal for the killing of an innocent local elder. This type of reaction by desperate civilians is likely to increase over time.
For most Afghans though, the biggest concern remains Taliban ties to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), long accused of interference in Afghan affairs through different proxies. It is difficult to imagine a change in the widespread Afghan mistrust towards Pakistan's ruling apparatus as long as the ISI continues to provide sanctuary and logistical support to militants, and exercise command-and-control authority through rogue elements over key militant networks.
It is also inconceivable that terms such as "change in the status quo" and "gunboat diplomacy" both used in Mullah Omar's Eid message, and unheard of from a former village mullah, would come from his personal lexicon (especially considering that Omar was born in a landlocked country!), pointing to his continued mentoring by non-Afghans.
Pakistani author Ahmed Rashid has called the Eid message a "forward-looking political message," while British special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan Mark Sedwill tweeted that the letter marks a "a shift of tone"; but for most Afghans, angered by domestic inertia and tired of unabated violence (Taliban and affiliated networks are alleged to be responsible for approximately 80% of all civilian deaths, according to the United Nations), actions speak louder than words.
Despite attempts at selling his strategy to Afghan and Western audiences, and contrary to previous Taliban pronouncements calling for the re-establishment of the Islamic Emirate, the Taliban leader admitted for the first time in his message that his group does not seek to "monopolize power." Instead, he calls for the establishment of a "real" Islamic government based on Islamic interests, going as far as accepting a role for other ethnic groups -- a novel idea shunned during the regime's power-grab in 1996.
For Mullah Omar's vision of an Islamic government to become reality, though, either the current Afghan Constitution (which guarantees basic human and democratic rights) would have to be scrapped, or the current system modified through top-down Taliban-style implementation of shariah. However, such concepts do not seem acceptable to most poverty-stricken Afghans and a devout but forward-looking population, the majority of whom, including women, are under 30 years of age. And such radical social re-engineering could further weaken the Afghan government's hold on power, paving the way for further civil strife.
Public opinion polls taken in the country since 2005 show that support for the Taliban and their style of governance garners no more than 10 percent approval at the most. This is why the Taliban and the networks that support them are opting for a more moderate tone. Some analysts view this change as progress, but it may not amount to much in the long term, as long as the use of violence against not only foreign forces but also Afghans is justified as "jihad."
Finally, in an era of mass protests against dictatorships in various parts of the Islamic world, and Twitter and Facebook generational activism, Mullah Omar seems uneasy about his group's oppressive reputation. He uses a misplaced anti-colonial narrative to target dissatisfied Afghans and skeptical Muslim masses to change existing perceptions of the Taliban, and solicits financial and moral support for his increasingly less popular fight.
Fully aware that his association with al-Qaeda is now seen as a liability, Omar blames the U.S. and NATO presence as the main cause of conflict in Afghanistan. However, he fails to appreciate the non-violent nature of most mass protests in the Muslim world and also fails to mention that prior to the September 11 terrorist attacks, his forces and those of allied foreign jihadists, including al-Qaeda, were actively promoting warfare, mass murder and oppression in Afghanistan, long before Western forces appeared on the scene.
While trying to stay a step ahead of his political adversaries, the Taliban leader and his resourceful mentors are trying to enter the world of realpolitik, by boasting about their military-political prowess on one hand, and showing a pragmatic face on the other. Perceptions of the Taliban may differ across the various time-zones of the world, but in war-torn Afghanistan, realities inked on the pages of history have a powerful voice of their own.
Given the Afghan experiences of the last three decades, it will take a lot more than just an adjustment in tone and rhetoric on the part of Mullah Omar to move the so-called reconciliation process forward, and end the current round of conflict in Afghanistan.
Omar Samad is the former ambassador of Afghanistan to France (2009-2011) and Canada (2004-2009) and former spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2001-2004).
Kabul To Jalalabad: A Postcard From The Road
by Nishant Dahiya NPR
The road from Kabul to Jalalabad that NPR Morning Edition host Renee Montagne and I took earlier this week passes through some spectacular scenery — the road carves its way through the Kabul Gorge, between craggy, rock cliffs on one side and the Kabul River on the other –- often, a dizzying 1,000 feet below.
The three-hour journey can often stretch into a multi-hour ordeal if there is an accident along the way, which there very often is. The road has been much improved in the past few years but that has only encouraged local drivers to drive faster and take more risks on the narrow, single-lane highway. Carcasses of cars litter the valley below.
The Taliban often attack oil tankers, trucks carrying goods, and police checkpoints along the road, especially in a mountainous section called the Tanqi Valley.
The mountains and the road gradually open up into the town of Jalalabad, which sits on the Grand Trunk Road. This is a historic route stretching from Kolkata in Eastern India, via Pakistan, all the way to Kabul, and it has carried tradesmen, goods, ideas and invaders back and forth for centuries.
Our route was no different than the one Osama bin Laden took from Kabul to Jalalabad in the weeks after the U.S. invasion in 2001, and just before the fall of Kabul.
Unlike us, from Jalalabad, bin Laden proceeded toward the White Mountains and the al-Qaida redoubt of Tora Bora — a complex of caves built into the mountains by the wealthy Saudi in the 1980s, when he was part of the Mujahedeen fighting the Soviet troops.
A few weeks after hiding in Tora Bora, in December 2001, bin Laden managed to slip into Pakistan, while under sustained U.S. aerial bombardment. It took nearly ten years for the U.S. to find and kill bin Laden.
The Navy SEAL raid that killed him on the morning of May 2nd was launched from the airbase just outside Jalalabad. And today, though bin Laden might be dead, the same airbase in this Eastern city is a testament to the continuing U.S. fight against the Taliban and in its efforts to kill al Qaeda leaders.
During the course of the three days we spent in Jalalabad, the full range of the American arsenal in use against the Taliban and al Qaeda was in full view: Predator drones, Blackhawk and Chinook helicopters, Apache gunships and, C-130 transport planes rumbled in and out round the clock.
By some accounts Jalalabad is where the vast majority of the Predator drones used to attack militants in the tribal region of Pakistan are now launched from. Conveniently, the city sits only a 40-minute drive from Pakistan and its tribal regions.
Nishant Dahiya is a producer for NPR. He took this trip as part of a story he worked on with Morning Edition's Renee Montagne. That story aired this morning and we've included audio of it at the top of this post.
7 insurgents killed, 32 detained in E. Afghanistan
KABUL, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- Seven insurgents were killed and 32 detained during 10 separate operations launched by the Afghan and NATO-led forces in eastern Afghan provinces, said a statement issued by the U.S. military here on Thursday.
"Ten Afghan and Coalition force operations in Regional Command- East (RC-East) resulted 7 enemies killed, the detention of 32 suspected individuals and a weapons cache turned in over the past 24 hours throughout the region," said the statement by the U.S. forces with NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) .
A concerned local Afghan civilian turned over a weapons cache that included 11 60mm mortar rounds, two anti-tank mines, a jug of homemade explosives, a bag of improvised explosive device (IED) components, four hand grenades, two 82mm recoilless rifle rounds, two bolt actions rifles as well as two shotguns and on heavy machine gun barrel, according to the statement.
It also confirmed a drone with the military alliance crashed in Sar Rowzah district of Afghanistan's eastern Paktika province over the same period of time.
"The unmanned aerial vehicle was recovered and there was no enemy activity in the area prior to the crash," it said, adding operations in RC-East are still ongoing.
NATO and Afghan officials often use the word insurgents referring for Taliban or the main anti-government militants in insurgency-hit country. However, the insurgent group have yet to make comments.
Militancy has been rampant since May this year when Taliban militants announced to launch spring offensive in the war-battered Afghanistan.
Pakistani Police Detain Dozens After Suicide Bombings
VOA News September 8, 2011
Police say they have detained some 170 suspects in connection with Wednesday's suicide bombings that killed 28 people in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta.
Senior police official Hamid Shakil told VOA on Thursday that many of those being questioned are Afghan refugees.
Two suicide bombers attacked the home of Farrukh Shehzad, the deputy head of Baluchistan province's paramilitary Frontier Corps, on Wednesday. Police say one of the assailants was carrying an identity card indicating he was from Afghanistan's Kunduz province.
The Pakistani Taliban said it carried out the attack in retaliation for the recent arrest of an al-Qaida leader.
Shehzad was wounded and his wife was killed in the attack. Several of his security guards and at least two children were also among the dead. More than 80 other people were wounded in the two blasts.
Pakistani Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told news agencies the militant group carried out the attack “in revenge for the arrests of our brothers in Quetta.”
On Monday, Pakistan's military announced that the Frontier Corps had helped arrest senior al-Qaida leader Younis al-Mauritani and two other al-Qaida operatives in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province.
Mauritani was believed to have been tasked by al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden with targeting economic interests in the United States, Europe and Australia.
Pakistan's military did not say when the arrests were made but said the operation was “planned and conducted with technical assistance of U.S. intelligence agencies.”
The White House on Monday praised the operation as an example of the longstanding partnership between the U.S. and Pakistan in fighting terrorism.
The United States strongly condemned Wednesday's suicide bombings, calling them “horrific.”
Kazakhstan Cites Terror-Suspect Links To Afghanistan, Pakistan
September 8, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
A spokesman for a Kazakh provincial court says the questioning of some of the 22 suspects being held on terrorism charges has revealed that they received funding from Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Boranbai Galiev, the press secretary for the Atyrau Provincial Court, said one of the suspects had been in constant contact with Afghanistan and Pakistan through the Internet.
Atyrau, in western Kazakhstan, has seen several terrorist attacks and security operations since May, including the country's first suicide bomber.
Galiev said money for the group was deposited in a Kazakhstan bank.
compiled from local and regional agency reports
Afghans: Still hoping 'peace and stability come'
NBC News By Atia Abawi, NBC News Correspondent 07/09/2011
KABUL - Outside the walls of Kabul University, students, professors and passersby go about their day in the capital of Afghanistan. Many are unaware that in a few days it will be the 10th anniversary of one of America’s darkest days.
There is no question that the Sept. 11 attacks changed America and the world. Perhaps no one saw more change than the millions of Afghans who lived under the oppressive Taliban regime that hosted the al-Qaida leaders responsible for the horrific attacks – and as a result have been subjected to 10 years of war.
NBC News’ producer Akbar Shinwari, photojournalist Tony Zumbado and I spoke to a variety of Afghans on the dusty but paved road outside Kabul University to get their perspective on how life has changed – for better or worse – since the attacks of 9/11 and the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. ‘The Russians did more work for the country’ First we spotted a young man wearing a black suit waiting for his ride.
Naweed Omar, a 23-year-old psychology student at the university, told us that many Afghans were very excited when America and the NATO coalition came to help –they thought their lives would finally improve.
But after 10 years that excitement has turned to hopelessness and resentment.
“If we compare America’s arrival to the arrival of the Russians, the Russians did more work for the country,” Omar said comparing the building and infrastructure the Soviets provided Afghanistan in the 1980s to what Afghanistan has seen since 2001.
“Just look at it, Russia was one country that did so much work and now you have 40 countries who have done nothing,” he added. Ziarmal Safi, a 25-year-old English literature student, agreed that the international community could have done more in the last decade, but he also believes that the Afghans still need outside help.
“Afghans, they do not have the capacity to take [on] the security or to ensure the security all over in Afghanistan,” he said, “I don’t want America to leave, but I want America to concentrate a little bit more.”
Safi said that the Americans have spent lots of money in Afghanistan but that his own government and the American government have squandered that money by not implementing a system of accountability.
“They’re supporting [the] Afghan government and [the] Afghan people. They give them money, but they don’t ask them where did they spent all this money.”
Women’s rights have changed – for the better But money and security hasn’t been the only issue. Human rights and women’s rights were in the forefront when the war began, but those issues have been almost forgotten as the focus has turned to talks of Taliban reconciliation and international withdrawal.
Many Afghan women have stories of banishment and humiliation before 2001. During the Taliban regime, women were restricted from working, receiving an education or even leaving their house without being escorted by a male relative.
“When the Taliban were here we always say it was really the dark, dark condition here. Even the people of Afghanistan couldn’t believe that they are human,” Yalda Mojadidi, a 23-year-old psychology student at Kabul University, told me.
Mojadidi said that with the arrival of the Americans and the international community, much has changed in her life and the lives of women throughout the country – she was finally allowed to go to school again.
“[There] is lots of changes for us,” she said in English, “Especially for women. They can go to university, college, school, anywhere and they can work as well.”
Edrees Bahadur, a 21-year-old economics major, agreed with Yalda. He said that Sept. 11 changed Afghanistan for the better by bringing attention to the country’s dire situation.
“America with its alliance came to Afghanistan and Afghanistan [gained] an independent government – so that caused Afghanistan to improve and to strengthen their capacities,” he said.
But Bahadur and Mojadidi warn that their country still needs the help of the international community.
“My hope for Afghanistan is that peace and stability [will] come,” Mojadidi said. “The foreigners should not go from Afghanistan, they should stay here. If they go back, I think that the situation [of] 10 years before – it will come again.”
Some still long for the good old days But there are still some who welcomed the days of the Taliban and a strict Islamic government.
Those people – usually men – tell stories of not worrying about air assaults and criminal gangs in the Taliban days.
“During the Taliban time, if you had a sack full of money on your back and you put that on the road and left it there, nobody would touch it – nobody had the courage to touch it,” 40-year-old teacher Haji Shadeem of Paktika province told us.
Shadeem believes his country has spiraled out of control.
“Everyone [now] has worries that they will be killed on any day. They are waiting for their death. And we don’t know from which side,” he said, fearing both the insurgency and NATO forces.
Many Afghans Shrug at 'This Event Foreigners Call 9/11'
Wall Street Journal By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV SEPTEMBER 8, 2011
KABUL - The Sept. 11 attacks that triggered the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan also uprooted 16-year-old Abdul Ghattar from his village in war-torn Helmand province, bringing him to a desolate refugee camp on the edge of Kabul.
Yet Mr. Ghattar stared blankly when asked whether he knew about al Qaeda's strike on the U.S., launched a decade ago from Afghan soil.
"Never heard of it," he shrugged as he lined up for water at the camp's well, which serves thousands of fellow refugees. "I have no idea why the Americans are in my country."
In a nearby tent that is the camp's school, his teacher, 22-year-old Mullah Said Nabi Agha, didn't fare much better. He said he has never seen the iconic image of the Twin Towers burning. He was vaguely aware that some kind of explosion had occurred in America.
"I was a child when it happened, and now I am an adult, and the Americans are still here," Mr. Agha said. "I think the Americans did it themselves, so they could invade Afghanistan."
The teacher's view is by no means rare here. The events of Sept. 11, 2001, of course, are known to educated Afghans, and to many residents of big cities. But that isn't always the case elsewhere in a predominantly rural country where 42% of the population is under the age of 14, and 72% of adults are illiterate. With few villages reached by television or electricity, news here is largely spread by word of mouth.
Such opinions highlight a contrast between American and Afghan perspectives on the longest foreign war in U.S. history, one that killed thousands of Afghans and, at the latest count, claimed the lives of 1,760 U.S. troops.
They also explain the Taliban's ability to rally popular support—in part by seizing the narrative to portray the war not as one triggered by America's need for self-defense, but as one of colonial aggression by infidels lusting for Afghanistan's riches.
"The Islamic Emirate wages a lawful struggle for the defense of its religion, country and soil," the Taliban's leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, told Afghans last month on the occasion of the Islamic Eid al-Fitr holiday.
According to a survey of 15- to 30-year-old men in the two southern provinces where President Barack Obama sent the bulk of American surge troops, 92% of respondents said they didn't know about "this event which the foreigners call 9/11" after being read a three-paragraph description of the attacks.
"Nobody explained to them the 9/11 story—and it's hard to win the hearts and minds of the fighting-age males in Helmand if they don't even know why the foreigners are here," says Norine MacDonald, president of the International Council on Security and Development, the think tank that carried out the survey of 1,000 Afghan men in eight districts of Kandahar and Helmand. "There is a vacuum—and it's being filled by al Qaeda and Taliban propaganda claiming that we are here to destroy Islam."
Some Afghans who do know about the events of 2001 often subscribe to conspiracy theories, imported from Pakistan and Iran, that have long lost currency even in the Middle East.
Maulvi Abdulaziz Mujahed, an imam at Kabul's Takbir mosque who served as chairman of the Kabul provincial council in 2008 to 2009, said in a recent interview that the Sept. 11 attacks were a Jewish conspiracy, a view he says was reinforced by his 2009 visit to New York's Ground Zero.
"I saw the photos of all those who have been killed in the attacks, and I saw people bring flowers for their loved ones. But I couldn't find a single Jew among them," Mr. Mujahed said. "The superpowers wanted a good pretext to invade Afghanistan, and these attacks provided it."
Abdul Hakim Mujahid, the deputy chairman of the Afghan government's High Peace Council, a body created to negotiate a peaceful solution to the war, was in New York when the two jets struck the Twin Towers—in his capacity as the Taliban regime's semi-official envoy to the U.S. and the United Nations.
While Mr. Mujahid says he was saddened by the attacks, he says he still doesn't believe al Qaeda was responsible for "the unfortunate incident."
"After 9/11, the whole world rushed to Afghanistan, and the people of Afghanistan were under the illusion that everything would be changed: The roads would be paved black, the houses would be painted white, the infrastructure rebuilt and the industries established," he says. "But gradually these expectations have come down, and now have reached the point of zero. The people are asking: When will the foreigners finally leave?"
Not every Afghan subscribes to the conspiracy theories or wants the Americans to leave. At the campus of Kabul University, where young women and men mix in a setting unimaginable under Taliban rule, students said in interviews they were fully aware of the Sept. 11 attacks and saw the U.S. invasion as bringing benefits to Afghanistan. Many of them were ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks from the country's north—ethnic minorities discriminated against under the rule of the Taliban.
"Under the Taliban, Afghanistan was a terrorist haven, nobody could leave their house, and I wouldn't have been able to attend university," says Nasser Hasrab, a 20-year-old literature student from the northern Faryab province. "After the Soviets left we had a civil war, and I am afraid that if the Americans leave, the same would happen again."
Across town in the Herat restaurant—once the favorite hangout of Taliban leaders and al Qaeda militants—owner Abdulazim Niyazi, dressed in a Polo shirt and clutching a Samsung cellphone, pondered the momentous change of the past decade.
Because TV was banned under the Taliban, there was no particular celebration or commotion in the restaurant on Sept. 11, 2001, he said. Since then, Mr. Niyazi complained, boomtown Kabul has been swamped with corruption, prostitution and vice. More importantly, his business has soured.
"Under the Taliban, we were the only place," he said. "Now, Kabul is filled with restaurants." —Habib Khan Totakhil contributed to this article.
U.S. envoy says Pakistan should get behind Afghan peace talks
USA TODAY By Jim Michaels 07/09/2011
Pakistan is reluctant to allow senior Taliban leaders to travel to Afghanistan for reconciliation talks, raising concerns that Pakistan is not helping enough to resolve the conflict.
"Those who are willing to talk should be given the opportunity," Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, told USA TODAY in a phone interview. "Those who are determined to fight should have actions taken against them that should prevent them from doing so."
Afghan officials have been meeting with Taliban representatives to find a political solution to the conflict. The United States has said that it supports the Afghan initiative but that it is too early to report progress in the talks.
"You can't kill your way out of an insurgency," Crocker said. "There's got to be a political settlement at some point."
Analysts say Pakistan is attempting to play both sides in the conflict, hedging its bets in the event the Taliban remains after the United States leaves the region. The United States plans to withdraw its forces by the end of 2014.
"The Pakistanis still see the Taliban as their best leverage in Afghanistan," said Lisa Curtis, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a think tank. "They're on the fence right now."
Elements of the Pakistani government, such as its intelligence services, backed the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 1996. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has accused the Pakistanis of aiding the Taliban insurgency today. Several militant groups in Pakistan provide weapons and fighters to the Taliban.
The U.S.-Pakistani relationship worsened after the United States launched a raid into Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden. The Pakistanis were not told of the plan before the raid.
Crocker acknowledged Pakistan may be concerned that the United States may abandon the region, leaving Pakistan with a need to have a relationship with the Taliban. He said facilitating peace talks with the Taliban is "in their interests as well as Afghanistan's."
"It's not like they're not cooperating at all," Crocker said of Pakistan.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Pakistan's recent arrest of a senior al-Qaeda leader and two associates in Quetta indicates cooperation.
"I think that's a good sign," Panetta said.
The Pakistani Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Afghanistan's government says it will negotiate with Taliban leaders willing to put down their arms and back the constitution, including respect for women's rights.
Though talks at the national level have not led to a breakthrough, the Afghan government is increasing efforts to reintegrate insurgent fighters into their home villages.
About 2,400 fighters have completed a reintegration program that provides jobs, training and security to former insurgents, according to the coalition command in Afghanistan. An additional 3,000 are waiting to go through the program. Crocker is hopeful these local efforts will weaken the insurgency.
"It's kind of hard to make an insurgency if your gun-toting insurgents have gone into another line of work," Crocker said. "It would certainly diminish the significance of the fat cats who sit in (Pakistan's) Quetta or North Waziristan."
Battle for Afghanistan's Gambir Jungle: 1st Platoon's 'last stand'
By the end of Day 1 of Operation Hammer Down, 1st Platoon needed help. But when reinforcements arrived, they found they had more than enough of their own troubles.
By Anna Mulrine, Staff writer / September 8, 2011 The Christian Science Monitor
Kunar, Afghanistan - Operation Hammer Down had begun in the hours before midnight of June 24 as an operation to flush insurgents out of terrorist training camps in the remote valleys of eastern Afghanistan. Now, in the full light of Sunday, June 25, it was clear that B Company's 1st Platoon was, in the words of one soldier, being "rocked."
From a ridge some 500 yards away, the soldiers from B Company's 3rd Platoon, also a part of Operation Hammer Down, could see the battle raging between the 1st and the Taliban.
It was clear the enemy were experienced fighters. "They were using our tactics against us, basically," says Staff Sgt. Christopher Panter of the 3rd. "And they know our rules of engagement probably better than we do."
When US aircraft sped down the valley in an effort to fire on enemy positions, "You'd see a lot of females getting up on the buildings, waving fighters in to hide them," Panter says. "It's hard to see that. You can watch eight fighters pile into a building, but you know there are women and children in there so you can't do anything about it."
As the 3rd watched from a distance, 1st Platoon soldiers who could were rallying to a safe house they had established, creating a strong point for the unit in a nearby mud-walled house called a kulat. It was "a 'last stand' kind of thing," as one soldier describes it.
From then on, says Sgt. Elwyn Lovelace of the 1st, "We just kind of focused on keeping ourselves alive."
Meanwhile, in the gulch, injured Staff Sgt. Nigel Kelly and the soldiers of the 1st working to save him remained vulnerable, with Taliban fighters all around. "At one point when we were down in there we could hear them above us," says Spc. Derrick Dickerson. "All they had to do was lean over and spray, and we'd be done."
Kelly urged the soldiers to just leave him behind. "He told us that while we were playing dead. He told us that it wasn't worth us getting hurt," says Dickerson.
Dickerson and the others did not heed his suggestion. Slowly, as darkness fell, he and the other soldiers pulled Kelly up the gulch and to the rooftop of the kulat that had become the strong point in hopes of having him airlifted to safety.
A medevac chopper, under cover of night, came at last. For five minutes, it hovered above Kelly and the other soldiers. "But it wouldn't land," Dickerson says. The area was too dangerous. "Once it left, probably about 10 minutes after that, [Kelly] died."
Barring the 'back door'
By that night, senior commanders overseeing Operation Hammer Down had made a decision. They would not pull the plug. Instead, the 1st Platoon would hold the strong point and wait to be relieved by a new unit: Havoc Company.
Just as the soldiers of the 1st had done the night before, Havoc Company was to land on a 10,000-foot ridgeline and move some 4,000 feet down the mountain before sunrise. But by the early hours of Sunday, June 26, it was clear to commanders that Havoc would be forced to dig in and fight its own battle.
First, Havoc's Chinook crashed, and medics began calling for an alarming number of casualty evacuations, says Pfc. John Litwinczuk. Of the 57 troops from Havoc Company on the mission, 13 were injured during the hard landing and flown out in the hours before dawn.
Then, at first light, the 44 US soldiers left felt the brunt of the insurgents' first salvo. A rocket-propelled grenade hit with "a big huge boom," Litwinczuk recalls. His intuition told him there was some strategy to the enemy barrages. "I think they were trying to gauge where we were and where our guns were – because the next attack was huge."
Havoc Company, commanders were rapidly realizing, had been dropped in the middle of a key insurgent transit route. "We knew it was a route," says Lt. Col. Colin Tuley, commander of the 2nd Battalion. "But we didn't know it was the route."
As night fell, intercepted radio intelligence backed up that assessment. The chatter indicated that insurgents were getting reinforcements from a neighboring province and were planning to attack again at daybreak.
Havoc soldiers were ordered to fortify their fighting positions.
This was not an easy proposition, as they dug into the stone-cold ridge where snow had only recently receded. "That ground was rock hard," says Litwinczuk. "Me and my buddy went around grabbing up big rocks. We built a three-foot-high wall, and we put tree [limbs] around," he says. "Those trees saved our lives."
As the temperature dropped, soldiers stripped the helicopter for anything that would keep them warm. They tore the lining from the ceiling of the downed Chinook and wrapped themselves in it. Troops who brought extra socks used them on their hands and arms. Others wrapped bandages around their necks to keep out the cold. Everyone dispensed with modesty to sleep as close together as possible.
"We were spooning," Litwinczuk adds. "Everyone was spooning."
As the soldiers of Havoc Company sought what rest they could, a fresh plan was taking shape. A new unit would come to the aid of the stricken 1st Platoon – if it could arrive before daybreak.
Afghan Concerns Over U.S. Staying Power
The Huffington Post By Jayshree Bajoria Senior Staff Writer, Council on Foreign Relations 07/09/2011
As the timeline for the drawdown of U.S. and international troops from Afghanistan approaches, the United States and Afghanistan are working to finalize a long-term security arrangement that would secure a limited U.S. troop presence in the country beyond 2014. But the United States and Afghanistan disagree on several points, starting with how binding the agreement should be. Taj Ayubi, a minister-counselor to Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai, says as U.S. public opinion for the war in Afghanistan wanes amid an economic downturn and rising unemployment, Afghans grow increasingly concerned about Washington's long-term commitment to the country. Ayubi, who accused some in the Afghan government of sabotaging the strategic pact under discussion with Washington in a speech he delivered at the Marine Corps University in Quantico, says the majority of Afghans support a U.S. military base in the country post-2014.
There is a lot of distrust in the U.S.-Afghan relationship, and corruption looms large as a concern among lawmakers in Congress. Where do you think this relationship stands at present, and what can the two sides do to improve it?
Both sides are trying very hard to mend relations. Actually, the relations are not bad; it's just that in the last few years we were not able to coordinate as much as we should have. We have come to a stage where the transition of authority is taking place, so we are rushing into things. That's why there are little aberrations occurring in our relations.
What is Afghanistan doing to mend relations?
The Afghan government and the United States have assigned their national security advisors to continue talks and come up with some solutions. Perhaps in the next two to three months, we'll have some definite answers to those questions.
What steps is the Afghan government taking to tackle corruption?
The Afghan government has assigned two anti-corruption organizations: the major crimes task force and the attorney general's office. So, there are a number of commissions and organizations that are going to go into that. At least twenty to thirty corrupt officials and judges and some governors [have been] arrested.
Do you have any concerns on the prosecution of the war and how it's faring?
We always have concerns. But from a tactical point of view, we have made many inroads; we have weakened the main body of the enemy. They have been reduced in many parts. For instance, at one time you could not drive from Lashkar Gah to Kandahar [both in southern Afghanistan and approximately 87 miles apart]. Now, you can do that and with a lot of comfort. That means the [insurgents] have been reduced. They cannot hold any place; they cannot take any place. They have to just suffice by hitting soft targets.They have even attacked civilians at places of worship.
What concerns does the Afghan government have with how Pakistan is tackling terrorism? And what do you see as their role in the reconciliation talks with the Taliban?
Pakistan is going to be a very, very important factor in the talks regarding reconciliation; Afghanistan understands that, and Pakistan also understands that. The United States and our other partners [also understand]. Pakistan has to be on board on these talks, and together we can gradually come to some type of understanding.
A recent report by the Associated Press accuses the Afghan government of scuttling the U.S.-Taliban talks due to fears of President Karzai's authority being undermined by a Washington-brokered deal. Clearly there seems to be a lot of confusion regarding the reconciliation talks and between the different parties involved.
The talks have just begun in the last three months. There have been talks between some Afghan sources and some Taliban sources. If we have to make peace, it has to come from a position of strength, which means that the United States should be strong in Afghanistan. The United States can be strong only when [Afghanistan] signs a strategic partnership with the United States. Also, the Afghan people want basing rights for the United States. Once that happens, and people see that the United States is here to stay in Afghanistan, much of this confusion will just fizzle out.
What is the status of negotiations for the strategic partnership agreement? Are there sticking points between the two parties?
We had the initial agreement from the United States in 2004, and both sides have expressed a desire to renew that. The Afghans have been asking for a binding relationship with the United States. The United States has been a little wary about that. Perhaps it has to go through a lot of political [troubles] in Washington. So, they're not as prepared for that yet. Also, the Afghans have to prepare politically for such a big agreement with the United States, especially for basing rights.
Is there enough support for a U.S. military base inside Afghanistan beyond 2014?
I'll tell you with confidence, 85 percent support the United States to stay in Afghanistan long term.
The Afghan government has expressed displeasure over the night raids conducted by U.S. forces. Is that something you are addressing with the United States in the strategic partnership agreement?
Yes, with the transition processes going on right now between Afghanistan, NATO, and the United States, those issues will also be addressed. [The Afghan government wants] more Afghans at the forefront [of the night raids], and the foreign troops would be behind them. [Foreign troops] are not going to go directly and blast Afghan doors and do all those things at night.
Given the economic realities in the United States, are there concerns in the Afghan government and among the public that the United States might abandon them following the withdrawal in 2014?
Yes, there is concern and fear in the Afghan public. In the last three months, since the talks about the strategic partnership have been delayed a bit, so many businesses and people have just put a hold on their businesses and there is a little slump in real estate sales in Afghanistan. Once those [strategic partnership agreement] issues are resolved, things will pick up again. I don't think that people have too many concerns that the United States will abandon them, because the United States has been giving assurances, over and over again.
Are there specific issues within the agreement that they don't agree on?
Yes, for instance [Afghans think] that it should be binding, and also that it should be ratified by the Senate of the United States. I think the U.S. government has to do some political work. Afghans have to do the same.
This interview first appeared on CFR.org.
In Afghanistan's Panjshir, disquiet over Taliban reconciliation
By Sanjeev Miglani and Hamid Shalizi
DALASANG, Afghanistan (Reuters) - At the entrance to Afghanistan's magnificent Panjshir Valley, an 84-year-old supporter of resistance hero Ahmad Shah Massoud said his village was fully armed to fight a resurgent Taliban to the end.
Like the Russians before them, the Pashtun Taliban have failed to penetrate Panjshir fortified by jagged cliffs and plunging valleys, coming as far as neighboring Nuristan province as they extend their control in the north and east of the country.
But as the beleaguered government and its Western backers reach out to the Taliban to explore prospects of a political settlement of the 10-year war, the sense of disquiet grows in the Tajik-dominated Panjshir region.
"We are all armed, we will not sit quiet. If the Taliban come, we will fight them everywhere," said Mullah Mohammad, pointing to his village in the valley floor by the side of the rushing waters of the Panjshir river.
It is from here that Massoud, or the Lion of Panjshir, fought the Taliban at the head of the Northern Alliance representing Afghanistan's ethnic minorities, until his assassination two days before the Sept 11, 2001, attacks.
Soon after, U.S.-led coalition forces teamed up with the warlords of the Northern Alliance to drive the Taliban out of power from Kabul, and since then many have gone into government.
Ten years on, the cult of Massoud grows across Afghanistan but especially in his mountain redoubt where the gates to the valley have been draped in black in memory of the fallen leader, killed when two men posing as reporters set off a bomb hidden in a video camera.
It is not clear how much of Massoud's old alliance still holds and whether the former regional backers such as Iran, India and Russia, who have deep concerns over reconciliation with the Taliban, are involved with the old leadership.
"Some remnants of the Northern Alliance have been openly skeptical and even hostile to the idea of a negotiated settlement with the Taliban," said Joshua Foust, an expert on Afghanistan at the American Security Project in Washington.
"Rumors have been flying fast and furiously the last two years or so that the Northern Alliance are rebuilding their militias."
FRITTERING AWAY GAINS
At Massoud's white stone monument on the top of a hill surrounded by barren mountains, a trickle of visitors, some from as far as the southern province of Kandahar, sit in silent prayer.
Afghan police patrol the narrow, winding road leading to the monument and the checkpoints and the mud houses are emblazoned with portraits of the legendary fighter.
For his supporters, it would have been a different Afghanistan had he lived and the gains that they made for the country are being frittered away by the administration of President Hamid Karzai.
"Afghanistan was delivered to Karzai because of the resistance fighters. The foreign forces only gave air support. But they have wasted the victory," said Ahmad Wali Masoud, a former Afghan ambassador to Britain who heads the Massoud Foundation in honor of his brother.
Massoud's assassination, which many believe was the work of al Qaeda as a gift to the Taliban, has itself not been investigated properly, Wali Masoud said.
He said British investigating agencies had informed him that 22 different terrorist groups across the world had collaborated in the plot.
"But it was never investigated properly. This government has not even set up an inquiry," he said, adding the role of some of Afghanistan's neighbors should also be probed. He declined to name them.
Ten years later, Afghanistan remains a deeply divided society and the administration risks accentuating the divides further by pursuing a deal with the Taliban without spelling out parameters, said Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister and close associate of Massoud.
"We support reconciliation, but it has to be done in a transparent manner," he said.
"We want peace, but peace with dignity. There was also peace in Afghanistan during the Taliban in the 1990s, but it was peace of the graveyard. Is that what we want?"
(Editing by Nick Macfie)
Female Militia Chief Keeps Peace in Helmand District
Veteran fighter has years of experience leading men into combat, besides being a mother of nine.
IWPR By Gol Ahmad Ehsan 7 Sep 11
Afghanistan - It is obvious how much respect Abedo, a paramilitary commander in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand region, commands. Walking through the bazaar in Marja district, laughing and joking, the diminutive figure is greeted by tradesmen and shopkeepers, some of whom step forward to kiss the commander’s hands.
What makes 70-year-old Abedo an exceptional warrior by Afghan standards is that she is a woman. She set aside the traditional roles assigned to women in Pashtun society, and pursued a long career as a muhajedin fighter.
Dressed in male attire and with a yellow Helmand cap on her head, she now controls security in her home areas, leading a force of 30 paramilitaries.
The mother of nine recalled how her military career began shortly after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. She fought side by side with her mujahedin husband until he was killed in battle eight years later.
“My husband was martyred during the early years of jihad and although it was difficult for me, I continued fighting,” she said.
After his death, she changed from female clothing and dressed like an Afghan man, and went on to command a 200-strong band of mujahedin. Although she escaped serious injury, she says she killed and wounded many enemies.
“There were many battles at that time and we would fight for several days without stopping,” she said. “My men would be martyred and many enemies would also be killed. Those are the demands of war.”
She says the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 was the high point in her life.
“When the Russians left Afghanistan, I couldn’t sit still, I was so happy,” she said. Laughing at the memory, Abedo said, “Being a leader and commander was enjoyable, especially when I gave orders to my mujahedin and they obeyed me. We’d attack the enemy and I would feel I was greatly honoured.”
Feeling that right had been done, she laid down her arms and tried to build a normal life with her four sons and five daughters.
“I waged jihad to satisfy God,” Abedo said. “I didn’t pursue jihad as some others did, to obtain positions and property in this world. Those who misuse the name of jihad took advantage of it to loot and steal from people. Their efforts have been futile – they will receive nothing in the next world.”
After years living in relative peace, Abedo was moved to take up arms once more when her business was threatened by conflict between the government forces of post-2001 Afghanistan and their Taleban opponents.
“The police would tell me not to sell to the Taleban, and the Taleban would tell me not to sell to the police,” she said. “Finally, the Taleban torched my shop.”
Refusing to be cowed, she called up ten young men from her village, formed them into a paramilitary unit, and was contracted by the government to maintain stability in the area.
“I will fight against anyone who wants to disrupt the security of my village and district,” she said.
Her stance naturally soured relations with local Taleban leaders, so she now takes precautions to avoid ambush – varying her movements, visiting the district centre only occasionally to attend council meetings, and living away from her own home.
Local officials are impressed with their ally.
“Besides being a very brave woman, Abedo has a very sound understanding of the tactics of war,” Baz Gol, who is in overall command of pro-government militias operating in Marja district. “In addition, the people very much support her. She works with us to in ensuring security and we are happy with her achievements.”
Abedo insists she has always prized her independence, so although she currently works with the Kabul government, she has no political or factional alliances.
“During the jihad, weapons and ammunitions were brought in from Pakistan independently, in my name, and I would give them to the mujahedin here. I was independent then and I am now,” she added.
Her record and current position means that Abedo is held in high esteem by members of her tribe and village.
“Abedo is a brave, unique and gracious woman,” said Nek Mohammad, a resident of Marja. “She should be counted as a hero of Afghan history. “During the jihad era, we witnessed some male mujahedin commanders signing deals with the Russians to stop fighting. Abedo fought bravely until the last moment, when the Russians left the country.”
Mohammad Sadeq, a resident of Lashkar Gah, recalled Abedo’s influence in the mujahedin war against the Soviets.
“I wanted to go to Marja district, but the mujahedin were in control of the area. There were checkpoints everywhere,” he said. “I knew Abedo and got a signed and stamped letter from her ordering the mujahedin not to touch me. I went on my journey with some trepidation, and when the mujahedin stopped me and started interrogating me, I showed them the letter. They said they would have killed me if I hadn’t had the letter, because I had come from the town and looked like a spy to them – but no one could ignore Abedo’s orders.”
Abedo said her militia members are registered and trained by the authorities, receiving 110 US dollars a month, and abiding strictly by official rules of engagement.
One of her men, Mirza, said, “Abedo is a woman who knows more than many men. If we face a problem, we act on to her advice and perform well because of it.”
Asked what she would do if her soldiers misbehaved, Abedo said, “I don’t allow my militia to do that. I don’t even want children complaining about them.”
Familiar with a wide range of weapons, she said her long experience gave her an edge over many others, even in the Afghan security forces.
“Modern-day youngsters in the police and army don’t have experience, and it’s easy for them to get killed in combat because they don’t know how to fight,” she said dismissively.
She has even greater contempt for cowardice, saying, “Those who are afraid of war cause others to be defeated. And liars, too, are marked for defeat. I hate them both.”
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