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Panetta Says Pakistan Haven for Afghan Attacks Is ‘Unacceptable’
Bloomberg By Viola Gienger Sep 15, 2011
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta vowed action to stop a Pakistan-based militant group from staging “unacceptable” attacks in Afghanistan and then fleeing back to their haven across the border.
“I’m not going to talk about how we’re going to respond,” Panetta told reporters traveling with him yesterday to San Francisco. “I’ll just let you know we are not going to allow these kinds of attacks to go on.”
U.S. officials have pinned a weekend truck bomb attack and this week’s assault on the U.S. Embassy and NATO coalition headquarters in Kabul, the Afghan capital, on the Jalaluddin Haqqani group, a guerrilla faction with ties to Pakistan’s military intelligence agency. The network operates largely from a sanctuary in Pakistan’s borderland with Afghanistan.
The Obama administration has increased diplomatic and financial pressure on Pakistan to move more quickly and aggressively against militant networks that the U.S. says are targeting the country’s own people as well as its neighbors. Relations fell to a new low after American special operations forces killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in a May raid within Pakistan without that government’s knowledge.
“I’m very concerned about the Haqqani attacks because, No. 1, they’re killing people, killing our forces,” Panetta said. “No. 2, they escape back into what is a safe haven in Pakistan, and that’s unacceptable.”
Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are in California for a day of annual talks today with their Australian counterparts. Decisive Action
Clinton, visiting the Pakistani capital Islamabad in May for talks that included Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the U.S. expects Pakistan’s leaders to take “decisive” action against extremist groups such as the Haqqani guerrillas in North Waziristan.
“Many of the world’s most vicious terrorists have been living in Pakistan,” Clinton said in a visit after the bin Laden raid. “There is much more work that is required and it is urgent.”
In Afghanistan, the U.S. and its coalition partners are fighting the Taliban and associated groups whose leaders operate from the tribal regions of Pakistan.
The weekend truck bombing created a crater 20 feet (6 meters) long and 9 feet deep, said Panetta, who took office July 1 after serving as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, where he helped lead the bin Laden raid. Looking for Evidence
The U.S. suspects the Haqqani network also was behind the attack two days ago on the embassy, and continues to look for evidence that might prove the link, Panetta said. U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said the assault didn’t seriously endanger his embassy.
“Time and again, we’ve urged the Pakistanis to exercise their influence over these kinds of attacks from the Haqqanis,” the defense chief said. “We’ve made very little progress in that area.”
Afghan and coalition forces did manage to quell the firefight, Panetta said, repeating official U.S. assertions that the assault was more an indicator of Taliban weakness than strength. He said he was conducting an unrelated secure video conference with General John Allen, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, when the standoff was under way in the streets of Kabul.
“Anytime they can make their way into Kabul, into the capital, that’s cause for concern,” Panetta said. “At the same time, the forces did respond and respond quickly. Casualties were limited and we were able to basically defeat their effort.”
Panetta said Allen assured him the coalition was continuing to reduce levels of violence overall in Afghanistan and “seriously weaken” the Taliban.
“His view, and I share it, is that these kind of attacks - - sporadic attacks and assassination attempts -- are more a reflection of the fact that they’re losing their ability to be able to attack our forces on a broader scale,” Panetta said.
Pakistan hits back at US criticism in Kabul attack
Associated Press By ZARAR KHAN Thursday, Sep. 15, 2011
American criticism of Islamabad's failure to pursue the Haqqani militant network blamed for this week's attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul risks damaging anti-terror cooperation between the two countries, Pakistan's Foreign Ministry warned Thursday.
Washington wants to degrade the insurgency in Afghanistan before handing over security responsibilities to Afghan forces and pulling out. Pakistan's reluctance to attack the Haqqani group, which U.S. officials say has safe havens in Pakistan and is behind much of the violence in Afghanistan, is a major source of tension.
On Wednesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and other U.S. officials said the Haqqani group was behind the 20-hour assault on the embassy in Kabul. Panetta expressed frustration with Pakistan and issued what was construed in Pakistan as a veiled warning that Washington may take unilateral action against the militants.
Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tehmina Janjua said Thursday that Panetta's remarks were "out of line with the cooperation that exists between the two countries in the war against terrorism." Pakistan's army, which controls defense and foreign policy, declined comment on his remarks.
Islamabad has resisted attacking the Haqqanis because they do not pose a direct threat to Pakistan. The army is engaged in a bloody fight with other militant groups. It fears that making enemies of the Haqqanis now could tip the country into even greater chaos.
The army also believes it will be able to use the group, with which it has ties going back to the U.S.-backed resistance against Soviet rule in Afghanistan, to ensure its arch-enemy India does not gain a foothold there once the American troops leave.
Panetta said it was unacceptable that the Haqqanis are able to launch attacks and then flee to safe havens across the border in Pakistan. "The message they (the Pakistanis) need to know is: we're going to do everything we can to defend our forces," Panetta told reporters.
U.S. and Afghan officials say the Haqqanis are behind many of the high-profile attacks in the Afghan capital in recent years, including a 2009 assault on the Indian embassy. The two nations have alleged that the group is assisted by Pakistan's powerful spy agency, a charge Pakistan denies.
The United States has fired scores of missiles at Haqqani fighters in North Waziristan since 2008, killing many low and midlevel fighters. Those attacks were initially tolerated by Pakistani authorities but have developed into another irritant in ties.
In recent months, Pakistani officials have alleged that militants are crossing over from Afghanistan and attacking Pakistani troops and civilians, leading them to complain of "safe havens" in Afghanistan. Janjua raised this issue, saying NATO and the U.S. should also address it.
Washington has given Islamabad $20 billion in aid since 2001, most of it to the military, to try to secure its cooperation. It can't send ground troops across the border to attack the Haqqanis because that would likely cause a nationalist backlash that could destabilize Pakistan and create divisions in the army, where many soldiers do not support the top brass' alliance with Washington.
By Kevin Sieff, The Washington Post Friday, September 16, 2:27 AM
KABUL — The teenage insurgents spend their days learning to make shoes and bookshelves, listening to religious leaders denounce the radical interpretation of Islam they learned as children.
But when they return to their cells at Kabul’s juvenile rehabilitation center, the boys with wispy beards and cracking voices talk only of the holy war from which they were plucked and their plans to resume fighting for the Taliban.
“They bring us here to change us,” said Nane Asha, in his late teens. “But this is our way. We cannot be changed.”
As the Taliban presses its efforts to recruit teenage fighters, Afghan officials and their international backers have crafted a program to reintegrate the country’s youngest insurgents into mainstream society. But that ambition is coming up against the intransigence of the teens, who say they would rather be on the battlefield.
“We’ll fight against America for a thousand years if we have to,” said Ali Ahmad, 17, sitting at a desk that has hearts and Koran verses scratched in the wood. “Jihad is the duty of every Muslim.”
Before joining the insurgency in their early teens, the fighters were students, part-time shopkeepers and farmhands, mostly living in the Pashtun-dominated regions of southern and eastern Afghanistan. Some say their parents supported the decision to take up arms. Others left home without warning, disregarding the wishes of relatives and heeding what they call a religious and moral obligation.
Here at the detention center, they live alongside a large group of teens found guilty of crimes unrelated to terrorism. Often, young Taliban members are described as desperate rather than ideological, but the 30 teenage fighters here appear undeterred and unrepentant, and they vow strict adherence to the group’s creed.
“We tell them, ‘You could be a mullah or a tailor or a carpenter.’ But they come here with a misinterpretation of the Holy Koran stuck in their mind. It can be hard to erase that,” said Shah Abbas Bashardost, who works with the boys.
“If we can’t get through to the kids, who can we rehabilitate?” Bashardost said.
Reintegration is at the heart of U.S. and Afghan government strategies to wind down the war, with schooling and employment being offered to coax fighters away from the insurgency. Juvenile offenders seemed a sensible starting point in that campaign, because many assumed they would be easier to win over than adults who have spent years, or even decades, waging war.
In the next few years, reintegration programs such as the one at the Kabul juvenile center — which is run by Afghans but bolstered by foreign supporters, including the United States — are expected to take shape at prisons across the country. But the disappointing results at the Kabul facility reflect the challenges facing the campaign.
The experience of boys such as Asha and Ahmad suggests that after years of religious schooling and combat, the draw of war might be too strong to overcome.
An early start
The Taliban visited Asha’s school when he was about 13, preaching the evils of American interlopers and the value of violent jihad. Asha approached the speaker after the sermon ended. “How can I join you?” he asked.
Within a few weeks, Asha was enrolled in a six-month training course, learning how to fire a Kalashnikov and to connect a nest of wires and explosives that could take out a U.S. tank. He studied the material obsessively.
“I would be on my motorbike, but I’d be going over the information in my head: how to make the bomb work, how to connect all the parts,” he said.
At the end of the Taliban course, Asha, like most of the other young fighters at the rehabilitation center, was tested on his knowledge. He placed first in his class of 37.
“My parents were very proud,” he said.
Then Asha put his new skills to work, scurrying across Helmand province to lay a variety of explosives in areas where foreign troops were likely to travel and watching from a distance as his handiwork sent plumes of smoke, dust and shrapnel into the air.
Sometimes, he said, he fired on the troops who emerged to tend to the wounded. Sometimes, he got too close, and pieces of hot metal punctured his skin, leaving scars.
Asha was rising through the Taliban ranks, accruing subordinates and ammunition, when Afghan police stopped him in Kandahar last year, recognizing his face from a photo of suspects.
Bone scans of inmates
Asha told interrogators that he was 16, even though he thinks he is several years older, because sentences are halved for juveniles. Rather than serve time in conventional prisons, teenage insurgents are sent to minimally secured rehabilitation facilities, which look more like high schools than jails. Afghan authorities have taken to performing bone scans of young inmates to ascertain their ages, knowing that many lie.
In May, the country’s intelligence agency paraded five boys ages 11 to 17 in front of reporters, photographers and cameramen in Kabul. The boys were among 400 juvenile fighters arrested by the intelligence agency in the past two years; many more have died in battle.
On stage, the boys told reporters that they wanted to divorce themselves from religious extremists and return to their families. They seemed ripe for exactly the kind of services offered by the rehabilitation program.
But at the Kabul center, detainees call Taliban members on borrowed cellphones to reassure them that their commitment to jihad has not weakened. Taliban commanders promise to reward the boys for serving prison sentences, the detainees said.
Religious officials handpicked by the government visit several times per week, charged with teaching the children a more moderate interpretation of Islam. Three social workers aim to dull the luster of the insurgency, promoting alternative careers.
In July, the Italian Embassy inaugurated a gym and computer lab at the facility. The United States assigns its military officials as “mentors” to advocate for some of the inmates and provide mattresses and school supplies to the facility.
Over the next four years, the United States has said, it will “support de-radicalization teams, reintegration efforts, and rehabilitation programming for prisoners,” particularly in the south and east, according to a plan released this year by the U.S. Embassy. American officials acknowledge the rehabilitation center’s shortcomings and say they plan to increase training for the facility’s employees and provide additional vocational instruction for inmates.
Grand ambitions
For now, the juvenile center’s practices do not always match its lofty ambitions. Several days a week, when religious officials are unable to teach Koran classes, Asha leads the group instead. While a group of boys told an American reporter that their ultimate goal was “to kill you people,” a social worker within earshot appeared unfazed, saying nothing.
“How much progress are these centers really making?” said Latifullah Mashal, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s intelligence service.
Meanwhile, officials at the juvenile center are looking for reasons to be hopeful — or, short of that, to explain their lack of success.
“We are concerned about whether they will go back to the Taliban,” said Aziza Adalatkhwah, the center’s director. “But, ultimately, it depends on the child and on how much they love their county.”
Interior Minister Praises Policemen who Fought Kabul Attackers
TOLOnews.com Thursday, 15 September 2011
The commitment of policemen to their jobs should not be underestimated, Afghanistan's interior minister, Bismellah Mohammadi, said on Thursday, acknowledging the heroism of police officers during the attack on Kabul earlier in the week.
Visiting a military hospital in Kabul, the minister called on the people of Afghanistan to co-operate with the police for a better country.
The Afghan security forces put their lives on the line to end Tuesday's insurgent attack. Two police officers attempted to thwart two separate suicide attackers in Kabul before they could detonate their explosives. Both men lost their lives.
Police officer Samiullah reacted immediately on spotting a suicide bomber. In a bid to protect innocent bystanders, he launched himself at the attackers and hugged him tight as he exploded.
Samiullah's family said they are proud of him for performing such a heroic act to save lives.
The policeman leaves behind a wife and four children. He was the family's only breadwinner.
Another officer, Jan Ali, also lost his life trying to defend his country. He left behind his wife, four children and his aging mother.
His family is not wealthy and relatives have called on the government to provide for his offspring.
"I praise the police officers who shed their blood to defend their people and home against [our] enemies and the Taliban fighters," General Mohammadi said, as he visited those wounded in the attacks.
A series of co-ordinated assaults in Kabul on Tuesday left six people dead and 13 others injured. The attacks started around lunchtime, when six insurgents positioned themselves in a half-built, multi-storey building at Abdul Haq roundabout and started firing rockets at the US Embassy and Nato's headquarters. Women and children were among the wounded.
23 insurgents killed, 8 detained in Afghanistan
KABUL, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- Security forces during operations have killed 23 insurgents and captured eight in different parts of the country over the past 24 hours, Afghan Interior Ministry said on Friday.
"Afghan National Police (ANP), backed by army and Coalition forces, killed 23 armed insurgents and captured eight insurgents during five joint operations in Faryab, Sari Pul, Zabul, Uruzgan and Wardak provinces over the last 24 hours," Interior Ministry said in a statement issued here.
During the operations, ANP also discovered and seized a handful of weapons and ammunitions besides defusing 16 anti-vehicle mines and finding some 39 kg of explosive materials, it said.
Seven armed insurgents were also injured in the mentioned operations, it said.
Afghan officials often use the word "insurgents" referring to Taliban.
However, the militant group, who stepped up their attacks on Afghan and NATO-led troops since a spring rebel offensive was launched in May this year, has yet to make comments.
Earlier Friday, a soldier with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was injured when insurgents attacked an ISAF convoy in the country's northern Kunduz province, an ISAF spokesman in Kunduz province said.
The ISAF service member sustained minor injuries after a roadside bomb went off near the ISAF's military convoy in Archi district of Kunduz province that followed insurgents' small arm fire Friday morning, according to the spokesman.
Currently around 140,000-storng ISAF soldiers with majority of them Americans have been deployed in the insurgency-hit country.
Corrupt Afghan trucking for U.S. military probed by Congress
Washington Post By Karen DeYoung Friday, September 16, 2011
Trucking contractors who pay off the Taliban, warlords and government officials to ensure safe passage for U.S. military goods in Afghanistan do so because they believe they have no choice if they want to avoid attack, a senior military official told a congressional oversight panel Thursday.
“Some of that money, for sure, is going to the insurgency,” Brig. Gen. Stephen J. Townsend said. “I can’t quantify how much is going to attacks against us. . . . I don’t think you can completely stop it, but we’ve got to minimize it.”
Townsend and Pentagon officials told a House subcommittee that a new trucking contract, which goes into effect Friday, will decrease the level of corruption through wider competition, increased vetting and improved military oversight, along with a “code of ethics” for the contractors.
The new contract is worth about $1 billion over the next year. Under the contract it replaces, tens of millions of dollars had been diverted to “malign actors,” according to congressional and military investigators.
The officials offered no assurances that the payoffs or wider corruption can be eliminated. But they said Afghan corruption is endemic and the need to supply U.S. troops is critical.
“As bad as it is, it would be worse if we had U.S. personnel guarding convoys,” Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary Gary Motsek said. “The body count would be unacceptable.”
Nearly all of the supply convoys — which transport more than 70 percent of all food, fuel, construction material and weapons to the nearly 100,000 U.S. troops across Afghanistan — are guarded by private Afghan security companies.
Military concern over payoffs first arose more than two years ago, when U.S. army investigators estimated that the going rate for protection was $1,500 to $2,500 per truck. But the military did not launch formal investigations into the issue until congressional committees conducted their own inquiries last year.
Military investigators concluded in May that U.S. funds had flowed to criminals and insurgents through four of the eight companies that were part of the earlier contract and that six of the eight were associated with “fraudulent paperwork and behavior,” including profiteering, money laundering and kickbacks to Afghan government and police officials.
Thursday’s hearing — by the House oversight subcommittee on national security, homeland defense and foreign operations — was the first in which the Pentagon explained the new contract.
Lawmakers appeared far from satisfied. Rep. John F. Tierney (D-Mass.) said military investigations had identified more than $360 million in overall U.S. contract funds diverted to “warlords, power brokers, insurgents, and criminal patronage networks” in Afghanistan. A separate government commission had estimated this month that as much as $60 billion had been lost to waste, fraud and abuse.
“I fear that these reports are only the tip of the iceberg,” Tierney said. Asked about supply pilferage, Townsend said it was only about 1 percent overall but ran as high as 15 percent of the 1.5 million gallons of fuel per day transported under the trucking contract.
Tierney and others also questioned the military’s zeal in pursuing contract abusers. Last December, the U.S. command in Afghanistan announced that it had suspended Watan Risk Group, the major security subcontractor for trucking convoys, for diverting funds and violating weapons regulations. The action, U.S. officials said at the time, was a “signal that there is a sea change underway and that we’re very serious” about combating corruption.
Last month, however, the military overturned Watan’s debarment and that of one of Watan’s security subcontractors, Haji Ruhullah. Ruhullah, widely considered a leading warlord in southern Afghanistan, acknowledged making payoffs, but he was excused by the army’s legal department on grounds that Watan had not explained contract rules to him and that his inability to speak English prevented him from reading the rules himself.
At the hearing, Tierney also raised concerns that more than half of the 20 companies awarded the new trucking contract were subcontractors under the previous version.
Kim D. Denver, deputy assistant secretary of the Army, said that none of the companies were among those with alleged abuses.
Also on Thursday, the General Accountability Office released a report saying that the departments of Defense and State and the U.S. Agency for International Development had failed to comply with laws and agreements requiring them to keep accurate count of the number of contractors employed in Iraq and Afghanistan and of the money distributed to them.
Data compiled last year by all three had “significant limitations,” including an underreporting of “at least $4 billion in contract obligations,” the GAO said.
In Thursday’s testimony, Motsek said the Defense Department employed a total of 93,118 contractors in Afghanistan as of the third quarter of 2011, nearly half of whom were Afghan nationals. The rest were about evenly divided between U.S. citizens and citizens of some other country.
Top Afghan, Pakistani officials review Taliban reconciliation
ISLAMABAD, Sept.16 (Xinhua) -- Top Pakistani and Afghan diplomats, intelligence and defence officials are scheduled to meet in Islamabad on Friday to review progress on the reconciliation in Afghanistan, officials and diplomats said.
An Afghan diplomat told Xinhua that Afghan side would seek information on any contact Islamabad has established with the Afghan Taliban as part of the reconciliation process at the Joint Commission on Peace and Reconciliation meeting.
Afghanistan Deputy Foreign Minister Jawed Ludin has arrived in Islamabad to lead his side, spokesperson for the Afghan embassy said. Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir will head the team of Pakistani officials, the Foreign Ministry said.
Intelligence and military representatives from both sides will also attend the meeting, said Tehmina Janjua, the spokeswoman for the Pakistan foreign office. She told reporters in Islamabad that issues of reconciliation will be discussed.
The two sides will meet to prepare the agenda for a meeting scheduled between Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani and Afghan President Hamid Karzai next month in Kabul.
Afghanistan and Pakistan had formed a two-tier commission in April when Gilani flew to Kabul to persuade the Taliban to join the reconciliation process. But Pakistani and Afghan officials now admit that the reconciliation process has stalled since the commission had been set up to bring Taliban to the negotiating table.
Both sides will also discuss mutual cooperation, said an Islamabad-based Afghan diplomat requesting anonymity.
Afghanistan believes that the recent tension between Pakistan and the U.S. has negatively impacted the reconciliation process in Afghanistan, the Afghan diplomat said. But he said that the arrest of a senior al-Qaida leader in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta this month with cooperation by the U.S. intelligence has raised hopes for revival of Pakistan-U.S. normal relationship which will have positive impact on Afghan peace process.
Access to Taliban leaders, Afghanistan would also like access to Taliban leaders captured by Pakistan, including Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, revealed a senior Afghan diplomat. Baradar was nabbed by Pakistani forces from Karachi in 2010 on a tip-off by U. S. intelligence operatives.
Sources said Pakistani side would raise the issue of incursion into its territory by militants from Afghan territory. Pakistan army said that up to 300 armed militants from Afghanistan attacked seven Pakistani border posts on Aug. 27 in the border district of Chitral and killed nearly 28 Pakistani security men.
U.S. Now Relies On Alternate Afghan Supply Routes
NPR By Tom Gjelten September 16, 2011
Napoleon declared that "an army marches on its stomach," and Gen. Omar Bradley said, "amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics." Successful military commanders have long recognized that few requirements rank higher in wartime than the need to maintain reliable supply lines.
Nowhere is that adage more relevant than in Afghanistan, a landlocked country flanked by hostile or wary neighbors. The shipment of supplies and equipment to U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan over the last 10 years has been handicapped by high costs, pilferage, and the threat of ambush.
"Look at the geography of getting things into Afghanistan," says Derek Mitchell, until recently the principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific security affairs. "Look at the countries that surround [Afghanistan], the nature of their relationships, and the distance from the United States."
Logistics Challenge Of A Generation
To the west of Afghanistan lies Iran. Pakistan, politically unstable and home to a ruthless Taliban movement, lies on the south and east, across a mountainous border. It is no wonder that the shipment of supplies and equipment to U.S. forces in Afghanistan has been a source of headaches throughout the 10 years the United States has been engaged there.
"This is the logistics challenge of our generation," says Vice Adm. Mark Harnitcheck, deputy commander of the U.S. military's Transportation Command and a student of military logistics history. "The challenge of my father's generation was escorting convoys across the north Atlantic when we didn't know how to do that very well. Convoys in 1943 would lose 16 of their 32 ships. The Army had their challenge supplying Patton in his race across France, keeping him resupplied. Supporting operations in Afghanistan is our generational challenge."
For the first seven years of the Afghanistan war, almost all supplies and equipment were shipped by sea to the Pakistani port of Karachi. From there, they were trucked overland to Afghanistan, through parts of Pakistan effectively controlled by the Taliban.
In 2008, according to Harnitcheck, the U.S. military lost as much as 15 percent of its supplies in those areas due to ambushes and theft. Establishing another supply route became a top priority.
When President Obama decided to surge 30,000 additional troops into Afghanistan, the use of alternative routes became all the more critical, notes Mitchell.
"Given that President Obama was looking to move things even more rapidly in the surge, we needed more routes, more redundancy, more flexibility," he says.
Finding Ways Around Pakistan
It was against this background that military planners developed what came to be known as the "Northern Distribution Network," a variety of routes from Europe across Central Asia and into Afghanistan from the north. The routes all avoided transit through Pakistan.
The first pathway was across the Caucasus region and Central Asia, largely on rail lines. Routes were later added from Iraq through Turkey and then to the east. Routes originate in each of the major Baltic ports (Tallinn in Estonia, Riga in Latvia, and Klaipeda in Lithuania) and continue through Belarus. One new route begins in Vladivostok on Russia's Pacific coast and extends through Siberia.
"The other big change is that we are doing a lot of trucking," says Harnitcheck, "all the way from Germany to Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan and then south through Tajikistan into Afghanistan."
Under agreements negotiated with the governments of all countries involved in the Northern Distribution Network (NDN), the cargo is restricted to non-lethal equipment. Armored vehicles can be shipped, but only after their weaponry has been removed. The importance of the northern routes is, nevertheless, growing.
Of all non-lethal supplies coming over land into Afghanistan now, almost half arrive via the northern routes. According to Pentagon officials, the goal is to be able to bring 75 percent of that equipment into Afghanistan from the north.
The disruption of supply shipments through Pakistan has diminished since 2008, but the danger still exists, especially with the rise of anti-U.S. sentiment in Pakistan in the aftermath of the Osama bin Laden raid in May of this year.
"Given what happened in our relations with Pakistan over the past year and how unstable that relationship is, having that [northern route] as a contingency is a relief for the U.S. military," says Andrew Kuchins, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies who has written extensively about the NDN.
Future Of The Northern Routes
The surge of troops and equipment into Afghanistan has mostly ended, but before long, there will be a flow out of the country. The NDN was established as a one-way route, from Europe into Afghanistan, but U.S. officials are now negotiating for permission to use the route in reverse.
"As we start to move forces out over time, we also need multiple places to pull forces out," says Mitchell, who recently became the Obama administration's special envoy to Burma. "That means the NDN will become more and more important to our operation."
There is one downside to the northern routes, however. Bringing supplies overland on trucks and railroads all the way from Europe and across Central Asia costs two or three times as much as shipping them by sea and moving them up through Pakistan.
"Cost is a huge issue, obviously, for anything we're doing in the [Defense] Department and the government right now," says Mitchell. "But obviously the protection of our forces and the ability to achieve our mission is also extraordinarily important, so we need to balance the cost with the urgent requirements on the ground."
Afghan NGO Seeks To Increase Number Of Women In Government
September 16, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
KABUL -- An Afghan nongovernmental organization has compiled a list of 1,400 women qualified to hold posts in national or local government in an effort to promote greater inclusion of women in politics and social life, RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan reports.
The list, based on a nationwide survey, was put together by Khorasan, an NGO affiliated with the Women's Affairs Ministry. The group hopes to present the list to the government.
Khorasan Director Seema Ghani told RFE/RL that the goal is to raise the voices of women, particularly those from remote and undeveloped regions of Afghanistan where women's involvement in government decision-making is minor or nonexistent.
"Despite the general perception that women are not capable of undertaking leadership positions, our survey shows that women have the qualifications needed to take an active role in the politics and social affairs of their regions," Ghani said.
"The list is also evidence that it is not just women in urban areas, but also from the poorest and most-remote areas, who possess these abilities," she said. "We are therefore continuing efforts to increase the names on this list and present them to the government."
Halima Ropema, one of the women on the list, told RFE/RL the compilation of the list is a cause for optimism and a step in the right direction.
"Unfortunately, women are playing a very insignificant role in the everyday running of the country," Ropema said. "We all welcome the creation of such a list as we need to have more competent women in all levels of governance."
Following the ousting of the hard-line fundamentalist Taliban in 2001, women burst onto the public scene, assuming political roles, establishing women's organizations, and flooding back to schools and universities. The country's election laws include a quota for women in elected posts like provincial councils and parliament.
But despite such advances, many challenges remain.
National surveys show that more than 60 percent of women still experience physical violence, while 70 percent are forced into marriage. Numerous schools for girls have been burned down by militants, who have also attacked and killed female students.
Afghan authorities have also failed to investigate and prosecute those behind the high-profile murders of female journalists, rights activists, and politicians.
Death Toll in Pakistan Suicide Attack Rises to 40
VOA News September 16, 2011
The death toll from a suicide attack on a funeral in northwest Pakistan has risen to 40.
Thursday's bombing targeted members of an anti-Taliban militia as they gathered for funeral prayers in the Lower Dir tribal area. Some 70 people were hospitalized with injuries.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, but the Pakistani Taliban has stepped up attacks on pro-government tribes.
On Tuesday, gunmen opened fire on a school bus on the outskirts of the city of Peshawar, killing four children and the driver.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the shooting, saying the children were from a local tribe that has been fighting insurgents in the region.
Afghan Scepticism Over Bonn Conference
Critics say planning for the future will be meaningless without security on the ground.
IWPR By Khan Mohammad Danishju 15 Sep 11
Afghanistan - Afghans interviewed by IWPR are concerned that a landmark conference on their country’s future this December will fail to bring real change because the primary focus will not be on making peace with the Taleban.
The summit, which will include representatives from scores of countries and international organisations, will take place in Bonn, in a conscious echo of the first such meeting ten years ago, which set out a roadmap for post-Taleban Afghanistan and approved an interim administration led by current president Hamid Karzai.
This year’s conference is expected to review progress since 2001 and to discuss the kind of political process needed to make the country stable, plans for managing the period once NATO-led troops withdraw in 2014, and what shape engagement by the international community will take after that date.
“The agenda for the conference is in preparation,” Hakim Asher, head of the government media centre, said. “The international community's performance over the past ten years will be discussed, as well as development programmes for Afghanistan over the next ten years, particularly after 2014.”
Asher said the question of a Taleban presence at the Bonn talks did not feature in the agenda discussions. Negotiations with the insurgents were going on, but in a separate context, he added.
“The Afghan government continues its peace efforts outside the Bonn conference,” he said. “President Karzai’s recent trip to Saudi Arabia and his meeting with the Saudi king were part of the country’s efforts in that direction.”
Asher added that the Afghan armed forces had built up the weapons and capacity they needed to provide security by themselves.
“Even if the second Bonn conference does not discuss security issues, that does not mean that the Afghan government has not made peace and security a priority,” he added.
Critics say that it was a mistake not to include representatives of groups like the Taleban and Hezb-i Eslami in the 2001 Bonn conference, and that repeating that error will inevitably lead to failure.
“The non-participation of armed opponents of the government in the second Bonn conference means the event will be purely for show, like previous conferences,” political analyst Abdul Ghafur Lewal said. “If armed opposition [groups] do not take part, they will challenge the plans of the second Bonn conference just as they did after the first one.”
The international community’s position seems to be that Taleban participation is up to the Afghan government. Speaking on August 16, Britain’s Ambassador to Kabul, Sir William Patey, said there was “no question” of anyone but the Afghan authorities inviting insurgent representatives to attend.
“Whether the Taliban or any other groups are represented in Bonn will be a matter for the Afghan government. there will be one Afghan delegation, but who is in that delegation is a question for the Afghan government,” he said.
Asher, meanwhile, made it clear that insurgent groups would need to sign up to the government’s reconciliation programme if they wanted to be part of the Bonn meeting. That seems highly unlikely, since the insurgents are reluctant to take part even on their own terms. The Taleban’s leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, ruled out sending a delegation in a statement to mark the end of Ramadan at the end of August. He dismissed the Bonn conference as pointless, saying it would not be genuinely representative of the Afghan people.
Masihullah, a student at Kabul University, said achieving peace and security had to come top of the Bonn meeting’s list of priorities, arguing that “if it only discusses development programmes, it would be as if our house was on fire but instead of putting out the fire, we consulted our neighbours and relatives about how to paint the walls and windows, what kind of carpet we should have, and what kind of furniture we needed”.
Aside from the question of a Taleban presence, some analysts say the Bonn conference should be used to secure pledges from countries with an interest in Afghanistan – and in some cases a history of interference – that they will work towards a better future.
“I think the roots of the problems in Afghanistan need to be discussed at the conference,” political analyst Faruq Bashar said. “In addition to the armed opposition, some regional states like Pakistan, Iran, Russia, and even India and Saudi Arabia, should be involved in the conference so that these fundamental problems can be identified, and guarantees obtained from these countries in order for peace in Afghanistan to be assured.”
Pessimists, meanwhile, believe the conference has little hope of success because of the Afghan government’s own record since 2001.
“There are two reasons why I don’t have faith in the outcome of the conference,” political analyst Harun Mir said. “First, the Afghan government is mired in corruption and lacks the capacity to chair the conference, so it’s hard to anticipate that the outcome will be ideal. Second, the present government will be subsequently be replaced, so how can one expect that new government to implement decisions approved at this conference?”
Kabul resident Emal Faizi said the problems of poor governance, corruption, lawlessness and unfulfilled development all came back to one issue – the failure to establish a secure environment.
“That means that security has to be made a priority at the second Bonn conference,” he added.
Khan Mohammad Danishju is an IWPR-trained reporter in Kabul.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
Bloomberg By Viola Gienger Sep 15, 2011
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta vowed action to stop a Pakistan-based militant group from staging “unacceptable” attacks in Afghanistan and then fleeing back to their haven across the border.
“I’m not going to talk about how we’re going to respond,” Panetta told reporters traveling with him yesterday to San Francisco. “I’ll just let you know we are not going to allow these kinds of attacks to go on.”
U.S. officials have pinned a weekend truck bomb attack and this week’s assault on the U.S. Embassy and NATO coalition headquarters in Kabul, the Afghan capital, on the Jalaluddin Haqqani group, a guerrilla faction with ties to Pakistan’s military intelligence agency. The network operates largely from a sanctuary in Pakistan’s borderland with Afghanistan.
The Obama administration has increased diplomatic and financial pressure on Pakistan to move more quickly and aggressively against militant networks that the U.S. says are targeting the country’s own people as well as its neighbors. Relations fell to a new low after American special operations forces killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in a May raid within Pakistan without that government’s knowledge.
“I’m very concerned about the Haqqani attacks because, No. 1, they’re killing people, killing our forces,” Panetta said. “No. 2, they escape back into what is a safe haven in Pakistan, and that’s unacceptable.”
Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are in California for a day of annual talks today with their Australian counterparts. Decisive Action
Clinton, visiting the Pakistani capital Islamabad in May for talks that included Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the U.S. expects Pakistan’s leaders to take “decisive” action against extremist groups such as the Haqqani guerrillas in North Waziristan.
“Many of the world’s most vicious terrorists have been living in Pakistan,” Clinton said in a visit after the bin Laden raid. “There is much more work that is required and it is urgent.”
In Afghanistan, the U.S. and its coalition partners are fighting the Taliban and associated groups whose leaders operate from the tribal regions of Pakistan.
The weekend truck bombing created a crater 20 feet (6 meters) long and 9 feet deep, said Panetta, who took office July 1 after serving as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, where he helped lead the bin Laden raid. Looking for Evidence
The U.S. suspects the Haqqani network also was behind the attack two days ago on the embassy, and continues to look for evidence that might prove the link, Panetta said. U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said the assault didn’t seriously endanger his embassy.
“Time and again, we’ve urged the Pakistanis to exercise their influence over these kinds of attacks from the Haqqanis,” the defense chief said. “We’ve made very little progress in that area.”
Afghan and coalition forces did manage to quell the firefight, Panetta said, repeating official U.S. assertions that the assault was more an indicator of Taliban weakness than strength. He said he was conducting an unrelated secure video conference with General John Allen, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, when the standoff was under way in the streets of Kabul.
“Anytime they can make their way into Kabul, into the capital, that’s cause for concern,” Panetta said. “At the same time, the forces did respond and respond quickly. Casualties were limited and we were able to basically defeat their effort.”
Panetta said Allen assured him the coalition was continuing to reduce levels of violence overall in Afghanistan and “seriously weaken” the Taliban.
“His view, and I share it, is that these kind of attacks - - sporadic attacks and assassination attempts -- are more a reflection of the fact that they’re losing their ability to be able to attack our forces on a broader scale,” Panetta said.
Pakistan hits back at US criticism in Kabul attack
Associated Press By ZARAR KHAN Thursday, Sep. 15, 2011
American criticism of Islamabad's failure to pursue the Haqqani militant network blamed for this week's attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul risks damaging anti-terror cooperation between the two countries, Pakistan's Foreign Ministry warned Thursday.
Washington wants to degrade the insurgency in Afghanistan before handing over security responsibilities to Afghan forces and pulling out. Pakistan's reluctance to attack the Haqqani group, which U.S. officials say has safe havens in Pakistan and is behind much of the violence in Afghanistan, is a major source of tension.
On Wednesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and other U.S. officials said the Haqqani group was behind the 20-hour assault on the embassy in Kabul. Panetta expressed frustration with Pakistan and issued what was construed in Pakistan as a veiled warning that Washington may take unilateral action against the militants.
Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tehmina Janjua said Thursday that Panetta's remarks were "out of line with the cooperation that exists between the two countries in the war against terrorism." Pakistan's army, which controls defense and foreign policy, declined comment on his remarks.
Islamabad has resisted attacking the Haqqanis because they do not pose a direct threat to Pakistan. The army is engaged in a bloody fight with other militant groups. It fears that making enemies of the Haqqanis now could tip the country into even greater chaos.
The army also believes it will be able to use the group, with which it has ties going back to the U.S.-backed resistance against Soviet rule in Afghanistan, to ensure its arch-enemy India does not gain a foothold there once the American troops leave.
Panetta said it was unacceptable that the Haqqanis are able to launch attacks and then flee to safe havens across the border in Pakistan. "The message they (the Pakistanis) need to know is: we're going to do everything we can to defend our forces," Panetta told reporters.
U.S. and Afghan officials say the Haqqanis are behind many of the high-profile attacks in the Afghan capital in recent years, including a 2009 assault on the Indian embassy. The two nations have alleged that the group is assisted by Pakistan's powerful spy agency, a charge Pakistan denies.
The United States has fired scores of missiles at Haqqani fighters in North Waziristan since 2008, killing many low and midlevel fighters. Those attacks were initially tolerated by Pakistani authorities but have developed into another irritant in ties.
In recent months, Pakistani officials have alleged that militants are crossing over from Afghanistan and attacking Pakistani troops and civilians, leading them to complain of "safe havens" in Afghanistan. Janjua raised this issue, saying NATO and the U.S. should also address it.
Washington has given Islamabad $20 billion in aid since 2001, most of it to the military, to try to secure its cooperation. It can't send ground troops across the border to attack the Haqqanis because that would likely cause a nationalist backlash that could destabilize Pakistan and create divisions in the army, where many soldiers do not support the top brass' alliance with Washington.
By Kevin Sieff, The Washington Post Friday, September 16, 2:27 AM
KABUL — The teenage insurgents spend their days learning to make shoes and bookshelves, listening to religious leaders denounce the radical interpretation of Islam they learned as children.
But when they return to their cells at Kabul’s juvenile rehabilitation center, the boys with wispy beards and cracking voices talk only of the holy war from which they were plucked and their plans to resume fighting for the Taliban.
“They bring us here to change us,” said Nane Asha, in his late teens. “But this is our way. We cannot be changed.”
As the Taliban presses its efforts to recruit teenage fighters, Afghan officials and their international backers have crafted a program to reintegrate the country’s youngest insurgents into mainstream society. But that ambition is coming up against the intransigence of the teens, who say they would rather be on the battlefield.
“We’ll fight against America for a thousand years if we have to,” said Ali Ahmad, 17, sitting at a desk that has hearts and Koran verses scratched in the wood. “Jihad is the duty of every Muslim.”
Before joining the insurgency in their early teens, the fighters were students, part-time shopkeepers and farmhands, mostly living in the Pashtun-dominated regions of southern and eastern Afghanistan. Some say their parents supported the decision to take up arms. Others left home without warning, disregarding the wishes of relatives and heeding what they call a religious and moral obligation.
Here at the detention center, they live alongside a large group of teens found guilty of crimes unrelated to terrorism. Often, young Taliban members are described as desperate rather than ideological, but the 30 teenage fighters here appear undeterred and unrepentant, and they vow strict adherence to the group’s creed.
“We tell them, ‘You could be a mullah or a tailor or a carpenter.’ But they come here with a misinterpretation of the Holy Koran stuck in their mind. It can be hard to erase that,” said Shah Abbas Bashardost, who works with the boys.
“If we can’t get through to the kids, who can we rehabilitate?” Bashardost said.
Reintegration is at the heart of U.S. and Afghan government strategies to wind down the war, with schooling and employment being offered to coax fighters away from the insurgency. Juvenile offenders seemed a sensible starting point in that campaign, because many assumed they would be easier to win over than adults who have spent years, or even decades, waging war.
In the next few years, reintegration programs such as the one at the Kabul juvenile center — which is run by Afghans but bolstered by foreign supporters, including the United States — are expected to take shape at prisons across the country. But the disappointing results at the Kabul facility reflect the challenges facing the campaign.
The experience of boys such as Asha and Ahmad suggests that after years of religious schooling and combat, the draw of war might be too strong to overcome.
An early start
The Taliban visited Asha’s school when he was about 13, preaching the evils of American interlopers and the value of violent jihad. Asha approached the speaker after the sermon ended. “How can I join you?” he asked.
Within a few weeks, Asha was enrolled in a six-month training course, learning how to fire a Kalashnikov and to connect a nest of wires and explosives that could take out a U.S. tank. He studied the material obsessively.
“I would be on my motorbike, but I’d be going over the information in my head: how to make the bomb work, how to connect all the parts,” he said.
At the end of the Taliban course, Asha, like most of the other young fighters at the rehabilitation center, was tested on his knowledge. He placed first in his class of 37.
“My parents were very proud,” he said.
Then Asha put his new skills to work, scurrying across Helmand province to lay a variety of explosives in areas where foreign troops were likely to travel and watching from a distance as his handiwork sent plumes of smoke, dust and shrapnel into the air.
Sometimes, he said, he fired on the troops who emerged to tend to the wounded. Sometimes, he got too close, and pieces of hot metal punctured his skin, leaving scars.
Asha was rising through the Taliban ranks, accruing subordinates and ammunition, when Afghan police stopped him in Kandahar last year, recognizing his face from a photo of suspects.
Bone scans of inmates
Asha told interrogators that he was 16, even though he thinks he is several years older, because sentences are halved for juveniles. Rather than serve time in conventional prisons, teenage insurgents are sent to minimally secured rehabilitation facilities, which look more like high schools than jails. Afghan authorities have taken to performing bone scans of young inmates to ascertain their ages, knowing that many lie.
In May, the country’s intelligence agency paraded five boys ages 11 to 17 in front of reporters, photographers and cameramen in Kabul. The boys were among 400 juvenile fighters arrested by the intelligence agency in the past two years; many more have died in battle.
On stage, the boys told reporters that they wanted to divorce themselves from religious extremists and return to their families. They seemed ripe for exactly the kind of services offered by the rehabilitation program.
But at the Kabul center, detainees call Taliban members on borrowed cellphones to reassure them that their commitment to jihad has not weakened. Taliban commanders promise to reward the boys for serving prison sentences, the detainees said.
Religious officials handpicked by the government visit several times per week, charged with teaching the children a more moderate interpretation of Islam. Three social workers aim to dull the luster of the insurgency, promoting alternative careers.
In July, the Italian Embassy inaugurated a gym and computer lab at the facility. The United States assigns its military officials as “mentors” to advocate for some of the inmates and provide mattresses and school supplies to the facility.
Over the next four years, the United States has said, it will “support de-radicalization teams, reintegration efforts, and rehabilitation programming for prisoners,” particularly in the south and east, according to a plan released this year by the U.S. Embassy. American officials acknowledge the rehabilitation center’s shortcomings and say they plan to increase training for the facility’s employees and provide additional vocational instruction for inmates.
Grand ambitions
For now, the juvenile center’s practices do not always match its lofty ambitions. Several days a week, when religious officials are unable to teach Koran classes, Asha leads the group instead. While a group of boys told an American reporter that their ultimate goal was “to kill you people,” a social worker within earshot appeared unfazed, saying nothing.
“How much progress are these centers really making?” said Latifullah Mashal, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s intelligence service.
Meanwhile, officials at the juvenile center are looking for reasons to be hopeful — or, short of that, to explain their lack of success.
“We are concerned about whether they will go back to the Taliban,” said Aziza Adalatkhwah, the center’s director. “But, ultimately, it depends on the child and on how much they love their county.”
Interior Minister Praises Policemen who Fought Kabul Attackers
TOLOnews.com Thursday, 15 September 2011
The commitment of policemen to their jobs should not be underestimated, Afghanistan's interior minister, Bismellah Mohammadi, said on Thursday, acknowledging the heroism of police officers during the attack on Kabul earlier in the week.
Visiting a military hospital in Kabul, the minister called on the people of Afghanistan to co-operate with the police for a better country.
The Afghan security forces put their lives on the line to end Tuesday's insurgent attack. Two police officers attempted to thwart two separate suicide attackers in Kabul before they could detonate their explosives. Both men lost their lives.
Police officer Samiullah reacted immediately on spotting a suicide bomber. In a bid to protect innocent bystanders, he launched himself at the attackers and hugged him tight as he exploded.
Samiullah's family said they are proud of him for performing such a heroic act to save lives.
The policeman leaves behind a wife and four children. He was the family's only breadwinner.
Another officer, Jan Ali, also lost his life trying to defend his country. He left behind his wife, four children and his aging mother.
His family is not wealthy and relatives have called on the government to provide for his offspring.
"I praise the police officers who shed their blood to defend their people and home against [our] enemies and the Taliban fighters," General Mohammadi said, as he visited those wounded in the attacks.
A series of co-ordinated assaults in Kabul on Tuesday left six people dead and 13 others injured. The attacks started around lunchtime, when six insurgents positioned themselves in a half-built, multi-storey building at Abdul Haq roundabout and started firing rockets at the US Embassy and Nato's headquarters. Women and children were among the wounded.
23 insurgents killed, 8 detained in Afghanistan
KABUL, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- Security forces during operations have killed 23 insurgents and captured eight in different parts of the country over the past 24 hours, Afghan Interior Ministry said on Friday.
"Afghan National Police (ANP), backed by army and Coalition forces, killed 23 armed insurgents and captured eight insurgents during five joint operations in Faryab, Sari Pul, Zabul, Uruzgan and Wardak provinces over the last 24 hours," Interior Ministry said in a statement issued here.
During the operations, ANP also discovered and seized a handful of weapons and ammunitions besides defusing 16 anti-vehicle mines and finding some 39 kg of explosive materials, it said.
Seven armed insurgents were also injured in the mentioned operations, it said.
Afghan officials often use the word "insurgents" referring to Taliban.
However, the militant group, who stepped up their attacks on Afghan and NATO-led troops since a spring rebel offensive was launched in May this year, has yet to make comments.
Earlier Friday, a soldier with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was injured when insurgents attacked an ISAF convoy in the country's northern Kunduz province, an ISAF spokesman in Kunduz province said.
The ISAF service member sustained minor injuries after a roadside bomb went off near the ISAF's military convoy in Archi district of Kunduz province that followed insurgents' small arm fire Friday morning, according to the spokesman.
Currently around 140,000-storng ISAF soldiers with majority of them Americans have been deployed in the insurgency-hit country.
Corrupt Afghan trucking for U.S. military probed by Congress
Washington Post By Karen DeYoung Friday, September 16, 2011
Trucking contractors who pay off the Taliban, warlords and government officials to ensure safe passage for U.S. military goods in Afghanistan do so because they believe they have no choice if they want to avoid attack, a senior military official told a congressional oversight panel Thursday.
“Some of that money, for sure, is going to the insurgency,” Brig. Gen. Stephen J. Townsend said. “I can’t quantify how much is going to attacks against us. . . . I don’t think you can completely stop it, but we’ve got to minimize it.”
Townsend and Pentagon officials told a House subcommittee that a new trucking contract, which goes into effect Friday, will decrease the level of corruption through wider competition, increased vetting and improved military oversight, along with a “code of ethics” for the contractors.
The new contract is worth about $1 billion over the next year. Under the contract it replaces, tens of millions of dollars had been diverted to “malign actors,” according to congressional and military investigators.
The officials offered no assurances that the payoffs or wider corruption can be eliminated. But they said Afghan corruption is endemic and the need to supply U.S. troops is critical.
“As bad as it is, it would be worse if we had U.S. personnel guarding convoys,” Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary Gary Motsek said. “The body count would be unacceptable.”
Nearly all of the supply convoys — which transport more than 70 percent of all food, fuel, construction material and weapons to the nearly 100,000 U.S. troops across Afghanistan — are guarded by private Afghan security companies.
Military concern over payoffs first arose more than two years ago, when U.S. army investigators estimated that the going rate for protection was $1,500 to $2,500 per truck. But the military did not launch formal investigations into the issue until congressional committees conducted their own inquiries last year.
Military investigators concluded in May that U.S. funds had flowed to criminals and insurgents through four of the eight companies that were part of the earlier contract and that six of the eight were associated with “fraudulent paperwork and behavior,” including profiteering, money laundering and kickbacks to Afghan government and police officials.
Thursday’s hearing — by the House oversight subcommittee on national security, homeland defense and foreign operations — was the first in which the Pentagon explained the new contract.
Lawmakers appeared far from satisfied. Rep. John F. Tierney (D-Mass.) said military investigations had identified more than $360 million in overall U.S. contract funds diverted to “warlords, power brokers, insurgents, and criminal patronage networks” in Afghanistan. A separate government commission had estimated this month that as much as $60 billion had been lost to waste, fraud and abuse.
“I fear that these reports are only the tip of the iceberg,” Tierney said. Asked about supply pilferage, Townsend said it was only about 1 percent overall but ran as high as 15 percent of the 1.5 million gallons of fuel per day transported under the trucking contract.
Tierney and others also questioned the military’s zeal in pursuing contract abusers. Last December, the U.S. command in Afghanistan announced that it had suspended Watan Risk Group, the major security subcontractor for trucking convoys, for diverting funds and violating weapons regulations. The action, U.S. officials said at the time, was a “signal that there is a sea change underway and that we’re very serious” about combating corruption.
Last month, however, the military overturned Watan’s debarment and that of one of Watan’s security subcontractors, Haji Ruhullah. Ruhullah, widely considered a leading warlord in southern Afghanistan, acknowledged making payoffs, but he was excused by the army’s legal department on grounds that Watan had not explained contract rules to him and that his inability to speak English prevented him from reading the rules himself.
At the hearing, Tierney also raised concerns that more than half of the 20 companies awarded the new trucking contract were subcontractors under the previous version.
Kim D. Denver, deputy assistant secretary of the Army, said that none of the companies were among those with alleged abuses.
Also on Thursday, the General Accountability Office released a report saying that the departments of Defense and State and the U.S. Agency for International Development had failed to comply with laws and agreements requiring them to keep accurate count of the number of contractors employed in Iraq and Afghanistan and of the money distributed to them.
Data compiled last year by all three had “significant limitations,” including an underreporting of “at least $4 billion in contract obligations,” the GAO said.
In Thursday’s testimony, Motsek said the Defense Department employed a total of 93,118 contractors in Afghanistan as of the third quarter of 2011, nearly half of whom were Afghan nationals. The rest were about evenly divided between U.S. citizens and citizens of some other country.
Top Afghan, Pakistani officials review Taliban reconciliation
ISLAMABAD, Sept.16 (Xinhua) -- Top Pakistani and Afghan diplomats, intelligence and defence officials are scheduled to meet in Islamabad on Friday to review progress on the reconciliation in Afghanistan, officials and diplomats said.
An Afghan diplomat told Xinhua that Afghan side would seek information on any contact Islamabad has established with the Afghan Taliban as part of the reconciliation process at the Joint Commission on Peace and Reconciliation meeting.
Afghanistan Deputy Foreign Minister Jawed Ludin has arrived in Islamabad to lead his side, spokesperson for the Afghan embassy said. Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir will head the team of Pakistani officials, the Foreign Ministry said.
Intelligence and military representatives from both sides will also attend the meeting, said Tehmina Janjua, the spokeswoman for the Pakistan foreign office. She told reporters in Islamabad that issues of reconciliation will be discussed.
The two sides will meet to prepare the agenda for a meeting scheduled between Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani and Afghan President Hamid Karzai next month in Kabul.
Afghanistan and Pakistan had formed a two-tier commission in April when Gilani flew to Kabul to persuade the Taliban to join the reconciliation process. But Pakistani and Afghan officials now admit that the reconciliation process has stalled since the commission had been set up to bring Taliban to the negotiating table.
Both sides will also discuss mutual cooperation, said an Islamabad-based Afghan diplomat requesting anonymity.
Afghanistan believes that the recent tension between Pakistan and the U.S. has negatively impacted the reconciliation process in Afghanistan, the Afghan diplomat said. But he said that the arrest of a senior al-Qaida leader in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta this month with cooperation by the U.S. intelligence has raised hopes for revival of Pakistan-U.S. normal relationship which will have positive impact on Afghan peace process.
Access to Taliban leaders, Afghanistan would also like access to Taliban leaders captured by Pakistan, including Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, revealed a senior Afghan diplomat. Baradar was nabbed by Pakistani forces from Karachi in 2010 on a tip-off by U. S. intelligence operatives.
Sources said Pakistani side would raise the issue of incursion into its territory by militants from Afghan territory. Pakistan army said that up to 300 armed militants from Afghanistan attacked seven Pakistani border posts on Aug. 27 in the border district of Chitral and killed nearly 28 Pakistani security men.
U.S. Now Relies On Alternate Afghan Supply Routes
NPR By Tom Gjelten September 16, 2011
Napoleon declared that "an army marches on its stomach," and Gen. Omar Bradley said, "amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics." Successful military commanders have long recognized that few requirements rank higher in wartime than the need to maintain reliable supply lines.
Nowhere is that adage more relevant than in Afghanistan, a landlocked country flanked by hostile or wary neighbors. The shipment of supplies and equipment to U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan over the last 10 years has been handicapped by high costs, pilferage, and the threat of ambush.
"Look at the geography of getting things into Afghanistan," says Derek Mitchell, until recently the principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific security affairs. "Look at the countries that surround [Afghanistan], the nature of their relationships, and the distance from the United States."
Logistics Challenge Of A Generation
To the west of Afghanistan lies Iran. Pakistan, politically unstable and home to a ruthless Taliban movement, lies on the south and east, across a mountainous border. It is no wonder that the shipment of supplies and equipment to U.S. forces in Afghanistan has been a source of headaches throughout the 10 years the United States has been engaged there.
"This is the logistics challenge of our generation," says Vice Adm. Mark Harnitcheck, deputy commander of the U.S. military's Transportation Command and a student of military logistics history. "The challenge of my father's generation was escorting convoys across the north Atlantic when we didn't know how to do that very well. Convoys in 1943 would lose 16 of their 32 ships. The Army had their challenge supplying Patton in his race across France, keeping him resupplied. Supporting operations in Afghanistan is our generational challenge."
For the first seven years of the Afghanistan war, almost all supplies and equipment were shipped by sea to the Pakistani port of Karachi. From there, they were trucked overland to Afghanistan, through parts of Pakistan effectively controlled by the Taliban.
In 2008, according to Harnitcheck, the U.S. military lost as much as 15 percent of its supplies in those areas due to ambushes and theft. Establishing another supply route became a top priority.
When President Obama decided to surge 30,000 additional troops into Afghanistan, the use of alternative routes became all the more critical, notes Mitchell.
"Given that President Obama was looking to move things even more rapidly in the surge, we needed more routes, more redundancy, more flexibility," he says.
Finding Ways Around Pakistan
It was against this background that military planners developed what came to be known as the "Northern Distribution Network," a variety of routes from Europe across Central Asia and into Afghanistan from the north. The routes all avoided transit through Pakistan.
The first pathway was across the Caucasus region and Central Asia, largely on rail lines. Routes were later added from Iraq through Turkey and then to the east. Routes originate in each of the major Baltic ports (Tallinn in Estonia, Riga in Latvia, and Klaipeda in Lithuania) and continue through Belarus. One new route begins in Vladivostok on Russia's Pacific coast and extends through Siberia.
"The other big change is that we are doing a lot of trucking," says Harnitcheck, "all the way from Germany to Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan and then south through Tajikistan into Afghanistan."
Under agreements negotiated with the governments of all countries involved in the Northern Distribution Network (NDN), the cargo is restricted to non-lethal equipment. Armored vehicles can be shipped, but only after their weaponry has been removed. The importance of the northern routes is, nevertheless, growing.
Of all non-lethal supplies coming over land into Afghanistan now, almost half arrive via the northern routes. According to Pentagon officials, the goal is to be able to bring 75 percent of that equipment into Afghanistan from the north.
The disruption of supply shipments through Pakistan has diminished since 2008, but the danger still exists, especially with the rise of anti-U.S. sentiment in Pakistan in the aftermath of the Osama bin Laden raid in May of this year.
"Given what happened in our relations with Pakistan over the past year and how unstable that relationship is, having that [northern route] as a contingency is a relief for the U.S. military," says Andrew Kuchins, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies who has written extensively about the NDN.
Future Of The Northern Routes
The surge of troops and equipment into Afghanistan has mostly ended, but before long, there will be a flow out of the country. The NDN was established as a one-way route, from Europe into Afghanistan, but U.S. officials are now negotiating for permission to use the route in reverse.
"As we start to move forces out over time, we also need multiple places to pull forces out," says Mitchell, who recently became the Obama administration's special envoy to Burma. "That means the NDN will become more and more important to our operation."
There is one downside to the northern routes, however. Bringing supplies overland on trucks and railroads all the way from Europe and across Central Asia costs two or three times as much as shipping them by sea and moving them up through Pakistan.
"Cost is a huge issue, obviously, for anything we're doing in the [Defense] Department and the government right now," says Mitchell. "But obviously the protection of our forces and the ability to achieve our mission is also extraordinarily important, so we need to balance the cost with the urgent requirements on the ground."
Afghan NGO Seeks To Increase Number Of Women In Government
September 16, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
KABUL -- An Afghan nongovernmental organization has compiled a list of 1,400 women qualified to hold posts in national or local government in an effort to promote greater inclusion of women in politics and social life, RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan reports.
The list, based on a nationwide survey, was put together by Khorasan, an NGO affiliated with the Women's Affairs Ministry. The group hopes to present the list to the government.
Khorasan Director Seema Ghani told RFE/RL that the goal is to raise the voices of women, particularly those from remote and undeveloped regions of Afghanistan where women's involvement in government decision-making is minor or nonexistent.
"Despite the general perception that women are not capable of undertaking leadership positions, our survey shows that women have the qualifications needed to take an active role in the politics and social affairs of their regions," Ghani said.
"The list is also evidence that it is not just women in urban areas, but also from the poorest and most-remote areas, who possess these abilities," she said. "We are therefore continuing efforts to increase the names on this list and present them to the government."
Halima Ropema, one of the women on the list, told RFE/RL the compilation of the list is a cause for optimism and a step in the right direction.
"Unfortunately, women are playing a very insignificant role in the everyday running of the country," Ropema said. "We all welcome the creation of such a list as we need to have more competent women in all levels of governance."
Following the ousting of the hard-line fundamentalist Taliban in 2001, women burst onto the public scene, assuming political roles, establishing women's organizations, and flooding back to schools and universities. The country's election laws include a quota for women in elected posts like provincial councils and parliament.
But despite such advances, many challenges remain.
National surveys show that more than 60 percent of women still experience physical violence, while 70 percent are forced into marriage. Numerous schools for girls have been burned down by militants, who have also attacked and killed female students.
Afghan authorities have also failed to investigate and prosecute those behind the high-profile murders of female journalists, rights activists, and politicians.
Death Toll in Pakistan Suicide Attack Rises to 40
VOA News September 16, 2011
The death toll from a suicide attack on a funeral in northwest Pakistan has risen to 40.
Thursday's bombing targeted members of an anti-Taliban militia as they gathered for funeral prayers in the Lower Dir tribal area. Some 70 people were hospitalized with injuries.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, but the Pakistani Taliban has stepped up attacks on pro-government tribes.
On Tuesday, gunmen opened fire on a school bus on the outskirts of the city of Peshawar, killing four children and the driver.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the shooting, saying the children were from a local tribe that has been fighting insurgents in the region.
Afghan Scepticism Over Bonn Conference
Critics say planning for the future will be meaningless without security on the ground.
IWPR By Khan Mohammad Danishju 15 Sep 11
Afghanistan - Afghans interviewed by IWPR are concerned that a landmark conference on their country’s future this December will fail to bring real change because the primary focus will not be on making peace with the Taleban.
The summit, which will include representatives from scores of countries and international organisations, will take place in Bonn, in a conscious echo of the first such meeting ten years ago, which set out a roadmap for post-Taleban Afghanistan and approved an interim administration led by current president Hamid Karzai.
This year’s conference is expected to review progress since 2001 and to discuss the kind of political process needed to make the country stable, plans for managing the period once NATO-led troops withdraw in 2014, and what shape engagement by the international community will take after that date.
“The agenda for the conference is in preparation,” Hakim Asher, head of the government media centre, said. “The international community's performance over the past ten years will be discussed, as well as development programmes for Afghanistan over the next ten years, particularly after 2014.”
Asher said the question of a Taleban presence at the Bonn talks did not feature in the agenda discussions. Negotiations with the insurgents were going on, but in a separate context, he added.
“The Afghan government continues its peace efforts outside the Bonn conference,” he said. “President Karzai’s recent trip to Saudi Arabia and his meeting with the Saudi king were part of the country’s efforts in that direction.”
Asher added that the Afghan armed forces had built up the weapons and capacity they needed to provide security by themselves.
“Even if the second Bonn conference does not discuss security issues, that does not mean that the Afghan government has not made peace and security a priority,” he added.
Critics say that it was a mistake not to include representatives of groups like the Taleban and Hezb-i Eslami in the 2001 Bonn conference, and that repeating that error will inevitably lead to failure.
“The non-participation of armed opponents of the government in the second Bonn conference means the event will be purely for show, like previous conferences,” political analyst Abdul Ghafur Lewal said. “If armed opposition [groups] do not take part, they will challenge the plans of the second Bonn conference just as they did after the first one.”
The international community’s position seems to be that Taleban participation is up to the Afghan government. Speaking on August 16, Britain’s Ambassador to Kabul, Sir William Patey, said there was “no question” of anyone but the Afghan authorities inviting insurgent representatives to attend.
“Whether the Taliban or any other groups are represented in Bonn will be a matter for the Afghan government. there will be one Afghan delegation, but who is in that delegation is a question for the Afghan government,” he said.
Asher, meanwhile, made it clear that insurgent groups would need to sign up to the government’s reconciliation programme if they wanted to be part of the Bonn meeting. That seems highly unlikely, since the insurgents are reluctant to take part even on their own terms. The Taleban’s leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, ruled out sending a delegation in a statement to mark the end of Ramadan at the end of August. He dismissed the Bonn conference as pointless, saying it would not be genuinely representative of the Afghan people.
Masihullah, a student at Kabul University, said achieving peace and security had to come top of the Bonn meeting’s list of priorities, arguing that “if it only discusses development programmes, it would be as if our house was on fire but instead of putting out the fire, we consulted our neighbours and relatives about how to paint the walls and windows, what kind of carpet we should have, and what kind of furniture we needed”.
Aside from the question of a Taleban presence, some analysts say the Bonn conference should be used to secure pledges from countries with an interest in Afghanistan – and in some cases a history of interference – that they will work towards a better future.
“I think the roots of the problems in Afghanistan need to be discussed at the conference,” political analyst Faruq Bashar said. “In addition to the armed opposition, some regional states like Pakistan, Iran, Russia, and even India and Saudi Arabia, should be involved in the conference so that these fundamental problems can be identified, and guarantees obtained from these countries in order for peace in Afghanistan to be assured.”
Pessimists, meanwhile, believe the conference has little hope of success because of the Afghan government’s own record since 2001.
“There are two reasons why I don’t have faith in the outcome of the conference,” political analyst Harun Mir said. “First, the Afghan government is mired in corruption and lacks the capacity to chair the conference, so it’s hard to anticipate that the outcome will be ideal. Second, the present government will be subsequently be replaced, so how can one expect that new government to implement decisions approved at this conference?”
Kabul resident Emal Faizi said the problems of poor governance, corruption, lawlessness and unfulfilled development all came back to one issue – the failure to establish a secure environment.
“That means that security has to be made a priority at the second Bonn conference,” he added.
Khan Mohammad Danishju is an IWPR-trained reporter in Kabul.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com