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Attack Kills Police Officers in Afghanistan
By ALISSA J. RUBIN and TAIMOOR SHAH The New York Times September 28, 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan — Eight police officers were killed overnight at a hilltop checkpoint in the fourth episode in three months taking aim at the police in Helmand Province.
One officer was missing after the attack, and police officials are investigating whether he betrayed his comrades to the Taliban. The attack came just a day after a suicide bomber attacked a shop in Helmand’s provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, that was owned by an Afghan who supplied the police with bread, cooking oil and firewood.
During the summer, there were two attacks on the police in and near Lashkar Gah. In one case, seven police officers were poisoned. In the other, a guest at a police post outside a ministry office killed his hosts and escaped, police officials in Helmand Province said.
Lashkar Gah was among the five cities and two provinces where Afghan security forces assumed sole control over the summer in the first stage of a transition from American security.
Also in Helmand this week, the counternarcotics police found and destroyed three drug laboratories, according to an announcement by a NATO official. The estimated street value of the drugs, which included nearly 2,000 gallons of opium solution, 220 pounds of heroin and 176 pounds of opium, was $350 million.
The killings in Helmand came as the United Nations released its quarterly report Wednesday on Afghanistan, which noted that there had been a nearly 40 percent increase in violent episodes in June, July and August over the same period last year.
A vast majority were the result of insurgent attacks. The subset of suicide attacks, however, was down over the same period.
Most striking was the continued “campaign of intimidation” through the assassinations of high-ranking Afghan government officials, said the report, noting that 181 people were killed in July and August.
Among those killed during the three months were a number of high-profile figures including President Hamid Karzai’s half brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, who led the Kandahar provincial council; Hikmatullah Hikmat, the head of Kandahar’s religious council; Jan Mohammed Khan, an adviser to President Karzai from Oruzgan Province; and Ghulam Haider Hamidi, the mayor of Kandahar.
NATO has yet to release overall figures for the same period. There are differences in the criteria used by the two groups, and the groups gather information in different ways. For instance, NATO in roughly the same period of June, July and much of August had noted a decline in complex attacks. And over all, NATO has said that the insurgents’ capability, especially in the south, has been degraded by NATO and Afghan troop operations.
In another measure of Afghanistan’s insecurity, the United Nations recorded an estimated 130,000 people displaced in the first seven months of the year, a 64 percent increase over 2010. Displacement includes both big and small moves by families. Typically families with some means flee farther when escaping violence, while poorer families might move only a few miles to a place where there is less fighting. The numbers of the displaced are still small relative to the numbers who were displaced or became refugees during the Afghan civil war of 1992-96 and during the Taliban’s rule.
Also in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday, the police chief of the Chora district in Oruzgan Province, Mohammed Gul, was killed by a roadside bomb as he drove to a rural village.
Three NATO service members were killed by an improvised explosive device in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, the military said, and a fourth died of a non-battle-related injury in southern Afghanistan.
U.S. Condemns Deadly Afghan Bombing
September 28, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
The United States has condemned a bomb attack on a bus in Afghanistan that killed 16 Afghan civilians, including 11 children.
Officials said the bus, carrying people who were returning from a wedding engagement party, was struck by a roadside bomb in western Herat Province on September 27.
Taliban militants are suspected of carrying out the attack.
In a written statement, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland called the bombing a "callous, targeted attack on innocent civilians," and said the perpetrators -- whom she called "terrorists" -- continue to "demonstrate blatant disregard for the lives of innocent Afghans and attempt to undermine the cause of peace."
The U.S. statement expressed confidence that such attacks will not deter the Afghan people from "pursuing a more peaceful, democratic future for their country."
The statement added that the U.S. military and allied forces will continue to "pressure" those who perpetrate such violence.
compiled from agency reports
Afghan insurgency claims 191 lives in seven day
KABUL, Sept. 28 (Xinhua) -- Taliban-led insurgency in the war- torn Afghanistan have left some 191 people dead, including 122 insurgents, 35 civilians and 34 personnel of Afghan National Police (ANP) over the last seven days, a spokesman for Interior Ministry Sediq Sediqqi said on Wednesday.
"Direct insurgent attack, Improvised Explosive Device (IED) and suicide bomb explosions have killed 35 civilians and 34 policemen with ANP over the past seven days," Sediqqi told reporters in a joint press conference with Deputy Interior Minister in Counter- Narcotics Affairs General Baz Mohammad Ahmadi here.
Providing details on the casualties, he said that 66 civilians and 44 police were wounded over the same timetable around the country.
"ANP have foiled several insurgent attacks, prevented four suicide bombings and defused 115 anti-vehicle mines and IEDs besides arresting of 138 insurgents in different parts of the country in the same period of time," Sediqqi added.
The Afghan special counter-narcotic police force, backed by NATO-led Coalition forces, during operations destroyed six heroin labs in Baghiran and Khanishin districts of the country's southern Helmand province on Monday, Ahmadi said in the same press conference.
He also said security forces found and seized various kinds of drugs during these operations which worth over 300 million U.S. dollars.
Militancy has been rampant since May this year when Taliban militants announced to launch spring offensive in the war-battered Afghanistan.
Nine insurgents killed in Afghanistan: gov't
KABUL, Sept. 28 (Xinhua) -- Nine armed insurgents killed, three wounded and nine others were arrested by Afghan National Security Forces over the past 24 hours in Afghanistan, according to a statement released by Ministry of Interior on Wendesday.
Five joint military operations are launched in surrounding areas of the Kunduz, Balkh, Helmand and Logar provinces with the support of National Directorate of Security (NDS)and NATO-led ISAF coalition forces. As a result, nine armed insurgents were killed, three wounded and nine others were arrested by Afghan National Police.
Afghan National Police also discovered and seized a large number of weapons and ammunitions, including 28 AK-47 assault rifles, four rockets, four pistols, one suicide vest, three anti- vehicle mines, nine hand grenades, 4kg IEDs and 50 mine fuses.
During these operations, Afghan National Police seized 100 kg heroin, 5,935 kg morphine, 2,860 kg chemicals, 89kg opium and 3, 280 kilograms sodium carbonate, it said. In another development, Afghan security forces backed by NATO- led coalition forces, killed 11 insurgents during a night raid operation in eastern Nangarhar province on Tuesday night, provincial government said in a statement on Wednesday.
A local Taliban commander named Zar Mohammad was also killed in the operation conducted in Spin Zar district of Nangarhar province 120 km east of capital Kabul, the statement said adding "No civilian or security forces were injured in the raid," Afghan and ISAF officials often use the word "insurgents" for referring to Taliban insurgents.
The insurgent group, who stepped up their attacks on Afghan and about 140, 000 ISAF troops stationed in the country since a spring rebel offensive was launched in May this year in the country, has yet to make comments.
Pakistan Foreign Minister Says Committed To Afghan Peace
September 28, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar says her country is committed to helping achieve peace in neighboring Afghanistan, and to cooperating with the governments of Afghanistan and the United States to achieve this goal.
Her remarks on September 27 in an address to the United Nations General Assembly came after U.S. officials recently accused Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency of having links to the Haqqani network, which has been blamed for the September 13 assault on the U.S. Embassy in the Afghan capital Kabul and other attacks. Pakistan has repeatedly rejected the allegations.
In her speech to the 193-country General Assembly, Khar said:
"A cooperative endeavor, in full solidarity with the people of Afghanistan, is the only way of ensuring peace, stability and prosperity in the region," Khar said in her speech to the 193-country General Assembly. "Pakistan is willing to do its best with international partners and, most notably, the governments of Afghanistan and the United States, to acquit itself of this high responsibility, at this defining moment in one of the most important struggles of our times."
Khar reiterated that Pakistan condemns recent deadly militant attacks in Afghanistan, and said Pakistan remains firmly committed to combating terrorism and militancy.
compiled from agency reports
Pakistan's PM Warns US to End 'Negative Messaging' on Militancy
VOA News September 27, 2011
Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani is warning the United States it must end "negative messaging" by accusing Pakistan of supporting militant attacks in Afghanistan. He says such accusations will only strengthen anti-American feelings in his country.
In an interview with the Reuters news agency, Gilani said unilateral U.S. military action to hunt down Haqqani network militants inside Pakistan - similar to the raid that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in May - would be a violation of his country's sovereignty.
Gilani's statement came a day after the Pakistani military said it would not target the al-Qaida and Taliban-linked Haqqani network because it is already stretched too thin battling militants elsewhere in northwestern Pakistan.
Also Tuesday, hundreds of Pakistanis turned out for anti-American rallies across the country, and a suspected U.S. drone fired two missiles on a compound near Wana in the South Waziristan tribal region, killing at least three alleged militants.
On the final day of the U.N. General Assembly's annual session in New York Tuesday, Pakistan's Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar said few countries have been as brutally ravaged by terrorism as Pakistan. She told the gathering that 30,000 civilians, police and security forces have been killed since 2002. Khar said Islamabad is determined to eliminate terrorism from its soil, from the region and from the world, and she called for enhanced international cooperation to wipe it out.
Her remarks came as the White House urged the Pakistani government "to take action" to deal with the Haqqani network that Washington says conducts attacks against international forces from its base in Pakistan's lawless North Waziristan tribal region.
But in an online statement Tuesday, the Taliban said that it, not Pakistan, controls the Haqqani network. The group said there are no ties between the Haqqani network and Pakistan's spy agency, the ISI, and that Haqqani fighters do not seek refuge in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal region, as Washington claims.
The Taliban statement also said attempts to link the Haqqani network's founder, Jalaluddin Haqqani, to the Pakistani government are designed to "give a bad name" to its prominent figures by tying them to foreign intelligence services.
Adm. Mullen’s words on Pakistan come under scrutiny
Washington Post By Greg Miller and Karen Deyoung Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Adm. Mike Mullen’s assertion last week that an anti-American insurgent group in Afghanistan is a “veritable arm” of Pakistan’s spy service was overstated and contributed to overheated reactions in Pakistan and misperceptions in Washington, according to American officials involved in U.S. policy in the region.
The internal criticism by the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to challenge Mullen openly, reflects concern over the accuracy of Mullen’s characterizations at a time when Obama administration officials have been frustrated in their efforts to persuade Pakistan to break its ties to Afghan insurgent groups.
The administration has long sought to pressure Pakistan, but to do so in a nuanced way that does not sever the U.S. relationship with a country that American officials see as crucial to winning the war in Afghanistan and maintaining long-term stability in the region.
Mullen’s testimony to a Senate committee was widely interpreted as an accusation by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that Pakistan’s military and espionage agencies sanction and direct bloody attacks against U.S. troops and targets in Afghanistan. Such interpretations prompted new levels of indignation among senior officials in both the United States and Pakistan.
Mullen’s language “overstates the case,” said a senior Pentagon official with access to classified intelligence files on Pakistan, because there is scant evidence of direction or control. If anything, the official said, the intelligence indicates that Pakistan treads a delicate if duplicitous line, providing support to insurgent groups including the Haqqani network but avoiding actions that would provoke a U.S. response.
“The Pakistani government has been dealing with Haqqani for a long time and still sees strategic value in guiding Haqqani and using them for their purposes,” the Pentagon official said. But “it’s not in their interest to inflame us in a way that an attack on a [U.S.] compound would do.”
U.S. officials stressed that there is broad agreement in the military and intelligence community that the Haqqani network has mounted some of the most audacious attacks of the Afghanistan war, including a 20-hour siege by gunmen this month on the U.S. Embassy compound in Kabul.
A senior aide to Mullen defended the chairman’s testimony, which was designed to prod the Pakistanis to sever ties to the Haqqani group if not contain it by force. “I don’t think the Pakistani reaction was unexpected,” said Capt. John Kirby. “The chairman stands by every word of his testimony.”
But Mullen’s pointed message and the difficulty in matching his words to the underlying intelligence underscore the suspicion and distrust that have plagued the United States and Pakistan since they were pushed together as counterterrorism partners after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
U.S. military officials said that Mullen’s testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee has been misinterpreted, and that his remark that the Haqqani network had carried out recent truck-bomb and embassy attacks “with ISI support” was meant to imply broad assistance, but not necessarily direction by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency.
U.S. officials have long accused Pakistan of providing support to the Haqqani network and allowing it to operate along the Afghanistan border with relative impunity, a charge that Pakistani officials reject.
But Mullen seemed to take the allegation an additional step, saying that the Haqqani network “acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency,” a phrase that implies ISI involvement and control.
That interpretation might be valid “if we were judging by Western standards,” said a senior U.S. military official who defended Mullen’s testimony. But the Pakistanis “use extremist groups — not only the Haqqanis — as proxies and hedges” to maintain influence in Afghanistan.
“This is not new,” the official said. “Can they control them like a military unit? We don’t think so. Do they encourage them? Yes. Do they provide some finance for them? Yes. Do they provide safe havens? Yes.”
That nuance escaped many in Congress and even some in the Obama administration, who voiced concern that the escalation in rhetoric had inflamed anti-American sentiment in Pakistan.
U.S. officials said that even evidence that has surfaced since Mullen’s testimony is open to differences in interpretation, including cellphones recovered from gunmen who were killed during the assault on the U.S. Embassy.
One official said the phones were used to make repeated calls to numbers associated with the Haqqani network, as well as presumed “ISI operatives.” But the official declined to explain the basis for that conclusion.
The senior Pentagon official treated the assertion with skepticism, saying the term “operatives” covers a wide range of supposed associates of the ISI. “Does it mean the same Haqqani numbers [also found in the phones], or is it actually uniformed officers” of Pakistan’s spy service?
U.S. officials said Mullen was unaware of the cellphones until after he testified.
Pakistani officials acknowledge that they have ongoing contact with the Haqqani network, a group founded by Jalaluddin Haqqani, who was one of the CIA-backed mujaheddin commanders who helped drive the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan in the 1980s. Now in poor health, Haqqani has yielded day-to-day control of the network to his son, Sirajuddin.
U.S. officials see indications that their Pakistani counterparts can exert influence on the Haqqani group in some cases, if not exert control.
Last year, at the United States’ behest, the ISI appealed to the Haqqani group not to attack polling stations during Afghan elections, a request that appears to have been honored. The senior Pentagon official declined to say how U.S. intelligence knows that the request was made, except to say, “We were aware of it.”
Mullen’s testimony was prepared at a time of intense frustration with Pakistan, in the aftermath of the embassy attack and other incidents. His remarks were striking in part because Mullen has long been sympathetic to Pakistan, traveling frequently to Islamabad and meeting more than two dozen times with its army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani.
But with his term as Joint Chiefs chairman about to expire, Mullen has become increasingly frustrated with the failure to get Pakistan to cut ties with Haqqani, and instructed his staff to compose testimony for last week’s hearing that would convey a message of exasperation.
In Pakistan, a military official emerged from a meeting of corps commanders Sunday saying they would make no move against Haqqani in the North Waziristan tribal region and warning that a unilateral U.S. action would have “disastrous consequences.”
The reaction in the Pakistani press to Mullen’s message has been more severe. A column this week by retired air vice marshal Shahzad Chaudry asked, “What could be the possible motives for America’s recent diatribes?” It concluded that the United States was intentionally sowing chaos in the region to weaken Pakistan.
In Washington, a senior Obama administration official said that “no one has any interest in walking back” what Mullen said, even while voicing concern over the comments’ impact on the fragile relationship with Pakistan.
“If the Pakistanis are finally scared about this, great,” the administration official said. “But we don’t want to walk [the relationship] over a cliff.”
Correspondent Karin Brulliard in Islamabad and special correspondents Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad and Haq Nawaz Khan in Peshawar, Pakistan, contributed to this report.
Taliban Have no Message to Afghanistan's Future: Stanekzai
TOLOnews.com Tuesday, 27 September 2011
Those who can not renounce violence and join a political stream, what message could they have for Afghanistan's future, Chief of High Peace Council Secretariat said on Monday.
Masoom Stanekzai, who survived the attack on Burhanuddin Rabbani, said the Taliban might have been instructed by their leaders to avoid taking responsibility for Rabbani's assassination.
Mr Stanekzai, who is currently under treatment for wounds he suffered in the attack at Rabbani's home last Tuesday, described the Taliban as enemies of peace in Afghanistan.
"Those who could not pull themselves out of terrorism to join a political process, what would be their message to the future of Afghans and Afghanistan?," he said.
He said he was already with the chief of High Peace Council and at his home and then the bomber showed up with Rahmatullah Wahedyar, member of Peace Council who took the Taliban bomber posing as a peace messenger of the Taliban to the house of Mr Rabbani.
He said when the bomber was greeting with Rabbani, Rahmatullah Wahedyar attempted to run out of the room.
Burhanuddin Rabbani, Karzai's elite peace envoy and a former President of Afghanistan, was assassinated at his home by a Taliban turban bomber last Tuesday.
Afghan president to visit India
NEW DELHI, Sept. 28 (Xinhua) -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai will visit India next week to seek India's support for the peace efforts in his country and promote economic cooperation with India, reported Indo-Asian News Service Wednesday.
Karzai will arrive here on Oct. 4 and is expected to hold talks with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and External Affairs Minister S. M. Krishna on the security situation in Afghanistan, in the aftermath of the Sept. 20 assassination of former Afghan President of Burhanuddin Rabbani.
Issues relating to expanding trade, commerce and connectivity with a view to making Afghanistan a hub for regional trade will figure in the discussions, said the report quoting a reliable source.
Last week, Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmay Rassoul unveiled a " New Silk Road" initiative to forge closer economic ties between Afghanistan and its neighboring countries.
In New Delhi, Karzai will also deliver a lecture on the India- Afghan relations at the Observer Research Foundation, a local think tank.
Afghans eye China to help bring peace, stabilize economy
By Abdul Haleem, Zhang Jianhua
KABUL, Sept. 28 (Xinhua) -- "Keeping in mind China's rapid economic development and influence in the region, she can play effective role in bringing about peace and strengthening economy in Afghanistan," an intellectual Afghan who introduced himself only Hamid opined.
Attending the 62nd celebration of the founding anniversary of the People's Republic of China in Tuesday evening in Chinese embassy to Kabul, Hamid said that "since our neighbor China has significant influence over the south and central Asian countries, it can influence them to help end instability in Afghanistan."
Corroborating his notion, another Afghan Assadullah Mohaqiq, an official with the Education Ministry in open chat with friends described China as a wonderful country, saying China had made unprecedented promotion in all fields including economy.
To rebuild Afghanistan, it was essential for Afghans to learn from China's experience, he observed.
In the simple but impressive banquet attended by Kabul-based diplomats and Afghans almost from all walks of life, China's ambassador to Afghanistan Xu Feihong in his remarks highlighted the progress China has achieved.
"In 1949, China's GDP was merely 18 billion U.S. dollars. Whereas the GDP reached 5.88 trillion in 2010, which made China rank the second largest economy in the world," Ambassador Xu Feihong said in part of his remarks.
Briefing the guests on the improving of living standards in China, the ambassador went on to say that in 1949 China had the population of 450 million, 370 million of whom lived below the poverty line, while in 2010 the population exceeded 1.3 billion while the number of people in poverty was reduced to 150 million.
"The aim of China's development is to work together with other countries to build a harmonious world of durable peace and common prosperity," the ambassador added in his speech.
Highlighting China's part in the world economic growth, Ambassador Xu Feihong said that "China has contributed over 10 percent to world economic growth every year in recent years. In 2010, this proportion exceeded 25 percent."
Like other Afghans, government's senior Minister Hedayat Amin Arsala also expressed his happiness over the development that China has achieved over the past decades.
"I have visited China several times and each time the progress that China had made was tangible and spectacular," Arsala said in his speech to congratulate China's National Day.
Likewise other Afghans, Minister Arsala also believed that China could use its influence it has over the nations in the region in bringing about peace in Afghanistan and reviving economy through investment in the war-battered nation.
"We hope China to use its influence in bringing about peace and security in Afghanistan," Minister Arsala noted in his speech, saying China's investment like in cooper mine, and other fields would also help Afghans to stabilize their economy.
Declaring Haqqanis Terrorist Organization Might Backfire on U.S.
Bloomberg By John Walcott and Viola Gienger September 28, 2011
The Obama administration isn’t ready to declare the Haqqani group in Pakistan a “foreign terrorist organization” even after Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the group attacked the U.S. embassy and American troops in Afghanistan.
“We are continuing to review whether to designate” the Haqqani organization, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said yesterday.
Mullen’s declaration in Senate testimony last week that Haqqani operatives acted as a “proxy” for Pakistan’s intelligence service may have further complicated the question.
Taking the first step -- adding the Haqqani group to the list of terrorist organizations -- would lead to demands that Pakistan be declared a state sponsor of terrorism. That would put at risk Pakistan’s cooperation as the U.S. tries to snuff out al-Qaeda’s core and other militants in the country’s tribal areas.
For now, the U.S. has designated the Haqqani network’s founder and other leaders. It has made clear to Pakistan that clamping down on the group “is job one, that we want to do it together, and that’s the conversation that we’re having now,” Nuland said.
Designating Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism would put it in the company of only four other countries -- Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria -- and might trigger a nationalist backlash in Pakistan. It would require halting U.S. aid to Pakistan, force the U.S. to oppose World Bank loans to Pakistan, and end cooperation between the two countries in fighting terrorism and trying to stabilize Afghanistan.
Pariah State
Naming Pakistan a sponsor of terrorism “would turn it into a pariah state,” Robert Lamb, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said in a telephone interview. “That would complicate a lot of aspects of the relationship, which is complicated enough already. It’s ugly, but it’s not unsalvageable.”
The administration is under new pressure to designate the Haqqanis a terrorist organization alongside 49 others, including al-Qaeda, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip.
After Mullen testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that the Haqqani group “meets the standards for designation” as a terrorist organization. So far, said congressional officials, Clinton hasn’t responded.
Congressional Pressure
“I think there’s going to be increasing congressional pressure on them to list the Haqqani network as a foreign terrorist organization,” said Lisa Curtis, a former CIA analyst and now a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation policy group in Washington.
“If we know that the Haqqani network is behind these major attacks on U.S. interests and we fail to confront them, that is a signal of weakness and it simply invites more attacks,” she said.
Nuland and other administration and military officials signaled a reluctance to sanction Pakistan.
Pentagon Press Secretary George Little said yesterday that the U.S. wants to “maintain a relationship with Pakistan that’s grounded in common interests, to include going after terrorists that threaten both countries.”
“There are differences from time to time,” Little told reporters at the Pentagon. “Those differences have been made public, and we continue to discuss those differences in private. We look forward to working with the Pakistanis to try to resolve them.”
Stretched Thin
Pakistani military officials told reporters in Islamabad on Sept. 25 that they had decided not to take action against the Haqqani group because their forces are stretched too thin.
If tensions escalated, Pakistan might again, as it did in a previous diplomatic confrontation, cut supply lines to U.S., NATO and Afghan forces in Afghanistan from its port city of Karachi. Alternative land or air routes are more costly and difficult.
The Pakistanis, said two U.S. intelligence officials, also might abandon secret agreements that permit unmanned U.S. drones to collect intelligence and attack targets in designated areas of Pakistan.
The U.S. already is restricted from operating over the Haqqanis’ suspected base in North Waziristan or the border city of Quetta, home to the main Afghan Taliban group. They also might expel some or all of the classified number of U.S. intelligence officers and special operations forces who are training Pakistani troops and helping target drone attacks, the officials said.
ISI Role
Designating the Haqqani network a terrorist organization would do little to stop the group, said Curtis of the Heritage Foundation. The Haqqanis, she said, probably still would be able to garner financial support from their allies in the Persian Gulf region and backing from the Pakistan spy agency, the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, known as ISI.
A U.S. designation of the Haqqanis isn’t likely to change Pakistani policy either, said Christine Fair, a Pakistan expert at Georgetown University in Washington.
The ISI and the Pakistani military regard the Haqqani network and other militants as allies in their campaign to maintain Pakistani influence in Afghanistan and prevent arch- rival India from getting a toehold on Pakistan’s western border, said Fair and other specialists.
“They believe that the Haqqanis would protect Pakistan’s interest in any future setup in Afghanistan,” Curtis said.
Rejecting the charges that his government uses the Haqqanis as a proxy, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said in a Sept. 25 statement that U.S. policy on Afghanistan shows “confusion and policy disarray.”
“We may just let this ride,” said Marvin Weinbaum, a former Afghanistan and Pakistan intelligence analyst at the State Department and director of the Center for Pakistan Studies at the Middle East Institute in Washington. “We know what direction the U.S.-Pakistan relationship is going, and now we have no idea what the bottom looks like.”
Insecurity is Caused by Pakistan Intervention: Senate
TOLOnews.com Tuesday, 27 September 2011
Insecurity and instability in Afghanistan are caused by Pakistani interferences and the Afghan government should reconsider its policy towards Pakistan, Afghan Senate House said on Monday.
Senate House is also planning to send a letter to the UN Security Council to intervene and make Pakistan stop firing rockets into Afghan soil.
Recent rocket attacks have hugely hurt Afghanistan's national sovereignty, senators said.
But Pakistan denies firing rockets into Afghan soil.
Senate House called on the International Community to increase cross-border attacks targeting insurgents hidden inside their safe havens and sanctuaries in Pakistan's lawless tribal regions.
"Senate House should send a letter to the UN Security Council on behalf of the Afghan people considering realities and reasons" behind Pakistani rocket attacks into Afghanistan, Deputy Speaker of Senate House, Mohammad Alam Ezedyar, said.
Afghan border regions have been come under rocket attacks from Pakistan for several days, recently in which dozens of civilians have been killed and hundreds of people have been displaced.
Drug find is largest in partnership’s history
NATO News Release
KABUL, Afghanistan (Sep. 27) – Combined Afghan and coalition security forces conducted a major narcotics seizure in Baghran district, Helmand province, Monday.
The narcotics seizure is reportedly the largest ever made by combined forces in Afghanistan.
The combined force, acting on intelligence, targeted an area believed to be manufacturing drugs used to finance lethal aid for use in attacks against Afghan and coalition forces. The security force discovered three narcotics laboratories containing drugs with an estimated street value in excess of $350 million (USD).
The combined security force destroyed the narcotics labs, along with approximately 1,815 gallons (6,870 L) of morphine solution, 220 pounds (100 kgs) of heroin, 176 pounds (80 kgs) of opium, 26,543 pounds (12,065 kgs) of chemicals used to process narcotics and a quantity of drug processing equipment.
“This operation will disrupt the enemies’ ability to facilitate attacks against the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan” said Maj. Gen. James B. Laster, head of Joint Operations at ISAF Joint Command. “We are committed to ensuring a more secure and stable future for the people of Afghanistan.”
For more information on this story please contact the Ministry of Interior Affairs.
Russia's Lavrov Calls Drug Threat From Afghanistan 'Heroin Aggression'
September 27, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
UNITED NATIONS -- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has described the narcotics threat from Afghanistan as a "heroin aggression" aimed at Russia and Central Asia.
Lavrov's remarks were part of his remarks to the UN General Assembly, in which he appealed to NATO's ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) to more effectively combat the growing Afghan drug threat.
"We can say that Central Asia and Russia are already facing heroin aggression, while the profits from the drug trafficking are being used as the main source for financing the extremist underground in the whole region," Lavrov said.
Regarding the situation in Syria, Lavrov said it was unacceptable to ignore reform proposals put forward by President Bashar al-Assad, and that it was important to encourage the government and the opposition to start negotiations on the future of their country.
The Assassination Next Door
New York Times By CAMELIA ENTEKHABIFARD September 27, 2011
FOR the last nine years, I have lived part time in Afghanistan, in a house in the Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood of Kabul. In the past, when I gave directions to my house, I mentioned the well-known landmark next door: the home of Burhanuddin Rabbani, the head of the High Peace Council and a former president and leader of the mujahedeen. As Afghanistan’s security situation has steadily deteriorated, people have been more and more hesitant to visit me; few of my acquaintances wanted to risk being near the home of the man responsible for trying to negotiate peace with the Taliban.
I was in New York last week when Mr. Rabbani was killed in that home. A young man posing as an emissary of peace hid explosives in his turban, detonating them in Mr. Rabbani’s reception room when he leaned in to greet my neighbor and kiss his shoulder. With his death comes the destruction of the hope many key Afghan leaders had for talks with the Taliban, as well as their trust in President Hamid Karzai’s ability to make peace.
By deciding to try to broker peace between Mr. Karzai’s government and the Taliban, Mr. Rabbani acted against the wishes of his political enemies, as well as many of his friends and colleagues. A number of influential spiritual leaders and political heavyweights who tried to guard Afghanistan’s young democracy in the post-Taliban period had already been murdered.
Nowhere was Mr. Rabbani’s security situation more precarious than on our street. Guards operated a checkpoint outside his home, and every day there was a crowd huddled around it — beggars, people with illnesses or complaints, Afghans from all around the country who hoped to receive help from the well-known politician. “Your house will explode along with Rabbani’s if there’s ever a suicide attack at that checkpoint,” an American friend warned me during my last visit to Afghanistan, just a month ago. “Those guards are good for nothing,” he’d said. “They could easily be disarmed.”
Yet I have never felt unsafe on Rabbani’s street. As a journalist, I found it a privilege to live near the man whom admirers called “Oustad Rabbani” — Professor Rabbani.
I interviewed him many times in the last few years. During Afghanistan’s most turbulent political periods, like elections or loya jirgas, the tribal assemblies that serve as national referendums, I’d station myself in his foyer for hours at a time in order to hear what was happening in the government, and obtain firsthand information for my articles. Polite, soft-spoken and humble, Mr. Rabbani always granted me an audience, greeting me with a close-lipped smile before offering raisins and walnuts and green tea.
Though Mr. Rabbani often criticized the Karzai administration, he remained hopeful that the Afghan people would take advantage of the world’s interest in their country to achieve peace before it was too late. “We must act before international donors stop caring whether or not we achieve democracy or a higher standard of living,” he told me. “One day, the world will no longer care and we will lose our support.”
As a moderate who was a leader of the mujahedeen, Mr. Rabbani served as a link between different factions of power in Afghan society. Through active diplomacy, he persuaded his fellow mujahedeen to stand by Mr. Karzai in spite of their differences. Now, with respected figures blaming the president (and what they see as his naïve support for dialogue) for Mr. Rabbani’s death, it will be virtually impossible for him to regain their trust and restart peace talks with the Taliban.
For the last nine years, the only traffic around my house was from people coming and going to visit Mr. Rabbani. In the wake of his murder, anyone walking along my street will arrive at a dead end.
Camelia Entekhabifard, the author of “Camelia: Save Yourself by Telling the Truth — a Memoir of Iran,” is a journalist reporting on Iranian and Afghan affairs.
Accidents top cause of helicopter crashes in Afghanistan
USA TODAY By Tom Vanden Brook 28/09/2011
Accidents are the major cause of helicopter crashes in Afghanistan, despite the recent shootdown of a Chinook that killed 30 U.S. troops, according to records obtained by USA TODAY.
Twenty-nine helicopters have crashed in Afghanistan since January 2009 through mid-September, the records show. Insurgents shot down six helicopters, including one other Chinook — the hulking aircraft that can hold nearly 40 troops.
Human error, bad weather and mechanical problems are among the other causes of crashes, according to the Army.
"It's just a fact of life that helicopters are accident prone," said John Pike, executive director of Globalsecurity.org, a defense policy group.
Afghanistan is also "hot, high and dusty," he said. Hot air is thin and can starve engines of power, Pike said. Altitude poses similar challenges. Dust can damage a helicopter's components and obscure a pilot's vision when it's stirred up.
The crashes have taken a toll. Eighteen U.S. servicemembers and one civilian died in the accidental crashes. Thirty-four servicemembers have died in the shootdowns, including the 30 men who perished in the one Chinook crash Aug. 5.
Helicopters are vital to U.S. military operations in Afghanistan as travel by vehicle can be difficult, even impossible in some areas. There are few paved roads in the country, which has wide-open stretches of desert and rugged mountains.
Insurgents often seed roads with bombs. The U.S. military relies on helicopters to ferry troops to root out insurgents, and to rescue the wounded for fast transport to hospitals.
In all, helicopter pilots fly about 50,000 missions per year in Afghanistan, said Lt. Col. Christopher Kasker, an Army spokesman.
Among helicopters, the two-crewmember Kiowas had the most accidental crashes. Insurgents shot down three of them, the most in that category along with Chinooks.
Kiowas are used for scouting missions and to support servicemembers in combat with their missile launchers. They also have a .50-caliber machine gun.
Insurgents' machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades are among the main threats in Afghanistan, Pike said. Helicopter pilots in Iraq countered similar threats by flying more night missions and at higher altitudes, and by varying their routes.
"Helicopters have got ballistic protection," Pike said. "But you can't armor the whole thing or it would never take off."
Shoulder-fired missiles are the greatest threat to helicopters, but the threat seems lessened by defenses such as flares that thwart heat-seeking guidance systems, Pike said.
U.S.-supplied missiles helped Afghan insurgents bring down Russian helicopters in the 1980s, hastening the Soviet withdrawal.
Today, U.S. helicopter pilots benefit from better equipment, training and intelligence on insurgent activity. This allows helicopter pilots in many cases to avoid "getting bushwhacked" by insurgents, Pike said.
"We have a solid decade of combat experience with helicopters," Pike said. "They help give Americans a freedom of maneuver that the Soviets did not have.
"Air mobility does not mean you won't get your butt shot off in a fight. but it does seek to get you into that close fight unhindered."
'Car bombs and suicide bombers were unknown in Soviet-era Kabul'
In this extract from his new book, Ghosts of Afghanistan, Jonathan Steele recalls his first visit to Kabul, which in 1981, was firmly under Soviet control
Guardian.co.uk By Jonathan Steele Tuesday 27 September 2011
'Explosion? What explosion?" Afghanistan's foreign minister Shah Mohammed Dost inquired with an elegant raising of his eyebrows when I interrupted our interview to ask whether the sudden noise I had just heard was an explosion.
It was November 1981, almost two years since Soviet troops had invaded, and the official spin from Moscow and its allies in Kabul was that everything was under control.
"Ah yes, the dynamiting," Dost said as another boom sounded in the distance. He was eager to assure me I was mistaken if I thought I could hear the sound of war from his office in central Kabul. "They do it almost every day, sometimes twice a day, for producing stones for construction, you know."
A tall, slim man with a neatly clipped moustache, Dost was the most prominent face of Afghanistan's Moscow-installed regime.
In the first weeks after the December 1979 invasion, Soviet officials had been so confident of quick victory that they gave western reporters astonishing access, even allowing them to ride on tanks or drive rented cars and taxis alongside Soviet convoys. By the spring of 1980, the mood had changed as the Kremlin saw it was in for a long war of attrition. The war became a taboo in the Soviet media, while western journalists who applied for visas for Afghanistan were routinely refused. The only way to cover the conflict was to endure days and nights of walking along precarious mountain paths with guerrilla fighters from mujahedin safe havens in Pakistan. A few stories that appeared in western papers via this route were careful and low-key, but many were romantic, self-promoting accounts of heroic exploits by reporters who donned a shalwar kameez and a pakol, the pie-shaped Afghan woolen hat, to slip into Afghanistan alongside the men with the guns. Mujahideen groups encouraged this adventure journalism, uncriti
cal, exaggerating and occasionally dishonest.
By 1981, the Soviets were realising the no-visa policy was a mistake. Their case was not being heard. So a handful of western journalists were let in for short trips in small groups or occasionally on their own.
I landed in Kabul on a bright autumn morning that year after changing planes and an overnight stay in Delhi. After the heat of India's capital I was struck by the extraordinary clarity of Kabul's air and the sky's deep blue. The city sits on a high plateau surrounded by a ring of khaki mountains and beyond them, glittering in the distance, are the snow-capped peaks of the Hindu Kush. In the dozen trips I have made to Kabul, its magnificent setting never ceases to amaze me. The country's poverty is overwhelming and the stories a reporter hears or sees are often tragic, but you can always lift your eyes to the hills and feel a restorative surge of nature's beauty to revive your energy.
On that first trip, the city itself, and not just its majestic surroundings, exuded a sense of calm. It was totally unexpected. Where was the war? And where were the Russians? Whatever was going on in the Afghan countryside, there was little sign of war or preparation for it in Kabul. In the two weeks I spent in the city I saw hardly any Soviet troops. On the few occasions I spotted some, they were acting as tourists rather than enforcers. As though the war was far away, they wore floppy khaki hats and no helmets and would drive in open-sided jeeps to Chicken Street, known by its English name to Afghans and foreigners alike as the city's best market for souvenirs.
Car bombs and suicide attacks, which have become a permanent threat in today's Kabul, were unknown during the Soviet period, and Afghans went about their daily business without fear of sudden mass slaughter. Many Soviet diplomats came with their families, and the embassy had a flourishing kindergarten, as well as a primary and secondary school. At the city's two university campuses, most young women were unveiled, as were most of the female staff in banks, shops, schools, factories and government offices. A few wore a loose head-scarf over their hair. Only in the bazaar where poorer people shopped was the burqa common, usually blue, pink or a light shade of brown.
When I registered with the Afghan foreign ministry, they assigned me – as I had expected – a minder who was to act as interpreter and accompany me on all my interviews. Unlike the British military minder I was required to have in Helmand in 2010, he was unarmed. Called Naqib, he and his superiors accepted most of my requests to meet Afghan ministers and other officials. Their key objective was to challenge the stories being written by reporters travelling with the mujahideen and convince me that opposition claims that Kabul was surrounded and close to collapse were wildly untrue.
Without a knowledge of the language and shadowed by my minder, I realised it was impossible to meet many Afghans independently, though I found a few shopkeepers who spoke some English. But from the evidence of my own eyes, the mujahideen claims of a city under siege certainly seemed false. The dozens of little kebab stalls in the street had as much lamb from the countryside as they needed. Pomegranates, watermelons and grapes spilled out of the bazaar.
I never discovered a definitive explanation for the explosions I had heard during my interview with Foreign Minister Dost, but his point that Kabul was unaffected by the destruction of war was valid.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
By ALISSA J. RUBIN and TAIMOOR SHAH The New York Times September 28, 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan — Eight police officers were killed overnight at a hilltop checkpoint in the fourth episode in three months taking aim at the police in Helmand Province.
One officer was missing after the attack, and police officials are investigating whether he betrayed his comrades to the Taliban. The attack came just a day after a suicide bomber attacked a shop in Helmand’s provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, that was owned by an Afghan who supplied the police with bread, cooking oil and firewood.
During the summer, there were two attacks on the police in and near Lashkar Gah. In one case, seven police officers were poisoned. In the other, a guest at a police post outside a ministry office killed his hosts and escaped, police officials in Helmand Province said.
Lashkar Gah was among the five cities and two provinces where Afghan security forces assumed sole control over the summer in the first stage of a transition from American security.
Also in Helmand this week, the counternarcotics police found and destroyed three drug laboratories, according to an announcement by a NATO official. The estimated street value of the drugs, which included nearly 2,000 gallons of opium solution, 220 pounds of heroin and 176 pounds of opium, was $350 million.
The killings in Helmand came as the United Nations released its quarterly report Wednesday on Afghanistan, which noted that there had been a nearly 40 percent increase in violent episodes in June, July and August over the same period last year.
A vast majority were the result of insurgent attacks. The subset of suicide attacks, however, was down over the same period.
Most striking was the continued “campaign of intimidation” through the assassinations of high-ranking Afghan government officials, said the report, noting that 181 people were killed in July and August.
Among those killed during the three months were a number of high-profile figures including President Hamid Karzai’s half brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, who led the Kandahar provincial council; Hikmatullah Hikmat, the head of Kandahar’s religious council; Jan Mohammed Khan, an adviser to President Karzai from Oruzgan Province; and Ghulam Haider Hamidi, the mayor of Kandahar.
NATO has yet to release overall figures for the same period. There are differences in the criteria used by the two groups, and the groups gather information in different ways. For instance, NATO in roughly the same period of June, July and much of August had noted a decline in complex attacks. And over all, NATO has said that the insurgents’ capability, especially in the south, has been degraded by NATO and Afghan troop operations.
In another measure of Afghanistan’s insecurity, the United Nations recorded an estimated 130,000 people displaced in the first seven months of the year, a 64 percent increase over 2010. Displacement includes both big and small moves by families. Typically families with some means flee farther when escaping violence, while poorer families might move only a few miles to a place where there is less fighting. The numbers of the displaced are still small relative to the numbers who were displaced or became refugees during the Afghan civil war of 1992-96 and during the Taliban’s rule.
Also in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday, the police chief of the Chora district in Oruzgan Province, Mohammed Gul, was killed by a roadside bomb as he drove to a rural village.
Three NATO service members were killed by an improvised explosive device in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, the military said, and a fourth died of a non-battle-related injury in southern Afghanistan.
U.S. Condemns Deadly Afghan Bombing
September 28, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
The United States has condemned a bomb attack on a bus in Afghanistan that killed 16 Afghan civilians, including 11 children.
Officials said the bus, carrying people who were returning from a wedding engagement party, was struck by a roadside bomb in western Herat Province on September 27.
Taliban militants are suspected of carrying out the attack.
In a written statement, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland called the bombing a "callous, targeted attack on innocent civilians," and said the perpetrators -- whom she called "terrorists" -- continue to "demonstrate blatant disregard for the lives of innocent Afghans and attempt to undermine the cause of peace."
The U.S. statement expressed confidence that such attacks will not deter the Afghan people from "pursuing a more peaceful, democratic future for their country."
The statement added that the U.S. military and allied forces will continue to "pressure" those who perpetrate such violence.
compiled from agency reports
Afghan insurgency claims 191 lives in seven day
KABUL, Sept. 28 (Xinhua) -- Taliban-led insurgency in the war- torn Afghanistan have left some 191 people dead, including 122 insurgents, 35 civilians and 34 personnel of Afghan National Police (ANP) over the last seven days, a spokesman for Interior Ministry Sediq Sediqqi said on Wednesday.
"Direct insurgent attack, Improvised Explosive Device (IED) and suicide bomb explosions have killed 35 civilians and 34 policemen with ANP over the past seven days," Sediqqi told reporters in a joint press conference with Deputy Interior Minister in Counter- Narcotics Affairs General Baz Mohammad Ahmadi here.
Providing details on the casualties, he said that 66 civilians and 44 police were wounded over the same timetable around the country.
"ANP have foiled several insurgent attacks, prevented four suicide bombings and defused 115 anti-vehicle mines and IEDs besides arresting of 138 insurgents in different parts of the country in the same period of time," Sediqqi added.
The Afghan special counter-narcotic police force, backed by NATO-led Coalition forces, during operations destroyed six heroin labs in Baghiran and Khanishin districts of the country's southern Helmand province on Monday, Ahmadi said in the same press conference.
He also said security forces found and seized various kinds of drugs during these operations which worth over 300 million U.S. dollars.
Militancy has been rampant since May this year when Taliban militants announced to launch spring offensive in the war-battered Afghanistan.
Nine insurgents killed in Afghanistan: gov't
KABUL, Sept. 28 (Xinhua) -- Nine armed insurgents killed, three wounded and nine others were arrested by Afghan National Security Forces over the past 24 hours in Afghanistan, according to a statement released by Ministry of Interior on Wendesday.
Five joint military operations are launched in surrounding areas of the Kunduz, Balkh, Helmand and Logar provinces with the support of National Directorate of Security (NDS)and NATO-led ISAF coalition forces. As a result, nine armed insurgents were killed, three wounded and nine others were arrested by Afghan National Police.
Afghan National Police also discovered and seized a large number of weapons and ammunitions, including 28 AK-47 assault rifles, four rockets, four pistols, one suicide vest, three anti- vehicle mines, nine hand grenades, 4kg IEDs and 50 mine fuses.
During these operations, Afghan National Police seized 100 kg heroin, 5,935 kg morphine, 2,860 kg chemicals, 89kg opium and 3, 280 kilograms sodium carbonate, it said. In another development, Afghan security forces backed by NATO- led coalition forces, killed 11 insurgents during a night raid operation in eastern Nangarhar province on Tuesday night, provincial government said in a statement on Wednesday.
A local Taliban commander named Zar Mohammad was also killed in the operation conducted in Spin Zar district of Nangarhar province 120 km east of capital Kabul, the statement said adding "No civilian or security forces were injured in the raid," Afghan and ISAF officials often use the word "insurgents" for referring to Taliban insurgents.
The insurgent group, who stepped up their attacks on Afghan and about 140, 000 ISAF troops stationed in the country since a spring rebel offensive was launched in May this year in the country, has yet to make comments.
Pakistan Foreign Minister Says Committed To Afghan Peace
September 28, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar says her country is committed to helping achieve peace in neighboring Afghanistan, and to cooperating with the governments of Afghanistan and the United States to achieve this goal.
Her remarks on September 27 in an address to the United Nations General Assembly came after U.S. officials recently accused Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency of having links to the Haqqani network, which has been blamed for the September 13 assault on the U.S. Embassy in the Afghan capital Kabul and other attacks. Pakistan has repeatedly rejected the allegations.
In her speech to the 193-country General Assembly, Khar said:
"A cooperative endeavor, in full solidarity with the people of Afghanistan, is the only way of ensuring peace, stability and prosperity in the region," Khar said in her speech to the 193-country General Assembly. "Pakistan is willing to do its best with international partners and, most notably, the governments of Afghanistan and the United States, to acquit itself of this high responsibility, at this defining moment in one of the most important struggles of our times."
Khar reiterated that Pakistan condemns recent deadly militant attacks in Afghanistan, and said Pakistan remains firmly committed to combating terrorism and militancy.
compiled from agency reports
Pakistan's PM Warns US to End 'Negative Messaging' on Militancy
VOA News September 27, 2011
Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani is warning the United States it must end "negative messaging" by accusing Pakistan of supporting militant attacks in Afghanistan. He says such accusations will only strengthen anti-American feelings in his country.
In an interview with the Reuters news agency, Gilani said unilateral U.S. military action to hunt down Haqqani network militants inside Pakistan - similar to the raid that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in May - would be a violation of his country's sovereignty.
Gilani's statement came a day after the Pakistani military said it would not target the al-Qaida and Taliban-linked Haqqani network because it is already stretched too thin battling militants elsewhere in northwestern Pakistan.
Also Tuesday, hundreds of Pakistanis turned out for anti-American rallies across the country, and a suspected U.S. drone fired two missiles on a compound near Wana in the South Waziristan tribal region, killing at least three alleged militants.
On the final day of the U.N. General Assembly's annual session in New York Tuesday, Pakistan's Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar said few countries have been as brutally ravaged by terrorism as Pakistan. She told the gathering that 30,000 civilians, police and security forces have been killed since 2002. Khar said Islamabad is determined to eliminate terrorism from its soil, from the region and from the world, and she called for enhanced international cooperation to wipe it out.
Her remarks came as the White House urged the Pakistani government "to take action" to deal with the Haqqani network that Washington says conducts attacks against international forces from its base in Pakistan's lawless North Waziristan tribal region.
But in an online statement Tuesday, the Taliban said that it, not Pakistan, controls the Haqqani network. The group said there are no ties between the Haqqani network and Pakistan's spy agency, the ISI, and that Haqqani fighters do not seek refuge in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal region, as Washington claims.
The Taliban statement also said attempts to link the Haqqani network's founder, Jalaluddin Haqqani, to the Pakistani government are designed to "give a bad name" to its prominent figures by tying them to foreign intelligence services.
Adm. Mullen’s words on Pakistan come under scrutiny
Washington Post By Greg Miller and Karen Deyoung Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Adm. Mike Mullen’s assertion last week that an anti-American insurgent group in Afghanistan is a “veritable arm” of Pakistan’s spy service was overstated and contributed to overheated reactions in Pakistan and misperceptions in Washington, according to American officials involved in U.S. policy in the region.
The internal criticism by the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to challenge Mullen openly, reflects concern over the accuracy of Mullen’s characterizations at a time when Obama administration officials have been frustrated in their efforts to persuade Pakistan to break its ties to Afghan insurgent groups.
The administration has long sought to pressure Pakistan, but to do so in a nuanced way that does not sever the U.S. relationship with a country that American officials see as crucial to winning the war in Afghanistan and maintaining long-term stability in the region.
Mullen’s testimony to a Senate committee was widely interpreted as an accusation by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that Pakistan’s military and espionage agencies sanction and direct bloody attacks against U.S. troops and targets in Afghanistan. Such interpretations prompted new levels of indignation among senior officials in both the United States and Pakistan.
Mullen’s language “overstates the case,” said a senior Pentagon official with access to classified intelligence files on Pakistan, because there is scant evidence of direction or control. If anything, the official said, the intelligence indicates that Pakistan treads a delicate if duplicitous line, providing support to insurgent groups including the Haqqani network but avoiding actions that would provoke a U.S. response.
“The Pakistani government has been dealing with Haqqani for a long time and still sees strategic value in guiding Haqqani and using them for their purposes,” the Pentagon official said. But “it’s not in their interest to inflame us in a way that an attack on a [U.S.] compound would do.”
U.S. officials stressed that there is broad agreement in the military and intelligence community that the Haqqani network has mounted some of the most audacious attacks of the Afghanistan war, including a 20-hour siege by gunmen this month on the U.S. Embassy compound in Kabul.
A senior aide to Mullen defended the chairman’s testimony, which was designed to prod the Pakistanis to sever ties to the Haqqani group if not contain it by force. “I don’t think the Pakistani reaction was unexpected,” said Capt. John Kirby. “The chairman stands by every word of his testimony.”
But Mullen’s pointed message and the difficulty in matching his words to the underlying intelligence underscore the suspicion and distrust that have plagued the United States and Pakistan since they were pushed together as counterterrorism partners after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
U.S. military officials said that Mullen’s testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee has been misinterpreted, and that his remark that the Haqqani network had carried out recent truck-bomb and embassy attacks “with ISI support” was meant to imply broad assistance, but not necessarily direction by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency.
U.S. officials have long accused Pakistan of providing support to the Haqqani network and allowing it to operate along the Afghanistan border with relative impunity, a charge that Pakistani officials reject.
But Mullen seemed to take the allegation an additional step, saying that the Haqqani network “acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency,” a phrase that implies ISI involvement and control.
That interpretation might be valid “if we were judging by Western standards,” said a senior U.S. military official who defended Mullen’s testimony. But the Pakistanis “use extremist groups — not only the Haqqanis — as proxies and hedges” to maintain influence in Afghanistan.
“This is not new,” the official said. “Can they control them like a military unit? We don’t think so. Do they encourage them? Yes. Do they provide some finance for them? Yes. Do they provide safe havens? Yes.”
That nuance escaped many in Congress and even some in the Obama administration, who voiced concern that the escalation in rhetoric had inflamed anti-American sentiment in Pakistan.
U.S. officials said that even evidence that has surfaced since Mullen’s testimony is open to differences in interpretation, including cellphones recovered from gunmen who were killed during the assault on the U.S. Embassy.
One official said the phones were used to make repeated calls to numbers associated with the Haqqani network, as well as presumed “ISI operatives.” But the official declined to explain the basis for that conclusion.
The senior Pentagon official treated the assertion with skepticism, saying the term “operatives” covers a wide range of supposed associates of the ISI. “Does it mean the same Haqqani numbers [also found in the phones], or is it actually uniformed officers” of Pakistan’s spy service?
U.S. officials said Mullen was unaware of the cellphones until after he testified.
Pakistani officials acknowledge that they have ongoing contact with the Haqqani network, a group founded by Jalaluddin Haqqani, who was one of the CIA-backed mujaheddin commanders who helped drive the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan in the 1980s. Now in poor health, Haqqani has yielded day-to-day control of the network to his son, Sirajuddin.
U.S. officials see indications that their Pakistani counterparts can exert influence on the Haqqani group in some cases, if not exert control.
Last year, at the United States’ behest, the ISI appealed to the Haqqani group not to attack polling stations during Afghan elections, a request that appears to have been honored. The senior Pentagon official declined to say how U.S. intelligence knows that the request was made, except to say, “We were aware of it.”
Mullen’s testimony was prepared at a time of intense frustration with Pakistan, in the aftermath of the embassy attack and other incidents. His remarks were striking in part because Mullen has long been sympathetic to Pakistan, traveling frequently to Islamabad and meeting more than two dozen times with its army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani.
But with his term as Joint Chiefs chairman about to expire, Mullen has become increasingly frustrated with the failure to get Pakistan to cut ties with Haqqani, and instructed his staff to compose testimony for last week’s hearing that would convey a message of exasperation.
In Pakistan, a military official emerged from a meeting of corps commanders Sunday saying they would make no move against Haqqani in the North Waziristan tribal region and warning that a unilateral U.S. action would have “disastrous consequences.”
The reaction in the Pakistani press to Mullen’s message has been more severe. A column this week by retired air vice marshal Shahzad Chaudry asked, “What could be the possible motives for America’s recent diatribes?” It concluded that the United States was intentionally sowing chaos in the region to weaken Pakistan.
In Washington, a senior Obama administration official said that “no one has any interest in walking back” what Mullen said, even while voicing concern over the comments’ impact on the fragile relationship with Pakistan.
“If the Pakistanis are finally scared about this, great,” the administration official said. “But we don’t want to walk [the relationship] over a cliff.”
Correspondent Karin Brulliard in Islamabad and special correspondents Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad and Haq Nawaz Khan in Peshawar, Pakistan, contributed to this report.
Taliban Have no Message to Afghanistan's Future: Stanekzai
TOLOnews.com Tuesday, 27 September 2011
Those who can not renounce violence and join a political stream, what message could they have for Afghanistan's future, Chief of High Peace Council Secretariat said on Monday.
Masoom Stanekzai, who survived the attack on Burhanuddin Rabbani, said the Taliban might have been instructed by their leaders to avoid taking responsibility for Rabbani's assassination.
Mr Stanekzai, who is currently under treatment for wounds he suffered in the attack at Rabbani's home last Tuesday, described the Taliban as enemies of peace in Afghanistan.
"Those who could not pull themselves out of terrorism to join a political process, what would be their message to the future of Afghans and Afghanistan?," he said.
He said he was already with the chief of High Peace Council and at his home and then the bomber showed up with Rahmatullah Wahedyar, member of Peace Council who took the Taliban bomber posing as a peace messenger of the Taliban to the house of Mr Rabbani.
He said when the bomber was greeting with Rabbani, Rahmatullah Wahedyar attempted to run out of the room.
Burhanuddin Rabbani, Karzai's elite peace envoy and a former President of Afghanistan, was assassinated at his home by a Taliban turban bomber last Tuesday.
Afghan president to visit India
NEW DELHI, Sept. 28 (Xinhua) -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai will visit India next week to seek India's support for the peace efforts in his country and promote economic cooperation with India, reported Indo-Asian News Service Wednesday.
Karzai will arrive here on Oct. 4 and is expected to hold talks with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and External Affairs Minister S. M. Krishna on the security situation in Afghanistan, in the aftermath of the Sept. 20 assassination of former Afghan President of Burhanuddin Rabbani.
Issues relating to expanding trade, commerce and connectivity with a view to making Afghanistan a hub for regional trade will figure in the discussions, said the report quoting a reliable source.
Last week, Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmay Rassoul unveiled a " New Silk Road" initiative to forge closer economic ties between Afghanistan and its neighboring countries.
In New Delhi, Karzai will also deliver a lecture on the India- Afghan relations at the Observer Research Foundation, a local think tank.
Afghans eye China to help bring peace, stabilize economy
By Abdul Haleem, Zhang Jianhua
KABUL, Sept. 28 (Xinhua) -- "Keeping in mind China's rapid economic development and influence in the region, she can play effective role in bringing about peace and strengthening economy in Afghanistan," an intellectual Afghan who introduced himself only Hamid opined.
Attending the 62nd celebration of the founding anniversary of the People's Republic of China in Tuesday evening in Chinese embassy to Kabul, Hamid said that "since our neighbor China has significant influence over the south and central Asian countries, it can influence them to help end instability in Afghanistan."
Corroborating his notion, another Afghan Assadullah Mohaqiq, an official with the Education Ministry in open chat with friends described China as a wonderful country, saying China had made unprecedented promotion in all fields including economy.
To rebuild Afghanistan, it was essential for Afghans to learn from China's experience, he observed.
In the simple but impressive banquet attended by Kabul-based diplomats and Afghans almost from all walks of life, China's ambassador to Afghanistan Xu Feihong in his remarks highlighted the progress China has achieved.
"In 1949, China's GDP was merely 18 billion U.S. dollars. Whereas the GDP reached 5.88 trillion in 2010, which made China rank the second largest economy in the world," Ambassador Xu Feihong said in part of his remarks.
Briefing the guests on the improving of living standards in China, the ambassador went on to say that in 1949 China had the population of 450 million, 370 million of whom lived below the poverty line, while in 2010 the population exceeded 1.3 billion while the number of people in poverty was reduced to 150 million.
"The aim of China's development is to work together with other countries to build a harmonious world of durable peace and common prosperity," the ambassador added in his speech.
Highlighting China's part in the world economic growth, Ambassador Xu Feihong said that "China has contributed over 10 percent to world economic growth every year in recent years. In 2010, this proportion exceeded 25 percent."
Like other Afghans, government's senior Minister Hedayat Amin Arsala also expressed his happiness over the development that China has achieved over the past decades.
"I have visited China several times and each time the progress that China had made was tangible and spectacular," Arsala said in his speech to congratulate China's National Day.
Likewise other Afghans, Minister Arsala also believed that China could use its influence it has over the nations in the region in bringing about peace in Afghanistan and reviving economy through investment in the war-battered nation.
"We hope China to use its influence in bringing about peace and security in Afghanistan," Minister Arsala noted in his speech, saying China's investment like in cooper mine, and other fields would also help Afghans to stabilize their economy.
Declaring Haqqanis Terrorist Organization Might Backfire on U.S.
Bloomberg By John Walcott and Viola Gienger September 28, 2011
The Obama administration isn’t ready to declare the Haqqani group in Pakistan a “foreign terrorist organization” even after Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the group attacked the U.S. embassy and American troops in Afghanistan.
“We are continuing to review whether to designate” the Haqqani organization, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said yesterday.
Mullen’s declaration in Senate testimony last week that Haqqani operatives acted as a “proxy” for Pakistan’s intelligence service may have further complicated the question.
Taking the first step -- adding the Haqqani group to the list of terrorist organizations -- would lead to demands that Pakistan be declared a state sponsor of terrorism. That would put at risk Pakistan’s cooperation as the U.S. tries to snuff out al-Qaeda’s core and other militants in the country’s tribal areas.
For now, the U.S. has designated the Haqqani network’s founder and other leaders. It has made clear to Pakistan that clamping down on the group “is job one, that we want to do it together, and that’s the conversation that we’re having now,” Nuland said.
Designating Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism would put it in the company of only four other countries -- Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria -- and might trigger a nationalist backlash in Pakistan. It would require halting U.S. aid to Pakistan, force the U.S. to oppose World Bank loans to Pakistan, and end cooperation between the two countries in fighting terrorism and trying to stabilize Afghanistan.
Pariah State
Naming Pakistan a sponsor of terrorism “would turn it into a pariah state,” Robert Lamb, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said in a telephone interview. “That would complicate a lot of aspects of the relationship, which is complicated enough already. It’s ugly, but it’s not unsalvageable.”
The administration is under new pressure to designate the Haqqanis a terrorist organization alongside 49 others, including al-Qaeda, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip.
After Mullen testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that the Haqqani group “meets the standards for designation” as a terrorist organization. So far, said congressional officials, Clinton hasn’t responded.
Congressional Pressure
“I think there’s going to be increasing congressional pressure on them to list the Haqqani network as a foreign terrorist organization,” said Lisa Curtis, a former CIA analyst and now a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation policy group in Washington.
“If we know that the Haqqani network is behind these major attacks on U.S. interests and we fail to confront them, that is a signal of weakness and it simply invites more attacks,” she said.
Nuland and other administration and military officials signaled a reluctance to sanction Pakistan.
Pentagon Press Secretary George Little said yesterday that the U.S. wants to “maintain a relationship with Pakistan that’s grounded in common interests, to include going after terrorists that threaten both countries.”
“There are differences from time to time,” Little told reporters at the Pentagon. “Those differences have been made public, and we continue to discuss those differences in private. We look forward to working with the Pakistanis to try to resolve them.”
Stretched Thin
Pakistani military officials told reporters in Islamabad on Sept. 25 that they had decided not to take action against the Haqqani group because their forces are stretched too thin.
If tensions escalated, Pakistan might again, as it did in a previous diplomatic confrontation, cut supply lines to U.S., NATO and Afghan forces in Afghanistan from its port city of Karachi. Alternative land or air routes are more costly and difficult.
The Pakistanis, said two U.S. intelligence officials, also might abandon secret agreements that permit unmanned U.S. drones to collect intelligence and attack targets in designated areas of Pakistan.
The U.S. already is restricted from operating over the Haqqanis’ suspected base in North Waziristan or the border city of Quetta, home to the main Afghan Taliban group. They also might expel some or all of the classified number of U.S. intelligence officers and special operations forces who are training Pakistani troops and helping target drone attacks, the officials said.
ISI Role
Designating the Haqqani network a terrorist organization would do little to stop the group, said Curtis of the Heritage Foundation. The Haqqanis, she said, probably still would be able to garner financial support from their allies in the Persian Gulf region and backing from the Pakistan spy agency, the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, known as ISI.
A U.S. designation of the Haqqanis isn’t likely to change Pakistani policy either, said Christine Fair, a Pakistan expert at Georgetown University in Washington.
The ISI and the Pakistani military regard the Haqqani network and other militants as allies in their campaign to maintain Pakistani influence in Afghanistan and prevent arch- rival India from getting a toehold on Pakistan’s western border, said Fair and other specialists.
“They believe that the Haqqanis would protect Pakistan’s interest in any future setup in Afghanistan,” Curtis said.
Rejecting the charges that his government uses the Haqqanis as a proxy, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said in a Sept. 25 statement that U.S. policy on Afghanistan shows “confusion and policy disarray.”
“We may just let this ride,” said Marvin Weinbaum, a former Afghanistan and Pakistan intelligence analyst at the State Department and director of the Center for Pakistan Studies at the Middle East Institute in Washington. “We know what direction the U.S.-Pakistan relationship is going, and now we have no idea what the bottom looks like.”
Insecurity is Caused by Pakistan Intervention: Senate
TOLOnews.com Tuesday, 27 September 2011
Insecurity and instability in Afghanistan are caused by Pakistani interferences and the Afghan government should reconsider its policy towards Pakistan, Afghan Senate House said on Monday.
Senate House is also planning to send a letter to the UN Security Council to intervene and make Pakistan stop firing rockets into Afghan soil.
Recent rocket attacks have hugely hurt Afghanistan's national sovereignty, senators said.
But Pakistan denies firing rockets into Afghan soil.
Senate House called on the International Community to increase cross-border attacks targeting insurgents hidden inside their safe havens and sanctuaries in Pakistan's lawless tribal regions.
"Senate House should send a letter to the UN Security Council on behalf of the Afghan people considering realities and reasons" behind Pakistani rocket attacks into Afghanistan, Deputy Speaker of Senate House, Mohammad Alam Ezedyar, said.
Afghan border regions have been come under rocket attacks from Pakistan for several days, recently in which dozens of civilians have been killed and hundreds of people have been displaced.
Drug find is largest in partnership’s history
NATO News Release
KABUL, Afghanistan (Sep. 27) – Combined Afghan and coalition security forces conducted a major narcotics seizure in Baghran district, Helmand province, Monday.
The narcotics seizure is reportedly the largest ever made by combined forces in Afghanistan.
The combined force, acting on intelligence, targeted an area believed to be manufacturing drugs used to finance lethal aid for use in attacks against Afghan and coalition forces. The security force discovered three narcotics laboratories containing drugs with an estimated street value in excess of $350 million (USD).
The combined security force destroyed the narcotics labs, along with approximately 1,815 gallons (6,870 L) of morphine solution, 220 pounds (100 kgs) of heroin, 176 pounds (80 kgs) of opium, 26,543 pounds (12,065 kgs) of chemicals used to process narcotics and a quantity of drug processing equipment.
“This operation will disrupt the enemies’ ability to facilitate attacks against the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan” said Maj. Gen. James B. Laster, head of Joint Operations at ISAF Joint Command. “We are committed to ensuring a more secure and stable future for the people of Afghanistan.”
For more information on this story please contact the Ministry of Interior Affairs.
Russia's Lavrov Calls Drug Threat From Afghanistan 'Heroin Aggression'
September 27, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
UNITED NATIONS -- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has described the narcotics threat from Afghanistan as a "heroin aggression" aimed at Russia and Central Asia.
Lavrov's remarks were part of his remarks to the UN General Assembly, in which he appealed to NATO's ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) to more effectively combat the growing Afghan drug threat.
"We can say that Central Asia and Russia are already facing heroin aggression, while the profits from the drug trafficking are being used as the main source for financing the extremist underground in the whole region," Lavrov said.
Regarding the situation in Syria, Lavrov said it was unacceptable to ignore reform proposals put forward by President Bashar al-Assad, and that it was important to encourage the government and the opposition to start negotiations on the future of their country.
The Assassination Next Door
New York Times By CAMELIA ENTEKHABIFARD September 27, 2011
FOR the last nine years, I have lived part time in Afghanistan, in a house in the Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood of Kabul. In the past, when I gave directions to my house, I mentioned the well-known landmark next door: the home of Burhanuddin Rabbani, the head of the High Peace Council and a former president and leader of the mujahedeen. As Afghanistan’s security situation has steadily deteriorated, people have been more and more hesitant to visit me; few of my acquaintances wanted to risk being near the home of the man responsible for trying to negotiate peace with the Taliban.
I was in New York last week when Mr. Rabbani was killed in that home. A young man posing as an emissary of peace hid explosives in his turban, detonating them in Mr. Rabbani’s reception room when he leaned in to greet my neighbor and kiss his shoulder. With his death comes the destruction of the hope many key Afghan leaders had for talks with the Taliban, as well as their trust in President Hamid Karzai’s ability to make peace.
By deciding to try to broker peace between Mr. Karzai’s government and the Taliban, Mr. Rabbani acted against the wishes of his political enemies, as well as many of his friends and colleagues. A number of influential spiritual leaders and political heavyweights who tried to guard Afghanistan’s young democracy in the post-Taliban period had already been murdered.
Nowhere was Mr. Rabbani’s security situation more precarious than on our street. Guards operated a checkpoint outside his home, and every day there was a crowd huddled around it — beggars, people with illnesses or complaints, Afghans from all around the country who hoped to receive help from the well-known politician. “Your house will explode along with Rabbani’s if there’s ever a suicide attack at that checkpoint,” an American friend warned me during my last visit to Afghanistan, just a month ago. “Those guards are good for nothing,” he’d said. “They could easily be disarmed.”
Yet I have never felt unsafe on Rabbani’s street. As a journalist, I found it a privilege to live near the man whom admirers called “Oustad Rabbani” — Professor Rabbani.
I interviewed him many times in the last few years. During Afghanistan’s most turbulent political periods, like elections or loya jirgas, the tribal assemblies that serve as national referendums, I’d station myself in his foyer for hours at a time in order to hear what was happening in the government, and obtain firsthand information for my articles. Polite, soft-spoken and humble, Mr. Rabbani always granted me an audience, greeting me with a close-lipped smile before offering raisins and walnuts and green tea.
Though Mr. Rabbani often criticized the Karzai administration, he remained hopeful that the Afghan people would take advantage of the world’s interest in their country to achieve peace before it was too late. “We must act before international donors stop caring whether or not we achieve democracy or a higher standard of living,” he told me. “One day, the world will no longer care and we will lose our support.”
As a moderate who was a leader of the mujahedeen, Mr. Rabbani served as a link between different factions of power in Afghan society. Through active diplomacy, he persuaded his fellow mujahedeen to stand by Mr. Karzai in spite of their differences. Now, with respected figures blaming the president (and what they see as his naïve support for dialogue) for Mr. Rabbani’s death, it will be virtually impossible for him to regain their trust and restart peace talks with the Taliban.
For the last nine years, the only traffic around my house was from people coming and going to visit Mr. Rabbani. In the wake of his murder, anyone walking along my street will arrive at a dead end.
Camelia Entekhabifard, the author of “Camelia: Save Yourself by Telling the Truth — a Memoir of Iran,” is a journalist reporting on Iranian and Afghan affairs.
Accidents top cause of helicopter crashes in Afghanistan
USA TODAY By Tom Vanden Brook 28/09/2011
Accidents are the major cause of helicopter crashes in Afghanistan, despite the recent shootdown of a Chinook that killed 30 U.S. troops, according to records obtained by USA TODAY.
Twenty-nine helicopters have crashed in Afghanistan since January 2009 through mid-September, the records show. Insurgents shot down six helicopters, including one other Chinook — the hulking aircraft that can hold nearly 40 troops.
Human error, bad weather and mechanical problems are among the other causes of crashes, according to the Army.
"It's just a fact of life that helicopters are accident prone," said John Pike, executive director of Globalsecurity.org, a defense policy group.
Afghanistan is also "hot, high and dusty," he said. Hot air is thin and can starve engines of power, Pike said. Altitude poses similar challenges. Dust can damage a helicopter's components and obscure a pilot's vision when it's stirred up.
The crashes have taken a toll. Eighteen U.S. servicemembers and one civilian died in the accidental crashes. Thirty-four servicemembers have died in the shootdowns, including the 30 men who perished in the one Chinook crash Aug. 5.
Helicopters are vital to U.S. military operations in Afghanistan as travel by vehicle can be difficult, even impossible in some areas. There are few paved roads in the country, which has wide-open stretches of desert and rugged mountains.
Insurgents often seed roads with bombs. The U.S. military relies on helicopters to ferry troops to root out insurgents, and to rescue the wounded for fast transport to hospitals.
In all, helicopter pilots fly about 50,000 missions per year in Afghanistan, said Lt. Col. Christopher Kasker, an Army spokesman.
Among helicopters, the two-crewmember Kiowas had the most accidental crashes. Insurgents shot down three of them, the most in that category along with Chinooks.
Kiowas are used for scouting missions and to support servicemembers in combat with their missile launchers. They also have a .50-caliber machine gun.
Insurgents' machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades are among the main threats in Afghanistan, Pike said. Helicopter pilots in Iraq countered similar threats by flying more night missions and at higher altitudes, and by varying their routes.
"Helicopters have got ballistic protection," Pike said. "But you can't armor the whole thing or it would never take off."
Shoulder-fired missiles are the greatest threat to helicopters, but the threat seems lessened by defenses such as flares that thwart heat-seeking guidance systems, Pike said.
U.S.-supplied missiles helped Afghan insurgents bring down Russian helicopters in the 1980s, hastening the Soviet withdrawal.
Today, U.S. helicopter pilots benefit from better equipment, training and intelligence on insurgent activity. This allows helicopter pilots in many cases to avoid "getting bushwhacked" by insurgents, Pike said.
"We have a solid decade of combat experience with helicopters," Pike said. "They help give Americans a freedom of maneuver that the Soviets did not have.
"Air mobility does not mean you won't get your butt shot off in a fight. but it does seek to get you into that close fight unhindered."
'Car bombs and suicide bombers were unknown in Soviet-era Kabul'
In this extract from his new book, Ghosts of Afghanistan, Jonathan Steele recalls his first visit to Kabul, which in 1981, was firmly under Soviet control
Guardian.co.uk By Jonathan Steele Tuesday 27 September 2011
'Explosion? What explosion?" Afghanistan's foreign minister Shah Mohammed Dost inquired with an elegant raising of his eyebrows when I interrupted our interview to ask whether the sudden noise I had just heard was an explosion.
It was November 1981, almost two years since Soviet troops had invaded, and the official spin from Moscow and its allies in Kabul was that everything was under control.
"Ah yes, the dynamiting," Dost said as another boom sounded in the distance. He was eager to assure me I was mistaken if I thought I could hear the sound of war from his office in central Kabul. "They do it almost every day, sometimes twice a day, for producing stones for construction, you know."
A tall, slim man with a neatly clipped moustache, Dost was the most prominent face of Afghanistan's Moscow-installed regime.
In the first weeks after the December 1979 invasion, Soviet officials had been so confident of quick victory that they gave western reporters astonishing access, even allowing them to ride on tanks or drive rented cars and taxis alongside Soviet convoys. By the spring of 1980, the mood had changed as the Kremlin saw it was in for a long war of attrition. The war became a taboo in the Soviet media, while western journalists who applied for visas for Afghanistan were routinely refused. The only way to cover the conflict was to endure days and nights of walking along precarious mountain paths with guerrilla fighters from mujahedin safe havens in Pakistan. A few stories that appeared in western papers via this route were careful and low-key, but many were romantic, self-promoting accounts of heroic exploits by reporters who donned a shalwar kameez and a pakol, the pie-shaped Afghan woolen hat, to slip into Afghanistan alongside the men with the guns. Mujahideen groups encouraged this adventure journalism, uncriti
cal, exaggerating and occasionally dishonest.
By 1981, the Soviets were realising the no-visa policy was a mistake. Their case was not being heard. So a handful of western journalists were let in for short trips in small groups or occasionally on their own.
I landed in Kabul on a bright autumn morning that year after changing planes and an overnight stay in Delhi. After the heat of India's capital I was struck by the extraordinary clarity of Kabul's air and the sky's deep blue. The city sits on a high plateau surrounded by a ring of khaki mountains and beyond them, glittering in the distance, are the snow-capped peaks of the Hindu Kush. In the dozen trips I have made to Kabul, its magnificent setting never ceases to amaze me. The country's poverty is overwhelming and the stories a reporter hears or sees are often tragic, but you can always lift your eyes to the hills and feel a restorative surge of nature's beauty to revive your energy.
On that first trip, the city itself, and not just its majestic surroundings, exuded a sense of calm. It was totally unexpected. Where was the war? And where were the Russians? Whatever was going on in the Afghan countryside, there was little sign of war or preparation for it in Kabul. In the two weeks I spent in the city I saw hardly any Soviet troops. On the few occasions I spotted some, they were acting as tourists rather than enforcers. As though the war was far away, they wore floppy khaki hats and no helmets and would drive in open-sided jeeps to Chicken Street, known by its English name to Afghans and foreigners alike as the city's best market for souvenirs.
Car bombs and suicide attacks, which have become a permanent threat in today's Kabul, were unknown during the Soviet period, and Afghans went about their daily business without fear of sudden mass slaughter. Many Soviet diplomats came with their families, and the embassy had a flourishing kindergarten, as well as a primary and secondary school. At the city's two university campuses, most young women were unveiled, as were most of the female staff in banks, shops, schools, factories and government offices. A few wore a loose head-scarf over their hair. Only in the bazaar where poorer people shopped was the burqa common, usually blue, pink or a light shade of brown.
When I registered with the Afghan foreign ministry, they assigned me – as I had expected – a minder who was to act as interpreter and accompany me on all my interviews. Unlike the British military minder I was required to have in Helmand in 2010, he was unarmed. Called Naqib, he and his superiors accepted most of my requests to meet Afghan ministers and other officials. Their key objective was to challenge the stories being written by reporters travelling with the mujahideen and convince me that opposition claims that Kabul was surrounded and close to collapse were wildly untrue.
Without a knowledge of the language and shadowed by my minder, I realised it was impossible to meet many Afghans independently, though I found a few shopkeepers who spoke some English. But from the evidence of my own eyes, the mujahideen claims of a city under siege certainly seemed false. The dozens of little kebab stalls in the street had as much lamb from the countryside as they needed. Pomegranates, watermelons and grapes spilled out of the bazaar.
I never discovered a definitive explanation for the explosions I had heard during my interview with Foreign Minister Dost, but his point that Kabul was unaffected by the destruction of war was valid.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com