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What to do about Pakistan
The United States cannot afford to indulge Pakistan's support for terrorism any longer. The risks of sticking with the status quo are greater than the risks of adopting a tougher approach.
By Peter Tomsen October 9, 2011 Los Angeles Times
How are insurgents able to continue launching deadly attacks in Afghanistan 10 years into the U.S.-led war there? Part of the blame — perhaps even the bulk of it — lies with Pakistan's army and its powerful intelligence arm, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, known by the acronym ISI.
For decades, Pakistan has conducted a proxy war in Afghanistan through Islamist insurgent groups that it has created, nurtured and supplied. There is considerable evidence that these groups are managed not by "rogue" ISI elements, as has sometimes been asserted, but by the agency itself. The ISI is a disciplined military institution that answers to the orders of the military command, a point former Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf often emphasized. The current Pakistani army chief, army Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, was director of the ISI under Musharraf, and he headed the organization during 2005, when the Taliban began to make a strategic comeback in Afghanistan, operating from protected sanctuaries in Pakistan.
Today, three Pakistani-supported proxy groups are fueling the insurgency in Afghanistan: the Quetta Shura, the Haqqani network and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's smaller terrorist group, Hezb-i-Islami. Not one of them has been placed on the U.S. State Department's official list of foreign terrorist organizations.
Putting these groups on the list would make them subject to a range of U.S. sanctions, and it should be done immediately. There is extensive documentation in the public record — and extensive classified intelligence documentation — of their attacks on American forces inside Afghanistan, including the Haqqani network's deadly attacks at the U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters last month. As Adm. Michael G. Mullen, outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, noted in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee recently, the Haqqani network "acts as a veritable arm" of the ISI.
The U.S. campaign against global terrorism cannot succeed as long as Pakistan's army and ISI continue to support terrorist sanctuaries and training facilities inside Pakistan. The same training camps used to prepare thousands of Afghan, Pakistani and Arab fanatics to cross into Afghanistan also churn out global terrorists like the Pakistani American Faisal Shahzad, who tried to bomb Times Square last year.
Americans need to realize that terrorists' attempts to strike the United States from sanctuaries in Pakistan will occur again and again unless their bases are closed down. Bombs targeting American cities will inevitably become more lethal with time. Today they are conventional. Tomorrow they are likely to be biological, chemical or nuclear.
Washington has long considered Pakistan an important ally, and so has tread lightly for fear of alienating the nuclear-armed and strategically located country. But it is time to add an "or else" to our dealings with Islamabad.
In the weeks since Mullen's harsh language before the Senate, members of the Obama administration have sought to soften the rhetoric somewhat. White House spokesman Jay Carney described Mullen's comments as consistent with U.S. policy but said that he would not have used Mullen's language. Other officials, speaking on background, said Mullen's remarks weren't reflective of U.S. policy.
But there are also indications that the U.S. could be finally ready to adopt a tougher approach. The day after Mullen spoke, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, publicly requested "that the State Department take the additional step of listing the [Haqqani] network as a foreign terrorist organization," noting that the organization "meets the [legal] standards" for this designation. Last week, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the State Department was completing a "final formal review" preparatory to listing the organization. And at his Wednesday White House press conference President Obama warned that "there's no doubt that, you know, we're not going to feel comfortable with a long-term relationship with Pakistan if we don't think that they are mindful of our interests as well."
These are steps in the right direction, but they don't go nearly far enough. The George W. Bush and Obama administrations' "soft" policy of persuasion mixed with bountiful aid and expectations of progress has failed. The U.S. needs to take a much harder stance on Pakistan's promotion of Islamist terrorism in the region and globally.
Washington has the capability to bring great pressure to bear on Pakistan to encourage it to change course. The U.S. should privately and clearly convey to Pakistan's army and ISI that it will be compelled to implement escalating measures if Pakistan does not close down the ISI-sustained terrorist sanctuaries in Pakistan. The U.S. should also enlist other nations for regional and global coalitions to contain the terrorism coming from Pakistan. No Muslim government supports the sanctuaries in Pakistan exporting violent extremism. Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, Afghanistan, the Central Asian republics and Western Europe all wish to see them dismantled.
Among other pressures the U.S. can bring to bear are the severance of all military and economic aid, the designation of the three Afghan terrorist organizations as foreign terrorist organizations, the naming of Pakistan itself as a state sponsor of terrorism and the declassification of information exposing the terrorist bases in Pakistan and the ISI's involvement in them.
Pakistan has hinted lately that it would turn to China and Iran if the United States ramps up pressure. But neither China nor Iran would like to see a Taliban government return to Kabul, nor would they wish to spend the huge sums it would take to shore up Pakistan's listing economy.
The Obama administration needs to implement a Pakistan policy that serves America's national security interests. It must be constructed for the long term and be responsive to Pakistan's actions. There should be incentives employed to encourage the dismantling of terrorists organizations that the ISI has created and sustained. And there should be consequences if it does not.
The United States cannot afford to indulge Pakistan's support for terrorism any longer. The risks of sticking with the status quo are greater than the risks of adopting a tougher approach.
Peter Tomsen is the author of the just-published "The Wars of Afghanistan." He was U.S. special envoy and ambassador to Afghanistan from 1989 to 1992.
Lawmakers End Boycott of Parliament in Afghanistan
New York Times By JACK HEALY October 8, 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan - Near the white tent where an ousted Afghan lawmaker lay moaning in bed, slowly starving herself in political protest, her onetime colleagues in Parliament congratulated themselves Saturday on their decision to return to work.
More than a month had passed since dozens of lawmakers walked off their jobs to protest the disputed results of last year’s parliamentary elections, effectively paralyzing the fractured National Assembly by denying it a quorum. On Saturday, still seething at President Hamid Karzai and with no resolution to the deeper grievances crippling Afghanistan’s government, the dissident members nevertheless ended their boycott and marched back into the assembly.
“We had to come back to work together, to pass laws,” said Shekiba Hashimi, one of the more than 70 members of Parliament who had boycotted the sessions. “The government could not do anything. Everything stopped.”
Not that much was accomplished during Saturday’s session. Lawmakers made impassioned speeches and left after about an hour. Bitter divisions remained over a recent decision by the country’s election commission to replace nine members of Parliament with losing candidates who had challenged the results of the fraud-plagued election.
For the past week, the outrage over that decision has been on display just outside the main gates of Parliament, in the white tent occupied by Semin Barakzai, a lawmaker from the western province of Herat who was one of the nine to lose their seats.
Writing letters and holding news conferences got her no traction, supporters said, so Ms. Barakzai decided to take a page from nonviolent protest methods more familiar in India than here: She would not eat or drink until she got her job back.
“No one heard my voice,” she said Saturday morning, glassy-eyed and listless. “I had no other option.”
Ms. Barakzai lay under a heap of blankets, her black head scarf askew. A women’s rights advocate sat at her bedside, rubbing her wrists, and members of Parliament came to offer words of encouragement and concern. She waved away doctors who came to take her blood pressure and who urged her to drink water.
“I’m not taking any medicine,” she told the doctors.
Outside, they said she did not seem to understand — or care about — the toll that severe dehydration could take on her kidneys. On Saturday night, the public health minister visited and persuaded Ms. Barakzai to drink a bit of water.
With few powerful supporters to protect her, Ms. Barakzai became a casualty of political compromise as Afghan officials tried to resolve a yearlong dispute that had alienated Parliament from the president and pushed the country to the brink of a constitutional crisis.
In June, a special court set up by Mr. Karzai to judge allegations of electoral fraud ruled that 62 seats in Parliament should be awarded to candidates who had challenged the outcome of the elections — many of them allies of the president. That decision undercut the election commission, which had earlier declared the results of the vote should stand, and set off angry protests from members of Parliament.
Mr. Karzai, bowing to overwhelming pressure, scrapped the special court and publicly affirmed the election commission’s final authority over the vote, but suggested that the commission take another look at the results. It did, and ruled in August that Ms. Barakzai and eight others should lose their seats.
A majority of lawmakers, who had also protested the special court, vowed to fight the decision, but with most of them having retained their seats, those like Ms. Barakzai were largely left behind as the protest petered out. She told people close to her that she would continue her vigil, though it was impossible to say for how long. “She told me the rules have been broken, the laws have been stepped on, and that she was ready to sacrifice her life,” said her husband, Mohammed.
Sharifullah Sahak contributed reporting.
Expelled Afghan Female Lawmaker Enters 8th Day of Hunger Strike
VOA News October 9, 2011
A female Afghan politician expelled from parliament for alleged voter fraud is vowing to continue a more than week-long hunger strike until she is reinstated.
Sunday is the eighth day of Simeen Barakzai's hunger strike in a protest tent outside parliament in the capital, Kabul. A doctor told the French news agency that Barakzai's health was worsening to a critical condition.
Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission expelled her and eight other lawmakers from the national assembly in August to try to resolve long-running allegations of voter fraud against some winners of a parliamentary vote in September 2010. Some lawmakers who boycotted parliament to protest the expulsions returned to their seats on Saturday.
In other developments, the NATO alliance said Sunday two of its service members were killed in an insurgent attack a day earlier in southern Afghanistan. It gave no other details.
NATO also says a combined Afghan and coalition force killed one Taliban militant and captured several others including an insurgent leader during an operation Saturday into Sunday in the eastern province of Nangarhar. It says the captured insurgent leader helped to bring explosives and weapons from Pakistan into Afghanistan.
Afghan government seeks Pakistan’s help in stalled peace process
Washington Post By Joshua Partlow and Karin Brulliard Sunday, October 9, 2011
KABUL - With prospects for peace talks at a new low, the Afghan government is attempting to resuscitate negotiations with a seemingly contradictory approach: publicly bashing the Pakistanis for supporting the Taliban while at the same time asking for their help.
In a series of recent speeches and interviews, President Hamid Karzai has sought to balance inflammatory remarks that Pakistan is fighting a proxy war in Afghanistan with conciliatory appeals for greater cooperation among neighbors.
Last week, for example, Karzai signed a strategic partnership agreement with India, Pakistan’s arch-rival, but on the same trip he called Pakistan a “twin brother” and the key to long-term peace. After years of failed efforts to talk directly with the Taliban, Karzai has decided he must talk through Pakistan to make progress.
“When President Karzai says we want to talk to Pakistan, it doesn’t mean we are at war with Pakistan,” Mohammed Umer Daudzai, Afghanistan’s ambassador to Pakistan, said in an interview. “It means all the other contacts didn’t work. We want to go through Pakistan for any dialogue with the Taliban.”
Afghanistan’s new position in some ways mirrors the Obama administration’s own dilemma with Pakistan. Many U.S. officials are convinced that Pakistan’s intelligence agency is helping insurgents fight in Afghanistan, but the Americans want to avoid ruining what cooperation remains.
But Pakistan’s firm denials that it is supporting the Taliban and its anger at the Afghan and U.S. accusations suggest it might have little inclination to change course.
Tension rose again Saturday when Afghan officials accused Pakistan of launching rockets over the border into Konar province. Janan Musazai, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s Foreign Ministry, said the government had summoned Pakistan’s ambassador in Kabul for an explanation.
The governor of Konar, Fazilullah Wahedi, said 30 rockets, fired from a Pakistani military base in Dir, landed in two districts of the province and wounded four people. Pakistani officials denied such a shelling took place. In the past, Pakistan has said some firing at insurgents has strayed across the border.
‘Easy punching bag’
Karzai has been vague about how he wants to engage with Pakistan to further peace talks. Afghan officials said the first step is to convene a meeting of a joint peace commission, established in June, that includes Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and the heads of the army and intelligence services, and their Afghan counterparts.
U.S. officials support Karzai’s call for engaging the Taliban through Pakistani government officials. Their own efforts to meet with insurgents have at times mirrored the Afghan approach — a reported meeting between U.S. officials and representatives of the Taliban-affiliated Haqqani insurgent network was brokered by Pakistani intelligence.
Instead of dealing with “shadow intermediaries,” Karzai wants to pursue reconciliation “in a way that’s more focused with established interlocutors, which the government of Pakistan would be one. We welcome that,” said a senior U.S. official in Afghanistan, speaking on the condition of anonymity in keeping with diplomatic protocol.
But Pakistan is angry that it has been made the world’s scapegoat for the decade-long war in Afghanistan. Pakistani officials have said that they would help with negotiations but that the United States must decide whether it wants to continue fighting in Afghanistan or make peace.
“As long as there are coalition forces in Afghanistan, the relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan will never really attain their full potential. There will always be a problem,” said Rustam Shah Mohmand, former Pakistani ambassador to Kabul.
Some noted that Karzai’s more aggressive tone — he told the BBC on Friday that the Taliban couldn’t “move a finger” without Pakistani support — followed remarks last month by Adm. Mike Mullen, the recently retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who called the Haqqani network a “veritable arm” of Pakistan’s intelligence service.
“Pakistan is an easy punching bag,” said Pakistani Sen. Salim Saifullah Khan, an opposition lawmaker who chairs the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee.
“There is still a lot of sympathy” in Pakistan toward the Taliban, Khan said, “but to say that the state is involved, I think that’s unfair.”
Karzai’s new stance has been months in the making. With the killings this summer of his half brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, who carried out the president’s agenda in Kandahar, and another top ally, former governor Jan Mohammad Khan, the president’s influence over his base in southern Afghanistan was dealt a powerful blow.
‘Pakistanis will react’
Karzai has become more vulnerable to criticism from his rivals from the north, primarily the ethnic Tajiks, who disagree with what they consider his policy of “appeasement” by inviting the Taliban to talk peace.
When a suicide bomber last month killed peace envoy and former president Burhanuddin Rabbani, a Tajik leader who helped buffer Karzai from other northern opponents, Karzai’s position deteriorated even further. Afghan and U.S. officials said Karzai was forced to concede some ground to this emboldened opposition. Laying the blame on Pakistan and stepping back from direct talks with the Taliban was one way to do that.
But at a meeting in Kabul after Rabbani’s death, Vice President Mohammed Fahim, Interior Minister Bismillah Khan Mohammadi and other leaders discussed how negotiating with the Taliban had failed and that Pakistani intelligence was behind this killing, one participant said.
Some at the meeting thought that “as long as Karzai is in this country, there is no hope,” the participant said. An aide to Fahim confirmed that the meeting took place but denied that the criticism of Karzai was so stark.
Parliament member Yonus Qanooni said in an interview that blaming Pakistan was a “positive step” but that Karzai’s decision to keep pursuing negotiations was “a huge mistake.”
Pressure was also growing on Karzai among his supporters. In early August, a delegation of southern tribal elders and politicians told Karzai that his “lenient style” toward the Taliban was counterproductive and that “Pakistan was the main player and we have to start talks with them,” said Aman Mohammad Hotak, the head of Uruzgan’s provincial council.
Blaming Pakistan publicly, particularly when seeking its help, risks undermining peace talks before they start.
“If Karzai continues with anger, he will get it back,” said Rasul Baksh Rais, a political science professor at Lahore University of Management Sciences. “I think the Pakistanis will react. They won’t stay as cautious as they have been.”
Brulliard reported from Islamabad. Special correspondents Sayed Salahuddin and Javed Hamdard in Kabul contributed to this report.
Execution video shows Afghan tribal justice still enforced
By Nick Paton Walsh and Moni Basu, CNN
October 9, 2011
Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- On his knees, Nawroz prays. He is a condemned man about to die in a brutal way.
His crime: The killing of his lover's husband.
The judge: A local warlord in Kand, Afghanistan.
The executioner: The victim's father.
A mobile phone video captured the grisly scene.
Many have gathered to watch this act, sitting on dusty earth, in dappled shade.
Nawroz, wrapped in a white shawl, gets up from his prayer mat. His alleged victim's father is led by another man to Nawroz. "Hold the gun right," the man tells the father.
Bang.
Nawroz falls to the ground.
Two more shots ring out.
The warlord ordered the man to pull the trigger twice, but he kept on, unable to deliver a swift fatal shot.
"Stop shooting, you donkey," the spectators say.
"He's still alive," says one.
But not for long.
This is not a video taken before 2001, in the days when the Taliban ruled and Kabul's stadium was reserved not for soccer, but public executions. It's from last month.
After a decade of the U.S.-led war to defeat extremism in Afghanistan, feudal justice still exists.
In remote Kand, outside the reach of NATO or the Afghan government, warlord Mullah Mustafa and his men rule by the gun. Mustafa helps keep the Taliban at bay, the people say, so the government lets him run his own fiefdom.
It's not the sort of compromise the United States imagined a decade ago, bringing a type of justice that's swift and brutal.
Human Rights Watch has said that in large parts of Afghanistan, no formal judicial system is in place and only tribal and other customary forms of justice are practiced.
And a scathing report issued last year by the International Crisis Group described Afghanistan's judicial system as being "in a catastrophic state of disrepair.
"A growing majority of Afghans have been forced to accept the rough justice of Taliban and criminal power brokers in areas of the country that lie beyond government control."
The report went on to say that the United States has not paid the same attention to justice reform as it has to other aspects of nation building.
"Its investment in judicial institutions is modest, as opposed to the billions invested in standing up the Afghan army and police," the report said.
The U.S. Agency for International Development allocated only 1% of its Afghanistan budget between 2002 and 2007 -- $64 million -- to supporting the establishment of rule of law, the report said.
Human rights monitors have pressed President Hamid Karzai's government to prioritize the establishment of a professional judiciary. But Nawroz's execution is more evidence that Afghanistan has a long way to go.
There have been other cases that have sparked outrage.
In 2006, Abdul Rahman was arrested and threatened with death for converting to Christianity. Last year, the Taliban ordered the first public executions by stoning since their fall from power -- a young couple who had eloped died in horrific fashion.
Jalaludin, who witnessed Nawroz's execution, said Mustafa gathered local mullahs to reach a verdict according to sharia, or Islamic law.
"The mullahs asked the father to forgive Nawroz and to take some of his family's land and women in compensation," he said. "But the father refused, so the mullahs ordered an execution."
Nawroz tried to buy his release, but Mustafa refused, Jalaludin said. He's not one to take bribes.
After the killing, Nawroz first said he had been helped by his cousins, according to Abdul Gafor, one of Nawroz's cousins.
"For that reason, we were interrogated and beaten a lot during the questioning," Gafor said.
But later, when questioned by Mustafa, Nawroz changed his story and said he had killed alone, Gafor said.
Another cousin, Sikander, wished for law and order.
"We'd like strong government," he said. "There's no police or government presence here, and Mullah Mustafa has government contacts."
Nawroz was a man whose jealousy allegedly led him to kill the man married to his lover. It's a story that has played out countless times in countless places. But here, in Kand, there was no trial, no jury of peers. Nawroz's punishment was strictly an eye for an eye, meted out in frightful fashion.
CNN's Nick Paton Walsh reported from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Moni Basu reported from Atlanta.
More Deaths Reported After Clashes In Afghanistan
October 9, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Two soldiers from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan were killed by an insurgent attack in the southern part of the country on October 8.
A NATO statement released on October 9 about the deaths did not provide further details.
The deaths bring to six the number of foreign troops killed in Afghanistan so far this month, with a total of 460 deaths among foreign troops in the country during 2011.
Meanwhile, in a separate clash, Afghan police say eight insurgents and an Afghan police officer were killed on October 8 in the southwestern province of Nimroz.
The provincial police chief in Nimroz, General Abdul Jabar Perdali, said the deaths occurred during a gun battle that lasted five hours.
compiled from agency reports
Afghan police kill 11 insurgents, detain 19 others
KABUL, Oct. 9 (Xinhua) -- The Afghan police backed by army and NATO-led Coalition forces have killed 11 insurgents and detained 19 others in different parts of the country over the past 24 hours, Afghan Interior Ministry said on Sunday.
"Afghan National Police (ANP) in collaboration with army and coalition forces launched 10 joint operations in Kunar, Kunduz, Kandahar, Helmand, Zabul, Uruzgan, Khost and Nimroz province over the last 24 hours, killing 11 armed insurgents and capturing 19 suspects,"the ministry said in a statement.
A handful of weapons and nine anti-vehciel mines were also found during the mentioned operations, it said.
Taliban militants have yet to make comments.
Separately, ANP secured safe release of a high school student who was kidnapped by unknown men Bati Kot District of eastern Nangarhar province on Saturday.
Afghan and NATO-led coalition forces keep up pressure on insurgents all over the country as over 360 insurgents had been killed and around 430 detained by joint forces in September alone, according the interior ministry statements.
Special Ops, CIA First In, Last Out Of Afghanistan
The Associated Press October 8, 2011
FORT BRAGG, N.C. - They were the first Americans into Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks and will probably be the last U.S. forces to leave.
As most American troops prepare to withdraw in 2014, the CIA and military special operations forces to be left behind are girding for the next great pivot of the campaign, one that could stretch their war up to another decade.
The war's 10th anniversary Friday recalled the beginnings of a conflict that drove the Taliban from power and lasted far longer than was imagined.
"We put the CIA guys in first," scant weeks after the towers in New York fell, said Lt. Gen. John Mulholland, then a colonel with U.S. special operations forces, in charge of the military side of the operation. U.S. Special Forces Green Berets, together with CIA officers, helped coordinate anti-Taliban forces on the ground with U.S. firepower from the air, to topple the Taliban and close in on al-Qaida.
Recent remarks from the White House suggest the CIA and special operations forces will be hunting al-Qaida and working with local forces long after most U.S. troops have left.
When Afghan troops take the lead in 2014, "the U.S. remaining force will be basically an enduring presence force focused on counterterrorism," said National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, in remarks in Washington in mid-September. That will be augmented by teams that will continue to train Afghan forces, added White House spokesman Tommy Vietor.
The White House insists this does not mean abandoning the strategy of counterinsurgency, in which large numbers of troops are needed to keep the population safe. It simply means replacing the surge of 33,000 U.S. troops, as it withdraws over the next year, with newly trained Afghan ones, according to senior White House Afghan war adviser Doug Lute
It also means U.S. special operators and CIA officers will be there for the next turn in the campaign. That's the moment when Afghans will either prove themselves able to withstand a promised Taliban resurgence, or find themselves overwhelmed by seasoned Taliban fighters.
"We're moving toward an increased special operations role," together with U.S. intelligence, Mulholland said, "whether it's counterterrorism-centric, or counterterrorism blended with counterinsurgency."
As out-going head of U.S. Army Special Operations Command, Mulholland has been in charge of feeding a steady stream of troops to commanders in the field. He knows they need as many special operations troops as he can produce and send. Those special operations forces under his command include U.S. Army Rangers, known for their raiding operations against militant targets, and U.S. Special Forces Green Berets, whose stock in trade is teaching local forces to fight a common enemy so the U.S. doesn't have to.
A foundation for special-operations-style counterinsurgency is already under way — staffed primarily by the Green Berets — with the establishment of hundreds of sites in remote Afghan villages where the U.S. troops are paired with Afghan local tribesmen trained by the Americans, Mulholland explained.
The program has been so successful in the eyes of NATO commanders that they've assigned other special operators like Navy SEALs to the mission, and even paired elite troops with conventional forces to stretch the numbers and cover more territory.
Senior U.S. officials have spoken of keeping a mix of 10,000 of both raiding and training special operations forces in Afghanistan, and drawing down to between 20,000 and 30,000 conventional forces to provide logistics and support. But at this point, the figures are as fuzzy as the future strategy.
Whatever happens with U.S. troops, intelligence officers know they will be a key component.
A senior U.S. official tasked with mapping out their role envisioned a possible future in which Afghan forces are able to hold Kabul and other urban areas, but the Taliban comes back in remote valleys or even whole provinces.
In that event, the official said, CIA and special operations forces would continue to hunt al-Qaida in Taliban areas the Afghan forces can't secure. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss planning for sensitive operations.
"If the CIA built an intelligence network that could provide special operations forces with targets, we could do the job," said Maj. Gen. Bennet S. Sacolick, who runs the U.S. Army's Special Warfare Center and School.
The only question will be which organization is in charge, and that will depend on the Afghan government, the senior U.S. official said. If Afghan authorities are comfortable with U.S. raiders continuing to operate openly, the special operations forces can lead, the official said. If they want a more covert presence, the CIA would lead, with special operation raiders working through them.
The other branch of special operations — the Green Berets and others Mulholland mentioned who specialize in training — would continue to support the Afghans in remote locations, trying to keep the Taliban from spreading.
The notion of a pared down U.S. fighting force, consisting of a latticework of intelligence and special operators, plus the far-flung units in the field, has spurred some criticism on Capitol Hill.
"You cannot protect the United States' safety with counterterrorism waged from afar," said Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee's emerging threats panel. His concern is that the White House has paid too little attention to how special operations and intelligence will keep the Taliban from overwhelming Afghanistan's remote terrain.
"I would like to know how many special operations forces they need, and how many conventional troops they propose to support them," he said, "and a rough time line."
The smaller special operations footprint could work, if it's part of a larger tapestry of counterinsurgency efforts, said retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, former commander of the Afghan campaign.
"I believe direct action operations are only effective when part of a holistic strategy," McChrystal said in an interview. "That does not necessarily imply large U.S. forces or responsibility, but it must include a spectrum of efforts that addresses root causes, partners with indigenous governments and efforts, and approaches the causes as well as the symptoms on extremism and-or terrorism."
In other words, diplomats and aid groups would have to replace the current military efforts at building Afghan government and services — and do it without a large footprint of U.S. forces to provide them security.
The smaller numbers would also put the U.S. troops left behind at greater risk, officials concede, with fewer support troops to rush to the rescue.
That's the mission a group of elite special operators was on in August, flying into a remote valley to aid another group of U.S. raiders on the ground, when the Taliban shot down their Chinook helicopter, killing 38 U.S. and Afghan forces on board.
Asked if it could happen again, Mulholland stopped and bowed his head, taking a long pause to think back to how it started.
"From the beginning, we accepted that risk," Mulholland said, remembering the early days when he sent load after load of special operations forces into Afghanistan, with no sure way to get them out.
He paused again. "We still do."
Policeman, 10 insurgents killed in Afghanistan
KABUL, Oct. 9 (Xinhua) -- A policeman and 10 insurgents were killed on Saturday when gunbattle broke out in Afghanistan's Nimroz province 790 km southwest of capital city of Kabul, provincial police chief said on Sunday.
"A unit of Afghan National Police (ANP) was travelling to Chahar Burjak district Saturday noon but a group of armed insurgents ambushed their convoy triggering a firefight lasting for hours," Nimroz provincial police chief, Abdul Jabar Purdili told Xinhua.
According to Purdili, one policeman was killed and two others injured in the incident.
"A total of 10 armed insurgents have been killed and ANP confiscate a handful of weapons and several motorcycles on the ground," the police official said.
Taliban insurgents, whose regime was toppled in a U.S.-led incursion in late 2001, have intensified activities since the militant group announced to launch spring offensive against Afghan security forces and NATO-led troops stationed in Afghanistan on May 1.
The militants group has yet to make comments.
In another development, Afghan and NATO-led Coalition forces launched a night raid operation in Spin Ghar district of eastern Nangarhar province Saturday night killing one person and capturing four suspected militants, spokesman for provincial government, Ahmad Zia Abdul Zia told Xinhua on Sunday.
However, Malik Usman, a tribal elder in Spin Ghar district, said that the killed man, 70, was a civilian and had no links with the anti-government insurgents.
2 NATO oil tankers torched in Pakistan
ISLAMABAD, Oct. 9 (Xinhua) -- Unknown armed men in southwestern Pakistan Sunday torched two oil tankers, carrying oil for the NATO forces in the neighboring Afghanistan, police in the region said.
Police said that Afghanistan-bound two oil tankers were coming from the port city of Karachi when armed men riding a motorbike set ablaze the two tankers in Bolan district of Balochistan province.
No one was hurt in the attack. The gunmen fled after the attack. Police and fire brigade personnel reached the site and extinguished the fire.
No group claimed responsibility for the attack. But suspected militants routinely target NATO supplies trucks and oil tankers mostly in Pakistan's northwest and attacks in Balochistan are rare.
Officials say that about 70 percent supplies for up to 160,000 U.S.-led NATO troops are transported through Pakistan.
The United States has signed deal with Russia for alternate supply route in view of frequent attacks on NATO trucks in Pakistan.
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Film about an expedition up Afghanistan’s highest mountain doesn’t tell all
By Associated Press, October 9
KABUL, Afghanistan — At 2:30 p.m. on July 19, 2009, the first Afghans to climb their country’s highest mountain unfurled a national flag on the icy peak in the blue above the clouds.
The celebration was fleeting. Minutes later, they headed down with a French companion, buffeted by violent gusts of wind and worried that exhaustion and a lack of oxygen would imperil their descent.
They aimed to deliver a message one doesn’t hear much, that Afghans can succeed. To say, according to a new film about the adventure, that there is more to Afghanistan than the Taliban, opium and burqas, the head-to-toe garments worn by some Muslim women.
Yet the upbeat tale masks a back story of reversals and obstacles that parallels the challenges of operating in a nation eroded by conflict. The saga is about rivalry, persistence, and tension that can flare among Afghan officials and foreign benefactors and promoters with clashing agendas. On a tiny scale, the story echoes other moviemaking ordeals. The filming of “Apocalypse Now,” a 1979 award-winner set in the Vietnam War, was so fraught with drama that a documentary was made about its production.
On Sept. 22, at Kabul’s French Institute, a boxy, 1970s-era structure, more than 100 Afghans and foreigners attended the first public screening of “24,000 Feet Above The War,” a 52-minute documentary that profiles four Afghans who sought to scale Mount Noshaq, a 7,492-meter-high (24,580-foot-high) peak — Afghanistan’s highest — in the Hindu Kush mountain range in the northeast.
Noshaq, close to the Himalayas, presides over a sliver of land, the Wakhan Corridor, that borders China, Pakistan and Tajikistan. Its isolation has largely spared it the violence that has gripped much of the rest of Afghanistan. An annual trickle of international tourists, many of them veteran climbers, is returning after a generation’s absence.
The September film screening, meant to be a celebration of hope, came two days after a suicide bomber killed former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, head of a government-backed peace council trying to reconcile with the insurgency.
The crowd applauded the wiry, weathered Afghan climbers who ascended the auditorium stage after the lights came up. Some had worked as guides and porters for foreign expeditions up Noshaq, going as far as base camps but never to the top.
In the 2009 bid, helped by French climbers, Malang Daria and Amruddin Sanjar reached the summit. Another climber, Afiat Khan, turned back because of altitude sickness, and the fourth, Gurg Ali, accompanied him for his safety.
At the screening, Daria wore a blazer over his traditional garb, a shalwar kameez. He embraced his role as an ambassador for Afghan pride, describing what he felt at the peak in this way:
“I saw all of the Afghan people at the top of Noshaq.”
It was the message that Louis Meunier, a 32-year-old trekker from Paris who crossed Afghanistan on horseback in 2005, had hoped to generate during the several years he spent preparing the three-week expedition and then producing the documentary from 50 hours of footage. The total cost was 90,000 euros ($122,000). Meunier didn’t make it to the summit because of acute bronchitis.
The film images are lush and the cutting is crisp. Meunier shows the so-called “Wakhan Tigers” during nearly a month of training at Chamonix in the French Alps; setting off with 70 porters, each carrying a 23-kilogram load to base camp; picking their way with crampons and ice axes in the upper reaches; celebrating at the summit; and returning to garlands of flowers in a village below.
As the climbing party sets out, a police chief arrives and Meunier fears he will cancel the project — “everything being possible in Afghanistan,” the narration says. But the officer just wishes them well. Then the team takes a rocky, steep route to avoid a minefield.
“The story behind the movie is much more complicated than it looks,” Meunier wrote in an email from France after attending the screening. “I decided to focus on the positive aspects of the expedition, to outline the fact that the Afghan climbers were willing to send a message of peace in their war-torn country.”
Trouble began long before the climb when Meunier and two French associates fell out with the French head of an adventure sports company who had promised financing. Later, Meunier got support from the French Embassy and the Aga Khan Foundation.
In other setbacks, a French production company dropped out, and the Afghan Ministry of Culture and Information objected. At a base camp, Meunier was informed by telephone that authorities might send helicopters to bring down the group. He quickly called the French Embassy, which used its influence to save the mission, according to Meunier.
Footage of his urgent phone conversations was cut from the film. The Afghan climbers, who are Shia Ismaili Muslims, speculated the culture ministry had wanted someone from Afghanistan’s biggest, mostly Sunni ethnic group, the Pashtuns, to be involved in the climb.
Najib Manalai, a Pashtun who was deputy culture minister at the time, said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press that there was “absolutely” no ethnic motivation for opposing the project, citing ethnically diverse teams in cricket and other sports.
“My proposal to the French was to give us, rather than this very symbolic, one-shot action, investment in a mountain-climbing course in Kabul where we would have trained tens of Afghani young people, who could have climbed many of the summits of Afghanistan,” he said.
He said the climb organizers sidestepped his ministry by getting support from other authorities, possibly in the presidency, and that the outcome “pleased some French and showed the incapacity of the Afghan government to take care of its interests for the long term.”
Manalai, now an adviser to the finance minister, spoke of tension between the “ideological concerns” of some Western donors and the “fundamental needs” of Afghans. He recalled telling French actors that street theater in Afghanistan was marginal, that their plan to stage shows would have little meaning and that any investment should be directed elsewhere.
Meunier is mild of manner and lanky of build. He has a rugged verve for the outdoors and Afghanistan. He arrived in 2002 for a six-month stint as an aid worker and ended up staying seven years. In Kabul, he played buzkashi, in which horsemen vie for a headless goat carcass.
“Why did it take me so long to edit the movie?” he wrote of the Noshaq documentary. “I was reluctant to address all these issues in a film. A few months later, when I decided to do it anyway, I did a first edit without starring myself. But the narrative was not good, and lacked direction. So I did a second edit... speaking in the first person, in French and English.”
It took another six months to get a $42,000 grant from the U.S. Embassy to dub the movie into Dari and Pashto, the two main languages in Afghanistan, produce DVDs and cover other costs. The embassy is sending copies of the film to provincial offices so more Afghans can see it. The U.N. mission plans to organize a national tour for the climbers.
The documentary helps “put a happy face” on Afghanistan, said Matthew Case, a public affairs officer at the U.S. Embassy, which was targeted on Sept. 13 by insurgents during an attack that killed seven Afghans. No embassy staff members were hurt.
“Afghanistan is not just about the war,” Case said. “There are people here trying to do well and survive and live a normal, quasi-normal, life.”
The Afghans who climbed Mount Noshaq hope to use their experience to promote tourism. At the film screening, Daria said he was willing to set up a mountaineering school for Afghans, but needed equipment because “I don’t have anything.”
As for Meunier, he is working on what is surely another monumental project, a film about the last Kyrgyz nomads of Afghanistan.
Assange, Jemima Khan lead Afghanistan protest in London
AFP – Sat, Oct 8, 2011.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and socialite Jemima Khan led a protest in London Saturday against the war in Afghanistan, 10 years after the United States and Britain went to war against the Taliban.
Organisers the Stop The War Coalition claimed 5,000 people attended the protest in central London's historic Trafalgar Square. London's Metropolitan Police did not give a figure.
"There comes a moment when you have to ask what is more dangerous, terrorism or counterterrorism," Khan, the former wife of Pakistani cricketer turned politician Imran Khan, told the crowd.
"Afghanistan is still the worst place in the world for women to live.... So by any standards, our mission in Afghanistan has failed."
Assange, who is currently under strict bail conditions as he fights extradition from Britain to Sweden on charges of rape, compared journalists and soldiers to war criminals.
"When we understand that wars come about as a result of lies, peddled to the British public and the American public and public all over Europe and other countries, then who are the war criminals? It is not just leaders, it is not just soldiers, it is journalists, journalists are war criminals," said Assange.
Assange, whose anti-secrecy website has published tens of thousands of leaked US diplomatic cables, won the Martha Gelhorn Prize for journalism in June.
Britain is the second biggest contributor of troops in Afghanistan after the United States, with 9,500 troops in the country.
A total of 382 British troops have died there since the beginning of military operations in Afghanistan in October 2001, which were launched following the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.
Western combat troops are due to pull out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014 but a survey published Thursday showed 57 percent of Britons want them to be withdrawn immediately.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
The United States cannot afford to indulge Pakistan's support for terrorism any longer. The risks of sticking with the status quo are greater than the risks of adopting a tougher approach.
By Peter Tomsen October 9, 2011 Los Angeles Times
How are insurgents able to continue launching deadly attacks in Afghanistan 10 years into the U.S.-led war there? Part of the blame — perhaps even the bulk of it — lies with Pakistan's army and its powerful intelligence arm, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, known by the acronym ISI.
For decades, Pakistan has conducted a proxy war in Afghanistan through Islamist insurgent groups that it has created, nurtured and supplied. There is considerable evidence that these groups are managed not by "rogue" ISI elements, as has sometimes been asserted, but by the agency itself. The ISI is a disciplined military institution that answers to the orders of the military command, a point former Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf often emphasized. The current Pakistani army chief, army Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, was director of the ISI under Musharraf, and he headed the organization during 2005, when the Taliban began to make a strategic comeback in Afghanistan, operating from protected sanctuaries in Pakistan.
Today, three Pakistani-supported proxy groups are fueling the insurgency in Afghanistan: the Quetta Shura, the Haqqani network and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's smaller terrorist group, Hezb-i-Islami. Not one of them has been placed on the U.S. State Department's official list of foreign terrorist organizations.
Putting these groups on the list would make them subject to a range of U.S. sanctions, and it should be done immediately. There is extensive documentation in the public record — and extensive classified intelligence documentation — of their attacks on American forces inside Afghanistan, including the Haqqani network's deadly attacks at the U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters last month. As Adm. Michael G. Mullen, outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, noted in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee recently, the Haqqani network "acts as a veritable arm" of the ISI.
The U.S. campaign against global terrorism cannot succeed as long as Pakistan's army and ISI continue to support terrorist sanctuaries and training facilities inside Pakistan. The same training camps used to prepare thousands of Afghan, Pakistani and Arab fanatics to cross into Afghanistan also churn out global terrorists like the Pakistani American Faisal Shahzad, who tried to bomb Times Square last year.
Americans need to realize that terrorists' attempts to strike the United States from sanctuaries in Pakistan will occur again and again unless their bases are closed down. Bombs targeting American cities will inevitably become more lethal with time. Today they are conventional. Tomorrow they are likely to be biological, chemical or nuclear.
Washington has long considered Pakistan an important ally, and so has tread lightly for fear of alienating the nuclear-armed and strategically located country. But it is time to add an "or else" to our dealings with Islamabad.
In the weeks since Mullen's harsh language before the Senate, members of the Obama administration have sought to soften the rhetoric somewhat. White House spokesman Jay Carney described Mullen's comments as consistent with U.S. policy but said that he would not have used Mullen's language. Other officials, speaking on background, said Mullen's remarks weren't reflective of U.S. policy.
But there are also indications that the U.S. could be finally ready to adopt a tougher approach. The day after Mullen spoke, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, publicly requested "that the State Department take the additional step of listing the [Haqqani] network as a foreign terrorist organization," noting that the organization "meets the [legal] standards" for this designation. Last week, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the State Department was completing a "final formal review" preparatory to listing the organization. And at his Wednesday White House press conference President Obama warned that "there's no doubt that, you know, we're not going to feel comfortable with a long-term relationship with Pakistan if we don't think that they are mindful of our interests as well."
These are steps in the right direction, but they don't go nearly far enough. The George W. Bush and Obama administrations' "soft" policy of persuasion mixed with bountiful aid and expectations of progress has failed. The U.S. needs to take a much harder stance on Pakistan's promotion of Islamist terrorism in the region and globally.
Washington has the capability to bring great pressure to bear on Pakistan to encourage it to change course. The U.S. should privately and clearly convey to Pakistan's army and ISI that it will be compelled to implement escalating measures if Pakistan does not close down the ISI-sustained terrorist sanctuaries in Pakistan. The U.S. should also enlist other nations for regional and global coalitions to contain the terrorism coming from Pakistan. No Muslim government supports the sanctuaries in Pakistan exporting violent extremism. Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, Afghanistan, the Central Asian republics and Western Europe all wish to see them dismantled.
Among other pressures the U.S. can bring to bear are the severance of all military and economic aid, the designation of the three Afghan terrorist organizations as foreign terrorist organizations, the naming of Pakistan itself as a state sponsor of terrorism and the declassification of information exposing the terrorist bases in Pakistan and the ISI's involvement in them.
Pakistan has hinted lately that it would turn to China and Iran if the United States ramps up pressure. But neither China nor Iran would like to see a Taliban government return to Kabul, nor would they wish to spend the huge sums it would take to shore up Pakistan's listing economy.
The Obama administration needs to implement a Pakistan policy that serves America's national security interests. It must be constructed for the long term and be responsive to Pakistan's actions. There should be incentives employed to encourage the dismantling of terrorists organizations that the ISI has created and sustained. And there should be consequences if it does not.
The United States cannot afford to indulge Pakistan's support for terrorism any longer. The risks of sticking with the status quo are greater than the risks of adopting a tougher approach.
Peter Tomsen is the author of the just-published "The Wars of Afghanistan." He was U.S. special envoy and ambassador to Afghanistan from 1989 to 1992.
Lawmakers End Boycott of Parliament in Afghanistan
New York Times By JACK HEALY October 8, 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan - Near the white tent where an ousted Afghan lawmaker lay moaning in bed, slowly starving herself in political protest, her onetime colleagues in Parliament congratulated themselves Saturday on their decision to return to work.
More than a month had passed since dozens of lawmakers walked off their jobs to protest the disputed results of last year’s parliamentary elections, effectively paralyzing the fractured National Assembly by denying it a quorum. On Saturday, still seething at President Hamid Karzai and with no resolution to the deeper grievances crippling Afghanistan’s government, the dissident members nevertheless ended their boycott and marched back into the assembly.
“We had to come back to work together, to pass laws,” said Shekiba Hashimi, one of the more than 70 members of Parliament who had boycotted the sessions. “The government could not do anything. Everything stopped.”
Not that much was accomplished during Saturday’s session. Lawmakers made impassioned speeches and left after about an hour. Bitter divisions remained over a recent decision by the country’s election commission to replace nine members of Parliament with losing candidates who had challenged the results of the fraud-plagued election.
For the past week, the outrage over that decision has been on display just outside the main gates of Parliament, in the white tent occupied by Semin Barakzai, a lawmaker from the western province of Herat who was one of the nine to lose their seats.
Writing letters and holding news conferences got her no traction, supporters said, so Ms. Barakzai decided to take a page from nonviolent protest methods more familiar in India than here: She would not eat or drink until she got her job back.
“No one heard my voice,” she said Saturday morning, glassy-eyed and listless. “I had no other option.”
Ms. Barakzai lay under a heap of blankets, her black head scarf askew. A women’s rights advocate sat at her bedside, rubbing her wrists, and members of Parliament came to offer words of encouragement and concern. She waved away doctors who came to take her blood pressure and who urged her to drink water.
“I’m not taking any medicine,” she told the doctors.
Outside, they said she did not seem to understand — or care about — the toll that severe dehydration could take on her kidneys. On Saturday night, the public health minister visited and persuaded Ms. Barakzai to drink a bit of water.
With few powerful supporters to protect her, Ms. Barakzai became a casualty of political compromise as Afghan officials tried to resolve a yearlong dispute that had alienated Parliament from the president and pushed the country to the brink of a constitutional crisis.
In June, a special court set up by Mr. Karzai to judge allegations of electoral fraud ruled that 62 seats in Parliament should be awarded to candidates who had challenged the outcome of the elections — many of them allies of the president. That decision undercut the election commission, which had earlier declared the results of the vote should stand, and set off angry protests from members of Parliament.
Mr. Karzai, bowing to overwhelming pressure, scrapped the special court and publicly affirmed the election commission’s final authority over the vote, but suggested that the commission take another look at the results. It did, and ruled in August that Ms. Barakzai and eight others should lose their seats.
A majority of lawmakers, who had also protested the special court, vowed to fight the decision, but with most of them having retained their seats, those like Ms. Barakzai were largely left behind as the protest petered out. She told people close to her that she would continue her vigil, though it was impossible to say for how long. “She told me the rules have been broken, the laws have been stepped on, and that she was ready to sacrifice her life,” said her husband, Mohammed.
Sharifullah Sahak contributed reporting.
Expelled Afghan Female Lawmaker Enters 8th Day of Hunger Strike
VOA News October 9, 2011
A female Afghan politician expelled from parliament for alleged voter fraud is vowing to continue a more than week-long hunger strike until she is reinstated.
Sunday is the eighth day of Simeen Barakzai's hunger strike in a protest tent outside parliament in the capital, Kabul. A doctor told the French news agency that Barakzai's health was worsening to a critical condition.
Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission expelled her and eight other lawmakers from the national assembly in August to try to resolve long-running allegations of voter fraud against some winners of a parliamentary vote in September 2010. Some lawmakers who boycotted parliament to protest the expulsions returned to their seats on Saturday.
In other developments, the NATO alliance said Sunday two of its service members were killed in an insurgent attack a day earlier in southern Afghanistan. It gave no other details.
NATO also says a combined Afghan and coalition force killed one Taliban militant and captured several others including an insurgent leader during an operation Saturday into Sunday in the eastern province of Nangarhar. It says the captured insurgent leader helped to bring explosives and weapons from Pakistan into Afghanistan.
Afghan government seeks Pakistan’s help in stalled peace process
Washington Post By Joshua Partlow and Karin Brulliard Sunday, October 9, 2011
KABUL - With prospects for peace talks at a new low, the Afghan government is attempting to resuscitate negotiations with a seemingly contradictory approach: publicly bashing the Pakistanis for supporting the Taliban while at the same time asking for their help.
In a series of recent speeches and interviews, President Hamid Karzai has sought to balance inflammatory remarks that Pakistan is fighting a proxy war in Afghanistan with conciliatory appeals for greater cooperation among neighbors.
Last week, for example, Karzai signed a strategic partnership agreement with India, Pakistan’s arch-rival, but on the same trip he called Pakistan a “twin brother” and the key to long-term peace. After years of failed efforts to talk directly with the Taliban, Karzai has decided he must talk through Pakistan to make progress.
“When President Karzai says we want to talk to Pakistan, it doesn’t mean we are at war with Pakistan,” Mohammed Umer Daudzai, Afghanistan’s ambassador to Pakistan, said in an interview. “It means all the other contacts didn’t work. We want to go through Pakistan for any dialogue with the Taliban.”
Afghanistan’s new position in some ways mirrors the Obama administration’s own dilemma with Pakistan. Many U.S. officials are convinced that Pakistan’s intelligence agency is helping insurgents fight in Afghanistan, but the Americans want to avoid ruining what cooperation remains.
But Pakistan’s firm denials that it is supporting the Taliban and its anger at the Afghan and U.S. accusations suggest it might have little inclination to change course.
Tension rose again Saturday when Afghan officials accused Pakistan of launching rockets over the border into Konar province. Janan Musazai, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s Foreign Ministry, said the government had summoned Pakistan’s ambassador in Kabul for an explanation.
The governor of Konar, Fazilullah Wahedi, said 30 rockets, fired from a Pakistani military base in Dir, landed in two districts of the province and wounded four people. Pakistani officials denied such a shelling took place. In the past, Pakistan has said some firing at insurgents has strayed across the border.
‘Easy punching bag’
Karzai has been vague about how he wants to engage with Pakistan to further peace talks. Afghan officials said the first step is to convene a meeting of a joint peace commission, established in June, that includes Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and the heads of the army and intelligence services, and their Afghan counterparts.
U.S. officials support Karzai’s call for engaging the Taliban through Pakistani government officials. Their own efforts to meet with insurgents have at times mirrored the Afghan approach — a reported meeting between U.S. officials and representatives of the Taliban-affiliated Haqqani insurgent network was brokered by Pakistani intelligence.
Instead of dealing with “shadow intermediaries,” Karzai wants to pursue reconciliation “in a way that’s more focused with established interlocutors, which the government of Pakistan would be one. We welcome that,” said a senior U.S. official in Afghanistan, speaking on the condition of anonymity in keeping with diplomatic protocol.
But Pakistan is angry that it has been made the world’s scapegoat for the decade-long war in Afghanistan. Pakistani officials have said that they would help with negotiations but that the United States must decide whether it wants to continue fighting in Afghanistan or make peace.
“As long as there are coalition forces in Afghanistan, the relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan will never really attain their full potential. There will always be a problem,” said Rustam Shah Mohmand, former Pakistani ambassador to Kabul.
Some noted that Karzai’s more aggressive tone — he told the BBC on Friday that the Taliban couldn’t “move a finger” without Pakistani support — followed remarks last month by Adm. Mike Mullen, the recently retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who called the Haqqani network a “veritable arm” of Pakistan’s intelligence service.
“Pakistan is an easy punching bag,” said Pakistani Sen. Salim Saifullah Khan, an opposition lawmaker who chairs the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee.
“There is still a lot of sympathy” in Pakistan toward the Taliban, Khan said, “but to say that the state is involved, I think that’s unfair.”
Karzai’s new stance has been months in the making. With the killings this summer of his half brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, who carried out the president’s agenda in Kandahar, and another top ally, former governor Jan Mohammad Khan, the president’s influence over his base in southern Afghanistan was dealt a powerful blow.
‘Pakistanis will react’
Karzai has become more vulnerable to criticism from his rivals from the north, primarily the ethnic Tajiks, who disagree with what they consider his policy of “appeasement” by inviting the Taliban to talk peace.
When a suicide bomber last month killed peace envoy and former president Burhanuddin Rabbani, a Tajik leader who helped buffer Karzai from other northern opponents, Karzai’s position deteriorated even further. Afghan and U.S. officials said Karzai was forced to concede some ground to this emboldened opposition. Laying the blame on Pakistan and stepping back from direct talks with the Taliban was one way to do that.
But at a meeting in Kabul after Rabbani’s death, Vice President Mohammed Fahim, Interior Minister Bismillah Khan Mohammadi and other leaders discussed how negotiating with the Taliban had failed and that Pakistani intelligence was behind this killing, one participant said.
Some at the meeting thought that “as long as Karzai is in this country, there is no hope,” the participant said. An aide to Fahim confirmed that the meeting took place but denied that the criticism of Karzai was so stark.
Parliament member Yonus Qanooni said in an interview that blaming Pakistan was a “positive step” but that Karzai’s decision to keep pursuing negotiations was “a huge mistake.”
Pressure was also growing on Karzai among his supporters. In early August, a delegation of southern tribal elders and politicians told Karzai that his “lenient style” toward the Taliban was counterproductive and that “Pakistan was the main player and we have to start talks with them,” said Aman Mohammad Hotak, the head of Uruzgan’s provincial council.
Blaming Pakistan publicly, particularly when seeking its help, risks undermining peace talks before they start.
“If Karzai continues with anger, he will get it back,” said Rasul Baksh Rais, a political science professor at Lahore University of Management Sciences. “I think the Pakistanis will react. They won’t stay as cautious as they have been.”
Brulliard reported from Islamabad. Special correspondents Sayed Salahuddin and Javed Hamdard in Kabul contributed to this report.
Execution video shows Afghan tribal justice still enforced
By Nick Paton Walsh and Moni Basu, CNN
October 9, 2011
Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- On his knees, Nawroz prays. He is a condemned man about to die in a brutal way.
His crime: The killing of his lover's husband.
The judge: A local warlord in Kand, Afghanistan.
The executioner: The victim's father.
A mobile phone video captured the grisly scene.
Many have gathered to watch this act, sitting on dusty earth, in dappled shade.
Nawroz, wrapped in a white shawl, gets up from his prayer mat. His alleged victim's father is led by another man to Nawroz. "Hold the gun right," the man tells the father.
Bang.
Nawroz falls to the ground.
Two more shots ring out.
The warlord ordered the man to pull the trigger twice, but he kept on, unable to deliver a swift fatal shot.
"Stop shooting, you donkey," the spectators say.
"He's still alive," says one.
But not for long.
This is not a video taken before 2001, in the days when the Taliban ruled and Kabul's stadium was reserved not for soccer, but public executions. It's from last month.
After a decade of the U.S.-led war to defeat extremism in Afghanistan, feudal justice still exists.
In remote Kand, outside the reach of NATO or the Afghan government, warlord Mullah Mustafa and his men rule by the gun. Mustafa helps keep the Taliban at bay, the people say, so the government lets him run his own fiefdom.
It's not the sort of compromise the United States imagined a decade ago, bringing a type of justice that's swift and brutal.
Human Rights Watch has said that in large parts of Afghanistan, no formal judicial system is in place and only tribal and other customary forms of justice are practiced.
And a scathing report issued last year by the International Crisis Group described Afghanistan's judicial system as being "in a catastrophic state of disrepair.
"A growing majority of Afghans have been forced to accept the rough justice of Taliban and criminal power brokers in areas of the country that lie beyond government control."
The report went on to say that the United States has not paid the same attention to justice reform as it has to other aspects of nation building.
"Its investment in judicial institutions is modest, as opposed to the billions invested in standing up the Afghan army and police," the report said.
The U.S. Agency for International Development allocated only 1% of its Afghanistan budget between 2002 and 2007 -- $64 million -- to supporting the establishment of rule of law, the report said.
Human rights monitors have pressed President Hamid Karzai's government to prioritize the establishment of a professional judiciary. But Nawroz's execution is more evidence that Afghanistan has a long way to go.
There have been other cases that have sparked outrage.
In 2006, Abdul Rahman was arrested and threatened with death for converting to Christianity. Last year, the Taliban ordered the first public executions by stoning since their fall from power -- a young couple who had eloped died in horrific fashion.
Jalaludin, who witnessed Nawroz's execution, said Mustafa gathered local mullahs to reach a verdict according to sharia, or Islamic law.
"The mullahs asked the father to forgive Nawroz and to take some of his family's land and women in compensation," he said. "But the father refused, so the mullahs ordered an execution."
Nawroz tried to buy his release, but Mustafa refused, Jalaludin said. He's not one to take bribes.
After the killing, Nawroz first said he had been helped by his cousins, according to Abdul Gafor, one of Nawroz's cousins.
"For that reason, we were interrogated and beaten a lot during the questioning," Gafor said.
But later, when questioned by Mustafa, Nawroz changed his story and said he had killed alone, Gafor said.
Another cousin, Sikander, wished for law and order.
"We'd like strong government," he said. "There's no police or government presence here, and Mullah Mustafa has government contacts."
Nawroz was a man whose jealousy allegedly led him to kill the man married to his lover. It's a story that has played out countless times in countless places. But here, in Kand, there was no trial, no jury of peers. Nawroz's punishment was strictly an eye for an eye, meted out in frightful fashion.
CNN's Nick Paton Walsh reported from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Moni Basu reported from Atlanta.
More Deaths Reported After Clashes In Afghanistan
October 9, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Two soldiers from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan were killed by an insurgent attack in the southern part of the country on October 8.
A NATO statement released on October 9 about the deaths did not provide further details.
The deaths bring to six the number of foreign troops killed in Afghanistan so far this month, with a total of 460 deaths among foreign troops in the country during 2011.
Meanwhile, in a separate clash, Afghan police say eight insurgents and an Afghan police officer were killed on October 8 in the southwestern province of Nimroz.
The provincial police chief in Nimroz, General Abdul Jabar Perdali, said the deaths occurred during a gun battle that lasted five hours.
compiled from agency reports
Afghan police kill 11 insurgents, detain 19 others
KABUL, Oct. 9 (Xinhua) -- The Afghan police backed by army and NATO-led Coalition forces have killed 11 insurgents and detained 19 others in different parts of the country over the past 24 hours, Afghan Interior Ministry said on Sunday.
"Afghan National Police (ANP) in collaboration with army and coalition forces launched 10 joint operations in Kunar, Kunduz, Kandahar, Helmand, Zabul, Uruzgan, Khost and Nimroz province over the last 24 hours, killing 11 armed insurgents and capturing 19 suspects,"the ministry said in a statement.
A handful of weapons and nine anti-vehciel mines were also found during the mentioned operations, it said.
Taliban militants have yet to make comments.
Separately, ANP secured safe release of a high school student who was kidnapped by unknown men Bati Kot District of eastern Nangarhar province on Saturday.
Afghan and NATO-led coalition forces keep up pressure on insurgents all over the country as over 360 insurgents had been killed and around 430 detained by joint forces in September alone, according the interior ministry statements.
Special Ops, CIA First In, Last Out Of Afghanistan
The Associated Press October 8, 2011
FORT BRAGG, N.C. - They were the first Americans into Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks and will probably be the last U.S. forces to leave.
As most American troops prepare to withdraw in 2014, the CIA and military special operations forces to be left behind are girding for the next great pivot of the campaign, one that could stretch their war up to another decade.
The war's 10th anniversary Friday recalled the beginnings of a conflict that drove the Taliban from power and lasted far longer than was imagined.
"We put the CIA guys in first," scant weeks after the towers in New York fell, said Lt. Gen. John Mulholland, then a colonel with U.S. special operations forces, in charge of the military side of the operation. U.S. Special Forces Green Berets, together with CIA officers, helped coordinate anti-Taliban forces on the ground with U.S. firepower from the air, to topple the Taliban and close in on al-Qaida.
Recent remarks from the White House suggest the CIA and special operations forces will be hunting al-Qaida and working with local forces long after most U.S. troops have left.
When Afghan troops take the lead in 2014, "the U.S. remaining force will be basically an enduring presence force focused on counterterrorism," said National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, in remarks in Washington in mid-September. That will be augmented by teams that will continue to train Afghan forces, added White House spokesman Tommy Vietor.
The White House insists this does not mean abandoning the strategy of counterinsurgency, in which large numbers of troops are needed to keep the population safe. It simply means replacing the surge of 33,000 U.S. troops, as it withdraws over the next year, with newly trained Afghan ones, according to senior White House Afghan war adviser Doug Lute
It also means U.S. special operators and CIA officers will be there for the next turn in the campaign. That's the moment when Afghans will either prove themselves able to withstand a promised Taliban resurgence, or find themselves overwhelmed by seasoned Taliban fighters.
"We're moving toward an increased special operations role," together with U.S. intelligence, Mulholland said, "whether it's counterterrorism-centric, or counterterrorism blended with counterinsurgency."
As out-going head of U.S. Army Special Operations Command, Mulholland has been in charge of feeding a steady stream of troops to commanders in the field. He knows they need as many special operations troops as he can produce and send. Those special operations forces under his command include U.S. Army Rangers, known for their raiding operations against militant targets, and U.S. Special Forces Green Berets, whose stock in trade is teaching local forces to fight a common enemy so the U.S. doesn't have to.
A foundation for special-operations-style counterinsurgency is already under way — staffed primarily by the Green Berets — with the establishment of hundreds of sites in remote Afghan villages where the U.S. troops are paired with Afghan local tribesmen trained by the Americans, Mulholland explained.
The program has been so successful in the eyes of NATO commanders that they've assigned other special operators like Navy SEALs to the mission, and even paired elite troops with conventional forces to stretch the numbers and cover more territory.
Senior U.S. officials have spoken of keeping a mix of 10,000 of both raiding and training special operations forces in Afghanistan, and drawing down to between 20,000 and 30,000 conventional forces to provide logistics and support. But at this point, the figures are as fuzzy as the future strategy.
Whatever happens with U.S. troops, intelligence officers know they will be a key component.
A senior U.S. official tasked with mapping out their role envisioned a possible future in which Afghan forces are able to hold Kabul and other urban areas, but the Taliban comes back in remote valleys or even whole provinces.
In that event, the official said, CIA and special operations forces would continue to hunt al-Qaida in Taliban areas the Afghan forces can't secure. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss planning for sensitive operations.
"If the CIA built an intelligence network that could provide special operations forces with targets, we could do the job," said Maj. Gen. Bennet S. Sacolick, who runs the U.S. Army's Special Warfare Center and School.
The only question will be which organization is in charge, and that will depend on the Afghan government, the senior U.S. official said. If Afghan authorities are comfortable with U.S. raiders continuing to operate openly, the special operations forces can lead, the official said. If they want a more covert presence, the CIA would lead, with special operation raiders working through them.
The other branch of special operations — the Green Berets and others Mulholland mentioned who specialize in training — would continue to support the Afghans in remote locations, trying to keep the Taliban from spreading.
The notion of a pared down U.S. fighting force, consisting of a latticework of intelligence and special operators, plus the far-flung units in the field, has spurred some criticism on Capitol Hill.
"You cannot protect the United States' safety with counterterrorism waged from afar," said Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee's emerging threats panel. His concern is that the White House has paid too little attention to how special operations and intelligence will keep the Taliban from overwhelming Afghanistan's remote terrain.
"I would like to know how many special operations forces they need, and how many conventional troops they propose to support them," he said, "and a rough time line."
The smaller special operations footprint could work, if it's part of a larger tapestry of counterinsurgency efforts, said retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, former commander of the Afghan campaign.
"I believe direct action operations are only effective when part of a holistic strategy," McChrystal said in an interview. "That does not necessarily imply large U.S. forces or responsibility, but it must include a spectrum of efforts that addresses root causes, partners with indigenous governments and efforts, and approaches the causes as well as the symptoms on extremism and-or terrorism."
In other words, diplomats and aid groups would have to replace the current military efforts at building Afghan government and services — and do it without a large footprint of U.S. forces to provide them security.
The smaller numbers would also put the U.S. troops left behind at greater risk, officials concede, with fewer support troops to rush to the rescue.
That's the mission a group of elite special operators was on in August, flying into a remote valley to aid another group of U.S. raiders on the ground, when the Taliban shot down their Chinook helicopter, killing 38 U.S. and Afghan forces on board.
Asked if it could happen again, Mulholland stopped and bowed his head, taking a long pause to think back to how it started.
"From the beginning, we accepted that risk," Mulholland said, remembering the early days when he sent load after load of special operations forces into Afghanistan, with no sure way to get them out.
He paused again. "We still do."
Policeman, 10 insurgents killed in Afghanistan
KABUL, Oct. 9 (Xinhua) -- A policeman and 10 insurgents were killed on Saturday when gunbattle broke out in Afghanistan's Nimroz province 790 km southwest of capital city of Kabul, provincial police chief said on Sunday.
"A unit of Afghan National Police (ANP) was travelling to Chahar Burjak district Saturday noon but a group of armed insurgents ambushed their convoy triggering a firefight lasting for hours," Nimroz provincial police chief, Abdul Jabar Purdili told Xinhua.
According to Purdili, one policeman was killed and two others injured in the incident.
"A total of 10 armed insurgents have been killed and ANP confiscate a handful of weapons and several motorcycles on the ground," the police official said.
Taliban insurgents, whose regime was toppled in a U.S.-led incursion in late 2001, have intensified activities since the militant group announced to launch spring offensive against Afghan security forces and NATO-led troops stationed in Afghanistan on May 1.
The militants group has yet to make comments.
In another development, Afghan and NATO-led Coalition forces launched a night raid operation in Spin Ghar district of eastern Nangarhar province Saturday night killing one person and capturing four suspected militants, spokesman for provincial government, Ahmad Zia Abdul Zia told Xinhua on Sunday.
However, Malik Usman, a tribal elder in Spin Ghar district, said that the killed man, 70, was a civilian and had no links with the anti-government insurgents.
2 NATO oil tankers torched in Pakistan
ISLAMABAD, Oct. 9 (Xinhua) -- Unknown armed men in southwestern Pakistan Sunday torched two oil tankers, carrying oil for the NATO forces in the neighboring Afghanistan, police in the region said.
Police said that Afghanistan-bound two oil tankers were coming from the port city of Karachi when armed men riding a motorbike set ablaze the two tankers in Bolan district of Balochistan province.
No one was hurt in the attack. The gunmen fled after the attack. Police and fire brigade personnel reached the site and extinguished the fire.
No group claimed responsibility for the attack. But suspected militants routinely target NATO supplies trucks and oil tankers mostly in Pakistan's northwest and attacks in Balochistan are rare.
Officials say that about 70 percent supplies for up to 160,000 U.S.-led NATO troops are transported through Pakistan.
The United States has signed deal with Russia for alternate supply route in view of frequent attacks on NATO trucks in Pakistan.
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Film about an expedition up Afghanistan’s highest mountain doesn’t tell all
By Associated Press, October 9
KABUL, Afghanistan — At 2:30 p.m. on July 19, 2009, the first Afghans to climb their country’s highest mountain unfurled a national flag on the icy peak in the blue above the clouds.
The celebration was fleeting. Minutes later, they headed down with a French companion, buffeted by violent gusts of wind and worried that exhaustion and a lack of oxygen would imperil their descent.
They aimed to deliver a message one doesn’t hear much, that Afghans can succeed. To say, according to a new film about the adventure, that there is more to Afghanistan than the Taliban, opium and burqas, the head-to-toe garments worn by some Muslim women.
Yet the upbeat tale masks a back story of reversals and obstacles that parallels the challenges of operating in a nation eroded by conflict. The saga is about rivalry, persistence, and tension that can flare among Afghan officials and foreign benefactors and promoters with clashing agendas. On a tiny scale, the story echoes other moviemaking ordeals. The filming of “Apocalypse Now,” a 1979 award-winner set in the Vietnam War, was so fraught with drama that a documentary was made about its production.
On Sept. 22, at Kabul’s French Institute, a boxy, 1970s-era structure, more than 100 Afghans and foreigners attended the first public screening of “24,000 Feet Above The War,” a 52-minute documentary that profiles four Afghans who sought to scale Mount Noshaq, a 7,492-meter-high (24,580-foot-high) peak — Afghanistan’s highest — in the Hindu Kush mountain range in the northeast.
Noshaq, close to the Himalayas, presides over a sliver of land, the Wakhan Corridor, that borders China, Pakistan and Tajikistan. Its isolation has largely spared it the violence that has gripped much of the rest of Afghanistan. An annual trickle of international tourists, many of them veteran climbers, is returning after a generation’s absence.
The September film screening, meant to be a celebration of hope, came two days after a suicide bomber killed former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, head of a government-backed peace council trying to reconcile with the insurgency.
The crowd applauded the wiry, weathered Afghan climbers who ascended the auditorium stage after the lights came up. Some had worked as guides and porters for foreign expeditions up Noshaq, going as far as base camps but never to the top.
In the 2009 bid, helped by French climbers, Malang Daria and Amruddin Sanjar reached the summit. Another climber, Afiat Khan, turned back because of altitude sickness, and the fourth, Gurg Ali, accompanied him for his safety.
At the screening, Daria wore a blazer over his traditional garb, a shalwar kameez. He embraced his role as an ambassador for Afghan pride, describing what he felt at the peak in this way:
“I saw all of the Afghan people at the top of Noshaq.”
It was the message that Louis Meunier, a 32-year-old trekker from Paris who crossed Afghanistan on horseback in 2005, had hoped to generate during the several years he spent preparing the three-week expedition and then producing the documentary from 50 hours of footage. The total cost was 90,000 euros ($122,000). Meunier didn’t make it to the summit because of acute bronchitis.
The film images are lush and the cutting is crisp. Meunier shows the so-called “Wakhan Tigers” during nearly a month of training at Chamonix in the French Alps; setting off with 70 porters, each carrying a 23-kilogram load to base camp; picking their way with crampons and ice axes in the upper reaches; celebrating at the summit; and returning to garlands of flowers in a village below.
As the climbing party sets out, a police chief arrives and Meunier fears he will cancel the project — “everything being possible in Afghanistan,” the narration says. But the officer just wishes them well. Then the team takes a rocky, steep route to avoid a minefield.
“The story behind the movie is much more complicated than it looks,” Meunier wrote in an email from France after attending the screening. “I decided to focus on the positive aspects of the expedition, to outline the fact that the Afghan climbers were willing to send a message of peace in their war-torn country.”
Trouble began long before the climb when Meunier and two French associates fell out with the French head of an adventure sports company who had promised financing. Later, Meunier got support from the French Embassy and the Aga Khan Foundation.
In other setbacks, a French production company dropped out, and the Afghan Ministry of Culture and Information objected. At a base camp, Meunier was informed by telephone that authorities might send helicopters to bring down the group. He quickly called the French Embassy, which used its influence to save the mission, according to Meunier.
Footage of his urgent phone conversations was cut from the film. The Afghan climbers, who are Shia Ismaili Muslims, speculated the culture ministry had wanted someone from Afghanistan’s biggest, mostly Sunni ethnic group, the Pashtuns, to be involved in the climb.
Najib Manalai, a Pashtun who was deputy culture minister at the time, said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press that there was “absolutely” no ethnic motivation for opposing the project, citing ethnically diverse teams in cricket and other sports.
“My proposal to the French was to give us, rather than this very symbolic, one-shot action, investment in a mountain-climbing course in Kabul where we would have trained tens of Afghani young people, who could have climbed many of the summits of Afghanistan,” he said.
He said the climb organizers sidestepped his ministry by getting support from other authorities, possibly in the presidency, and that the outcome “pleased some French and showed the incapacity of the Afghan government to take care of its interests for the long term.”
Manalai, now an adviser to the finance minister, spoke of tension between the “ideological concerns” of some Western donors and the “fundamental needs” of Afghans. He recalled telling French actors that street theater in Afghanistan was marginal, that their plan to stage shows would have little meaning and that any investment should be directed elsewhere.
Meunier is mild of manner and lanky of build. He has a rugged verve for the outdoors and Afghanistan. He arrived in 2002 for a six-month stint as an aid worker and ended up staying seven years. In Kabul, he played buzkashi, in which horsemen vie for a headless goat carcass.
“Why did it take me so long to edit the movie?” he wrote of the Noshaq documentary. “I was reluctant to address all these issues in a film. A few months later, when I decided to do it anyway, I did a first edit without starring myself. But the narrative was not good, and lacked direction. So I did a second edit... speaking in the first person, in French and English.”
It took another six months to get a $42,000 grant from the U.S. Embassy to dub the movie into Dari and Pashto, the two main languages in Afghanistan, produce DVDs and cover other costs. The embassy is sending copies of the film to provincial offices so more Afghans can see it. The U.N. mission plans to organize a national tour for the climbers.
The documentary helps “put a happy face” on Afghanistan, said Matthew Case, a public affairs officer at the U.S. Embassy, which was targeted on Sept. 13 by insurgents during an attack that killed seven Afghans. No embassy staff members were hurt.
“Afghanistan is not just about the war,” Case said. “There are people here trying to do well and survive and live a normal, quasi-normal, life.”
The Afghans who climbed Mount Noshaq hope to use their experience to promote tourism. At the film screening, Daria said he was willing to set up a mountaineering school for Afghans, but needed equipment because “I don’t have anything.”
As for Meunier, he is working on what is surely another monumental project, a film about the last Kyrgyz nomads of Afghanistan.
Assange, Jemima Khan lead Afghanistan protest in London
AFP – Sat, Oct 8, 2011.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and socialite Jemima Khan led a protest in London Saturday against the war in Afghanistan, 10 years after the United States and Britain went to war against the Taliban.
Organisers the Stop The War Coalition claimed 5,000 people attended the protest in central London's historic Trafalgar Square. London's Metropolitan Police did not give a figure.
"There comes a moment when you have to ask what is more dangerous, terrorism or counterterrorism," Khan, the former wife of Pakistani cricketer turned politician Imran Khan, told the crowd.
"Afghanistan is still the worst place in the world for women to live.... So by any standards, our mission in Afghanistan has failed."
Assange, who is currently under strict bail conditions as he fights extradition from Britain to Sweden on charges of rape, compared journalists and soldiers to war criminals.
"When we understand that wars come about as a result of lies, peddled to the British public and the American public and public all over Europe and other countries, then who are the war criminals? It is not just leaders, it is not just soldiers, it is journalists, journalists are war criminals," said Assange.
Assange, whose anti-secrecy website has published tens of thousands of leaked US diplomatic cables, won the Martha Gelhorn Prize for journalism in June.
Britain is the second biggest contributor of troops in Afghanistan after the United States, with 9,500 troops in the country.
A total of 382 British troops have died there since the beginning of military operations in Afghanistan in October 2001, which were launched following the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.
Western combat troops are due to pull out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014 but a survey published Thursday showed 57 percent of Britons want them to be withdrawn immediately.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com